Turning 40 in style

Giza. Pyramids and sand, a sphinx, sun and camel touts. What more could anyone have asked for? We had a wonderful day out. That sounds so trite, but it shouldn't. It was fabulous in every way.

You always hear that nothing can prepare you for the scale of the pyramids, but this so often had prepared me. Still there was plenty to amaze. Mostly, that all of this, each huge structure, was for just one man. Standing at the foot of a pyramid, each one of about 2 million stone blocks reaches your shoulder. Stepping back I tried to imagine one body deep inside, and that was the perspective that was hard to comprehend, exciting, ridiculous and awe-inspiring. I loved the solidity and enormity, and the monument to certainty or insecurity that had inspired and necessitated it.

I also loved that these pyramids are perched on the edge of modern Cairo. In pictures they appear to be out in the desert, but from the other side you see that the city has reached this site. A grey, smog-ridden city butted up behind the pyramids, its roofs peppered with satellite dishes. Against the stark, calm simplicity of the pyramids it looked chaotic, flimsy and lost. It should have spoiled the view but rather this contrast enhanced it.

We walked around the great pyramid, marvelled at the awfulness of the metal box housing a museum that butted up against one side. We visited the second pyramid, and Khufu's queens' pyramids - mostly rather dilapidated, before heading down to solve thee riddle of the sphinx. Ismail, Kate's lovely driver, joined us and together we pieced together history and speculation. He seemed to be having a great time, taking hundreds of photos, helping us fend off numerous touts and offers of camels - to ride, not in exchange for us.

Kate took me to lunch in a swanky hotel with a pyramid view where we feasted on Egyptian bread and their equivalent of mezze, while checking every now and then that the pyramid (we couldn't work out which it was) hadn't gone anywhere. It hadn't.

Back home in the afternoon there was cake with candles and cards and presents and balloons, the kids singing and a camel-shaped handbag singing and it was quite the most perfect birthday I can remember. And no, Kate, I'm not just saying that, so Halas already.