Sheik it

So, there I am in Wadi Rum. I have climbed down from the rock where I have watched the sun set behind huge monoliths of roll-topped sandstone, the spindly legs of camels throwing length shadows across the red sand.  I have drunk hot spicy tea from a tiny cup.I have eaten hummus and tabouli and lamb slow-roasted by being buried in an iron pot deep in the desert sand. We have gone for a walk in the dark to look at the stars, until J started frightening me with stories of djinn that had be jumping at every moonlit shadow, and scurrying like a desert rat back to the deep reds and brown of the rugs spread around a warm and fragrant fire.

And then, in what should have been the pinnacle of an otherwise gorgeous evening, the music starts. This is the moment. But can I remember a single thing from my Melbourne CAE belly dancing lessons? No. I get up and jig about for a little while, while a travelling companion to my left flails his limbs so desperately that I have to duck to stop him taking out an eye. I retire from the fray as soon as it is polite to do so, just one more frozen-hipped anglo in a very fluid desert.

...things to remember not to forget, USA

Time is getting away from me...there was a massive big canyon that dwarfed the clouds, there was a town full of ghosts perched on the hillside, there were massive mesa rising out of a baking plain dotted by numerous red columns of whirling red willy-willies, though they don't call them that. I don't know what they do call them, but they lasered their way across the flat expanse between the mesa and looked like they should be called 'Finger of God'. There was a little carpark off the highway with a lonesome toilet block, but when you got out of your car a cliff edge fell away beneath you and revealed a huge expanse of pink rounded hills in a grey dusty valley, like a jumble of giant pink and grey pearls.

There was a glassblower in Flagstaff who personally apologised to us for George Bush, and a biker in Williams who didn't like bagels. They were, he told his Vietnam Vet companions over breakfast, 'too tight. I prefer something looser. Like cake.' There was a bagel cafe in Flagstaff with every inch of wall covered in framed 'In Memorium' photos of dead dogs. If they came in alive they got a big biscuit.

There was baking dusty desert with Joshua trees, and pine forests with snow on the ground, and these two things were within an hour's drive of eachother.

There was a choice of eight dressings, but only one kind of salad.

Oh, and did I mention there was a bloody big canyon?

But there is no time for all that now, because last week, I went to Venice. I mean the real one, not the Vegas version. Stay tuned....