I've been back in the UK for almost 48 hours now, and I'm thanking myself for having the foresight (and enough holiday left) to have taken yesterday and today off of work. I just know that S (the clinical editor/community person for our site) will have at least two-dozen mostly pointless things she's gotten a bee in her bonnet about since I was last at work, and that's best dealt with on a Monday.
Interlude: this fine member of the EDL's fear of "muslamic rayguns" rant sounds even more ludicrous when said in a helium voice. And I'm still not sure when Iraqi law was instituted in London. Anyone?
Let's try and do a rough day-by-day summary of the holiday.
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Interlude: this fine member of the EDL's fear of "muslamic rayguns" rant sounds even more ludicrous when said in a helium voice. And I'm still not sure when Iraqi law was instituted in London. Anyone?
Let's try and do a rough day-by-day summary of the holiday.
Tuesday
I had Tuesday off of work in order to a) buy some stuff and b) pack. I was actually pretty good with getting around to the first part, largely because part of the "stuff" was some new books to read on holiday. I've got a ton of non-fiction sitting around here half-read but decided a trip to Forbidden Planet in town was in order for some fiction; I picked up four new paperbacks, which I'll review in a bit.
So far so good, but then I managed to get the wrong train home (well, right for where I live, not where I was going) and had to get another train back to Lewisham, managing to arrive just in time to find out I really need to lose some weight if I want to buy some decent new shirts and thankfully get some new trunks. Oh, and just in time to be done with shopping and leave right at school-leaving time, which is not Lewisham's finest time of day (if there is such a thing), especially not when your bus doesn't arrive for over half an hour. I did get some mild excitement from a couple of groups of people (one with large dog) fronting off on the other side of the road, the police turning up with horses and vans and, well, mostly just blocking the road even more.
Finally home, I proceeded to pack in my typical fashion; I retreived my suitcase from my housemate who'd borrowed it, put it open on my bed, and then added an item or two every half an hour or so, interspersed with faffing around online. It does work in the end though!
Wednesday
Up early for the flight. Trundled down to the station with my suitcase and bag, caught the train to London Bridge, had a smoke outside while waiting for Rachel, and got told off by a copper who pointed out that I was standing in front of a giant no-smoking sign, which I really hadn't noticed lol. Met up with Rachel, caught the train to Gatwick and met up with Johanna and Elaine, the other two members of Team Ginger. We checked in in about five minutes, I went and chain-smoked for another five, then we went through customs and to the bar for breakfast and our first drink of the holiday!
The flight to Sharm is a bit under five hours, and as bad as every other flight. Mostly because I'm a twitchy bugger at the best of times, not small enough to curl up in anyway comfortable (for me or those sitting next to me) and find it hard to sleep anyway. Valium and some stories off of /. I'd saved on my iPhone before taking off made it just about tolerable though.
When we got to Sharm it was a couple of hours after sunset, and 28 degrees. The forecasts had said between 25-28 during the day, but I don't think it was lower than 28 at all, and most days were 30-32 :) Despite the holiday company sending us totally the wrong transfer details, we met the driver straight away and were out of the airport within 15 minutes tops. Another 15 minutes or so, and we arrived at the resort, checked in and were whisked to our apartments by trolley.
We may have had dinner, we may have had drinks, being an all-inclusive holiday these things blur into each other...
Thursday
Breakfast around 9, then deciding which pool to sit by; there are 12 pools in the resort in total, it's a bloody huge maze of blocks of apartments, restaurants, shops, swimming pools, brick towers you could climb to the top, secluded nooks and stuff. In the end it was decided we'd go for the pool with the water slide, and we spent most of the day there in the sun, reading, sitting in the jacuzzi, going down the slide into the (cold!) pool, doing some poi (mostly me) and going and getting our free drinks from the bar at the main pool a couple of minutes away. Oh, and there was lunch as well. We packed up around 5 or so, went back to our rooms to freshen up, get changed, and explore the various channels on the cable TV. In case you were interested we mostly settled on Russian Music Box as our default background choice; it wasn't nearly as hilarious as the Polish music channel Johanna and I had on our last trip to Egypt, but had its moments. And female Russian pop stars are hotter than British ones in my opinion. Anyway.
After that we caught the free minibus to the Old Market part of Sharm, where we wandered around, got hassled by shop-keepers, I got offered chickens for my three wives, my three wives (heh) got upset that I'd only been offered chickens and they were worth at least camels, some genuine fake accessories were bought, and after failing to find anywhere to eat we instead found a chemist, where we discovered that our concept of a prescription translates there to asking nicely.
At this point we decided to head back to the resort by taxi, have dinner there, and then take some valium and go and get drunk. This led to several discoveries - the tequila there tastes like paint-stripper, it's hard to take decent photos after lots of booze and sedatives, and in my case, taking more valium and then a zopiclone before bed leads to sleeping through most of the next day. Oops.
Friday
I slept. A lot. Finally managed to rouse myself to get the bus into Naama Bay (the modern bit of Sharm) with the others, where we found somewhere to have a pizza as I was feeling a little faint due to various issues that should be fairly obvious. After delicious food we then started having a wander, at which point I had a small issue that led to the loss of my second-best pair of underwear. Oops. Again. After that things went much better; Johanna and Elaine found the exact pairs of genuine fake sunglasses they'd been looking for and Rachel found the sort of earrings she'd wanted. As for me, I was content with not having any accidents lol. We found a street bar just next to Pacha and had some very nice (and strong!) cocktails before going back to get on the minibus back to the resort, which was parked outside "The Egyptian Linol Richie Centre", which sold "English fags, cosmetics and accessories". I'm sure Linol gets a cut from every packet of Marlboros.
After a couple of drinks when we got back at the pool bar, we all had a fairly early bedtime.
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Ok, I'm going to leave it here I think, as my memory for what happened each day is already failing me... I need to wait until the rest of the photos are up on FB to provide a record lol. But here's a picture of Team Ginger at the bar in Naama Bay:
| < I am smiling | IT SPEAKS! > |
