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I’m trying desperately to keep up with a Moroccan boy as he weaves his way quickly between narrow alleys, and trying to avoid sparks sent flying across my path from a merchant filing down a piece of metal in his shop front. Goods are hanging all around me, people are flooding around in every direction, and he gestures to follow as I try not to be overwhelmed by the avalanche of new sights and sounds…

On Monday, just after arriving in Marrakesh with Sarah and some of her uni friends (which I think I can fairly confidently say are now also my friends) we decided to take a trip into the Souks – dense markets that pervade the centre of town. Here they sell a variety of handmade goods, such as clothes, wooden boxes and game boards, lanterns, sandals, and many more things.

The haggling started before we even left the villa – our taxis arrived and demanded 150 Dirhams each, yet we’d agreed 100 over the phone. After a 10 minute discussion (where each party essentially threatened repeatedly to leave) we settled on 100 and headed into town.

It was set to be a hot day, and as I got out of the taxi, I became instantly thankful for the hat I’d brought along with me, despite the odd slant it added to my fashion statement. Hats just never look right on my head. I see and sometimes require the practicality, but can never quite make it look right, like putting a tea cosy on a cappuccino machine.

We wandered through the big square next to the palace tower past rows of horse-drawn carriages and orange juice stalls and got ready to start shopping.

It’s difficult to walk more than a few metres in the souks without being propositioned to buy some trinket or accessory and while it felt extremely rude to ignore people, eye contact and acknowledgement could get you into a ten minute sales debate you didn’t want. It’s made me appreciate being able to browse unfettered back home.

It was fun to stroll through taking photos, looking at goods and cooing at cute, although jarringly thin stray cats as passed them. We stopped for mint tea and a call to prayer went out. This sounds like a man yelling on a megaphone, like a call to arms against an oppressive regime if you don’t understand the language or context but to the locals it’s a cherished tradition and they pray 5 times a day at allotted times.  Not everyone joins in – it’s not like a ‘minute of silence’ across town but more like an optional reminder.  In the afternoon one Moroccan boy – or young man – kept asking me where I wanted to go, and when I said I was interested in the musical instruments, seemed on a mission to drag me and the rest of our group across the market.  I made it clear I just wanted to browse but he stayed close and waited for us to move again.  “No guide no pay” he assured me, but I doubted he was running a charity for lost tourists.

My mistake was to start following him at all because after that it was difficult to stop.  We marched through many new sights and sounds at breakneck speed until finally there was too much to take in and we stopped at a junction.  He kept gesturing for us to follow but I explained we were going to look around and take our time.  He seemed disappointed and told me I could just have a quick look in his spice shop at which point I understood why he’d tried to gather our group.  I said we would pop in just so we would be left alone.  I really didn’t like being marched around at someone else’s behest, especially at such insistence and with an ulterior motive.  We took in the feel of our new surroundings in this part of the market but five minutes later the boy walked past us again.  “Not a gentleman,” he tutted at me, wagging his finger.  I was immediately confused, then amused, embarassed, and finally settled into a mixture of resentment and disappointment.  I hadn’t asked for his help, not once, and certainly didn’t promise him any custom.  I figured this was all part of the bargaining game though, and life and competition in the souks is hard.  Vastly different to my life as a software engineer and I can’t take all the comments and opinions to mean the same thing.

We were in the heart of the market now and every stall was packed full of items and every other shopkeeper wanted us to go inside and look around.  I stopped at a couple of instrument stalls and within minutes was being shown a drum or handmade guitar.  There was one odd double-necked whistle that played two notes at once that made a real racket – more like a foghorn blast than a chord.  Most of the drums seemed good and would have made a nice present for my percussion friends, although they almost certainly would have had one already.

After our shopping session we had a look around the square which had come to life while we were away.  There were lots of food stalls manned furiously by staff who wanted you to eat at their one, and they would pull you in literally, as well as regale you with ‘classic’ English quotes as you pass by.  A couple of jolly greeters told us they were running “The Morrocan Sainsburys” and the food looked really good – lots of tasty kebabs and koftes.  They showed us some photos of them meeting famous chefs like the bikers and Jamie Oliver.  We ate there, and wandered around the square some more.  Everyone still tried to get us to eat at their stall, and when we said we’d already had dinner insisted we came back tomorrow.  Sarah got a few compliments as well – in an effort, I think, to appeal to Western fast food culture, one greeter described Sarah as “Finger Licking Good”.  I politely agreed, backing away.

