three-day cushion

My people are off to Sharm el-Sheikh (resort at the southern tip of the Sinai) for three days, and I regretfully had to skip a return to the beaches and the coral in order to work on this book. Actually, it wasn’t that regretful… I’m excited about the turn the book has taken and really loved the idea of three days seeing nobody while working on it. Soon enough they’ll be back, and I’ll be guiding them through Alexandria as well as a few places in Cairo that are magnificent but which usually lie just below the tourist radar– the Ibn Tulun Mosque being one, and the next-door Gayer-Anderson Museum being another. And there are also various “farewell to Cairo” parties coming up, mostly for former Egyptian students who are leaving for study abroad. So I have to manage my remaining free time wisely. I have Manchester coming up during the first week of September, and teaching starts the day after I return. Furthermore, it will be Ramadan about a week from now, and that tends to slow down all practical tasks.

The Gayer-Anderson Museum is the former home of a British military officer who willed his cultural treasures to the Egyptian Government in exchange for the right to live out his days in that splendid building, with its outstanding furnishings and its secret rooms entered behind secretly movable cupboards; the house is featured in the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me”). The Ibn Tulun/Gayer-Anderson complex suffers only from a location problem. Although not far from the center of Cairo, it is situated in an odd place accessible only by labyrinthine side-streets, making its location impossible to describe easily, other than to say: “oh, it’s kind of in south central Cairo”. Luckily, most taxi drivers know exactly how to get there. But guidebooks don’t promote it as much as it deserves– it is a guaranteed hit with visitors. Some of my friends have even called it the highlight of their stay in the city.

But back to the point, since this is a “Composition of Philosophy” post… What I plan to do is write the rough draft of Chapters 7-9 before my friends return from the Sinai. There is a general point in this. If you are entering a period that you know will be very heavy in social activities, it’s good to enter that period after having made tangible advances on your project. That way you can enjoy the socializing to the full without feeling like it’s a way of evading your work. (Because after all, social activities can sometimes function as alibis. In order to remove that danger, make sure in advance that you don’t need an alibi for anything, and then it will simply be good fun.)