A Tim Gunn haunting

I had a Project Runway nightmare last night. I don't mean this metaphorically - I had an honest to goodness nightmare, set right in the middle of Project Runway - and it was terrifying.

I'd been thinking about the series as I went to sleep. You know those thoughts you have when you're dropping off - kind of all over the place, but somehow linked? I was thinking about my mum, and how I've gotten her addicted to the series, and about my credit card (which was compromised and then cancelled last week so now I'm without funds over here), and about Amazon, which says I can order series 8 before it's released in February, and about my sewing machine which is being packed up this weekend .... and then I drifted off to sleep. And into my dream.

I was sitting in the audience of a live taping of the show, and halfway through it, Heidi Klum announced that six contestants had been chosen from the audience for a special challenge. These contestants, she announced, had previously submitted audition pieces; garments they'd created that show their own "unique point of view". (We know how Project Runway likes designers with "a unique point of view"!)

She read out a list of names, and to my utter surprise - mainly because I knew I had never submitted an audition piece - I was among them. Dear god, totally, TOTALLY out of my depth. And desperately afraid of being found out. And our challenge?  It was one of those ones where you have to make a dress using unusual materials.

She sent us off to Lincraft (Lincraft! Oh, the irony!) to get our supplies. We had to take two taxis - this is where the dream started to resemble The Amazing Race a bit, clearly I watch too much reality tv, but I am unashamed of this - and our taxi took a shortcut but somehow we ended up blocks away from where we were meant to be.

But we bought all our supplies and I was raring to go, planning that I would make a dress out of black and white segments of stiff cardboard, like that famous dress years ago that was made out of gold American Express cards (there's the credit card reference, never mind that mine's a Visa!) held together with chain links - does anyone remember that dress?

I was thinking a cardboard version using a similar construction - but much more "mod" in style, like a Mondrian painting - would work on a skinny model, never on a real person of course with all her curves and bumps, but on those skinny Runway models it would be fine. A little strapless sheath, with contrasting handstitching in the seams as a design feature. Or covered in petals made from gorgeous Japanese wrapping papers, only Lincraft didn't have any in stock, and I was desperate for my wrapping paper box at home in Melbourne which has so many nice papers in it, but it was in Melbourne, and somehow this competition was taking place in Alexandria, in Egypt ....

The other two contestants with me wouldn't let me start on my piece, and decided we had to go to Lincraft where everyone else was. We got there somehow and I was stressing about how to create a pattern for my piece, when someone told me we'd been given a pattern block to work with. Everyone else was diving into the pile of patterns and opening them, cutting out the pieces, and as I ran over to get mine I saw that one young male contestant had already started piecing together his fabric - he was using striped French canvas, big pieces cut on the bias in green and white stripes and purple and white stripes. Another contestant was using yellow and white stripes and I realised I couldn't go with my original idea because it was too close to what they were doing, and they'd started first - if only I could have begun my piece when I wanted to, instead of letting my competitors hold me back! I was angry at myself for not trusting my instincts.

I started to get panicked. Time was slipping away, and I couldn't even open my pattern envelope and everyone else was getting so far ahead of me - well into the construction of the piece when  I hadn't even cut out my blocks. I was so worried, I knew it was useless to even try and start a piece because everybody else was so far advanced, and I couldn't get the envelope, and my hopes were fading and I knew it was useless.

Then my pattern envelope sank into a bookcase, the books actually ate it up and I was reaching inside trying to pull it out - and it flew out suddenly, and a huge gust of wind came up and blew all the tissue pieces everyone, and suddenly Lincraft was a paddock, with tufts of grass and a cold overcast sky, and I was scrambling over the rocks trying to collect all my different block pieces and then Tim Gunn was saying "de-SIGN-ers, talk to me".

I showed him a drawing of what I planned to make, and he narrowed his eyes and looked it up and down, and my heart beat faster in my chest and I started to catch my breath and it began to hurt in my lungs, and my ears started to ring and then I woke up.

I woke up, and my heart was pounding, and I was actually panicked. The sensation was so real that it startled me into a full awakening.

I checked the clock, and it was 555am - so I didn't even have the luxury of trying to go back to sleep and forget it. I had to get up right away, feeling unbalanced and worried and stressed. It took me half the morning to shake the feeling.

Wow, it gave a whole new meaning to the idea of waking up with Tim Gunn. Shudder.

Still sick. More photos.

Tourist tat by the seaside - but haven't I made it look good!

Very New-York-esque Alexandria taxi and street mosaic

Secondhand clothes for sale in the market

Smiley girl despite the piles of rubbish

More tourist tat

Inside Fort Qaitbey, originally the site of the Pharos lighthouse, one of the ancient 7 Wonders of the World

Gabled roof of bricks inside the fort

Outside the fort

Modern medicine in Egypt ... hmmm .....

For sale in the souq

Mirror mirror, on the wall ....

Souq street scene

Egyptian fashion - of sorts.

Picturing Egypt

One of the few remaining pieces of ancient statuary, now outside the Alexandria Blibliotheque

In the backalley souq

Fishing boat, in the Mediterranean Sea

Seaside pussins

They don't look it, but these boys were actually very nice and friendly

pegs for sale in the souq

View of Alexandria from the Corniche

Well Alexandria, things are looking up

Ugh. I'm glad we left.

