something about damaged hares in a permanent wave

The memory works in odd ways sometimes, particularly with regard to what the brain decides it's going to hang onto (often in the face of extreme uselessnes and irrelevance) and what it allows to waft away when the short-term memory has finished with it (even if it's something one knows one will need later (such as the relative concentrations of the ions inside and outside nerve cells, a fact which escaped every time I tried to remember it as a student and which popped up on every pertinent exam)). Even after several years' non-recollection I can suddenly recall long chains of words in their occurrences as albumsworths of song lyrics, swathes of dialogue from films or passages from books (provided they made enough of an impression to be properly remembered) but (despite occasionally trying) I am simply unable to remember most jokes, particularly those with lengthy set-ups which require several key plot points to be mentioned in the proper sequence in order for the punchline to have the desired effect. Just remembering the punchine isn't enough so most of the time I don't even try to tell jokes I merely sort-of remember as I would inevitably end up doing that backtracking oh-I-forgot-to-mention filling-in nonsense at the end after realising I'd missed out a Key Plot Point, if I even remembered the punchline correctly. Even if I can remember every component of the setup (such as those requred for the mild green hairy-lip squid joke) I lack the knack of being able to tell jokes engagingly, so leave the telling to those who can remember them and deliver them properly.

EcoDad's joke repertoire predominantly consists of those whose punchlines comprise one or more bad puns and which require groans or tuts upon delivery rather than laughter. Knowing this, the fact that I only heard a few words of setup and the punchline of the joke he told TFP on the way to the Mosque Kitchen this afternoon meant that the gist of the premise could be constructed with the aid of the action, repeated above for the benefit of David77 after we joined him in the Meadows and briefly posed for a shot he didn't use before heading for lunch.

Though sheltered, the Mosque Kitchen's eating-space is not an ideal place to spend an entire afternoon as 1: it doesn't sell coffee and 2: it's still essentially outside and thus not somewhere where sitting still for more than a mealsworth of time would be beneficial. Unfortunately the Elephant House (1: sells nice-tasting coffee in large cafétières and 2: is inside, but has nice views of the outside) was far too busy to be worth considering (which was a shame, as it had taken us ten minutes to get there from the mosque 200m away after the two people with the least up-to-date local geographical knowledge decided to not follow the two people who knew where they were going) but a suitable nearby alternative was suggested which also sold nice coffee and tasty cakes, though there wasn't much to look out of the window, though it did at least admit enough light to illuminate David77 opposite me. He may be collaged-in at a later date, though this was the picture which immediately jumped out at me.

Despite it being hat-and-gloves weather there was enough light to spend the rest of the afternoon wandering about the various things David will cease to have access to at the end of the week, though hopefully after seeing both the disappointing Christmas market on the Mound and the non-wondrous Winter Wonderland in the gardens he shall be able to leave without feeling that he's missing something. He might have mentioned a few times how it's impossible to take pictures on the street in Cairo without either being stared at or accosted; in recent years several amateur photographers have been harrassed by the hired security policing the winter-related arrangements in the technically-private-property Gardens (to the extent that they were operating a photography-permit system last year) but on our brief wander through there were no visible instances of heavy-handed pre-emptive photographer-thwarting that I noticed, though there were a few people bobbing about with noticeable non-compact cameras (which usually seem to be the kind which attract the most unwanted attention) or visible tripods (which can at least be accused of being a potential impediment (though hardly an actual danger) to large crowds of people).

After a brief pop into one of those unpleasant shops seemingly entirely filled with Christmassy decoration-nonsense (and the associated unpleasant music) we ended up trundling round the middle of the crags looking for skylines and (in my case) standing on a bench in an unrealistic picture-taking pose. I did at least apparently succeed in getting David to at least try using RAW files (or at least to set his camera to save them as well as his currently-favoured jpeg), particularly as a means to prevent the need to gripe about not being able to extract some detail from an under-exposed portion of image. I should have asked for a quick go of his camera and secretly switched off the jpegs in order to force him to use the RAW file. Perhaps next time.