Greige

For the first time yesterday, I heard of the colour greige, and I love it! It is, predictably, a mix between grey and beige. Sounds yucky, but the pictures below show it used really effectively in a home. By the way, I love this apartment in Brooklyn and how it manages to look effortlessly stylish, but without abusing design cliches like white everything or overtly 'designy' furniture.

Courtesy of Apartment Therapy

Sudanese ruins

View of Amon's temple from Jebel Barkal


Soleb temple



Naga Kiosk

Meroe Necrepolis

Church ruins from Old Dongola

Frescoes from old Dongola church.

For the first time in a long time, I miss Sudan (not the ruins above which I've never even seen, but just the place itself and its essence - excuse the nostalgia).

It occured to me the other day that I hadn't been to Sudan in 8 years. The last time I was there was for Eman's wedding, where my sister Sayda and I were bridesmaid's (I spent the month before beavering away making the dresses - I always did love a project). We busied ourselves the days prior to the 'main event' in the Al Magboul house helping with the preparations; the house had that special atmosphere you get in Sudan before a wedding, hundreds of people coming in and out, the smell of insence, henna, gold, cooking for the multitudes on a 'kanoon' (a type of charcoal stove made from recycled tins) in the yard. We also went on some great trips down the Nile, where Auntie Celia prepared some amazing barbequed seafood dishes on the boat. Happy days.

Apart from practical reasons and the fact that I frequently get to see my Sudanese relatives in Cairo, one of the main reasons I haven't been back is because I feel it might have gone from bad to worse. When I was living there 10 years ago, I could already see an enormous change with respect to when I had lived there as a child; the country (or at least the government) was now verging on scarily religious, the summers were even hotter (global warming?), the country seemed somehow poorer - the streets were teeming with refugees (I can only imagine that these people who wandered the streets like lost souls came from somewhere even worse than Sudan - poor things), some foods and traditions from my childhood already seemed to be dieing out; traditional drinks like Karkadeh (hibiscus juice) and Abre (I can only desribe this as juice with delicious paper floating in it - yes really) were being replaced by imported tins of Tang. And I worry that if I go back now I will be even more different from how I remember. One of the saddest things is that my grandmother (and her house - which was an extension of her) are no longer there. For me, that big depressing house was in some ways the essence of everything I remember fondly about Sudan; maybe I'm exagerrating, but it sometimes seemed like the epicentre of Omdurman life with it's constant traffic of people, a staff of 7 who seemed to do very little most of the time, the non-stop stream of amazing food coming out for the kitchen made by my grandmother who loved to cook, but not to chop, so she'd get the maids to do all the prepping, peeling and chopping of the food, whilst she got to do the fun bit - the stirring and the tasting, and of course the credit :-) (this is just what I'd do if I had staff) My grandma died a year ago, and with her I feel many traditions and customs that I associate so much with Sudan.

One place I'd like to see the next time I'm in Sudan is Dongola, the town where my dad's 'Danagla' family came to Khartoum from 2 generations ago. What I wasn't aware of until recently is that there is an old Dongola and a new Dongola. New Dongola (around 80km downstream from its old namesake) appears to be a relatively new town (1811) built to replace the original Dongola. Old Dongola was apparently an important city in medieval Christian Nubia (the capital of Makuria - I just love the way that name sounds - Makuria!) which was destroyed by the muslim Mameluks (Slave soldiers - possibly Egyptian in this case - 'owned' by the Ottomans). Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a history book...

I think that Old Dongola is now little more than a pile of rubble - and like anywhere in Sudan, very hard to get to. But from the images above, Old Dongola, along with other ruins of cities along the Nile are definitely on my 'to-do' list.

Be careful what you wish for

A couple of days ago I mentioned on the blog that I'd always wanted to have a themed 70's party - then last night some good friends suggested having a joint birthday party in August, and all of us being born in the 70s, why not theme it as such? Next time I might blog about my desire to be given 1.000,000 euros and see if that comes true :-)

Retro recipe cards

Back in the 80's did everyone's mothers have recipe cards with some of the weirdest recipes and photos that ever existed? I know mine did, though god knows what happened to them. I have found a set of the funniest Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 70s online, and I have included the link - look at the comments the girl has made about them - absolutely hilarious.


