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| My Bed With Funky Blanket |
After lots of missed calls either way, Safi and I finally managed to connect and I invited her round for a coffee one morning. She’s a very rewarding person to shop with, because she’s always super enthusiastic about what you’ve bought. Consequently, she came into my flat, saw the bookcase and was immediately complimentary.
We sat out on my balcony and had coffee and shortbread and chatted for a few hours. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the hostess with the mostess, because, as is typical, as soon as I asked her round, my coffee machine broke. Consequently, she had to bring her own coffee while I finished off the dregs of the coffee that had fused two sets of extension cords before I managed to get all the water to filter through. Nevertheless, the coffee and chat was a pleasant start to the day and I’m starting to feel like a lady who lunches!
By the end of it, Safi had kindly offered to take me round the shops again, since she was going in anyway to get some draught excluder. We arranged to meet at 10am in our foyer the next day.
This time, I was determined to make the most of my opportunity. Also, I now knew roughly what was in the shops and had since looked again in Senzo Mall and had a better idea of what was available and where.
We went to the Mona Centre first for the draught excluder. This time, I made up my mind to buy anything if I needed it. As a result I ended up with a laundry basket (which I suspect was quite expensive), some trays to organise my bathroom items (cleaning stuff, first aid, shower and hair gels etc, personal and dental hygiene), and one replacement extension cord. It came to 420 LE, which I found expensive, but the trays were much nicer than I’d seen in Spinneys, as was the laundry basket, and these were one-off costs.
Safi then drove to the shop (In and Out), located further down on the opposite side of the same street, where we both thought the sofabed was located – we had to do a rather alarming turn in a dual carriageway to get there, but that’s the Egyptian road system for you.
We went in, only to find that the sofabed wasn’t in that shop (so it was just as well I didn’t ask Esmat’s cousin to stop there!). So, ironically, we ended up going in and out of In And Out.
Convinced that the sofabed was in a shop in this general area, we walked a few shops along and spotted the sofabed in the window of Cairo Furniture Centre. We rattled the door, but it was locked! Again, this is Egypt, where everything opens late. Safi went into a lighting shop a few doors along to ask if they knew when the shop would re-open; they guessed in about one hour. I said that it was OK and that I would get a taxi another time to collect it.
Meanwhile, the shop owner, not wishing to miss a trick, offered to open up his other shop next door, which had a lot of lighting in it, for us to look round. We agreed to take a look – I was happy to do so, because I needed a new lampshade for my lounge area (I can’t read in my lounge at the moment because my current light is so dull) and was also looking for a standard lamp.
The selection was a bit overwhelming. Like many Egyptian shops, it was a fairly disorderly collection of items all piled into (and hanging from the ceiling as this was a light shop) a small space – for any Dundonians reading, it reminds me a bit of a stall in Den’s Road Market or, for everyone else, something like what you’d imagine an old-fashioned antique / curiosity shop to be like.
Anyway, it was worth the shopkeeper’s while and we must have made his day. I bought myself a chandelier-type lampshade (very popular style here in Egypt) and another crystal table lamp in the shape of leaves and flowers. My lampshade reminded me of my grandmother (mother’s side – oh, did I say before, in Arabic, they have a different word for uncle on your father’s side to the word for uncle on your mother’s side, how complicated is that?). My grandmother used to have a chandelier and my mother always used to comment how I was like her in that I liked things that sparkle. I now look at the lampshade and wonder if it is really a bit too old-fashioned, but too late now!
By the time we exited the lighting shop, the shop with my sofabed in it had opened, so the shopkeeper opening up his lighting shop for us had some advantage for us (well, for me, at any rate!) as well.
I made the guy in the furniture shop demonstrate how to operate the sofabed several times and tried it out myself, since I didn’t want to buy a sofabed and then find I couldn’t put it up/down. Again, they didn’t do delivery, but they organised someone to do it for me and we agreed a time of 3pm.
Off we then went to Senzo Mall, where I bought a replacement coffee machine. At first, I couldn’t find any filter coffee and for a horrible moment I thought I’d bought a coffee machine in a country that didn’t sell ground coffee (I’ve been using coffee from the UK until now). However, I’m sure they’ve had it on previous occasions, so it must just not be in stock just now. In Egypt, supermarket shopping can be a bit hit and miss as to what is available on any particular day, so you need to buy what you need when you see it.
In the end, I found something that looked like ground coffee. There were packs of the same brand in all different colours and most of them said “with extra cardamom and other spices”, which wasn’t what I wanted. The blue one didn’t say that, but it also didn’t say anything about it being pure coffee either, so I wasn’t sure whether it had spices but just not “extra” spices. I bought it anyway. All I can say is that it tastes a bit strange.
We got home and I waited for 3pm and the furniture didn’t arrive. At 4pm, I got a bit nervous, so I looked to see if my receipt had a phone number. It was in Arabic, but I was able to transliterate the numbers OK, except for not being able to make out from the small letters whether one number was a 2 or a 3. I dialled, but got no reply.
After 30 minutes, I decided I should try again. I’m sure there must be a facility on my phone somewhere where you can see the number you last dialled. I pressed an icon to see if that was it and to my horror the phone started ringing. I was in too much of a panic to notice who the call was from or even to register that it was someone calling me and not me them. It completely freaked me out and I frantically tried to work out how to cut the call. The red thing didn’t seem to want to swipe. Anyway, somehow it all stopped but I was too stressed after that to do anything. Did I tell you that I hate mobile phones?
At 5pm, the furniture still hadn’t arrived. I know this is Egypt (TIE, as Safi would say), but by now I was starting to worry a little, so I plucked up the courage to pick up my phone again and re-dial the number for the shop. This time, someone answered, but it was a woman with a screaming child in the background, so obviously I’d plumped for 2 when it should have been 3. I had no idea what to say to her and after saying “Cairo Furniture Store?” hoping she would say “Sorry, wrong number” and finding that she just kept on saying “Hello” instead, I just said “Sorry” and hung up, feeling sure that she wouldn’t have understood a word I said. I tell you, phones are a complete nightmare.
Shortly afterwards, though, the sofabed arrived, so in the end all was well, and I am now writing this blog in the new library area of my lounge.
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