The Ramblings of Boots

My tan having ‘done a runner’ after the 5 hour white knuckle drive over the mountains, and  the rest of me, being too fragile to consider moving from the bland luxury hotel I find myself in, I settle for the comfort of familiarity. Taps that work and surly (hands extended for the obligatory tip), room service.  My intent for the final 10 days is to retrieve it –  the tan that is.

I am not a lover of luxury hotels. They are all the same. Same square rooms – large double bed (useful if you’re travelling solo), dressing table with its ‘fat’ mirror, mini bar, balcony, bathroom (with sachets of multi purpose washing up liquid for the bath or your hair), hair dryer…HAIR DRYER!!! My hair hasn’t seen a hair dryer in 3 weeks! The excitement instantly dispelled by the discovery that the bathroom too has a ‘fat’ mirror.

When will shops and hotels realise that it is in their best interests (if they want repeat business) to install ‘skinny’ mirrors?

As one who hates shopping of any kind, it really annoys me when they put ‘fat’ mirrors in changing rooms. Do they want me to buy this little black number? There is no way I have that much cellulite and my knees are NOT that flabby.

That’s the another thing about luxury hotels, people feel they have to dress as if they were going to a film premier in Cannes.

The breakfast slaves greet me with a look that says “She’s wearing the same thing – again – cheapskate”.

I’ll have you know I have 4 pairs of these very comfortable Thai black trousers and 6 of these tops, which are very modest. They are NOT the same as yesterdays (I could only get away with that in the real Africa). I have showered put perfume on AND I have dried my hair!

Bland luxury hotels are not conducive to writing, they have no soul. Bling in abundance, marble everywhere – but no soul. Bland luxury hotels are places to see and be seen. Daily a fresh cargo arrives, German, Spanish, French, Italian and (ghastly) English. All intent on finding something to complain about; the holiday having cost “a fair few bob”(in any language) and “I want me money’s worth”.

So they complain.

“The mini fridge is not working”.

“There are not enough sun loungers”.

“Why do I have to pay for a safe?”

“ Not like an English/Spanish/Italian/German/French breakfast is it?”

NO, OF COURSE IT’S NOT! IT’S AFRICA!

They are met in the foyer by their jaded tour rep who promises them a day of delight in the souk and a camel ride, and patiently listens to their drivelling diarrhoea. He smiles with benign resignation – he heard it all yesterday.

They have come to Africa, but they don’t really want Africa, they want the illusion. They want tick boxes so they can go home and tell everyone what a wonderful time they had, how they “really saw Africa”.

Of course they didn’t –  see Africa that is. You have to live in Africa to see it, not stay in a hotel that far outranks your home in Florence/ Lille/Munich/Barcelona or Leeds. You could be anywhere.

The reality is they want to watch the footie on the wide screen in the bar, they want to complain about the service (like they’re used to any kind of service).

They want to spend their days haggling, with ‘foreign’ money for crap in the souk, manufactured in China and twice as expensive as Camden market.

They want to ride on flea ridden, gobbing camels so they can imagine themselves to be Lawrence ofArabia.

They want to flirt with the sweet smelling, brown eyed Arabs so they can say they had a romantic adventure and “I could have run off with a sheik you know”.

Trust me ladies, Mohamed will be offering a ‘good time’ to the next cargo of desperate housewives before you have even hit the Easy Jet departure lounge.

As I stretch out by the pool, having done the breakfast buffet battle and bribed the pool man for the last sun lounger (my reward for this being  malicious looks from the armies  of every european nationality still waiting for a lounger), I fondly imagine myself to look like the 20 something, golden tanned, pert breasted, flat stomached, long necked thing in the pink bikini on the other side of the pool.

I don’t of course –  look like the goddess in the pink bikini – if nothing else, I am a realist.

How can a neck tan like a road map? Criss crossing narrow white lines (a bit like the mountain roads) scarring across angry, red – nay purple, inflamed flesh. I am the Christmas turkey – the very old Christmas turkey.

Bat wings flapping, I plop onto my front – SQUELCH – surely  my arse must look a bit better? Well at least I don’t have to look at it.

