Not wet. Actually not cold either, but a pretty strong north wind. Palm trees whipping round and white caps in the sea. New read aloud book is Jack Shenker's The Egyptians: A Radical Story. Bought via Kobo, lured by the Guardian review:
**The limitations of much of the press coverage led, inevitably, to a dangerous oversimplification in which Mubarak was bad and the Tahrir Square crowds were good (except for those men raping women in the square), with Barack Obama speaking for us all when he said: “Egyptians have inspired us… they have changed the world”. The Egyptian army was good because it did nothing to stop the protesters (unlike the central security forces), but it became bad when it helped to create the post‑Mubarak regime. Egypt itself went from inspiring to horrifying, as the revolution was overcome by a counter-revolution, while the perception of the struggle morphed from people versus tyrant to violent Islamist martyrs versus the forces of order. The real story is more confused and more complicated, and, as Shenker presents it in this detailed, meticulous and fascinating book, more hopeful.**
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