Free It's a Don's Life by Mary Beard Page A

sir’ as they say). It’s only
     when you’ve climbed up to the entrance way on the pyramid itself that they tell you that you have to buy another ticket, from
     somewhere completely different, if you want to go inside. And it’s only when you have got back one more time that they tell
     you that you can’t take your camera inside. It would clearly be asking for it to leave your precious digital on the little
     shelf suggested (when we went, it was the resting place for just one ‘throwaway’ camera); so you have to climb down again
     to leave it in the car – or, as we did, disguise it in a make-up bag.
    And all this has to be done while avoiding the pushiest touts (plus camels) anywhere in the world. Exactly what scams they
     were trying to pull off wasn’t clear; but scams they certainly were. Our driver insisted, like an anxious parent of thoughtless
     adolescents, that we spoke to no one, that we didn’t wander round the back of the monument (where presumably even worse scammers
     lay in wait) and that we didn’t hire the first camel from the first Bedouin we saw.
    Still, it was probably the most memorable sight I’ve ever seen. And December was the perfect time to visit. Apart from a handful
     of intrepid Europeans, most of the visitors were local school parties. The little girls sweated through the passages in their
     veils and headscarves. But (much to the annoyance of their teachers) found us rather more exotic and photogenic a sight than
     the antiquities.
    Comments
    The overpowering smell of urea/ammonia is caused more by bat droppings than by human piss, I think.
    AJM

Sex on the Beach
    29 December 2006
    My prize Christmas present this year was an extremely elegant cocktail shaker, plus all the trimmings. And I mean all: four
     Martini glasses with flashing stems (improbably acquired from Marks & Spencer); cocktail recipe book; bottle of Cointreau
     and bottle of tequila (who would keep tequila in the house if they were not making cocktails?); and, to complete the kit,
     12 limes (ditto, as for the tequila).
    After a day’s stint in the library, honestly, I need a stiff drink. So this Christmas it’s been good-bye gin and tonic or
     a delicate glass or two of white wine; and hello Blue Lagoon and Moscow Mule.
    What I like about cocktails is their total artfulness. There is nothing remotely ‘natural’ about them. In fact, the whole
     point is to get as far from the appearance and the taste of the ‘real’ ingredients as you can. I mean, there is no purpose
     whatsoever to blue curaçao except to turn some other innocent spirit that glorious shade of luminescent blue. Of course, it
     adds to the alcohol content, but it didn’t need to be blue to do that.
    There is also something wonderfully democratising about cocktails. OK, some mixtures are more naff than others. Those who
     fancy a nice dry Manhattan might well turn their noses up at a Tijuana Taxi. And a bit of snobbery comes into the making of
     Martinis (though even the latest Bond movie pokes fun at the ‘shaken or stirred?’ obsession). But there’s none of that pretentious
     wine mythology involved. You don’t have to sniff them or discuss the year. You just drink them. If you like the taste, you
     have another; if not, you change the mixture.
    The history of the cocktail is a bit of a mystery. It certainly doesn’t go back beyond the nineteenth century – and there’s
     a strong hint that disguising the taste of the foul home-brewed spirits under Prohibition had something to do with their popularity.
     It struck me, in the middle of my second Margarita the other evening, how much the ancient Romans (the rich ones, at any rate)
     would have enjoyed the art of the cocktail if only they had thought of it.
    Romans were refreshingly uncultured when it came to alcohol. They mostly mixed their wine with water and/or honey, and they
     didn’t much care about vintages (except when they fell on an important political anniversary). So far