Quiet, but not bored

Our days have been rather quiet lately, hence the silence on here. It has been getting hotter (33 degrees today, going up to 38 by Tuesday) and we have been hiding in the cool downstairs salon and working with interludes of conversation with Moulaid, our housekeeper and surrogate mother.

When we walk around the souks I stare at everything with greedy but sideways eyes, for although I avoid fatal eyecontact with the shopkeepers or even looking too directly at their wares, I do have some shopping planning. We decided before we got here that we would rather return to Europe with five very good things than twenty-five mediocre things, but it is difficult to be steadfast in such decisions. Admittedly, we have dropped the carpet from our shopping list after we realised that Moroccan carpets are not quite to our taste - if you go to http://www.rugcompany.co.uk/ and go to Rug Designs and Woven Classics you will see the sort of thing on which my heart is set for our house in England (our next home after Marrakech). However, I have fallen in love with the embroidery which we have seen in some of the shops here, in particular Darkoum in Gueliz and must now lie awake at night wondering how to work monochrome geometric patterns into my interiors taste (think Longbourne in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice). Whether or not I can work through my embroidery crisis, I will most certainly be bringing home at least five chocolate-brown tooled leather pouffes, quite plain - no embroidery or patchwork, just dark brown with a geometric pattern on the top.

Finally, I want some lamps. Big ones. Big fancy, ornate ones with curves and points and general excessiveness. I will do my best to photograph the sort of thing I am after later on today or tomorrow and post some pictures. In the unlikely event that you do not know the sort of thing I mean then do a google images search and find the wildest and most extravagant.

In the meantime, I am off home again to rewatch PandP 2005 and try to imagine that embroidery in such a setting. All advice and justifications gratefully received.

As an aside, I have all sorts of regular readers whose identities are quite unknown to me! Naturally I have not the slightest objection to strangers reading about my adventures, but do feel free to leave a comment just to say hello.