We arrived back in Sharm El Sheikh late last night after three amazing days in Cairo and after a seven hour bus journey in the filthiest coach you ever did see. We arrived by taxi (tin can on wheels) to a different bus station to the one we had arrived at. We were assured that it was the correct place to catch the bus back to Sharm El sheikh, so we were very relieved when we saw a booth selling tickets for our destination. We eagerly purchase them and were bemused that they were cheaper than before. It wasn't until we came to board we realised we would be travelling by an inferior company and oh boy ..was it inferior.
I Have relaxed in the sun all day after all the grime of the Cairo streets and we are staying at the hotel complex tonight hence i've sneaked half hour on the internet !
The live egyptian band is just tuning up so I'll bid farewell for now, i'd love to tell you about the warm egyptian people we have encountered so far and my adventures at the Khan el khalili market where I haggled for all my life's worth to purchase a beautiful belly dancing outfit for half the price he originally wanted!!!
Thanks for all the lovely comments, I have read them all but don't have the time to reply to them just yet.
isadora Xx

Things are tearing along at a rapid pace.
We caught the bus to Cairo without any problems, we were the only non egyptians on the coach and we were given the best seats right next to the toilet(pooh) and near to the exit steps so there was no seat in front to impinge our view. It took six hours to reach Cairo and four of them was driving alongside the Sinai desert on one side with a view of the Red Sea on the other. It was enjoyable and relaxing admiring the view; then we reached the Suez Canal where we had a mad moment when the Military stopped everyone and checked all the luggage.
Most people alighted and had a toilet or cigarette stop.
I was fascinated watching the scene beneath the coach window, watching the soldiers going about their search routine religeously...then when we were almost ready to leave... silly me took out my camera and started messing about with it.
Aimlesslessly I pointed it through the window and aimed it at a good looking soldier who was rifling through someone's suitcase. All of a sudden he looked up at the coach and yelled across to the officer in charge, then before I knew it the chief of the Military with two henchmen boarded the coach and took my camera from me.
Fortunately (for me) my battery had failed so there were no recent photos on my camera, nevertheless the man in charge was very authoritive and one by one checked all my previous images to see if there were any prohibited images!!!!
I felt so stupid...we were only in the most secure border crossing ever, The Suez Canal and with such high security at this present time absolutely NO PHOTOGRAPHY is allowed (as is the case at all military bases)
I blame t'old man for not telling me, he should have known !! I dread to think what would have happened if I had been taking photos around the base, do you remember a few years ago those guys who were taking photos of those aircraft in Greece?...they were locked up for ages.
No harm done so we alighted in downtown Cairo and my goodness what a place it is!!!, we were bombarded from all sides with touts trying to fix us up with taxis, accommodation etc. we finally dived into a regulation cab only to find once inside that we were travelling in an old tin can on wheels..there were no seat belts the windows were stuck in the open position, wires were sticking out everywhere and you could only get out by opening the door from the outside!
nevertheless we got to the hotel in one piece for not too much money.

Hiya all
I'm in a different internet cafe and have just booked a hotel in Cairo on-line. I was assured that the printer was working so I could print off the accommodation voucher but after about half an hour the guy in charge conceded that the printer wasn't working and he placed the relevant web page on a floppy disc for me so that I can print it off somewhere else! Not a big deal I suppose but having only really ever used my own computer I got in a bit of a flap, lol. As long as the hotel in Cairo acknowledges my booking I guess it will be OK.
We went to the bus station yesterday and checked that we can get a coach to Cairo. They leave three times a day and it only costs 7 english pounds and takes six hours. We will be leaving for there on Tuesday
Sharm El Sheikh is a lovely resort, we decided to stay in the hotel for the entertainment last night as it was billed as 'an oriental show'. I wasn't expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised to see two belly dancers (one male, one female' and an amazing performance of 'Whirling Dervish' one was perfoming directly in front of me and it was amaing to see him spinning for a full ten mins or more. I videod most of the performance so I will try and post it when I return!
Gotta go as t'old man's getting restless, looking out the window there is a clear sky and hopefully a temperature of 73 degrees.

