Well it is nearly here, on Wednesday we will leave the UK to go to Egypt.
It is a land I love, and I have been in love with this land since I was a child.
I cannot think of anything that has excited me so much, or consumed so much of my leisure time, as this ancient and mysterious culture. My dream as a child was to go there, to see the wonders described in so many books and films. I vividly remember watching the Saturday films as a child at the local cinema, all of the biblical epics by Cecil B. DeMilne from 'Ben Hur' to 'The Bible'. As I watched, I never believed that one day I, a post war child, born into poverty in the North of England, would someday go there, it is a dream come true. To sail on the Nile, to go to places I had only ever dreamed of, with mysterious names like, Kom Ombo, Philae, Abu Simbel. To stand beneath the statues of Ramesses the great, in the temple of Karnak and to know that he also stood in the same place and gazed upwards as I did to admire his own image. To enter the Valley of the Kings and feel the presence of the Pharaohs of antiquity, Tuthmosis III, Seti I, Horemheb, Tutankhamun, Ramesis II, Merneptah, & Queen Hatshepsut. To wander around the Ramesseum (a quiet place) and mentally recall the poem by Shelley 'Ozimandius' and to 'despair' at his works. To go down into the tomb of a worker and to see what was his dream of immortality and to hope with all your heart that his dreams of the afterlife would become true, even though your own beliefs told you that it was not to be. To visit the workers village and to realise that these people were just like you and me! To be welcomed into the homes of an ordinary Egyptian family, to adopt another '(pseudo) Grand-daughter' named 'Fatima' (We will see her this week for the first time). I have been so lucky in my life, I was into middle age when I realised my ambitions and went to Egypt for the first time. I read avidly, I soak up anything regarding Egypt like a sponge, I was determined that one day I would go to Egypt. If ever I had a dream, it was be to become an Egyptologist, but alas that will never be, but I can dream. My own family is also involved in this and there is frequent contact between the two families. This is now our sixth visit to Egypt, but the wonders never cease.
Tez