Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 3 - Sharm El-Sheikh There are only 3 reasons to come to Sharm El-Sheikh A love of beach resorts A love of international climate change conferences A love of diving Our decision to come here wasn't based on any of those things, it was based on 4. It was the cheapest place to fly into and there is a ferry that quickly transports you to the interesting part of Egypt I'd based reason 4 on the fact that Sharm had a ferry port, Hurgada (on the 'mainland') had a ferry port and on Google Maps there was a dotted line in between. Stupid boy. The reason that there are 3 reasons is that the ferry stopped operating 10 years back. So, moving up the list we quickly decided we'd better do some diving to justify our coming here. As the boat pulled out of the harbour the sandstone cliffs reflected off the scattered aquamarine waters like a Monet-Hockney collaboration that could never have happened. The dive briefing droned on into its 20th minute and, while all...

Day 1 - Sharm el-Sheikh The shiny new infrastructure clings loosely to the dry ground as our taxi hurtles along the tarmac from the airport. If you shower a desert with water it sometimes flowers, if you soak it with money does it also bloom? It has been a long time since Sharm el-Sheikh was the small fishing village that the Israelis found when they invaded the Sinai peninsula in 1967 but it has, from appearances, recently had an extraordinary amount of money lavished upon it. The place must have warranted this largesse from the Egyptian government due to it being the host city of the COP27 summit. These annual summits are where countries discuss how awful climate change is and agree what not to do about it. The unsubtle 5-lane roads that have been laid provide an equally unsubtle irony about the environmental costs of holding an environmental summit. Is there any mitigation in the fact that they are now almost completely unused in their pristine, bombastic state? In time nature will...

Pub review They say: "We came for a skittle on a Saturday night and they were very welcoming but you know how you hear about lizards ruling the world, the barstaff had a very lizardy look. Make your own mind up!" --Craig Savage 4/5 I say: 'The place where everybody knows your name' The claim is painted onto the wall and doesn't seem so outlandish on this chilly Tuesday night as there is no-one in the pub to know my name or not. Dry January? I can't imagine that's a thing around these parts. You don't keep over 30 pubs in business with virtuous gestures like that. It might be a Tuesday thing. Per usual I try to find a quiet corner with my beer, surely an easy task in an empty pub? Not so. Speakers hang from every nook and carpet the space in a thick fog of sound. It isn't even the usual autotuned pop/R&B dirge being vomited into my ears. That stuff I can confine to a background hum. Instead it's the pre-match commentary for the Brighto...