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Today, it rained for about fifteen minutes. That was enough to gridlock the main highway and render the streets a slushy mess of mud, sand and piss. How delightful. The beeping is bad at the best of times, but add a little rainwater to the mix and people lose all restraint. It took over two and a half hours to get home.

Still, all this rain can at least help put out all the people that are setting themselves on fire here in Egypt at the moment. According to my learned colleagues, there's no point doing something like that in Egypt because you'll just be branded as a madman with no respect for Islam, with nobody sparing a thought as to why people feel the need to commit such a shockingly desperate symbolic gesture to get some attention.

How dreadfully, dreadfully sad. This country is broken beyond repair, it would seem.

Now that I am home, I am becoming more and more agitated by the car alarm that has been going since I got back, and looks likely to continue all evening. It's not just an ordinary irritating car alarm, but a special Egyptian car alarm, that fluctuates between siren/beep/whistle over and over again.

I feel a jihad coming on.

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