As I bury myself in  Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, trying to push out the now reality of it, I wish for a different world. A world where consumerism has little importance, a world where keeping up with the neighbours means nothing, a world  where just ‘being’ is what counts.

Fond though I am of the chaos in the Medina, the hustle and bustle of commerce, the motor bikes over laden with sacks of something green, the glorious maze that is the souk – I wish I was back in Taroudant.

Admitting that to date I have been excelling in my sloth study course but have been perhaps left wanting in my ‘I am a traveller’ campaign, I have, against all kinds of judgement, agreed to go from Taroudant to Marrakech, across the mountains by Grand Taxi, having discovered that no bus goes that way and not relishing the idea of more time in the seaside town of Agadir.

There is nothing wrong with Agadir, it is a very nice seaside town but after Taroudant it seems garish and brash, a little like going back to McDonalds after a decade of silver service at the Savoy.

“We will mees you Keem” Mahmoud assures me as I hand over my key thinking that I’ve hardly been a sparkling wild fire centre of attention; leaving that to the newly arrived Irishman who insists on telling everyone in that slow, loud, deliberate consonant stressed English, his entire life story. His victims, like captured birds, smiling and nodding in complete incomprehension, looking around for any excuse to remove themselves from his bird cage.

‘You will?’

“Yes, you have been very gentile. Very Taroudant, like family. We will miss you in the lobby after breakfast on your computer and again in the evening – you will come back of course?”

All this in French so he could have been saying “Fuck off you stupid old cow”, but I don’t think so.

My carriage awaits. A Mercedes no less. I know this because my son spent an entire summer teaching me the badges of all the makes of cars not only from the front but from the rear too – I can’t begin to tell you how useful this has been.

Asides from the badge which I am pretty convinced he bought in the souk and added to the car to improve its credibility, there is nothing remotely Mercedes like about it. The supposedly ‘Grand’ taxi that is.

I get in  the back – there is no seat belt.

I move to the front – there is a seatbelt. No working wing mirror but –  a seatbelt.

Inshalla.

Strapping me firmly in (it takes a while; the socket is tied together with string), my driver introduces himself.

“Mahmet”. He extends his hand.

‘Kim’.

He speaks no English and only a little French.

“Keem, Mahmet, Mahmet, Keem, Keem, Mahmet, Mahmet, Keem!”

It’s going to be a long journey.

I have no idea how far it is from Taroudant to Marrakech just that the journey is going to take about five hours.

We pass the farms of oranges and olives on the plains and far far into the distance I see the mountains, Mahmet chattering away – me struggling to reply.

He tells me that we will soon be approaching the argants, I think, he means apricots.

This isn’t so bad, we should be in the foothills soon.

OK let’s get something straight. Approaching the Atlas mountains from Taroudant, you drive for about an hour over flat plains, then – you hit the mountains.

There ARE no fucking foothills!

One minute orange trees, the next kill a goat terrain!

About this time I hit the ‘beam me aboard Scotty’ button. It fails. All I can see in front of me are crags and peaks and what look like pencil lines winding ever upwards – surely not roads!?

I keep hitting the ‘beam me aboard Scotty button. (If the fucking safety belt doesn’t work I don’t have great hopes for the air bag).

“C’est traquil, n’est pas Keem?” Mahmet beams at me.

NO IT IS NOT FUCKING TRANQUIL!

I slam my foot onto my (also not working) driving instructor’s override brake pedal as we screech round yet another hair pin bend on a road barely wide enough accommodate one vehicle let alone another coming in the other direction.

I pull my leg away from the door (like that’s going to help).

“Ca va?”

I AM GOING  TO  DIE!!!

“ Voici Keem, la nege!”

FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

There’s bloody white stuff everywhere and it’s getting closer to eye level. It looks like a beauty salon, saturday girl has been let loose on a French manicure of heroic proportions and been a little overenthusiastic.

“Look Keem il est Magnifique!”

Look? I can hardly breathe!

Mahmet tells me how wonderful it is, as we narrowly miss yet another oncoming vehicle, this time a lorry that is so long it forces us to move so close to the edge of the mountain tha  I can feel the wheels slipping off.

I watch a goat nimbly scrambling up a ninety degree angle to avoid being squashed.

