Monday 29 January 2018

Pension at last



Beloved is 65 today. Everyone who has sent him a card, except me, sent a picture of a motorbike. The winner has to this folded paper popup card. We are looking forward to his state pension. It made a big difference to our finances when I got mine a couple of years ago and Beloved qualifies for the new higher rate pension. That haing been said we have anticipated the change in fortune and have probably already spent the first few months several times over. Nothing like getting a windfall to push one into debt.

Sunday 28 January 2018

Ahwach at the beach?



We went into Agadir. and at the beach car park a number of somewhat embarrassed young men were changing into costume. Anyway they came out drumming and chanting. The question is was it Ahwach or Gnaoui?
I always think of Gnaoui as having wind or string instruments with the cymbals and drums and Ahwach as just the percussion, but Ahwach really would have an element of dancing as well perhaps with women participating. The march of theat Essaouira Festival includes groups with both.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_tkhVMW04A 

Ahwach is a feature of festivals and certainly the drumming was part of the local wedding which kept me awake on Wednesday night. To be fair they turned the loud drum and base disco off at 2.00am but the live drumming continued. I managed to fall asleep about quarter to four and when I woke up at 5.00am it had stopped. Beloved next to me just took his hearing aids out and snored throughout. Wedding? What wedding?




Monday 15 January 2018

The Amskroud Road and Hay Wagons

Well we are back after a long interval whilst I sorted out some medical problems. It was a late journey down the motorway but we reached the Amskroud toll at midnight - only half an hour home. Well not quite. That road has had a few flooding problems recently and they have apparently decided to tackle them. This means a series of deviations every half mile or so, great fun in the dark. The other (non)fun thing was the lorries straddling the centre line. All you could see was a low bank of red lights as they were travelling towards Taroudant for the Sunday souk, but you could see nothing above at any distance and wondered why they straddled the middle of the road. When you got up to them they turned out to be hay lorries and they straddled the white line because their loads were extended side ways in inverted triangle so as to reach both edges of the road. When Beloved managed to overtake, scooting under the wobbling arch of overhanging hay you could see they had done the same thing front and back so as to obscure the drivers view. Luckily we did not have to overtake them on a deviation nor did they meet with an oncoming lorry on one. They appeared very unstable and I assumed they were travelling at midnight to avoid traffic inspections. It was therefore with some schaudenfraude that when we got to El Humor there was a police stop which waved us through but rather severely pulled the following hay wagon over. We got home at 1.30pm.