 We weren't really enjoying the Hotel Acropole last night ... and this morning, I'm not sure whether the last straw was the unflushed putrescent mess that greeted me in the communal toilet, or the revolting pools of water and hair all over the tiled floor of the bathroom.

Either way, we took an immediate decision to bail on our booking and shift hotels. Luckily for us, right across the road was the Hotel Triomphe - and this time, we asked specifically for a room with an ensuite bathroom; AND, we asked to see it before we signed up. 

Room viewed and approved, we ran back across the road, collected our bags, vanished down the four flights of stairs (avoiding the death-trap of a lift, see the photos below), and promptly checked ourselves into the Triomphe. It's very Agatha Christie here, with wrought ironwork and shabby furniture and lovely ancient cracked marble floors and derelict bits of art deco architecture and two very nice old men who look after it. We are much happier.

Exhibit A: death trap.

Exhibit B: deaaaaaath traaaaaap!

 In fact, today we are much happier all around - it's been spectacular. Once the hotel was sorted out, we started things off with this - a Turkish coffee so thick you could practically have stood a spoon up in it. Now that's more like it.

More to come tomorrow. But now, it's time for beer.

Hello Alexandria, you're crap so far

....but well, perhaps it's too early to judge.

In defence of this city - the former capital of Egypt, the seat of Egyptian power under Cleopatra and Roman power under Alexander the Great, the home of the legendary Library of Alexandria and lighthouse - it's not actually Alexandria's fault.

If the holiday the White Witch and I had in Lebanon was a perfect example of kismet and wondrous serendipity, this one is (so far) a little of the opposite.

First of all, we are in the Hotel Acropole, which has one star under the Egyptian ratings system. One.

It's slightly better than the room I had in Palmyra, Syria, where there was a rocket shell-sized hole in the concrete wall that let the freezing Syrian air in.... but not much. Four flights of marble stairs, because the lift is a dilapidated old thing with an open shaft, a rusty pulley, and doors that don't close, so you are open to the air around you as you creak slowly upwards. Like, falling-out open to the air around you. Eek.

And the room, which apparently hasn't been cleaned since Cleopatra was empress here, has rock hard beds (good), a lovely sea view (good), faces onto the Midan Saad Zaghoul (which is terribly, terribly noisy) and the whole place looks as though it might go up in flames at any minute due to the shoddy electrics on the wall next to my bed (bad, not surprisingly).

I submit photographic evidence here, so that if in fact the place does explode in a ball of fire while we're here, one of you can produce it triumphantly when you sue the hotel management for negligence and wrongful death, on my behalf.

And, we have a shared bathroom. This will be one of those hotel stays we look back on fondly and laugh about. I hope.

To add insult to injury, I managed to very carefully pack my suitcase last night in Bahrain, and very carefully charged my camera battery, and very carefully put the camera battery back into the camera - and then completely forgot to pack the charger itself. So I had to go out and spent $70 US dollars on a new one the minute after we had checked into our room. Sigh.

 It annoyed me, too, because the last time I was in Egypt - Cairo, Luxor and Aswan - in 2004 with My One True Love, the camera I had at that time was a film one, and it was on its last legs, and it only took about every fifth shot I tried to capture. I was really looking forward to getting some good pics of Egypt this time! So to leave my charger behind ... well, I wasn't very happy with myself.

But here we are, for four days, and we plan to make the most of it. We'd like to see the catacombs, the new Library, perhaps make a day trip to Rosetta (where they found the famous Rosetta Stone that is now in the British Museum), visit the souqs, and take in a bit of Alexandrian life.

So far we've enjoyed a local Stella beer in the very posh Cecil Hotel, we visited one of the famous chocolate shops here, and taken in a film at a run-down old cinema. Which isn't bad for our first night.

Now we're yawning, so it's time for bed .... more - and better - adventures tomorrow.

Walking in a windy winter land

Bahrain had a sandstorm today!

Not just any old sandstorm, but the tail end of a bad-weather front that has swept across the Middle East from Lebanon - where the border with Syria is closed, giant waves have hammered Sidon in the south and heavy dumps of snow have blocked the mountain roads - right through to Egypt, where ships have sunk off the coast of Alexandria.and 28 buildings collapsed in the fierce winds and 11 people died.... Alexandria, where I happen to be heading on Wednesday this week. Yikes.

Sandstorms in the desert region are quite spectacular. They're not quite The Mummy-esque type of sandstorm beloved of Hollywood and Brendan Fraser movies, but they are massive and they do block visibility completely. I tried to take a photo to show you what the vista looked like, but it was completely pointless. All the sand and dust fills the air like a solid mass, and it's impossible to discern anything through it.

Giant wall of impenetrable sand? Check. Men wearing scarves over their heads to protect their eyes and lungs? Check. Incredible gusts of winds that nearly blew me over as I was trying to cross a busy road? Check, check and check. But no photographic proof possible.

So I've holed up here tonight in my porno palace and I'm not going out for love nor money. If you don't hear from me within 24 hours, you'll know I've suffocated in an eleven-storey high pile of sand. Wish me luck.