I WANT TO BE YOU! I WANT TO BE A GOAT!

All I can see are the road signs, well bits of rock telling us how far we are from Marrakech.

180

MILES OR FUCKING KILOMETRES?!

179

184? – OK WHAT HAPPENED THERE?!

Finally we are eye level with the bloody white stuff.

‘Le summit?’ I tentatively enquire, now feeling car sick, air sick and any other kind of sick you care to mention as we pull up at the only building for continents.

“Oui, nous mange ici”.

We are at the top of a bloody snow covered mountain, we have spent over two hours on the roller coaster of death, and he wants to eat!?

The restaurant at the end of my universe is called La Belle Vue.

It has a sign ”LA BELLE VUE”.

I DON’T FUCKING CARE!

Next to the sign, placed at the edge of the mountain, is another piece of rock which has painted on it: 2100 M.

I gulp for air, panic rising. There can’t be any oxygen. Nothing should be this high! Only aeroplanes should be this high!

I should be in an aeroplane looking down on this from the safety of my Easy Jet baked bean can.

Why does anyone want to go up mountains?

What possessed Hannibal to take Elephants over them? I bet the elephants weren’t that thrilled.

Alexander the Great, Richard the Lion Heart, all of them? Why couldn’t they just settle for therapy?

We eat.

A Berber omelette, actually a tajine of eggs and vegetables, and all the while I’m thinking…

…WE’VE GOT TO GET DOWN.

And I’m cold.

I checked the temperature for Marrakech this morning 26 degrees and sunny.

Well it’s not fucking 26 degrees on top of this mountain, Mr smart Alec weather man! It’s flatlining! ZERO! Possibly even minus zero!

Teeth chattering, we finish our lunch (I have to confess it did settle the stomach) and, having declined the kind Berber’s offer of ‘voi-ing’ his home made jewellery, we set of on the downward slalom.

Whether it was the food or the thought that we were on the home straight, I know not, but the second half was more bearable. A bit like childbirth, when you get to 10 centimetres, you know it’s nearly over.

The scenery on the other side was truly astounding and when we turned yet another hairpin to be met by the sight of a massive turquoise lake framed by snow peaks, even I had to admit it was ‘Magnifique’.

I discover that Mahmet has a wife and two children and that his wife is in hospital with a serious heart complaint, his children are living with his parents while he provides. Life is not easy in Morocco if you aren’t a tourist.

He discovers that I am single and free and he decides we are the same.

“Libertie” He winks.

I don’t think so, Mahmet.

We arrive at the hotel in Marrakech and I am so relieved I hug him and plant a kiss on both cheeks, promising to email and reserve him as my driver should I return. He was a very careful driver and despite many stops where we had to refill the radiator with water or he “take a peess”, we survived.

Had I known what was in store would I have embarked on the journey?

Possibly not.

I’ve crossed the Alps, the Hardangervidda, the Drakensberg (mere hillocks) and now the Atlas and I can say, without reservation, I like my mountains in the distance – preferably the far distance.

The VIP ‘up close and personal’ enclosure should come with a large sign –

ONLY GOATS AND PILOTS.

Last day in Taroudant and woke feeling a little sad.

We have loved our time in this town,  me, my blisters and our new travelling companions, two juicy mosquito bites; my fault, the moon was so beautiful, I just had to leave the balcony door open.

I have loved meeting  Veronika and David and Jonathan and sharing a little time with them.

I have revelled in my walks through the souk, my time in the square, my near death crossing the road experiences, the wannabe James Deans on their motorbikes, the proud Arab horses pulling their carriages, the faces – most of all – the faces.

I have loved it all, the nothingness of it, the selfishness…the lazyness.

My evening with Lily in her palatial riad….ah yes, Lily… I promised to tell more.

We met in the hotel lobby, both of us on the internet. She told me she had a house in the Kasbah and two days later invited me to tea, which turned into several glasses of wine and her life story.

Lily grew up in Sudan, Khartoum no less. Her grandfather supplied Kitchener during the war and the family settled there.

“Not the British army, Kim”. I understood.

She was the middle child and the family did well. Lily and her sister were never allowed out unless chaperoned and led a sheltered, privileged, almost Victorian childhood.