Isadora Xx

After a stressful time of it yesterday I finally made it to the sun! We left home really early leaving plenty of time to catch the train from Sheffield to Birmingham but because of the grim weather forecast we didn't know if they would be running or not. The rain was horrendous but fortunately the wind hadn't arrived this far north at 10 am so the train was only 5 mins late. Because of the 50mph speed limit across the rail network we unfortunately arrived in Birmingham 1 hour late, the connection to the airport was delayed hence we reached checkin with only 10 mins to spare and hyperventilating badly! lol.
The flight was without major setbacks and here we are now safely installed in Sharm El Sheikh where we will be relaxing and destressing for a couple of days before I have to make plans to get to Cairo.
We have decided to try and get there independently by booking a hotel online and using regular Egyptian transport. I'll let you know how it pans out... wish me luck Isadora Xxxx

The suitcase is packed, everything that needed to be done has been done but I keep fighting this sense of foreboding that keeps appearing. Somehow it doesn't feel quite right going to an area as a tourist when there is so much conflict in the surrounding region,it's not the fear of any attacks that bothers me more an uneasiness at the plight of the people.

Maybe this feeling will fade when I actually arrive..if I arrive that is! I have a train to catch departing for Birmingham airport at 10 am tomorrow morning but storms and strong winds have been forecast with probable transport disruptions
If there's a God then he doesn't want me to go to Egypt it took me nearly ten years to arrange another trip there after the compulsory cancellation of my 1997 holiday due to the Luxor massacre and now he's trying to put another obstacle in my way

When I met Bella in Manchester yesterday, I took my camera with me 'cos t'old man wanted to see a photo of her wearing the fairly expensive 'sale' coat that she had bought with the money he gave her for xmas. I decided not to bother as he would have been disappointed to see that the lovely. warm winter coat he thought she'd bought was in reality a skimpy albeit well made jerkin affair.
What I did take a photo of however, while I was waiting for Bella in Piccadilly gardens was this rather badly positioned photograph of an East European woman begging(almost wailing) profusely.

I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I was photographing her, hence you can't see her right arm where she had ripped off her sleeve right up to her shoulder to expose a slightly deformed arm and club hand. She also had one bare foot although I couldn't see any obvious signs of deformity there.
Am I naive or uninformed? I know we have our share of homeless beggars and new-agers occupying our city pavements but I had only seen deformity being exploited for alms in India, Istanbul, Prague and outside the Cathedrals in Seville and Granada.
The whys and wherefores of the sad plight of this hapless figure are not for me to judge ( I try to keep to the strict code of never discussing religion and politics) but I thought that by opening the floodgates into Britain from the East European countries it was supposed to improve and enhance the lives of these people NOT to make Britain border on the near third world country they left behind.

I fear that this is only the beginning of the horror. I read that there are literally hundreds of thousands of burglars, pickpockets and car thieves checking out the availability of Ryanair flights from Plovdiv to Stansted, criminality and corruption are part of the culture in these countries and alas I fear it is fast becoming ours.

I mentioned in a comment on mad poets blog that my dance class had been practising a very nice fully clothed version of a fan dance. I heard cries of "Keep 'em on, keep 'em on"
I think I better had keep my clothes on MP, or I could quite end up like HER!!

You remember that dance that Morecambe and Wise did at the end of their shows? Well...I did one very similar (but not quite as athletic due to my recuperating back) at the end of my shift today. The reason why?... 'cos I don't go back to work until 30th March.....Yippeee
The name used to distinguish this concession to the over 50's is 'Benidorm leave', I ask you how unoriginal is that!! The idea is that in the slack period between January and March (although if you saw the queues at the tills today you would think it was Xmas again), then the employees aged 50 and over may want an extended winter holiday and they assume that most of them would go to Benidorm, I wouldn't mind but some of the employees are that ..ahem..shall we say "lacking" that they actually think everyone who takes 'Benidorm leave' really does go there.
I digress, the end result is that now I won't have to say "Hello" to anyone unless I really want to for ten luverly weeks...hasta la vista el supermercado.

