In the neighbourhood

Slightly random photos from round and about

Several times a day there's tinny and slightly off-key music from down on the street, like an icecream truck in a horror movie. Far from being the local Mr Whippy, it's the bottled-gas man, and he drives around all day, so whether you run out of gas in the middle of cooking breakfast, dinner or late-night supper there's never too long to wait. (I guess local children don't expect the music to herald frozen treats, so don't feel let down every time they hear it.) There are even competing gas men. The one we hear most often has the horror movie music, but there's another whose truck plays "Für Elise", and a third whose truck plays the theme from Chariots of Fire (I swear I am not making this up). 

 

There's a less musical truck whose driver shouts into a megaphone as he drives along, or maybe he drives and his passenger shouts. It's possible he's listing the vegetables he has for sale, but he could be reciting nursery rhymes or boasting about how at least there's something to eat on his truck. His timing is a bit erratic, so I haven't bought anything from him yet. Also, by the time I unlock the door, lock it behind me (because we have been told to never ever leave the door unlocked even when we're home), dash down two flights of stairs and out the front door to the gate he's likely to have moved on.

There's also shouting from trucks like this one. When they're not cruising the neighbourhood touting for dead bodies appliances to take away for scrap or general delivery jobs they congregate behind the local petrol station and smoke.

 

Just around the corner from us is the Royal Jordanian Automobile Club. The Club part is very mysteriously hidden behind 6-metre-high fences with security guards, but they also teach people to drive, and every afternoon there's a steady stream of yellow cars that look a lot like taxis being driven slowly around the same circuit of streets. Part of what the novice drivers are learning is how to deal with all the honking that is an essential part of driving here, and maybe even how to honk themselves. Often if the learner driver is a woman there will be one or more other people sitting in the back seat, sometimes holding small children on their laps. Fun for all the family!

Here's an assortment of local shops. First, my home away from home, C-Town. It really is nicer inside than out (and just as well, too).

I can't shop at Happy Smiley Stores, not because of the name but because their butchery section is entirely devoid of English, so it is pretty much inevitable that I would wind up with spleens or gizzards.

In the building next to it, a couple of floors up from the Golden Waves Liquor Store, is a medical centre, the closest one recommended by the school Mark is working at so presumably not too fly-by-night. The centre's official address is "7th Circle, behind the C-Town Complex Khayat 4, next to the Happy Family Stores". Most addresses here are in a similar format (we are "7th Circle, Ibrahim Qattan Street, beside Al Burj gas station ...), so I guess featured businesses are not allowed to change names or disappear. (We are a couple of blocks from the petrol station, not right next to it, but it's our nearest landmark.)

Some of the many, many phone shops. Competing shops selling the same brands practically side by side.

Nothing says romance like a huge dusty teddy bear, right?

OSH does not seem to be a feature in Jordan. This chap is two storeys up, standing right on the end of a plank (actually 3 planks tied together) hanging by ropes from the top of the building, using power tools, without even a high vis vest to protect him.
 

And today's guy is sticking up advertising while clinging to a rope ladder. What the photo doesn't show is that the ladder goes up and over the end of the building and appears to be being counterweighted by two other men rather than tied to anything. At least it's not windy.