The bonus of backdating blog posts is that you can write up your notes when you get back from travelling and post them on the appropriate day.

The downside is that anyone using a browser rather than a feed reader will probably miss them by not scrolling down past postings that then appear above them.

So as it took the best part of a week to get my notes from Morocco online, here’s a link to the relevant entries for browser-based readers who probably won’t have seen them:

Day one: An introduction to sweet mint tea.

Day two: The Souq, the square and boiled cows’ heads.

Day three: Over the mountains by 4×4, donkey polo, and checking your bed for scorpions.

Day four: Hold-ups in Casablanca.

We are woken up by the musicians. They come stamping around the camp shortly after seven, standing by the flap of each tent and banging their drums. It certainly beats the hey-hey-hey Mickey Mouse message they played down the phones on a press trip to Disneyland Paris a couple of years back.

Today we were leaving. Not just the camp, but Morocco, too. The 4×4s had disappeared late yesterday afternoon, and now we were loaded onto a couple of dusty mini-buses and driven back down from the plateau and onto a fairly good road that took us back to the city in less than an hour.

When you use the good roads - like this one - you really see how different Morocco is to home. We passed by a boy at the side of the road sitting on an oil drum. All around him were ranged a series of smaller cans full of petrol he was selling, perhaps for the bikes that would never make it from one well-spaced station to the next. And there were no hoardings, either, save for the occasional notice of a coming development. There were no Gap billboards or McDonalds arches, no designer labels, and certainly nothing offering two of anything for the price of just one. It was quite refreshing.

The airport was less-so. Its bland, dingy terminal one is being renovated, with a beautiful entrance hall and a solar power plant, but the actual area where you queue and wait for your plane is nothing special. The x-ray people gave our bags a cursory glance and they told us to walk through the metal detectors without emptying our pockets. They beeped, of course, but the guard that stood beside them just rubbed his hands briefly across us, and never asked for an explanation of any wallet, key or belt bumps.

The whole airport felt unnaturally relaxed and laid back when you knew how frenetic the city it served was, just a couple of miles across an olive grove.

We put down in Casablanca, to drop people off and fill their seats with new passengers, and our 25 minute stopover turned into a 90 minute delay as an argument broke out at the back of the cabin between the ground and air crews. It was something to do with the forms the man from the ground crew kept waving close to their faces, but nobody seemed to want to sign them.

A compromise was arrived at, eventually, and the doors were close and we moved just slightly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the captain, speaking over the intercom. ‘It seems that our slot is no longer available at Heathrow, and we’re going to be delayed.’

A collective groan rang out through the plane, which I suspect was less to do with the delay and more with his fibbing. Our slot was probably lost over an hour before, though no fault of Heathrow.

I think I preferred out over-honest pilot coming over.

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africa, marrakech, morocco

Today we left Marrakech, but not to go home. Instead, we assembled after our meeting for a briefing by Azim’s team. They gave us maps, emergency mobiles and the keys to a fleet of twenty-odd 4×4, and sent us off into the mountains.

The idea was that we would all make our way out of the city, across the planes and the foothills to spend the night in Bedouin tents on a cactus-rimmed plateau overlooking two small villages in the valleys below. Azim’s men assured us that we would be fine, but having seen the mad driving seemingly endemic to the city we weren’t so sure.

Target: our camp in the mountains

Fortunately, it turned out that Marrakech doesn’t actually have much in the way of suburbs, and so we were into the parched no-man’s land that we had seen from the plane in just a couple of miles. The roads narrowed and the traffic got lighter, but you have to wonder for how long they will stay like that. Here and there, developers have staked their claim to patches of the red, Mars-like landscape, and modest boards speak of exciting tourist developments soon to appear in their place. It’s clear that Marrakech will undergo some serious changes in the coming years, and I’m glad that there seems to be little or no possibility they will be able to make any changes in the Souq or the square.

Eventually we found ourselves on our own. The road stretched out front and back as far as the eye could see and from one horizon to the other, ours was the only vehicle around. We passed through a small village hunkered down in the shadow of a massive dam wall and climbed the road that runs along the banks of the reservoir above. It’s like an oasis: an out of place patch of blue in the dusty, rocky vista before us.

