We're all trying very hard to move on from our sadness of the past year, it's been quite a roller-coaster beginning with the death of our aunt in February, Stepmother in March, Dad in May and now of course Freddie. I've told my remaining wee sister Joyce quite sternly that she had better look after herself or I shall have to have severe words with her!
We've been up and down to Durham over the past few weeks trying to do some sorting and sifting and doing a lot of reminiscing. Freddie had a great bunch of friends and their support has been just fantastic. Come to that our own friends have been really supportive and helped us incredibly to get through things. There were only 9 weeks between Freddie's diagnosis and death, so we really have been, and remain, in shock.
To try to get a rest from things here, Colin and I had a trip to Marrakesh in the October holiday sadly the weather was not brilliant so we had to do a lot of drinking coffee and shopping! Tough but someone has to do it. If you want a nice place to stay have a look at the Riad Linda's website. Very comfy and owned by Edinburgh friends of ours.
Had a couple of visits to a Hamman... a Morroccan version of a Turkish bath, starts with a thorough steaming then a wash down by the attendant followed by a thorough ex-foliation all over, next is a warm shower and finally a full body massage, takes about an hour and you feel great after. The building itself is worth a visit. Men and women are kept very separate and the clouds of steam are so thick that the odd roll of flesh goes un-noticed.
We were amazed when we came across lots of men taking part in what amounts to a fairground fishing game, except they were fishing for Coca Cola, Spright and Fanta with wooden fishing rods with loops of wire on the ends. Alcohol was available, but not within sight of mosques and it was nice to be in a sober environment!
It was wonderful to walk around the main square of the Medina - La Place El Fna by night, there were orange juice sellers, snake charmers, restaurants which set up each evening and were gone by morning, monkey handlers, fortune tellers and medicine men as well as musicians and thousands of people local and tourists. 
It's a very clean town and we had no concerns about food etc which was nice. My school girl french had a good testing and it was quite reasssuring just how much of higher french 1971 I have retained. Archie Gilogley would be proud of me!