By the time the family were forced to leave the Sudan for England in the 60’s she was fluent in French, English and Arabic.

A good English education afforded Lily  entrance to both Oxford and Cambridge to read law, but her protective  parents insisted she stay close to them and she studied in London instead, still leading a sheltered and privileged life.

She met a fine English gentleman who she loved dearly but whose mother had greater ambition for her son and did all she could to wreck the romance.

She succeeded.

Lily (now a barrister) went to New York to get over her broken heart.

New York in the late seventies.

Lily arrived in New York,  petite, multi lingual, intelligent, beautiful and VERY naive.

She fell in love with an American, an artist of some renown, and they painted the Big Apple so red that Lily blushes at the recollections; Studio 54 being their favourite haunt.

“He was so wild, Kim. I was wild. Imagine being let loose in new York after my childhood? But he was too wild, even for me.”

She came back to London and opened an art gallery on Bond Street, living at various times in Mayfair, Hampstead and Primrose Hill and being courted by Austrian Counts and English Lords, but by now her heart was set on travel and freedom.

She travelled round the world, played the tables in Monte Carlo, trekked in Nepal and  India, flew to Mexico for weddings, sailed in the South Pacific and rested in Africa (her heart always belonging to Africa).

The gallery, her baby (Lily is more than contented with her role as an aunt) was a great success and then, quite by chance,  some 20 years ago she met  her ‘little’ Italian and she has been with him ever since. He lives in France, she in London, they share all the good bits without ever having to give up being free spirits.

Now they have pooled their resources and renovated the riad in Taroudant.

It is their bolt hole and pension investment. It is also  a monument to good taste. Designed by a well known architect, using all local material and filled minimally with tasteful pieces of pure art (the cluster of highly collectable 60’s plastic chairs in the courtyard by the plunge pool and on the roof terrace were £200 each), all carefully sourced and lovingly placed; I could but gasp in admiration.

And so tomorrow I move on to Marrakech and all its hustle and bustle but I will miss this quiet walled city and hope to return.

 

I couldn’t be more excited, not even more excited than I was when I first saw those Blackpool illuminations.

Needing to stock up on my ‘classy way to commit suicides’ and refusing to pay the equivalent of £3 in whatevers, for a packet of a variety I hate, in the hotel shop, I head at precisely 2.15 for the Souk.

Having never been to the souk at this time before, preferring to go at noon when the sun is at it highest, I am amazed. It is closed, properly closed, as in the way it was properly grey in Agadir two days ago.

You can still walk through the souk but all the shutters are down. Grey shutters, blue shutters, aubergine shutters, green shutters all, like mad monk’s hoods, shielding their eyes and refusing to show me the gems hidden behind; the saffron, the herbs, the dates and the scarves that those in Blighty have requested.

Actually I almost prefer the souk like this. It is motor cycle free and I can get lost without losing an ounce of self esteem, there being nothing recognisable to make me feel guilty about my navigational skills, and to be truthful, I was a little worried about the saffron, knowing that my ability to tell the difference between saffron and spaghetti would undoubtedly be a challenge too far.

Once in the gloriously quiet square (the classy way to commit suicide kiosk is thankfully open), I settle down with ‘Moll Flanders’, order my j’us d’orange and watch a much quieter world go by. I like this Taroudant – a lot.

After an hour or so I wander back through the, still closed, souk and along the orange tree lined avenue to the hotel. The ripe oranges littering the floor like conkers in a Blighty  autumn.

I am rarely bothered on my walks these days. Most of the locals know who everyone is and they are quite used to this blonde old bag in almost Arab clothing marching through their town. They know I will smile and politely say ‘Bonjour’ but they also know better than to try and engage me in any kind of ‘parting with my money’ conversation. The concierge at the hotel even describes me as ‘family’ – he is obviously holding out for a good tip.

Arriving back at the hotel, Mahmoud (the concierge), tells me I have a message and hands me a note. My first thought is ‘Oh god what’s happened, who’s hurt? My second is that maybe David or Jonathan has left a message regarding the health of Charles.