Artificial oasis

We got out to take pictures and Jalal told us to be careful of scorpions sheltering from the sun under the rocks, just as a man pulls up on a dirty old motorbike. He steps off and pulls beads and cheap jewellery from his clothes, which he tries to sell us. As we continue our journey later in the day we see this more and more. Men stand at the roadsides as we sweep past holding up great geodes that would cost thousands back home, and just as much in excess baggage if you tried to take one back with you. When we slow down to pass through the villages on our route, young kids put their hands in through the windows or just throw a cheery wave as we pass them by.

Up in the hills down there

Our route takes us on across a wide flat plain where we pick up speed, and the scarab beetles, which seem to have chased off all other insects, are attracted to the white paint of our vehicle and get sucked in through the open windows. The road is as straight as it is flat as it passes by farmers bent double picking corn by hand. Then suddenly it reaches a steep hill that rises out of the ground almost at right angles, and folds itself into short strips and tight turns and climbs to impossible heights. The plain opens out below us and we can see all the way back to the dam, half an hour ago. A solitary line of pylons marches out across the landscape, but there seems to be nowhere for them to stop off, with no major settlements anywhere to be seen.

The road carries on up the hill, over the top and down the other side into a lush valley, and eventually we find a well-made road, down by a river where camels are bathing their feet. We pick it up and follow it on to the Atlas foothills and our tents for the night. In close to four hours we have travelled fewer than 70km.

Donkey polo

The tents are woven of thick dark wool, and they are the fabric equivalents of a terrace. Each is maybe 50m long and split into 18 areas - one each with a small bed, a lantern and a torch for finding the toilet at night where the only illumination, even during the day, is a single candle hung from a hook. They are built around a series of fires, which in turn are surrounded by rugs laid down to mark out the paths around the camp. The whole thing is ringed by closely-grown cacti, which I can only assume are there to keep out wild animals, or to stop us from walking over the edge of the plateau in the dark.

We have a briefing in a large communal tent and pass the afternoon watching the locals play donkey polo, and making bread or mirrors or small pieces of wooden furniture. Later on, as the sun goes down and we have been out to take pictures of the mountains’ silhouettes, a troupe of acrobats turn up and throw themselves around on the hard stony floor. Fire eaters and a group of local singers join them, and they keep us entertained while dinner is cooked.

The musicians warmed their instruments by the fire before their performance

This, it turns out, is bread cooked on the walls of a stone oven, and half a lamb for each table, sliced lengthwise along the middle and dropped on the table, gaping wound uppermost. Finally, we also have couscous, which we’ve been waiting for since we arrived, only it’s bland and wet, and a poor substitute for the packeted stuff we have at home. That’s a terrible thing to say, I know, but perhaps the couscous we buy in the supermarket is so unrealistic that the real thing is a sorry let-down.

I check my bed carefully for scorpions and watch the moon come up. It is as impressive as any sunrise I have seen. One moment there is just the tiniest dot of light pricking the top of a mountain. Three minutes later a great silver disk hangs in the sky, and you can see how it climbs higher and higher, accelerating away from the peaks. It barely looks real.

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africa, marrakech, morocco

Marrakech is famed for its Souq. At home we have markets, but they don’t compare to this knotted tangle of streets, lined by tiny businesses that will have been trading in its shady corners since the Normans invaded Britain. It’s many travellers’ sole reason for coming to Marrakech.

After an early briefing we split into groups and headed into the Medina, the old city still ringed by an unbroken 16km of thick red walls. Everything in Marrakech is red. Either because it’s so old it was built of the local red mud, or because it’s been painted that way to match the rest of the city.

The wide rose-trimmed roads disappeared, to be replaced by tighter, narrower paths that opened up onto squares. We passed the great mosque, the oldest and tallest building in the city, and pulled up at the end of an alley lined by small shops. Idle men sat in the doorways, sheltering from the heat, and bony cats slinked along in the shadows, calling out for food.

