It's difficult to tell until summer is over but it is looking as though the move to cacti and succulents las autumn may be working out. The babies are coming on well and the trailers are down the side of the pots. Moha has done a good job of keeping them watered. Downstairs the Cheese plant is thriving ,the roses are nearly out of hand, and we had to prune 3' off the hibiscus even though the last thing we did before we left was prune it. I can't get used to pruning 4 or 6 times a year but apparently that's normal here.
The main bridge out of Taroudant has been out of comission since the floods which I thought were in 2010 but a correspondent has reminded me were 2009. They have been painstakingly building a replacement which has been impossible to document through photographs because you could not stop the car on the deviation across the riverbed. It was finished this winter and looks very swish with an opening commemoration plaque, sadly inscribed only in arabic without french and tashalet equivalents. It is still impossible to photograph because the townside approaches by a long causeway with no stopping or indeed anywhere to do so. The otherside approaching the roundabout and new petrol station/cafe/restaurant complex seems to have become a permanent police vehicles stop. They obviously enjoy the proximity to the restaurant and there are always six or seven on duty which is double the usual quota. We've never been pulled over but their presence has discouraged me from taking tourist pictures.
And the other bridge of the title has been noticeable by its absence and a great nuisance at that. Last monday i was innocently having my breakfast bread and cheese when my bridge came out divesting me of my three front teeth. We managed to find a dentist in Agadir the same day and I had 5 sessions with her last week and one yesterday and another tomorrow and then she assures me my permanent bridge will be ready Monday or Tuesday well in time for my return to Britain next Saturday. I had been a little concerned as to the modernity of moroccan dentists, some have gruesome tooth signs suggesting they are little more than tooth drawers but was reassured that the dentist we found was on the same road as our notaire and architect suggesting an area of modern professionals. In fact Beloved assures me that everything is more modern than our british dentist's. I wouldn't really know as I decied that the best thing was just to keep my eyes shut and my mouth open. I have decided that there is an advantage in having limited shared language with you dentist,(a sort of pidgin mix of french and english) as they feel no duty to tell you in frightening detail and scarily "reassuring" tones exactly what they intend to do and how little it will hurt, but just get on with it.
Anyway the upshot is I have nothing to blog about now or over summer except about dentists and Beloved's planned trip to the Sahara has been ditched in favour of endless trips to Agadir and paying for teeth.
We were here for Mayday two years ago and saw a dignified march through town by the various union affiliates. We were here again this year but there was no march. Instead both the CDT and the FDT held separate meetings in Place Assareg and Place Tamaklate respectively. The unions split in 2003 and although they can still organise some joint demonstrations ,see
http://www.moroccotomorrow.org/cdt-fdt-labour-unions-hold-march-in-casablanca-in-support-of-working-class/,
they clearly could not agree on one Mayday celebration.
The FDT seemed to have council worker adherents in orange safety jackets and red baseball caps, a speaker a la Arthur Scargill and lots of chants, and even a song, reminiscent of 60s/70s demos in Britain. The CDT seemed to have more arabic sounding music from the loud speakers. The senior (going by the braid) police officer and his plainclothes colleague who both attend any demonstration settled for the CDT which they observed from the comfort of the Hotel Roudani over a coffee.
The sad thing for me was that on the march two years ago there had been a good turnout of women, marching separately from the men. At these demos there were only about half a dozen women at each. I suppose it is possible they had their own demo elsewhere but I didn't find one. It is the women who particularly need a union as they do hard, hard, agricultural work in the fields on a casual basis, like dockers in the 60s, and thus have none of the protections of maternity leave etc of city workers in foreign owned factories or workers in state industries.
