Sunday

We motor past the factories of Alabaster and the mud-brick villages that blend into the arid brown, or occasionally ochre, sand hills to the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, known to us hoi polloi as Queen Tomato Ketchup. The Egyptians are intensely proud of the magnificent restoration of this extraordinary temple. However, approached from a distance, it looks to me like the council offices of Stroud, carefully built in Bath stone.