Azim, our guide, explained that he would be taking us through the Souq, and to be careful with our cameras; not because they might be stolen - this is a very safe city, and it felt it - but because we could offend people if they popped up in our pictures. Try to avoid taking pictures of women, he said. And the old.

So we set out down a narrow alley barely wide enough for three to walk side by side, jumping out of the way of the motorbikes that cut through the tide of pedestrians. A small truck chanced its luck and pushed down behind them, forcing us all to squeeze into nooks in the wall or slip through an opening onto a small construction site where dusty workers were shovelling red earth into wooden carts strapped to the backs of a small troop of donkeys.

Watch out for bikes in the Souq

The deeper we got into the Souq, the more striking it became. It’s a boggling collection of tiny businesses, clustered together in groups. A whole alley of metalworkers; next door, a row of lantern makers, slaving over furnaces with primitive instruments in the scorching heat of the day. Turn a corner and it’s hand-made shoes as far as you can see. Around another, chickens by the thousand, unbroken strings of fruit and nut stalls, chameleons and terrapins, countless herbalists, and woodworkers beyond number.

We stopped by one of these woodworkers’ shops and he carved amulets for each of us with his feet, using his hands to run a bow back and forth to spin his manual spindle. No electrical tools here; instead he made boxes and kebab skewers the same way they would have done 500 years ago.

Metalworkers’ shops in the Souq

It was impossible to get a handle on how large the Souq might be, and I suspect it may be a little smaller than it felt, but we walked around it for a good two hours and I didn’t spot the same thing twice. When we eventually stepped out of its shady lanes, slashed by strips of sun that cut their way through the slatted wood roofs, we were in the enormous central square that at night is turned into a food market of epic proportions. Here, in the full heat of midday, traders laid out their wares on rugs and sat by them without any shade.

A street dentist proudly displayed his collection of ugly tools for pulling teeth, without either anaesthetic or a dental chair. Snake charmers played raspy tunes to their mesmerised cobras, while others kept monkeys on the ends of strings. One stall, beside a vendor of hairy animal parts, had a small train track set out on the ground. It was aqua blue, like the Thomas the Tank Engine sets you can get back home. Here, though, rather than Thomas, Henry and George, there was Osama bin Laden on a horse, pursued by an American in a tank that could never quite catch up with him.

We cut across the square, past caged chinchillas and meat-heavy food stalls that only hinted at what would become of the square at night. Azim (who has taken to calling us Friends of Mohammed as it’s easier than remembering our names) took us back there after sundown, and it was ever more frenetic.

We approached from the mosque, past the line of stinking horses queued up to wait for passengers, and could see the light of a thousand stalls set up on the square. Their bare electric bulbs burned yellow in the smoke and steam that hung in the air, and it seemed that the whole of Marrakech had come out to eat. Azim assured us that it was like this every night, and not a show for tourists. It was, he reminded us, a Unesco World Heritage Site, like the hilltop view down the Danube of Buda and Pest, or Porto’s Ribera.

As we moved closer, figures appeared from the smoke: two men boxing for small coins, thrown to them by the encircling crowd; men carrying snakes; a small girl tugging on my t-shirt so that I might buy the two pocket packs of tissues she held up. Beyond a ring of bottles the passers-by were trying to hook with looped string in the hope of winning a prize were the food stalls. Here sat cows’ severed heads, ready to be sliced and fired and served up to eat; enormous piles of 100 eggs or more, hard boiled and ready to peel; a ton of oranges for juicing; nuts to be cracked; piles and piles of snails to boil. A doctor sat at a battered table with three books, barely holding themselves together, as if to prove that if he didn’t know what ailed you, at least he knew where to look it up.

The ultimate street food: the night market in Marrakech

Nuts and fruit on sale in the main square

It was all accompanied by the excited chatter of locals out for food, the crackle of hot fat, and the bells of a man who leapt around among the crowd, ringing every time he spotted you taking a picture, to warn the stall holders that they were the target of your lens.

We worked our way through the square and out into the alleys behind it and into a riyad for dinner. Riyads are old houses, with all the rooms coming off a central courtyard that is open to the sky to keep it cool. You can afford to do that in a country with only 25 days rain every year. We had drinks on the roof, looking out over the city, and then descended two floors to eat curry and drink sickly sweet mint tea as belly dancers and local singers kept us entertained.

