115 – In the Pink

All around are happy people, pink people, spotty dresses, and an ambience.  An inexplicable ambience, of people with nothing to do but enjoy themselves.

114 – Vete a Dormir (Go To Sleep)

Twenty-five years ago I crawled out of a tent in the Sinai Desert at midnight, hoicked my rucksack onto my back, and followed our camels in the age-old pilgrimage from St Catherine’s Monastery to the summit of Mount Sinai.  You climb it at night as it’s too hot during the day.  Plus the main point of the pilgrimage is to be on the summit as dawn breaks, and the extraordinary colours appear to rush towards you as the sun rises and picks out the layers of mountain-ranges spread out before you.

113 – More Than a Foreigner

Of course it’s quite fun at first, isn’t it?  Being “the foreigner”, having a bit of a laugh with neighbours about one’s bad Spanish, apologising all the time, and realising that the sentence you can speak most fluently is “I’m sorry I don’t understand.”  But there comes a point when that simply isn’t good enough.