Ranting and Raving: Sand
By Sophie
Back when I was but a wee little girl, my mother was stressed out with her work, as usual. You would think that going into the office in which she worked, moaning to her co-workers about her boss, moaning to her boss about her co-workers, and coming home to us and moaning about both her boss and her co-workers would be entertainment enough; apparently, this was not the case.
Much to my surprise and delight, my parents made the rash decision to book us a holiday to Egypt. Eagerly, I tipped out the boxes under my bed, rifled through the assortment of pencils I had accidentally nicked from Mrs Cole’s spare draw, the many sheets of tracing paper I’d taken from the shelves at the edge of the classroom, and most of the blu-tack from Mr Gared’s infamous collection I had “borrowed” (admittedly, I may have had an issue), and found what I was looking for: a book on the wonders of the Egyptians.
By the time we had boarded the plane, taken our seats, realised they weren’t our seats, and found our actual places, I was pretty excited – excited may even be an understatement.
What kinds of mysteries would I discover in this hidden world? This world of charms and enchantments? This world of pharaohs, kings, evil spirits, and…cats? As it turned out, I discovered only one thing…
Sand. Lots and lots of sand.
From the moment the aeroplane door opened, there was sand everywhere. Sand in my hair, sand in my shoes, sand in my unopened bag of chips (don’t even ask me how that got there).
You get out of the taxi, what do you find? Sand on your bum. You order a drink from the hotel restaurant, what do you get? A sand-tini. You’re tired from a long day so you head off to bed, lift up the covers, and what do you find?
Those worthless little flecks of hell and suffering laying there, waiting to consume your soul.
In fact, I’m fairly convinced that the sand did deliberately cause me multiple injuries. Seven times I slipped on it just stepping out of the hotel door. Seven!
Don’t even get me started on what it was like having to trek out to the pyramids! If I wanted to walk half a mile to a gigantic structure, shrouded in suspicion, full of rumoured life-threatening traps, I would have visited my Aunt Barbara’s after she’s eaten a Mexican takeaway.
What was the point of the pyramids, anyway? They were to sand what Starbucks is to teenage girls – a hotspot where they can all gather and mock you for the way you look. I could just hear their little voices, cackling at the blisters on my ankles - the sand’s voices, I mean, not the girls’, obviously. That would be weird.
Speaking of ankles, I haven’t even yet mentioned the broken one I sustained due to the sand! As I staggered back from a long day of doing absolutely nothing down in the local town, I found the hotel was suddenly made of sand; and from the front doors, out leapt a super-sandy serpent that slithered its way over and snapped my ankle clean in half!
The doctors tried telling me it was just the heatstroke getting to me and that I had tripped over a Jack Russell, which was now being treated at the local vets for shellshock – but I know what I saw!
Even today, many years on from this horrific nightmare of a trip to Egypt, I still find small shards of golden devils littering the floor. They always turn up at the most inconvenient times, when your guard is lowest – in the shower, at breakfast, or even during your first-year French reading exam so you have to run for your life, only to be found by the examiner fifteen minutes later, curled up in the corner of the girls’ toilets, screaming for mercy.
I urge you all, if you are stupid enough to say, “You know what? Let’s go to the beach today,” or have a mother like mine, who convinces you that a trip to Egypt would be a good idea, take heed of my words! At least bring along someone qualified in exorcisms, or a bodyguard to keep permanent watch, or just one of those brushes that removes sand from your clothes.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go double-check the bath for any sand that may be left!
(As an extra note, the Jack Russell was perfectly fine. So fine, in fact, that it was capable of biting me on the arm two days later. Its mouth was foaming slightly. Did it have rabies or did I imagine it? Am I infected?)
I had better go and calm down.
- Sophie