I open the note with trepidation. Relief. It is not bad news nor, alas, news about Charles, but rather a note from Lily (who I met a few days ago and who I shall tell more of later), inviting me to tea at her newly acquired house in the Kasbah, the same Kasbah I got lost in on my first day.

Excited!? I almost wet my knickers. I have to be there in an hour. No time to return to the souk for a gift, I manage to purchase a bottle of wine from the hotel and pray that Lily isn’t Muslim.

As I rush to my room to change into something that I might not have worn for three days on the trot, I notice that nature’s most perfect blossom, the Jacaranda, is starting to bloom.

Jacaranda AND tea in the Kasbah! That has to rate as highly as feeding a muslim prince, pork, in south London.

I had intended to write about the perils of parenting. About how it is a) very hard and b) that as a parent you will always fail but, having been told quite smartly that ‘that will take you down the road of self pity,’ I drifted for a while in the sunshine and as I did my thoughts turned to my mother, our relationship, my mother as a person.

We had a difficult relationship. She being not the mother of my dreams, nor I the daughter of hers (she having always wanted a son) but she was my mother.

What kind of a woman was she I pondered? That question now too late fascinates me. How I wish I had entered into long taped conversations with this woman and captured her essence in an oral history. What did I really know about the frail body locked in a world of dementia that I watched slowly decline and become more and more frustrated as her memory failed and eventually die.

Very little.

She was born in 1926 to my grandparents, who divorced at a time one didn’t.

They were a working class couple living in Preston or Blackburn (you see how little I know). My grandmother’s family laid claim to a grander heritage involving textiles and bleach; my grandfather, I know even less about. I believe he was a gambler and a womaniser but asides from an unwelcome visit to my mother on the way to Newbury racecourse some decades later, I have no evidence to support this.

For whatever reasons, they divorced. He disappeared and in those days there was no such thing as child support.

The shame of divorce and the feelings rejection must have left an indelible mark on this small girl, their only child.

My grandmother, one of 8 siblings, took on various jobs to support them both and was, according to my mother, ‘a great favourite with the gentlemen’.

How far this ‘favouritism’ was explored or exploited I know not but I do know that among her various jobs she worked as a seamstress and in the local public house, either as bar maid or cleaner or – whatever.

I only met my grandmother once. I was five. We were supposed to be going on a family holiday to Devon when I came down with the chickenpox. My parents decided they could not forgo the holiday and could certainly not take a pox infested child with them, so I was duly dispensed to the two up to down, straight onto the cobbled street, house in Preston/Blackburn.

I adored my grandmother. She was warm and ample like a duvet you could snuggle into.

She took me to see the Blackpool illuminations and I marvelled at the neon twinkly lights and thrilled at the roller coaster and its occupants shrieking overhead although after our ride on the monster my imagined passion for all things thrilling died a certain death, never to be reignited.

“I have a gentleman friend who will buy us tea” she informed me – and he did, her in her best hat and me – scratching.

She let me scratch.

My mother had given her bottles of Calamine lotion and strict instructions that my hands must be glove covered and allowed nowhere near my face.

My grandmother seeing the torment the itching was causing, took off the gloves and said

“Eh love give ’em a good scratch…can’t hurt”.

Even today when I run my fingers over my cheek and feel the indent left from the scratching, I remember that glorious week and her warmth and rebellious kindness.

At some point my grandmother decided that this was no life for her daughter and sent her to live with her sister’s family. Whether this was to allow herself more freedom or in recognition of her own failings as a single parent, I know not.

I do know she adored my mother. She may have been a 20^th century Moll Flanders but my mother recalls fondly that she was always beautifully dressed, always wore hats and made all my mother’s clothes. She also remembers her  laugher; a laughter too intense to be heard. My grandmother it seems would shake and shake with this laughter until tears were streaming down her face, begging my mother to “Stop making me laugh”, but not a sound would come out until finally she exploded with mirth and the house would shake.

About the time my mother was sent to live with her aunt and Jenny came on the scene. Jenny had also been abandoned by her husband and my grandmother, whether lonely or in need of the few extra pennies that Jenny would provide, took her in and they lived together until my grandmother died in 1962 – I believe an awful lot of ‘gentlemen’ , including the mayor, attended her funeral.

