Day 473 5th November
Ben Mansour
Another day off the bike.
I was awake at 6 and had tea with Siri, the Ian Rush lookalike, and gave him some biscuits. I shaved and washed and had brekkie of olives and oil and tea. Then I went by taxi to the Souk with Younes and Kamal, where we traipsed through the mud and looked at lots of stalls and the variety of produce and animals and pretty much anything you could want to buy.
At the Souk – where do we start?
Then I waited with Aziz at the family stall and had tea as they thought it would be too risky for me to walk around on my own?
Kamal and I had another walk and I found a bike for Younes but it needed a lot of work and I decided against it. I had coffee with Aziz and watched Spurs v Palace on TV.
We took a taxi back to house and had more tea with kebabs. Then we opened the patisserie and sat chatting until Fazir’s family arrived and we had a four course meal with salads, then kebabs followed by a beef tagine and then fruit. It was the first time they had visited the new house and when Kamal said we were now going to eat with his family I assumed he was joking, but not so. I now found myself eating another tagine and more fruit. It’s difficult to say no when they keep telling you to eat, but I had reached my limit long ago. Kamal managed to take a phone call at the appropriate moment and got out of the second dinner somehow. I retired to bed at 10.30 exhausted and full to the brim.