Some people manning stalls were selling desserts, and Jake bought a big selection of them (for something really cheap like £3 for 10 different pastries).  He offered me one and I had the most delicious crunchy Macaroon I’ve ever tried.

Trying to get away from people continuously trying to sell us things, we walked down a busy road and towards a taxi rank, where our ride home, and an inevitable argument about the cost, was waiting for us.

You might wonder what makes someone want to strap themselves to something that is most definitely about to move in a violent and unpredictable manner, and then accompany it on a gee-force-attaining, vomit-inducing ride.  I certainly wonder that.  But then, that’s exactly what I did on Saturday, and it was really good fun.

Zorbing, also sometimes known as sphering or orbing, the art of rolling down a hill inside a ball, has been around since the mid-90s, and has enjoyed a reasonable amount of popularity ever since.  I remember seeing it in the news ages ago, and thinking it was crazy, but that I’d also like to try it.

And it’s fun!

We went through a company called orb360, who have a team running orbing most weekends at Devil’s Dyke near Brighton.  It was a little difficult to find the exact hill where they’d set up camp, but once you find the Devil’s Dyke pub, you can set out and just look for the highest crest in a hill ahead of you – they won’t be far from that.

We got there for our 3pm appointment and were greeted by friendly staffers.  We were surprised at how busy it was, actually, with two other big groups waiting for their rolls.  Thankfully they let us go first, rather than having to wait for all of them to finish.  We literally signed away our lives on the most cover-all waiver I’ve ever seen, and then plodded towards the huge plastic orbs.

It was quite wet and rainy on Saturday, and we had to take our shoes off to enter the orb: so I was faced with two options.  Keep my socks on, but get them wet on the grass, or take them off and endure cold (wet) water on my bare feet.  I started to take them off, then remembered other people would have done the same.  The years of my Mum warning me about verucas kicked in, and a paranoid voice in my head told me to keep them on.  So I waddled over in my ever-increasingly-sodden socks, and got ready to enter the orb.

I went first, and took a dive to get into the orb, head-first.  Apparently it was a good effort, and I didn’t need any burly men to push my behind, from behind, to assist my entrance.  There were a lot of straps, but I got myself attached securely and waited for Sarah to get in.  They rolled the ball slightly so I was perched, almost hanging from the top of the inner sphere while she got in.  That was probably the worst part, just waiting, and mostly dangling from the straps.  My mind flashed back to when a friend-of-a-friend told me her ex-boyfriend (a tentative link, I know) was really “into suspension”.  Having not had much experience with this particular sexual debauchery, I indulged my mind into thinking it must be something like my current predicament.  Regardless, Sarah got attached fairly quickly, and after a quick “Ready?”, we were off!

In my mind, I had imagined we’d be flung to the far edges of the inner sphere, much like a fairground ride where you’re kept in place by the centripedal force.  But the straps were doing a lot of work, and I got shaken up and down quite a few times.  I felt myself going upside down, but very quickly lost track of where the ground actually was.  It was exhiliarating.  Every so often a flash of green went past my vision to remind me I was tumbling around, although the world may just have been tumbling around me, it was hard to tell.

And then it was over, way too soon.  We unstrapped ourselves and slid out of the orb, in a dizzy stupour.  Sarah sensibly went feet-first out of the orb and landed upright, but I just dived out as I had gone in.  I didn’t want to end up like Pooh, with the inside of the ball as Owl’s house, the pursuit of adrenaline my metaphorical honey.

The staff were kind enough to let us get a jeep ride back to the top of the hill where we re-wrapped our soaking perambulators.  And thanking most of the people around us, we trudged back to the car.

I’d definitely go again, but if you get sick from movement-type rides, I probably wouldn’t recommend it.  This is like the mother of all shake-you-up experiences.  And we both had splitting headaches the next day, like all the bumpiness bruised our brains.  That’s my current theory, anyway.

When you were young did you ever play that game where you fold a piece of paper into sections, then draw different parts of a person’s body, then pass it to your friend so they could draw the next bit?  Well when 6 of us recently got together to eat a sensible dinner, we soon descended into chaos and decided to play again, aged 24-28.

  

  

You’d think we’d know better!  Still, it was fun.

Hello and welcome to davidaddis.com!  I’ve just updated my website to use WordPress, so it’s had a rather drastic and sudden image change.  Soon I’ll hook up the links to my music and game demos.