My mother allowed Jenny to stay in the house, rent free, until she died some 20 years later. Whether this gesture was to assuage the guilt she felt at leaving home at sixteen and never really returning or compassion, or just because she didn’t want to deal with selling the house, I shall never know, but I believe it was compassion.

She hero worshipped her uncle, her only male role model and told me in one of our infrequent ‘tell me about yourself’ conversations, that she based her search for a husband on him. A kind, quiet, well read man, who was of reasonable importance in the colliery; important enough to have a grace and favour house with a garden. He was also a union man I believe.

Despite having three daughters of his own, he treated her exactly the same as his own children. Her aunt was less charitable (her own daughters testify to this). A small bird like creature who ruled the household with a rod of iron and who, for whatever reasons, was mean spirited.

My mother would spend hours in the library (I suspect it was a small room with a few books) with her uncle, and came to love literature and song. My great uncle had a gramophone and my mother loved to listen to the opera he played. She had a wonderful voice and he would thrill to her singing along.

School was a three mile walk for the four girls, in a Lancastrian winter, nothing short of torture. My mother being the youngest, and the one with the weakest bladder, was often left trailing behind the others and many a time would arrive at school with with wet knickers and have to suffer the embarrassment of being hauled to the front of the class and told to go to the office where a clean pair would be handed out.

One of her cousins, Ethel, became sickly. First scarlet fever then St Vitus dance. My mother as the ‘Cinderella’ was taken out of school and given the task of tending to Ethel, which she did with gentleness and love. Ethel recovered (she was later to die from tuberculosis) and my mother’s cousins give all credit for her recovery to my mother’s patient care.

The rest of this time in her childhood memories is devoted to long summers and jumping over haystacks in the fields and learning how to cartwheel and, on a far sadder note, awaiting the arrival of her mother.

Her Aunt would tell her that her mother was coming to visit on a certain day and my mother would dress with extra care and await her arrival on the bottom step. She would wait and wait and wait – her mother never arrived. I wonder if this expected ‘visit’ was just a fabrication and yet another example of her aunt’s mean spirit, or whether her mother just forgot, or couldn’t cope. Whichever, it must have been a heart rending disappointment to this small girl.

At some point she returned to the house on the cobbled street. She went to grammar school, not because she was clever but because ‘One of the boys in class was clever, so everyone in the class went to grammar school’.

At school she would look at the world Atlas and promise herself she would one day see all the exotic places marked in empire red. The rubber plantations in Ceylon, the spices in India, the sand dunes of the Sahara; this was the world she promised herself.

Her flaming red hair was never to go unnoticed. By the time she was burgeoning into womanhood, she had several admirers and “I never carried my satchel home from school”.

She also never tired of telling me “ I had eight proposals you know, eight!” She especially liked to point this out when I was well into a pregnancy and barely in possession of any husband.

War broke out when she was working in a bakery. I cannot imagine my mother ever working in a bakery. She must have been an unmitigated disaster. My mother had no domestic skills,( although she insisted she studied domestic science at school). She could neither cook nor sew. Her mealtime offerings more often than not being presented in hard foil tins taken straight from the freezer, deposited into a cooker and from thence, partially thawed, onto a plate. By the time I arrived she had no need of culinary skills, having risen in the world and being in the possession of ‘staff’. She did attempt dinner parties in later years and like her daughter managed to perfect at least two ‘signature dishes’.

As far as sewing goes, I do remember sewing name tags into my school uniform with her on the eve of my banishment to boarding school, but I also remember my father being present and him sewing at least two name tags to our combined one.

I digress.

The war was for some a window of opportunity, certainly in my mother’s case. She was never going to be an opera star spite her talent, there was no money for that. So she was going to war.

It was her escape, her way out of flour soaked drudgery or an unhappy marriage to one of eight men (lest we forget) who, to her mind, all came with two big drawbacks. Firstly they had no soul, (being northern and through upbringing, lacking in artistic imagination) and secondly, they had ‘mothers’. As an only child, the product of a broken home, brought up by a mean spirited aunt, she had no intention of entering into the ring of competition with any other female, particularly a ‘mother’.

She begged her mother to sign the enlistment papers when she was seventeen, and her new life began.