Columns

The sky is as clear and blue here as it was in Marrakech, but now the sweat, sounds and stinks of the city are left far behind. I am staring out of the bus window thinking what a pillock Bob Geldof was for ever writing, "And there won't be snow in Africa, this Christmas time" because there is always flipping snow in flipping Africa at flipping Christmas time. I am surrounded by snow up here in the High Atlas mountains.

However, I fancy I can hear an anomalous noise. It sounds a bit like locusts. Surely you don't get locusts up here above the snow line? Maybe it is a swarm of African cicadas roused from below ground by the prospect of a raving tourist?

I ask the traveller in the seat in front of me if she can hear the cicadas too, but she doesn't reply. Her head is swaying to the mystic insect rhythm, and she is intoning some sacred mantra in communion with the natural wonders all around us. I crane forwards until I can make out the words of her low moaning chant: "He's trying to make me go to rehab. I won't go, go, go." I have found the source of the strange noise. It is leaking from her MP3 player.

My insect illusion is shattered. I look around for allies, but the other passengers in the bus are oblivious to her antisocial white noise. They, too, are plugged in to their own headsets and electronic devices. Several of them are tapping away at text messages. Others are playing computer games. The rage begins to build inside me. I move to the back of the bus and squeeze in next to a smiling old chap who looks like a struck-off doctor with a whisky habit. But I do not attempt to begin a conversation. He is

ADVERTISEMENT

squinting and smiling at his laptop computer. I think he's watching Mr Bean. I may have to kill him and put him out of my misery.

Gonna take you Haya

Now it is night time. The bus has descended to the High Atlas Foothills of the Ourkira Valley and decanted its payload of me and the Borg beside a Berber settlement. We are near Lalla Haya, which may sound like oral sex but is in fact the source of Morocco's sparkling mineral water. I wish to have social intercourse. I like talking to new people and learning new things from them. Instead, I am bored to tears by a young couple who inflict several hundred high-definition photos of their last holiday on me. I want to discuss this holiday.

Next, I am collared by a benign old witch and suffer video clips on a smartphone showing sundry puppy dogs, pussy cats and grandchildren. Doctor Whisky has changed batteries and is catching up on The Vicar of Dibley.

Eventually, I find a melancholy Dutch youth who is willing to talk to me about where we are here and now. He is very disappointed by Morocco, and complains that it takes so long to get anywhere. It was much better when he used Google Earth to plan his trip, and could fly like Superman from the virtual gutters of Marrakech to the virtual Atlas peaks in a matter of seconds.

Cicada Woman becomes hysterical when she discovers to her horror that there is no signal in the village, so she cannot score her fix of music downloads. Suddenly, I am surrounded by feral children demanding I take their photos, for which I must pay them. A goat and a camel mooch silently towards the Sahara looking for more friends to add to their Facebook pages. As for me, I wander away in search of a scorpion.

Stars in my eyes

And there it is, beautiful and bright, between Libra and Sagittarius, smack dab in the dust of the Milky Way: my very own constellation. I don't need a computer to teach me the map of the heavens. My granddad taught me on clear nights like this. I don't want to use software to simulate flying around the planet so I can drop in at any coordinates and read someone else's twaddle. I want to experience it all first hand and conjure up my own twaddle.