So, Marrakech…
So, I’m on the back of this motorbike, enjoying my Audrey Hepburn/Gregory Peck experience but in entirely the wrong city. But it couldn’t have happened anywhere other than Marrakech, when you think about it.
Because there’s something about it..something beautiful and chaotic and mysterious, and somehow, it made me feel quite different to me. And I liked it. I liked that feeling a lot.
We’d gone – the four of us, friends from our first term at University, and still friends despite distance and time – for one of our annual weekends away. This year was significant – we were all turning 28 (no, don’t do the maths, please, I said 28, and as far as I’m concerned 28 it is).
To be honest, we’d all seen Sex in the City II, and I fancied a look at the souks and the opportunity to wear harem pants. See #reallyshallow.
I’ve travelled and lived in Europe, but I hadn’t seen half as many places as I wanted to, so a trip to Africa for the first time felt rather exciting. I also somehow wanted be taken right out of my comfort zone, over the hill and far far away, (although it never occured to me that Marrakech would fulfil some of this, as I’d just gone for a spot of shopping) because turning 28 (yes, that is a euphamisim for another number) certainly makes you take a big, long look at your life, and to make long, long lists of what you haven’t done, and what you want to do, and what you really, really, really want to do.
And I’d begun the year about to be this number, with the prospect of my eldest child leaving for university in the autumn, the younger one to follow in the not too distant future. My contract had ended at work and I had decided to go freelance (because if I didn’t now I never would), and frankly, I was veering between “this is a brave, new, exciting world”, to “oh, shit…”
So we land in Marrakech.
It didn’t start well. Hundreds of people from many planes trying to squeeze through passport control without the aid of queueing. I kept a stiff upper lift and a cheery demeanour. But I get fraught in crowds, in fact a little panicky. I stayed that way for an hour and a half. When I finally got through to actual Morrocco I was too enfeebled to enjoy the moment.
Still, we’d organised transport. A very nice man took us to our riad. Or was it? No it wasn’t…but by the time we found out he had gone..