I had arranged to meet my retired ex-colleague friend today in Leeds city centre. On waking and hearing the wind howling outside my bedroom window, I just wanted to curl up and stay in bed.
She has further to travel than me as she lives further west near Denby Dale so I texted her and enquired if she thought she would have any problems with transport due to the weather.
"NO, see you at 12.30" was the reply. So the die was cast and off I headed to Leeds.
I would have cancelled if it wasn't for the fact that my friend has lost contact with most of her work friends since retiring and looks forward to meeting up so we usually meet up once a month to take in matinee theatre show or suchlike.
What should we do when we meet today?
The weather wasn't conducive to trawling around the shops and besides I was meeting Bella in Manchester next Sunday to do just that, so we did what is fast becoming a regular feature; we had a a bowl of soup and roll for lunch in the 'West Yorkshire Playhouse' cafe and purchased two £5 stand-by tickets for the day's matinee performance.
Today it was a production of THE WIZARD OF OZ, it was a choice of that or a production for even younger children aged between 3 and 7 called FLAT STANLEY.
"Oh no" I thought as I read that the recommended age for the Wizard of Oz show was 8 and over.
I hoped the production wouldn't be akin to a pantomime as I grew averse to them in the early 1990's when I saw Cannon and Ball at Bradford Alhambra...Oh yes we did!!!
but despite the rows of school children attending the matinee show I was not disappointed. We all know the story of Wizard of Oz and this was a true reflection of the 1936 film in pure musical play form with not a bit of panto in it whatsoever. In true Playhouse fashion the singing, dancing, costumes and props were second to none and it was actually a delight to hear the school children cooing at the cute little dog (Toto) who faultlessly performed alongside Dorothy and how they laughed at the antics of Scarecrow, Lion and Tin man.
I'm glad I went out and braved the weather.

Help!!! t'old man' has been on dog pooh watch for the last three days. After a successful campaign a few years ago we have had relatively dog pooh free grass verges outside our house...'til now that is... a few days ago t'old man spotted a walker letting his dog do its business without clearing it up. t'old man had a polite word with said offender and he went on his way.
Well, he's just spotted him again and there has been a repeat performance...t'old man's grabbed his coat and gone hareing off down the street.
This chap is fitter and younger than t'old man, I hope he knows what he's doing

I went into town after my spanish class to order a bed for Lulu's "new" spare room ( a house moving present from me) and ended up catching the bus home two hours later after having 15 needles stuck into me, half an hour with a heat lamp over me and 15 mins worth of deep chinese massage on my back.
Yes, I had walked past one of those Dr-herbs chinese remedy shops in the shopping centre. The painkillers had eased the acute pain I was feeling the other day but I was still feeling stiff and uncomfortable.
A 45 minute session and a bottle of Wood lock (medicated balm) later, and I was relieved of £50.
Was it worth it?..I don't know but I do feel some benefit and have made another appointment for another session next week.

..You've got to be in it to win it
..nothing ventured nothing gained.
..anything's worth a try
..i'll try anything once
..etcetera, etcetera etcetera.

I have been asleep for a couple of hours this afternoon probably due to the interrupted sleep I had last night coupled with the strong painkillers that the doctor prescribed this morning.
I'm feeling less pain now and so I have decided not to cancel my first event with the 'dance troupe' which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.
I will be getting a lift to the venue which is only a couple of miles away and the local 'flower club' will be hosting the event, apparently we have ben invited to help ourselves to the buffet afterwards.
I'm not sure which charity is being supported but i'll find out when I get there.
Fortunately I will NOT be required to dance seeing as I am the new girl and have not practised the routines much...just as well really!