A noisy, exciting day.

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africa, marrakech, morocco

Uma Thurman was on our plane. I had never imagined she would fly budget. Anyhow, there she was occupying the front two rows, with the aircrew fawning over her all the way from London to Marrakech, and taking photos with their mobile phones, which clearly weren’t turned off.

The first we saw of Morocco was the northern tip, framed in the same oval window as the tip of Gibraltar. It’s only when you see them from above that you realise how narrow the Straits are, and why so many wannabe refugees try to swim their way across.

South of the Straits was Africa, and this was to be my first time on the continent. First impressions were good. Any country that lets cats run freely around a runway can’t be all bad, and if they can stroll casually through passport control and rub around your feet as your bags are scanned, all the better.

We’d arrived 90 minutes late, the pilot blaming it on the airline being ‘disorganised’ - refreshingly honest - and stepped out into the middle of a Marrakech rush hour. The roads that cut through the boxy pink buildings were choked with raspy scooters and bikes. At one set of lights alone more than 100 streaked by, and between them there were only two crash helmets. One bike carried two people; the first laid out on his back, with his head on the handlebars, back on the tank and legs across the pillion. He was the passenger. The driver sat on his knees, his legs straddling his companion’s thighs to reach the stirrups, and one hand on either side of his ears to control the throttle, brakes and front wheel. It would have been impressive in a circus. On a wide main road it was surely suicide.

The roads were lined with roses, which are a major export crop. Morocco sends 12 million blooms to Europe each year, most of which probably end up being carted around pubs in buckets and sold singly at the end of a drunken night out.

Beyond them it was largely red dusty waste, strewn with rubble and rocks. We turned at a corner where camel drivers stood with their animals and pulled in at the hotel that would be home for the next two nights, until we headed up into the mountains for a night in Bedouin tents. It was then that we got our first taste of the sickly mint tea served from silver pots in small gold-rimmed glasses to aid our digestion. It was like liquid chewing gum.

We didn’t know it then, but clearly the Moroccans have a very sweet tooth and we’d be served this almost undrinkable drink six times a day. The fruit drink we had at dinner (where, surprisingly for a Muslim country, the buffet included Parma ham) tasted like it had been blended with a kilo of sugar. The rims of the glasses were coated with it. Every meal was followed by small rosewater biscuits. Breakfast always included a healthy selection of sticky rolls.

Jalal said this was fairly typical for an Arab country, and certainly it was something we got used to over the next four days, as you approached every dish expecting that it would be either heavily salted or incredibly sweet.

Or that there would be a slice of meat hiding under some innocent looking vegetables to trick the travelling vegetarian.

None of us stayed up so late, and with a few exceptions we were back in our rooms by midnight, ready for an early start the next morning. The middle of the day is so hot that our meetings have been timed for early morning and early evening, with the middle of the day left free for exploring the Souq, or heading out across country in chunky 4×4s.

As I slipped into bed and looked up at the ceiling I spotted a little plate in one corner and got out for a closer look. It was pointing east, towards Mecca. I guess that, like the sweet food and drinks and the lack of any portraits on the walls, is another thing we’ll see more of over the next four days.

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morocco, marrakech, africa

Cirque du Soleil: it’s like buses. You wait years to see it and then three come along at once. So it was that last night we found ourselves at the O2 watching Delirium, just a few weeks after Varekai at the Royal Albert Hall.

It was a good show. Very different to any we had seen before, as it was less about acrobatics, and more about singing and dancing all mixed up with massive on-screen graphics. It was totally indecipherable, as all Cirque du Soleil is if you don’t read the programme, but perfectly entertaining if you give in to it, sit back and enjoy.

It’s basically the story of a guy suspended from a balloon who floats around a mythical, magical world meeting lots of strange characters. That’s what you see on stage, anyway. What you’re not told - unless you read the programme - is that it’s an allegory. He is a regular, everyday guy who, like the rest of us, has great pressures on his time. And so he retreats into a fantasy, which is where we join him on stage.

