ready for Marrakech

First, I must say that to get away, pure and sim­ple, is a ton­ic. You, or at least I, don’t even know you need to. Sure you’re a bit accus­tomed to the whole rou­tine of food shop­ping, prep, cook­ing, cleanup (some­where in between there is the actu­al meal), laun­dry, school run, home­work super­vi­sion, clear­ing up after cats and humans. And it’s pleas­ant enough, any­way. Noth­ing needs to change.

Then your friend invites you to the per­fect exot­ic adven­ture: a week­end in Mar­rakech, Moroc­co, of all things, to cel­e­brate his birth­day. Only Vin­cent would do such a thing, after all. But he did, and we agreed, and then prompt­ly put it out of our minds. I guess in the dai­ly and week­ly pleas­ant grind of horse­back rid­ing lessons, skat­ing lessons, keep­ing up with the blog, house hunt­ing and what­ev­er else, it just dis­ap­peared. Until we found our­selves last Thurs­day after­noon at yet anoth­er house with yet anoth­er estate agent, and he asked, “Any plans for the Bank Hol­i­day week­end?” Now, being long famil­iar with what I think of still as dear British odd­i­ties, I don’t flinch any­more at the phrase “Bank Hol­i­day,” but it did give me just enough pause to won­der, “what does it real­ly mean,” so I looked it up. Of course it dates back 130 years, as does every­thing except things that date back 1000 years. But it’s to do with cel­e­brat­ing or observ­ing cer­tain impor­tant anniver­saries and also mak­ing sure work­ers have enough Mon­days off to jus­ti­fy the occa­sion­al week­end away. In any case, we sud­den­ly realised, “We’re going to Moroc­co this evening.” When we men­tioned this to the estate agent, a father of a new­born baby, he sim­ply sighed. “Take me with you?” I had to say, “No, I’m embar­rassed to say that we haven’t even thought about what we’re going to do, haven’t researched or planned any­thing. We’re real­ly going just to be with our friend Vin­cent for his birthday.”

The sweet guy said, “But that’s the best sort of hol­i­day. No plans, no expec­ta­tions. You are going to have the best time.”

So we raced home with Avery, packed in a haz­ardous unplanned sort of fash­ion (tuck­ing in for­mal dress for the offi­cial birth­day din­ner, of course), and took off for Gatwick. In the train on the way, I have to admit I suc­cumbed to Extreme Antic­i­pa­tion. All around me were oth­er hol­i­day mak­ers, a cou­ple of thir­ty-some­thing ladies trav­el­ing togeth­er, a mid­dle-aged lady oppo­site Avery and me who took up two seats and was glued to her lap­top the entire jour­ney, a dap­per-look­ing young man across the aisle who answered his mobile, “Si?” All on their way to the air­port! Who knows why. Just the thought of where, and why, was excit­ing. And I had a new book to enter­tain me. “Mur­der on the Menu,” and I would rec­om­mend it with­out reser­va­tion. It has every­thing: sum­maries of mys­tery plots, descrip­tions of loca­tions, analy­sis of typ­i­cal fic­tion­al detec­tives, and… recipes for all the dish­es in mys­tery nov­els! Per­fect mind­less trav­el lit­er­a­ture, plus pro­vid­ing the odd tempt­ing recipe for an appetite antic­i­pat­ing sev­er­al long hours of bad food, if any.

After the most bor­ing and cramped of flights, we arrived near mid­night in Mar­rakech, to be picked up by a dri­ver and led to a van we were to share (Vin­cent thinks of every­thing) with one Mike Red­fern, who was short­ly to become our best mate over the week­end. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er by pro­fes­sion, he chat­ted with us about Vin­cent, pho­tog­ra­phy, Moroc­co and what­ev­er else we could find to enter­tain each oth­er until we pulled up out­side the Med­i­na, the old walled city, and were trun­dled with all our stuff to the place that became home for three days, the Riad El Ouar­da, manned that evening by the incom­pa­ra­bly ele­gant and bright-smiled Mohammed. Vin­cent was there to throw his wel­com­ing and bear­like arms about us all, and we stum­bled through a can­dlelit court­yard, fra­grant with bouganivil­lea and pep­pered with faint chirp­ings of what would prove to be hun­dreds of spar­rows, right out the heavy bro­cade cur­tains of our rooms. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly cosy, if that makes sense. Into bed we tum­bled, to await the next day’s adventures…