Hot in Cairo!

It's extremely hot today in Cairo, like over 42C hot! You can tell it's up there when you put down your book at the table in the café, reach for your coffee cup and feel a very cold patch in the crease of your elbow as the sweat trapped there evaporates instantly. And then you fish your roasting iPad out of your bag wondering, as you hold it in your finger tips, if you left a trillion apps running overnight! Not to mention the high temperature 'pasteurisation' process you endure as you travel across town in a tin can of a cab with the driver passing you tissues to mop your brow; one tissue, one mop, one chuck...next tissue, next mop, next chuck...and so on! And he's doing the same! And, finally, the shock that oven gloves are required even to buy a newspaper at the street kiosk as you hand over a ten note and get seven burning-hot coins in exchange, as if your palm is being crossed with the devil's gold!

The trip was prompted by one of my coffee shop subjects not being happy with one of his shots; 'Where's my V sign?', he complained. I'll give you a V sign right now, if you don't watch out, I thought, before realising that the 'V for Victory' sign he had made in one of the series was, for him, politically significant (The Revolution), not to mention 'cool' or 'eshta', especially when posting it on Facebook....maybe only me and his mum liked the smiley version better!

So, I went off to my regular print shop to find them without internet and then began a wee tour of the area tracking down another place, with a half hour wait for them to get their little machine up and running. I must say, though, that the quality was terrific...just breathtaking compared to my previous suppliers, if four times the price!

I also got some done for Mustafa the Jeweller while I was in the area, and helped mend bridges between him and Dd after he got glue on one of Dd's pieces while trying, rather clumsily, to repair it.

In other gluey news, I successfully superglued the WC cistern lid together that I had managed to smash yesterday while trying, rather clumsily (yes, me too!), to repair the flushing mechanism, and now only need some maroon nail varnish to do a little touch up to it...et voila!

So, getting there in all this heat, while Dd works in her school finalising the necessary trainee reports. And let's see if Ahmed likes his new 'V' sign shot....here! The smiley one is here, if anyone is interested!

PS
Went back to deliver the V sign and the lad was away home, but the manger caught me for a group shot of his staff which I wanted to have here to record the end of the series..

PPS
Apologies to all who commented earlier but I've changed my shot...the previous blip available through link to my blipfolio below...

Oh, and here I am in a lovely café late in the afternoon where the guests put their feedback on post-its on the wall. Some range further, and I was pleased to read the exhortation 'Arise and shine, Oh Egypt, for your light has come!' Someone after my own heart!