I feel panicky
I managed to creep through last week ok despite suffering from undiagnosed backache, The Ibuprofen enabled me to go about my daily routine but then I stiffened up more and the pain seemed to travel across my back and is now presenting itself down my right leg.
Two years ago I was diagnosed with mild osteoarthritis in my left hip and I stiffened up completely (always in flamin' winter!) so I started doing specific exercises to loosen myself up. This helped a lot and for most of last year I have been mostly pain free, so two days ago, I started taking some prescribed medication which I had left over (still in date) and I bought a Pilates video in order to begin the stretching and toning exercises that helped me back then.
It hasn't improved yet, in fact it feels worse for the while it was in my back I could stand fairly comfortably but now it's the opposite as i'm better when sitting.
Which is why i'm panicking. I keep visualising t'old man pushing me on to the plane in a wheel chair and I had a dream that I was on my hands and knees crawling up a pyramid behind him trying to keep up

Right, positive thinking called for I will practise my exercises every day and if these pain killers don't work then I will have to see the doctor for advice.....Oh and the first thing i'm going to do when I get to Egypt is inquire into getting an old Egyptian masseuse to pay me a visit

After relating yesterday's conflabs there was only one incident of note during the course of todays shift.
I was standing near the doors about 5pm when a porter came in supporting a lady of pensionable age (she was 77 we discovered later), she had fallen over outside and was a little confused.
I sat her down with a cup of tea in the customer restaurant and radioed for a first aider who in turn phoned for a manager.
The old lady hadn't any injuries but there was a strong smell of alcohol and judging by the wet patch on her trousers the other odour was urine.
They checked her out and on chatting to her she told them that she had just left what is one of the roughest public house in the town, where she goes every Saturday afternoon to meet a male friend for a drink.
Apparently he didn't show up today so she left the pub after consuming only two drinks! (we think she forgot to mention the half bottle of whisky she must have drunk at home before setting out). She then proceeded to walk home, took a wrong turning and ended up at our supermarket door (a distance of three miles) where she apparently slipped on the wet ground.
The manageress spent quite a while talking to the emergency services on the phone and eventually they reached the conclusion that as she was able bodied and 'quite' coherent they should escort her to a taxi and send her home.

There for the grace of God go you..or I ... Amen

T'was my first shift back of the new year;
along with the usual friendly 'Happy New Year' greetings and the inevitable grimaces saying they were glad it was all over, I had a couple of other "off the beaten track" conversations.
The first was with a complete stranger (a female in her early thirties) who approached me as she was departing the store. She asked if I was "THE" Isadora who was going to Egypt soon. When I said I was she went on to explain that she had been chatting to the checkout operator who had served her who'd told her to have a word with me, as she (the customer) had just returned from a holiday in Sharm el Sheikh.
She carried on conversing giving me lots of Useless useful tips like how you can wear a mini skirt to go to the town's bars and restaurants, how a pashmina is useful on the cooler evenings, how to nab an Egyptian boyfriend for a holiday romance and how you can get an internal flight to Cairo for about £180 via the tour operator!
It was lovely of her to stop and chat but none of these hints will be of any use to me as I won't be needing an Egyptian boyfriend, I hope to be travelling to Cairo by local transport (for under a tenner)..maybe and somehow I don't think i'll be bar hopping in a mini skirt.

The second conversation was with a fiftyish year old female who has been coming into the store for as long as I can remember.
In her younger days she used to be a bit of a new ager then later on she would often be seen coming in to buy her supplies of booze as she developed a severe alcohol problem.
Today she looks a bit like a mad bag woman but is usually bubbly and chatty and seems to be on top of "some" of her problems.
Well... after greeting me with new year's wishes she began to tell me about her walk in the park this cold grey mid-afternoon, she told me that as she was strolling through the quiet park she had had an encounter with an angel.
She had come upon a park bench where there sat a middle aged black woman who seemed a little distressed so she asked her if she was alright and if there was anything she could do. The 'distressed lady' had said that she had suffered a fall and could the 'bag lady' see if there were any injuries on her. She went on to tell me that she had seen a cut just below her eye and a scratch on her her chin but apart from that she seemed alright and so touched the distressed lady's shoulder to reassure her.
Just then the bag lady had heard a noise (a dog barking ?) and swung round, when she turned around again to face the bench, the woman had disappered.
"She was an angel" she said to me.
I have no reason to think that her account was anything other than how she related it to me but as I am not someone who has experienced the phenomena of Angels (and I know there are many people who have and passionately believe) then I posed her a question.." How do you know she was an angel "? I asked and not another apparition such as a ghost or like"? or maybe you were hallucinating.
"OH I just know" she declared, " I have encountered devils in the past, lots of them, and SHE was an Angel"

So there you have it two little conversations of a regular store-greeter in the bowels of deepest darkest Yorkshire.

