Morocco

This blog will probably be inactive for a few days as Shirley and I are about to fly to Morocco for a holiday. It's another of my Internet-designed trips. I booked the Ryanair flights last November - £120 each. Then I researched hotels and destinations. We are going to the coastal port of Essaouira first of all. Such a lovely sounding name and a place where Jimi Hendrix lived for a while - I guess the hashish had something to do with Jimi's choice.

After Essaouira, we'll be in Marrakech for four nights. It sounds like a place where you have to have your wits about you. There are hustlers, pickpockets and other desperate people trying to acquire money to get by. They'll be taken aback when the great Yorkshire Pudding tells them to piss off in his broad East Yorkshire accent!

However, we chose Morocco because it would be "different". Shirley has never been to Africa. We know it won't be as safe and predictable as say southern Spain or the isles of Greece. One thing I haven't told her is that the British government currently recommend extreme vigilance when travelling in Morocco following the death by bombing of a tourist in Casablanca on March 11th. She'd be fretting all the time if I told her that.

If we are bombed to smithereens then I leave this blog to "Hello!" magazine with the remit that money acquired from publishing photos of our funeral should go straight to my beloved Hull City AFC to purchase a striker who knows how to stick away goals. I'll be back on April 9th everyone but I might post from a Moroccan internet cafe. Be good!

Essaouira