He's here. Brianfest Day 1.

Well, Chelsie (my assistant) and I went to the airport today to collect Brian and his band. They're a jolly nice bunch of people. The traffic was awful because it's Ramadan and everyone wants to get home early in time for iftar, and everyone is bad tempered because they are hungry and thirsty and haven't had any coffee or cigarettes all day. And it was about 35 degrees and the air conditioning on the car isn't working, so all in all it was an epic journey. Especially when we came around a corner on a motorway slip road to find a car reversing back down it very fast, swerving from side to side. I just hugged the wall and blew my horn and luckily he saw me.

We had problems with our rendezvous with the minibus driver, and so in typical Egyptian fashion it was a bit of a muddle leaving the airport as we had to distribute seven people and luggage between two vehicles that were a mile apart. We made it in the end though.

This evening we took them all on a felucca ride on the Nile as the sun went down. It was so beautiful tonight and the air was cooling off. It's peaceful on the Nile and it was really nice chatting to the guys and beginning to get to know them a little. Then it was off to an Italian restaurant for a meal (I don't know where else in the world you can eat a hearty Italian meal in and excellent restaurant with hearty portions for $10 a head). Then I did lots of running around preparing for tomorrow, and we got home at about 10pm.

Night night.