The Berkshire Egg Run

I and my lovely partner Mandy have recently returned from a holiday in Marrakech, Morocco.

Marrakech sits just a stone’s throw from the Atlas Mountains, which separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert, so we knew it was going to be hot but, as neither of us had ever been to Africa before, we were a somewhat taken‐aback by quite how hot it was!

We arrived at Marrakech Airport at 8:00pm and the temperature was a balmy 33 degrees Celsius. Thankfully we had done enough research to be dressed accordingly with Mandy wearing a light floaty dress and myself doing a passable impression of Hannibal Lecter in the final scene from the film ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

The drive into the centre of Marrakech was our first experience of the madness of Moroccan traffic. On the face of it, the only rule seemed to be ‘every man, woman, or child for themselves’!

past, driven and/or ridden in Paris, Rome, Seville, Madrid and Lisbon; I didn’t think there could be a more nerve‐racking free‐for‐all traffic system anywhere other than perhaps India, where I am told it is truly insane in the bigger cities.

By the time our taxi reached our wonderfully Moorish hotel in the Medina (the ancient walled town at the heart of Marrakech) you couldn’t have got a Rizla paper between the cheeks of my arse!

The following day, as temperatures quickly rose to 36 degrees Celsius, we decided to begin our exploration of the Medina and its legendary ‘souks’, which are narrow streets packed with market stalls and street vendors of an impossibly wide selection of goods from spices to clothing and baby tortoises to tacky jewellery.

Our initial foray into the spice souks was as atmospheric as we had hoped it would be. The wonderful aromas of Jasmine, Amber, Patchouli and a thousand other fragrances were quite intoxicating and the constant questions from stall holders as we meandered by their precipitously stacked wares were so practiced and smooth that we soon fell into the trap of conversation.

“Hey English! What is this?” asked a young trader, pointing to a pile of small resin blocks.

Of course I couldn’t let his question go by without a witty response...

“Well, you’re the one trying to sell it pal. If you don’t know what it is, I don’t think much of your chance of flogging it to anybody!”

Thirty minutes later we left his stall with all sorts of sweet‐smelling things and we were twenty‐five quid lighter than when we started. Lesson learned, I responded to all further enquiries of this nature from traders with a polite shake of the head and a smile.