It was interesting seeing it at the O2. First because I’ve not been in the arena bit since it was the Dome (although I have been in the outer ring of restaurants since its reopening when they made a lame attempt at an indoor beach last summer). And second, because it was the first time we had seen Cirque du Soleil flat-on, rather than in the round.

I’m glad it wasn’t our first time ever to watch it, as I think it suffered on that point. Circus is all about a performance in the middle of the crowd. Circus tents are round, and they centre on a ring. Somehow Delirium lost something by being presented front and centre, on a massive stage and screens that sliced the arena in half, hiding the furthest seats from view. You felt quite detached from it, which you don’t in the Royal Albert Hall where every seat is a front row seat.

Yet it was a fun night, with good company, good drinks and good food, and despite the flat-on presentation I’d recommend the show.

I’d also recommend the venue, and that surprised me more than anything.

France in the spring is becoming a tradition. We zizz over on the Shuttle and drive to Boulogne for the afternoon, then head back through Calais to pick up a summer’s-worth of wine and spirits and home in time for bed.

The Shuttle is so easy, and barring a bit of head-scratching and map reading to get ourselves unlost on the M20 roundabouts we actually got there early. We ignored the signs telling you when to drive to your train, and went straight to the lanes, which a couple of minutes earlier had emptied their lines of cars into a waiting train. We followed on behind them, waved through by a fluorescent yellow jacket, and were on our way to France much earlier than booked.

They’ve changed the rules on the Shuttle lately, so that daily tickets now include a free overnight stay. Not a hotel room, or anything - just the option of coming home a day later. It’s so much better than the plane, and far quicker and more flexible than the boat, where you have to pay to change your booking.

Anyhow, that got us to France by early afternoon, and we took the scenic coast road out of Calais and along by Griz Nes to Boulogne. The sea was rough enough to have us all glad we’d taken the tunnel rather than the ferry, as it crashed up on the rocks by the shore and sent curtains of spray across the headlands. At times it looked like a mist was rolling in above some of the smaller towns, which were softened and white.

By the time we got to the grottier end of Boulogne it had been calmed by the port and harbour walls, and the clouds had parted, giving way to a thick acrid smoke from burning tires on the seafront road. That scuppered plans for a quick park and dash to the supermarket jam aisles, as the police had bocked off the roads. Ostensibly for our own good, but probably just so we didn’t disturb the protestors.

So we spent the afternoon on foot, slowly working our way up the hill to the quieter fortified town at the top, and then walked around the walls, which give out over views of the town and port below. We did the same thing last May amid the drizzle and rain, so it was lovely to see it all in a better light this time around under blue, unbroken skies.

We stopped in the main square for a beer, sat outside in the sun, and felt like we’d arrived finally made it to the first day of summer.

It was a great afternoon and the travel, in both directions, was spot on. It’s a sad indictment of our domestic services that a trans-national set-up like the Tunnel, with only one track in each direction, can carry so much traffic without a single hitch, and run so smoothly.

Let’s hope our trip to Paris next month is equally trouble-free.

Oscar wrapped the presents

It’s almost unbelievable that Will is one. It seems only a few months since he was born, while we were all out eating Spanish food on a Good Friday evening. But the fact that today was his birthday and we were off to Kent to celebrate is testimony to the fact that another year has passed by.

I did read - somewhere - the reason why the years go faster as you get older, and it’s all to do with proportions. When you are three, and you can’t wait until you’re four, you have to live through another whole third of your life again before you get there. When you’re 33 and heading for 34, you have to live through only one 33rd of your life before it comes upon you.

If the proportions always stayed the same, and you made the wait from 33 to 34 equivalent to that from 3 to 4, you’d have 11 years to prepare for the increment.

Anyhow, Will’s birthday. He was having a party in a church hall, timed for mid-afternoon to fit in with feeding times, so we buzzed down to see Rich’s old village in the morning, and then dropped in on some friends for a lunchtime mug of tea.

They had a lovely cottage in the middle of almost nowhere. The wonky walls betrayed its age - about 350 years - and it was heated by fireplaces and an old wood burner. The garden, they were just sorting out, and planting up fruit bushes and vegetables. There was even talk of chickens, so plenty of common ground.

