30th Oct – I’ve watched every 7 Up episode since I was 7, and today I watched the latest, 56 Up. Michael Apted didn’t plan it this way in the beginning, but thanks to his perseverance, every 7 years I catch up with people I’ve known since I was a child.
31st Oct – There’s a Halloween party for 20 children under way next door. This is unusual where I live.
1st Nov – Tutoring a student in a college library, we were asked to leave for recess. The library closed for 15 minutes. Who made up that rule?
2nd Nov – A tutoring agency asked me to fill in my details on a page entitled “Teachers Backend”.
3rd Nov – In the last two years my neighbour in the Housing flats has had two babies. The father has taken them away to another town. She accepts it; she has no money to get them back or even to go and see them. Her life is so different from mine.
As the Nile flows through Cairo it is divided in two for a short space by Gezira Island. And on this island there’s a public green space with a geometric layout called the Andalusian Garden. It was designed by the architect Mahmoud Zulfiqar Bey in 1929 as a gift to his wife, and was originally used as a roller skating rink by members of the royal family. In 1935 it was opened to the public, and in 1941 when my father was in Cairo during the war he visited this Moorish garden. The park is now protected by a heritage classification. Unfortunately the pool in the photo is now dry, but the terraces are still decorated with coloured mosaics which are not evident in this black and white photo, but photos on this blog site show the beautiful colours of the tiles and the excellent design of the garden.
Thank you Ahmad Omar for telling me the name of this garden. The photo is from my father’s collection which he brought back from Egypt in 1942.
Andalusian Garden, Gezira Island, Cairo, Egypt, 1941
25th Oct – When I turn my computer on it grunts like a quietly spoken pig.
26th Oct – At the post office, the woman in front of me was paying her bills in cash. They totalled $2,100. It was a long wait while the clerk counted the notes.
27th Oct – Spent two hours researching and writing a blog post of about 400 words. When I submitted it I received a ‘like’ a literal half-second later. Not enough time to read even one word.
28th Oct – During the silent prayer time in church, a strange voice called out, ‘WHAT THE…’. It was an irreverent ring tone on an unsilenced mobile phone.
29th Oct – One of my young students living on a large property has trouble sleeping. Herds of kangaroos hop right up to his window and snort in the darkness.
When I saw the themes for this week’s photo challenges, Foreign (WordPress weekly challenge) and Spooky (Ailsa’s travel photo challenge), I knew exactly which photos I wanted to submit. They’ve given me the creeps since I was a child paging through my father’s war album from the Middle East. While I’d linger over photos of pyramids, camels and Arabs, I’d glance quickly at these two, shiver, and turn the page.
The Foreign theme: The photos are owned by me, an Australian, and it depicts a palace built in Egypt in Hindu-style architecture designed by a Frenchman for a Belgian, Baron Empain. The architect, Alexandre Marcel, was inspired by the temples of Orissa in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The palace’s sculptures of Hindu divinities, mythical creatures and erotic French maidens are so out of place in this Muslim country that they attract the attention of looters and vandals. The palace is in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo, but at the time of building, between 1907 and 1911, it was a town apart, designed by the Baron out of a stretch of desert he bought from the British colonial government. The Baron is buried under the Catholic basilica in Heliopolis, also commissioned by him, which you can see in a previous post.
The Spooky theme: Where do I begin? Both the interior and exterior of this reinforced concrete structure are crumbling and graffitied. Once decorated by Georges-Louis Claude in the French style, it had frescoes, parquet floors, gilded ceilings, gold-plated doorknobs, Belgian mirrors, and a spiral staircase in a tower sitting on a revolving base. It must have been beautiful. Now it’s bare, the only inhabitants bats and stray dogs. And ghosts. Not only is the palace said to be haunted, but some say Satanic rituals are practised there and that some of the mirrors are stained with blood. The Baron’s sister died when she fell from the tower and his psychologically disturbed daughter died in one of the basement chambers.
