20

Warning: ‘I can remember when this was all sand’ post.

This year will be my 20th GITEX. Back in 1988 it was a two-hall show – the second hall was a new feature, the MacWorld exhibition. The exhibitor party was a barbecue held on the small lawn at the back of the Apartments Club, one of the last remaining, marvellous, pieces of ‘70s Dubai. The show was mostly shell scheme stands, pirate software and shuffling brochure-hunters.

I met a teacher while out exploring the town. It was at a low nightclub in the Dubai Marine Hotel. A tiny, dark and pretty crap sort of place. You wouldn’t usually catch me dead in a nightclub, let alone one as ill-favoured as Cavaliers. It turned out the same was true of the teacher, who was only there because her friends had dragged her there. Mrs McNabb, as she is known today, is the product of that rarest of things: a GITEX romance...