Finally: for Mr Flighty... I have started my bit for a greener new year. There is now a trolley in the foyer full of discarded greetings cards, so today I will be taking mine down and placing them in ready for recycling
At a slack moment though I couldn't help pick a few up and read them, I concluded that I must be a sentimental old fool for one card that I read was scrawled in a child like writing, "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY "DEAR GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER, LOVE FROM BETHANY" I wondered how many more Christmases Bethany would be able to spend with her great, great grandfather and I for one couldn't have thrown that card away

1. I am ... what I am.
2. I will ...endeaver not to get stressed out at work.
3. I want ...to find a way of halting the ageing process.
4. I see ...better with my reading glasses on.
5. I need ...a cup of hot chocolate before I go to bed.

I nominate: Marika sunseeker
Ethelred
Mad poet
Puredawn
Astronut

You need to start your 5 sentences as I did and put in your own endings and then nominate 5 others to do the same!

A few years ago when I first started attending arabic dance class there was a group of women who I got on with particularly well, so much so that four of us went on holiday to Tunisia together.
Not long after, one of the women left the class and started her own class under the U3A banner aimed primarily at the older woman, much to our young teacher's consternation.
A few of the other older women left to join the other class but I stayed put as the time and location of my present class suited me fine but the only snag was that this class was a beginners class and returned to basics every year.
Well, Ok , I thought, i'm never going to be an expert dancer and my mild osteoarthritis inhibits me somewhat, so as long as I keep exercising then that's fine.
Well, this morning I got a phone call from my old friend to say that she had given up the U3A class she was running but has formed a little 'troupe' instead. It is just for fun and they would be performing simple dances in aid of charity at venues like old folk's homes and flower clubs etc. and did I want join them
I had my reservations as there is no love lost between my present teacher and Pauline and if she found out I was joining them she would be none too happy.
Pauline spent twenty minutes on the phone reassuring me that they were all middle aged women, some whom I would know and that their troupe would only be performing simple dances and that they also spend time going to other belly dance social events for recreation. She said that it doesn't matter if I am going to be away for six weeks this winter and the fact that I don't drive isn't a problem as there would be one or two ladies willing to give me lifts, so the result is that I will be attending one of their meetings tonight and will take it from there.
Not sure what My teacher will say when she finds out though...playground politics could come into play here I tell yer.

I've went to the slimming club earlier and I am six pounds over my goal weight. So there you go then, i've got two weeks to lose it before I go to Egypt otherwise the new trousers I bought will be too tight and i've heard it's a six hour coach ride from Sharm El Sheikh to Cairo so they'll need to be comfortable.
Was all that cake and chocolate worth it then?..YES it flamin' well was.

I feel flat..apathy has set in and I can't think of one new years resolution to make.

I can't give up smoking 'cos I did that thirty years ago.

I can't give up drinking alcohol 'cos I gave that up twenty two years ago.

I can't lose too much weight 'cos I lost my surplus stone and a half after making it last year's resolution so i'll just resolve to take off the excess I put on over Christmas.

I can't pledge to give up working as I do very little as it is, having cut down to eight and a half hours per week and will be having ten weeks leave soon.

I won't resolve to take up a new hobby as I don't dedicate myself to the two I have now so it would be pointless.
Maybe I could take up crocheting.

Oh dear this post is depressing me, I think i'd better stop NOW 'til my moody blues have passed.

Good afternoon everyone. Let the new year commence.

For my first blog of 2007, let's be frivolous.

When you woke up this morning which of these images portrays how you were feeling?

1..Nice and snug

2...It's still snug here

3...Well, I nearly got to bed

4...I dreamt of food

5...I nearly made it..stretchings good any way.

6...Just hanging around!!