Its dark history has kept the palace closed to the public. Since 2005 it has been owned by the Egyptian government which has made a few attempts to find restorers, but plans have always come to nothing. This year, however, the government announced a definite restoration project to transform the palace into a cultural centre…
20th Oct – On someone else’s computer I saw, for the first time, an advertisement on my blog. It’s for an expensive car. My husband reckons the car maker chose my blog for its readers.
21st Oct – Some kangaroos love the beach as much as I do.
Kangaroos, Murramarang Resort, Murramarang National Park, NSW
22nd Oct – A man I know who was from childhood a practising atheist, and who in recent years became a Protestant, has recently been baptised as a Catholic. A coincidence for me – I’ve just translated a story about a character who did exactly that.
23rd Oct – 30th wedding anniversary today.
24th Oct – A female politician (the PM) has loudly accused a male politician (L of the O) of being a misogynist and sexist. Yet I heard today that he cycles long distances every year to raise buckets of money for good causes including breast cancer research, a women’s shelter and Carers Australia.
15th Oct – Thought it would be easy to change my blog header, but, searching for a new photo to suit the long rectangle form, I found only one that had an interesting horizontal slice. Still, it’s now in place and reminding me of a very good day I once spent in Collioure, France.
16th Oct – Today I was pleased to see high up in my spruce tree an adult magpie and its fluffy-chested baby. It was some consolation to know she had one left after my dog killed her other chick last week. Bad dog.
17th Oct – At a student’s house today, her spoodle, a good dog, was sitting in a leather armchair like a person, its elbow leaning on the arm of the chair.
18th Oct – On the ancestry site today I found photos of my great-grandparents!
19th Oct – Asked a 12-year old student, a new migrant, to invent a bug and name it with a made-up name. She called it Justin Bieber.
When my father was in the Middle East he was surrounded by men and nurses. Mostly men. Sometimes they were soldiers in a war; sometimes they were larrikins. (The Australian Oxford Dictionary’s definition of larrikin is ‘a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions’.)
These soldiers look like they’re on a roof. Don’t tell me they’re acting as Bathsheba bathing on the roof and King David wooing her with his flute! Well, then, they’re imitating one of history’s most famous couples. I seem to remember that Bathsheba was beautiful…
10th Oct – This morning I typed for an author writing about an ancient document written in gold, emerald and purple. Tonight I translated a passage about an ancient manuscript written in gold, azure and purple.
11th Oct – Read that almost half the population of the Pacific region is living in poverty.
12th Oct – Got locked out when I was doing some gardening.
13th Oct – Today I completed the first draft of my first book translation. Woo hoo!
14th Oct – A Sydney teacher has just received a Guinness Book of Records award as the oldest active teacher in the world. He’s 99.
She’s asked us, too, to find a photo of a display that would be good to share.
Strolling through Paris one Sunday afternoon, heading for Place Vendôme to see where the rich do their shopping (though not on Sundays when everything’s closed, as I found), I was stopped in my tracks by this window display. Someone with an eye for the beauty of repetition has found a new use for old Singer sewing machines, technological marvels that produced clothes faster than human hands. Their black and gold and curvy bodies fill the windows to the ceiling on both fronts of the street corner.
When I was 5, I was taught to sew by a professional dressmaker (my sister), but I had to wait until I was 12 to get my own sewing machine, a Singer treadle. I made clothes on it until I started work at 15 when I bought an electric one, which I still use… That Sunday, the sight of all these old machines had me believing this was a tailor’s shop, and I would have gone in if it were open. But a little Internet research this morning reveals it’s a clothes shop. I’ve found photos of similar window displays in the US for the same company, All Saints Spitalfields.
Next time I’ll stroll down Rue Etienne Marcel during the week, and go in, but not to buy. I want to look at the window display from the inside.
Window display of Singer sewing machines, All Saints Spitalfields, Paris