Meanwhile, I've posted a few of them below - pay particular attention to the titles of the recipes and the 'props' arranged in the background. What were they thinking?!

A ramble about old-school food

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for themed parties, even though I haven’t actually been to one in years. At university there were the ubiquitous 70’s, James Bond parties and Halloween parties – but these are truly best forgotten! I wonder if students today behave as badly today as we did back then? In fact the last themed party I went to was one I organised for our clients at the advertising agency I worked at years ago. The theme was films, I had carte blanche to do what I wanted – so I decorated the venue as if it was an Oscar’s ceremony, came up with film-themed cocktails, got hold of film soundtracks, organised a movie quiz and entertainment... it really was good fun – considering it was a work event. Alas, since then my parties have been strictly non-themed, partly because most people hate dressing up! For some odd reason, one of my party fantasies has always been to do a 70’s themed party with a focus on ‘retro food’ – the main problem with this is that retro food wasn’t particularly good! I think at that time in the UK, we had just discovered so-called ‘exotic’ ingredients such as garlic (!), pineapples, prawns and avocadoes; so these featured prominently in dinner party menus from the era... And it was never enough just to serve these ingredients simply on a plate, they always had to be dressed up – either with gloopy sauces (think Thousand Island dressing on your prawn cocktail – to cover up the taste of the defrosted prawns I would imagine!) or served in some outlandish vessel – such as a scooped out watermelon used as a serving bowl for fruit salad, or half an orange used to make a ‘hedgehog’s body’, with cubes of pineapple and cheese on cocktail sticks stuck into it to make the ‘spines’ ... These dishes didn’t always taste amazing, but funnily enough they never tasted bad, and they had a sort of faux glamour that just makes me smile :-) Of course it wasn’t all about party food – there are plenty of everyday dishes from the era that spring to mind – and for some reason most of them were tinned, jarred or frozen. Some of my favourites were Heinz Macaroni cheese in a tin (!), Findus Crispy Pancakes (the filling was totally inedible) and Heinz tinned baked beans with sausages. I guess at the time, processed or ‘convenience’ foods were a novelty, and all our mums were keen to feed them to us, thus freeing up a couple of hours a day to attend Tupperware parties, Avon parties, use their ‘Clairol heated rollers’ or do some other retro activity! (luckily for my health, I didn’t eat this rubbish every day – my mother also made plenty of home-made goodies :-))

Prawn cocktail – where are the prawns?

These 'hedgehogs' were at every childhood party I attended

The grass is always greener...

I just phoned my ex-hospital in the UK to ask how I would get hold of my medical history from 8 years ago. I thought this would be a tall order considering the amount of hassle one has to sometimes go to to get a simple blood test in Madrid. Their response turned out to be incredibly helpful; 'Oh, we'll just pop them in the post to you', 'Or we can fax them if you like? 'Or shall we fax them straight to your doctor in Madrid?' How refreshing it was to speak to 'Avril'; I didn't have to go to the hospital in person, queue, shout, beg, feign tears or fill in any forms. On days like this, I realise that not everything in the UK is bad :-) I wonder if it would have been as easy if I had a foreign accent?

This weekend

My plans to have fun and 'get things done' this weekend have fallen by the wayside... I've had a cold since Friday (which I'm sure I caught from the man sneezing on the bus who didn't cover his mouth/nose when spewing germs into the air) and have been in a Frenadol-fever induced haze ever since... I managed to have an 'aperitiv' with ex-colleagues yesterday morning, but spent the rest of the day feeling blaaa, today I'm feeling similarly yucky, but in a few minutes I'm going to force myself to get up, wash a load of clothes, move all the furniture in the living room around (I am able to single-handedly move furniture double my bodyweight as I've been doing it since I was about 11 - I must have been a odd child ;)), throw out old clothes and if I feel up to it, meet friends for something low-key later... 1, 2, 3 and up......!