Tom in Egypt // توم في مصر

Merry Christmas one and all! I'm writing from Manchester Airport (where there is, predictably, no free  wireless) on my way home to Egypt. Delayed again. It's been a fabulous week-and-a-half of fantastic food, good wine (finally) and – most importantly - thoroughly excellent company.

My first couple of days involved trying to catch up with some old friends, who were on fine form as always. I also managed to visit my darling brother, who is working a proper job for a year before he goes to London next year. He has a desk on the top floor of a double-decker bus with TWO screens. I'm going to link my new 12” netbook to the 15” CRT in my new office just so I can compete.....

The netbook, a Samsung NC20, is running like a dream by the way, a real breath of fresh air after the battle-weary Fujitsu-Siemens that got so hot I would have to manually fan in order to use Skype (a sight so absurd as to be almost unsavoury for any with whom I was in video communication.)

The main highlight, aside from seeing my dearest family and friends, was the abundance of snow that made Saddleworth a very speical place to be at Christmas, and that also meant my mum didn't want to drive anywhere, thus leaving me free to run wild in her car. Well, as wild as you can run in a Mitsubishi Colt. On Wednesday, after fearing Mona stuck somewhere in the Channel tunnel, I finally picked her up from Piccadilly so she could see Christmas “ha2ee2ee” - (“real Christmas”, whatever that is). Mona, for those of you who haven't had the good fortune to meet her, is Andrea's host sister and best friend from Alexandria. She's something of a legend after the way she looked after Andrea in the hospital and was generally a star, and it was a real privilege to have her visit the family for Christmas and for me to get to know her a little better.

In recent years, our Christmases have acquired a fairly consistent international flavour, with guests now from Cameroon, Brunei, Egypt and the US, and with one Christmas being spent overlooking the Pyramids in Giza. For Mona's visit, we slightly cut down on the pig products (last year's main meal unwittingly starred 5 different kinds of pork) bought in some halal lamb and chicken, and some Schloer – a syrupy sweet non-alcoholic wine replacement. I showed her Manchester, took her shopping in Primark on Christmas Eve – her choice – and hit the Boxing Day sales with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Mona was an all-round great sport, even at one point impressively managing to persuade my dad to pull out his melodion for a tune and, even more commendably, getting my 84-year-old grandpa to pull out his handkerchiefs and give a brief masterclass in morris dancing. As I mentioned, it was a privilege, and Andrea and I both miss Mona whilst she is out of Egypt studying in the UK.



I'm sad to be leaving, it's been great to spend some time with my family and another week would have been nice, but you can't have everything. Next I'm meeting Michael in Cairo and then heading south for my first trip to Luxor for new year, and I'm reminded of how lucky I am to live where I do and travel as I do. The new job starts on January 4th, and I know I've already got a lot of editing to do along with meeting and getting to know the trainees I will be supervising. I'm looking forward to the challenge, and it will be good for me to have lots of work to do to occupy me until Andrea comes back to Egypt on the 25th.

Merry Christmas everyone! See you next year!

Txxx