Time

is a precious noun in this country.

Everyday I go to the studio space and look through my swathes of paper; ensuring lesson plans are in place for the three writing groups that I have running and looking through notes made on the work of my private writing students' who are writing deserving novels. I check my emails and do admin throughout the day responding to enquiries about ARC and bookings. I poke around for the various lists on lined note paper that have all the things I stil need to get and to do to get ARC shipshape for residents and then attempt the gigantuan task of finding the corresponding shops to get said things; this is one of the hardest tasks; without knowledge of where these shops are located and without the language to ask for what I need if the needed thing is not obvious to my eyes. Yesterday I got printing done but gave up on trying to find hydrogen peroxide for my contact lenses after four failed attempts. Even having the cleaners in is work as they themselves made a list of items they wished me to have; which then had to be translated and having bought the items they are either running late (but then that is normal) or they may not come at all.

The items on my lists irk me. It is so mundane and yet so crucial it seems but I find the mundanity of it blanches my spirit and it is not the most scintillating activity to ask mon amour to help with; yet help he does; two poets reduced to asking about breadboards and lightbulb fittings. Yet the creation of the space; of ARC; of my home; needs a practical application.

Time spent on such situations leads me away from my beautiful time; the time to write; the time I saw for myself in this move to Cairo. Yet it is this very utmost feeling of present time, of time being taken up right now, that also gives the feeling of being alive. There is litle refection and little musing on future; now is the time and it makes one live.

So today is Friday and I got up early and gave a private lesson working with one of my student's on her wonderful novel and now I am waiting; waiting for late or no show cleaners, waiting for mon amour to return after some days away, and maybe tonight we will go to a friend of mine's book launch 'Diary of an Egyptian Spinster'; though the spinster in this case, Abeer Soliman, is a young and attractive woman. Abeer has had a newspaper column and an online prescence with this diary for some years and found some fame within Egypt and the Arab states. It is a contemporary and candid work.

Next Saturday two potters from Cornwall; Thomasina Bates and Roland Bence arrive for one week's residency and then the Saturday after Theopisti Stylianou,a Cypriot photographer, and her writer husband will come for two weeks. They will be followed by Anne Devine and Tinka Bechert who will work throughout April on their project involving walking and text inspired by the Giza plateau. Then May brings a family of four who will be exploring Cairo for two weeks as part of a grand tour.

Busy times ahead indeed!