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366 unusual things: days 219-223

6th August – Currently watching the documentary Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, all 9 hours of it, for an hour and a half each night.  Each night I’m also learning German online.

7th August – This morning I woke when it was dark and looked at my clock’s glow-in-the-dark hands:  6 o’clock.  After a long time waiting for the sun to rise, I looked at the clock again:  2 o’clock.  The clock hands, the first time, must have actually said 12.30 am.

8th August – Through my window I watched a man arrive in a black car wearing a black suit and very black glasses. He had a quiet conversation with two guys in hoodies, then opened his car door and invited them to get in, gently touching one on the back, a reluctant passenger.  The car moved away slowly.

9th August – A Superb Fairy-wren just landed on my windowsill.  Never seen this in the 15 years I’ve been here.  It’s female and looks like a fat flying mouse with a vertical tail.

10th August – Heard a story on the news about a Dalmatian breeder who also owns a newborn Dorper lamb which has black spots on a white-based coat (normally they have a black head on a white body).  The lamb’s mother has rejected it, but a female Dalmatian has adopted it, licking it every now and then.  The lamb has tried to nuzzle up to her udder.

Julie Bolton's dalmation has taken on the mothering duties of this lamb that was born with black spots

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366 unusual things: days 214-218

1st August – Two people in my house eat apples every day.  One likes Pink Lady, the other likes Gala.  Whichever type is in the fridge, someone’s not happy.  If I buy Fuji or Red Delicious, no one eats them.

2nd August – The mother who wanted to get her daughter ‘moving forward’ (see my unusual thing of 27th July) forgot to send her daughter to me for her first lesson.  She was flat out, she said, and simply forgot.  Too busy moving forward.

3rd August – Some new face cream I bought says it ‘Prolongs youthful appearance with age-defying AHA’s’.  Aha!

4th August – At the local café there are two widescreen TVs on the walls of a small space, both set to a sporting match, not the same one, and loudish rock music plays through the sound system.

5th August – Watched The Diary of Anne Frank. (I’ve never been able to get through the book.)  I learnt that she wrote prolifically in her diary because she wanted to be a writer.  Indeed, she unwittingly became one.

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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Leading lines

Ailsa (http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/08/04/leading-lines/) has proposed that we find a photo containing ‘leading lines’.  Well, I’m no photographer or artist, so this was a technical term I had to look up.  I now know they are lines in an image that lead the eye to a point, either in or out of the picture.  In my father’s 1941 album of Egyptian photos, there are a few urban scenes with streets disappearing into the distance.  But in this one, below, the roads coming towards us are leading our eye to the centre of the photo.

It was taken in what was called, in the 1940s, Soliman Pasha Square, now known as Talaat Harb Square (Midan Talaat Harb), a short distance from Tahrir Square. In the centre of the square, in this photo, is a statue of Soliman Pasha which stood there from 1874 until 1964.  Soliman Pasha was a general, born Joseph Anthelme Sève in Lyon, France, who served under Bonaparte and then in Egypt was a military expert in the army of Mohamed Ali.  He converted to Islam and took the name Soliman Pasha.

At the far right of the photo is the once-opulent Groppi’s, formerly a Parisian-style café, tearoom and patisserie. Giacomo Groppi, a Swiss pastry maker, opened it in 1926 following success with other patisseries in Egypt.  From the 1920s and through the war years, Groppi’s was the place to be seen.  During the war, officers often stopped by for coffee or dinner or to find some female company.

While at the time this photo was taken the British were the resident colonials – hence the Australians were there defending Egypt – in the previous century it was the French who were leaving their mark.  In the 1940s French influence is evident everywhere, not just the Frenchman on the plinth and the patisserie that sold pastries made from secret recipes written in French, but the architecture is also of French neoclassical style from the era of Soliman Pasha in the 19th century.  Note some of the signs are also in French.  In the late 20th century Egyptian governments wanted to remove reminders of colonialism and so today, so I’ve read, much of the European-style glamour is neglected and dusty.  The statue of Soliman Pasha has now been moved to a military museum and a statue of Talaat Harb, an economist, stands in its place.

Cairo, Soliman Pasha Square, 1941