The Quest for Cushions

It's important to be lazy sometimes. I used to be quite good at it. I could go for days without even getting off the sofa. I'm not as good any more, I feel guilty and obliged to go out for a walk, even if it's just a totally pointless walk. I'll go out to by milk even though I don't really drink milk. I'll get a paper and never even read it.

But once the walk is done I can get back to being lazy. There are a couple of options. I've got a sofa, there are lots of cushions, there's a massive bean bag. The bean bag is great for watching TV. It's so big it feels like you're floating.

I'll put a couple of the cushions we got in Morrocco behind me and put my feet up on the Morroccan leather pouffe which I stuffed full of old clothes that I didn't have the heart to throw away. And I'll lie there and get lazy with a coffee next to me on the Morroccan rug.

It's a red rug, the colour of red wine. I bought it in Marrakech. It has white weaving stripes running across it. I don't know what it's made of, probably camel hair, or Atlas mountain goat hair.

Marrakech was a busy place. We stayed in a riad right in the centre, a riad is a sort of traditional house with about three or four floors and a central courtyard usually with some palms or a fountain in the centre. All buildings in Marrakech are the same hight because they're not alowed to be taller than the mosques and most of them have a roof garden or terrace. And when you look around the sky line from the roof gardens you can see all the pink buildings with the mosques sticking out occasionally wailing the call to prayer. It looks still and calm. Like a flat lake of terracotta. But it's not calm beneath the surface.

When you go down stairs it all changes. If you've ever imagined a labyrinth with strange things around every corner then that's sort of what it's like. The streets are about as wide as a pavement, and they have lots of people walking down them. In between the people are mopeds driven by kids weaving along spewing fumes and noise, and in between the people and mopeds are cats and kittens.

There are kittens everywhere. The streets are mostly lined with shops and some are covered with corrugated iron so it becomes a sort of indoor labyrinth so you can't even navigate by the sun or a slow moving cloud. By the time you manage to find where you might be on the map you turn another corner and realise you're absolutely completely and utterly lost. And that's just after 10 minutes of leaving the riad.

Children shout all the time offering directions, but someone told me not to take directions because the child would follow you about all day claiming they were now employed to be your personal guide.

I don't like to admit if I'm lost so I decided to go for the challenge of finding my own way. It wasn't the right decision.

I looked at my crumpled map and reconned we was in the vast, featureless, shaded area covering most of Marrakech with the word 'Souks' typed across it. It seemed we were in an area that didn't lend itself to being put on a map.

I suggested to Aimee we try to head for the main square or the biggest mosque but by this point she she wasn't really talking to me so we just pressed on in silence.

Silence except for the shouting of haggling from the market stalls, the bleat of the motor bikes, the miaows of cats, the calls of 'boss! boss!' shouted at me with every step I took to try some orange juice or mint tea, or cakes covered in wasps, or leather products or shoes for the lady or cushions or rugs or wooden carved ornaments or silver and opal jewellery or brightly coloured enamel ceramics from Fez and Tangiers.

We turned a conrner and when the main square opened up before us it felt like we'd defeated the labyrinth. We climbed up to the highest roof top cafe and took a seat over looking the whole city and sipped mint tea served from silver teapots with long spouts. It's nice tea – although a little sweet sometimes.

We decided that we would wait a couple of days before staring the shopping because we were a bit green around the gills as far as exchange rates and haggleing skills went. The market men would sniff us out as easy prey. So we just chilled and had tea and feshly squeezed orange juice and watched idiot tourists posing for photos with a poor little monkey wearing a nappy.

Then the singing started. Wailing voices coming from loud speakers at the top of the mosque began to echo around the square, then like ripples across the city all the other mosques began to join in and the pink sky and all the pink buildings seemed to reverberate.

It gave me goose bumps.

We decided it was probably time to head back to the riad. So we returned to the labyrinth. It was no easier getting home. But no way as stressful, the thought of reclining on the rooftop with some wine and a shisa pipe helped a lot.

Over the next few days we just conceeded that we were going to get lost every time we stepped outside, it became much easier then - just relax and surrender to the endless flow of life. I was going to pay 40 for the rug, but I felt like I'd cracked the puzzle, so I got it for 35.