Bird in gilded cage

From the Louis Tiran Sharm hotel, Sharm el Sheikh 6th January 2010

I have never been in a place so new and so luxurious: floors of marble in wavy contrasting patterns, tasteful low-slung black and white easy chairs and glass coffee tables, a private room with 4 metre by 3 balcony with sea view and slatted wooden shelves at just the right height for sundowners, a dozen pools, and a small army of smiling young Egyptian men doing all the work: room service, fixing toilets, weeding gardens and even smoothing the sands above the coral beach.

This is what can happen when a country develops in ways approved by powerful nations of the West. I could get used to it !

But it is not where I need to be, nor is it where my heart is. My heart is at Egypt's cool Mediterranean coast, somewhere between El Arish and Rafah. With the Viva Palestina convoy, my family, my home for the last month. As I write (6th January 2010) there is no breakthrough in talks between convoy leaders and the Egyptian authorities. My friends face another night of fear, of discomfort in the ambulance, of worry about their friends or their vehicles being beaten or set fire to. Above all of frustration at being so near their goal and yet barred from meeting the people of Gaza. I should be with them, and I am not .

Or, being an ordinary citizen with a normal active life and half a dozen competing responsibilities, I should be back home picking up the threads and doing all those things “which we have left undone ....” (as the Book of Common Prayer puts it).

“And there is no health in us ....” The robust good fortune which kept me fit all through this last month and thousands of miles has slipped away today to attend to others in greater need (I hope); which is a round-about way of saying that the bug which afflicted half the convoy members at Latakia has caught up with me. The beautifully presented salads and tasty soups and breakfasts have had to be admired just as works of art. Never mind: it's left more time for communicating with others, including back home.

And we have one extra to this place which designers of gilded cages never had to worry about before: hard-wire internet access in the room. So it has been a day of trying to involve my MP (John Grogan of Selby) in efforts to get the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to persuade the Egyptian authorities to let my people go !