Will you come? Will you? Will you? It's all they want to know. Come to the Sinai desert and sleep under the stars. Yes, please. Take me away from this snow to a sheikh in the desert who'll sing "Blue heaven and you and I, stars kissing a moonlit sky."
"I never saw a scorpion or a snake when I was there," says Corkman Dave Sharpe, of the National Toll Roads. He has completed the trek through the desert three times already, and although he's dressed like a camel herder in a long white galabeah and a lavender hamma, or turban - eh, we believe him.
The Sinai Desert Challenge 2001, which aims to raise in excess of £20,000 for Women's Aid, is launched officially by Ashraf Rashed, the Egyptian ambassador, at a party in his home on Clyde Road. Those who raise approximately £2,000 each to go on the trip will also help fund some of the Women's Aid services, which are provided for women and children who are experiencing domestic violence. Denise Charlton, Women's Aid director, says its national helpline received 10,000 calls from women last year.
Susan Duggan, a psychologist from Cork, who is here with her fiance, Dermot Carroll, is wearing a richly decorated Bedouin betrothal shawl. It's appropriate as their wedding is planned for Friday, May 4th, near Clonakilty in west Cork. Another engaged couple present are Christopher Pryse-Hawkins and his fiancee, Elizabeth Mulville. They plan to wed at the end of June.
Others at the party include auctioneer Corrie Mac Mahon and his wife, Gearoidin Charlton, and food writer Orla Broderick, who with Susan Duggan is currently planning a Dublin City Cookbook to be out for next Christmas to help raise more money for the organisation.