It was clear down there that spring was on its way - even moreso than it is at home. The rape fields were more yellow than they are in Essex, and the trees seemed further in bud, so it was almost a shame to head back into London - or the southern outskirts, at least - for the rest of the afternoon.

Birthday cake

It was a fun afternoon, though, at least as much so for the adults as for the kids. I’ve not been to a one-year-old’s part since I was about… well, one, I suppose, but little had changed. There was still cake and jelly and bowls of crisps, although gone were the pineapple hedgehogs of old, and in their place were mini pizzas. Out went pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey. In came ball pools and bubble machines.

The two hour party shot by (although if the time-passing logic holds true here, too, then it must have lasted whole days for the kids), and as we left to pack up the cars, it started to rain, proving that we’d chosen the better half of the day to explore the wilds of Kent.

Perhaps winter isn’t quite over after all.

The birthday boy

The last few weeks have been non-stop writing the book. I’ve been getting up at half five and writing before work, then writing when I’ve got back home again. I think the cat quite enjoys it. He sits on my lap at my desk and watches the cursor wandering across the screen.

Now it’s done. I submitted my copy on Friday and have spent the time since then catching up on all the jobs that were put to one side. I’ve cleared out the outhouse, ready for shelving to go in, I’ve dug over the vegetable plot, ready for this year’s onions to go in, and I’ve cleaned the greenhouse, ready for a healthy crop of tomatoes.

I had joked that the greenhouse - which is old and has a wooden frame - was probably being held together by all the moss. And it was.

Two days later I went out into the garden and two of the roof panes had slide down in their frames. One was 10in down, and the other a good foot or more. Fortunately they were quite easy to slide back up into their grooves, but it does make me wonder how many more seasons there are left in that greenhouse.

The switch to summer, though, is fantastic. I’m getting home in daylight.

The brew, just before the lid went on (don’t worry - we’re not keeping it either beside the radiator, or on the carpet)

There’s a monster in the kitchen of which we’ve rapidly lost control. We decided to start brewing beer this weekend. It was a four-dayer, after all. So we got ourselves a fermenter, which is really just a five gallon container with a lid and marks up the side, and mixed up our sugar, water, malt and yeast.

We snapped on the lid and… nothing. It really looked like a wash-out, which after our disastrous experiments with home-made hot cross buns (don’t ask) wouldn’t have been such a surprise.

Anyhow, that was Sunday morning. Yesterday.

This morning, we got up to a feint smell of beer in the hall, and looking through the side of the fermenter you could see those cloudy ripples you get down the sides of a freshly-pulled pint. There was tension in the lid of the fermenter, too, which was starting to raise slightly. Yesterday it had been totally flat.

Not wanting to have it explode, we snapped open a corner of the lid to release some of the pressure, then pressed it shut again and walked away. A couple of hours later, the same thing: the lid was bulging in the centre. We released the pressure.

Another hour later, another bulging lid, this time as tight as a drum. It’s been going on all day. The yeast has gone into overdrive and we’ve been releasing the pressure every hour, half an hour, fifteen minutes… the gap between each release has been getting shorter. Now it’s late evening, and in an hour I’ll be heading to bed. What then?

We’ve put the fermenter in the kitchen, beside the cat’s bowls, and I have these terrible visions of a scene from a sitcom. He pops down in the middle of the night for some Felix at the very moment when the top blows off. The kitchen, the counters and the cat are showered in a sticky, drippy, dark brown brew, that he gets horribly leglessly drunk licking off himself.

Stagger, stagger, trip up the stairs, jump up on the bed and hurl on the duvet.

So, the question is, do I loosen the lid overnight (and, presumably, until the end of the initial, most disruptive part of the fermentation process) or do I leave it snapped shut and trust the laws of physics and tight lids?

Reading around the net, it would seem that you don’t want real breathable air getting in to mix with the stale environment cooked up by the yeast, which would suggest the lid should stay shut.

But then I also see that some other fermenters have a value in the top, to release the pressure, but keep the outside air out.

Hmmm.