trailing grouse's photostream

One blistering hot Cairo summer day in 2006 I gathered some friends to visit the Four Seasons Nile Plaza and its chocolate buffet. I was gearing up psychologically to leave Umm El Donia, as my company was leaving Egypt at the end of the year, and I felt the combination of chocolate, friends, chocolate and luxury (did I mention chocolate?), would be appropriately soothing. It was. It also introduced me to Mr S, a tall, dark, mysterious Frenchman.

Pre Mr S I lived a wild and crazy life in central Cairo where going out in the evening meant meeting friends any time from 10pm to 2am, work nights would see me tucked up in bed early, at around 1am, all my friends were Egyptian - well, I certainly didn’t move all the way to Egypt to befriend Europeans and North Americans - and I avoided expat areas of town like the plague.

It’s funny what love can do. Almost immediately upon being smitten I moved to the sheltered life of The Hood. The first year was spent trying to get the echoes of tooting car horns out of my head, wearing ear plugs because the morning’s birdsong woke me up, getting used to saying what part of town I lived in without cringing and becoming accustomed to life in expat circles - not so easy given that our circles were French and I spoke none apart from oui, non, merci and a very quickly picked up enchanté.

So, today I am trailing Mr S. Having not had ‘the proposal‘ I am not a trailing spouse. I am, however, the Trailing Grouse: a trailing Scottish bird.