Leave And That...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I haven't posted in over a month. Sue me.

We've been on leave.

I hate flying, much as I love EK. A380s rock, the films were awful. Kindles rock more than A380s. Except in turbulence which we saw almost not at all. Heathrow sucks lemons.

Drove to Wales to see me mum for a couple of days, she's fine, thanks. Bit shaky. She's over 90 now. Fierce independent lady. The office calls, can I come back early? No. I shipped our bikes from there over to Northern Ireland. Halfords think I'm a totes jackass. They're all hardcore bike freaks, we have two bikes we love to ride when we're home. I got a puncture a while back and took the bike into them. They're all, like, can't you fix your own punctures? And I'm 'No.' And then they're, like, it's a quick release wheel so you don't have to bring the whole bike in. And I'm, 'Sue me.'

They boxed the bikes for me. They still think I'm a nutter, but now I'm another store's problem. They're happy about that.

Back to London for a couple of days in a Premier Inn because the sister-in-law's house (AKA Twickenham Central) is full of neeces. We like Premier Inns, actually. We got a great night's sleep every night, which is their promise, after all.

Photon checks into a hotel. Receptionist says, 'No bags?' Photon replies, 'Nah, I'm travelling light.'

Lovely week, Hampton Court, Thames Cruise, shit service at Pizza Express at the O2 (just drop the express, love, and you're fine) and mad wannabe BBC 2 Children's Presenters at Hamleys Regent Street. We reckoned these kids are freebasing to stay that hyper all day. They're so over the top even the neeces think they're a bit, well, mad. The office calls and asks if I can come back early. Still no.

And then we're on the open road to Salisbury for three idyllic nights at the Beckford Arms, a truly magnificent pub. These people offer you Bloody Mary for breakfast. They're very likeable. We spend the days wandering castles and long walks. There's a Catholic cemetery nearby, packed with little snippets of social history linked to the area's immigrants. The barman at the Beckford convinces me to take black pepper in my Hendricks. Oh me, oh my, people. Black pepper and strawberries in Hendricks. This is the future.

Heathrow, crappy BA and then Belfast. Meet up with the neeces again and do much neecing around. Business stuff, solicitors, banks and accountants. Oh, joy. We did a 5k Fun Run in Rathfriland. The bloody town's on an enormous hill. The outward jog is downhill. It's only when we turn the corner that the bleeding obvious finally hits our dull monkey brains. Ouch.

Two men walk into a bar. Ouch Ouch.

Drives up into the Mournes, Camogie practice, Mary Margaret's pub and wandering along the seafront at Warrenpoint. The Green Pea Café and their insane BLT (Brioche eggy bread, smoked bacon and sundried tomatoes with rocket. Oh dear me) and then the Hotel at Hilltown - the Downshire Arms to you, mate - for Sarah's birthday. Scallops, steak and dancing. The office calls. I get the message. We rearrange flights and hop to Heathrow, do a night in Twickenham Central and take the all-day flight the next day. I love EK, but that flight doesn't suit us. Back in the office for Wednesday, wiped out but functioning.

The weekend's almost over and it's all a vague memory now. A frenetic, lovely charge around the place doing things and seeing things and meeting people and laughing fit to bust, drinking stuff and eating stuff and driving around and just basically living it up.

And now we're back. You know, that sort of what are we doing here feeling mixed with the sense that we're back home and that. Settling back down into things, taking a weekend drive around the place and getting back into the rhythm. I have my wallet back in my back pocket and have stopped obsessing about the car being nicked. I'm back on 24x7 broadband mobile access and not paying Vodaphone two bleeding quid a day for data.

Life's good...

Woah. Leave. Back. Ouch.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No post for almost a month. Golly, poor blog!

Dubai, London, Liverpool, Haverfordwest, London, Copenhagen, Belfast, Newry, London, Dubai.

What was that? That was your leave, mate. Welcome back 'in station'.

Looking back on the whirlwind that was, the start of it seems like months ago. Copenhagen was our annual attempt to spend some time together away from work and the hustle and bustle of the annual tour of the UK.

Funny place.

The Danes seem to make quite a deal about how free and easy and just, well, downright cool and inclusive and right on they are, but they'll stand on the margins of a totally empty road, yawning blacktop trailing endlessly into the horizon either side of them, waiting for the green light before they'll move. You can freewheel as much as you like, as long as you obey the  rules.

The hotel we finally selected (after weeks of clicking and mulling) was overpriced and packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Actually, all of central Copenhagen was packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Dinner wherever we went was inevitably taken next to Hank and Wilma yelling at each other as if they were still out on the prairie rather than in a cosy and intimate Yerpean restaurant.

We ate well, especially at funky new eatery Almanak at The Standard (a converted old ferry terminus) which we randomly discovered when sheltering from a sudden downpour. It isn't, despite the sound of the name, a Lebanese joint, but a new 'contemporary Danish' place staffed by people who've run away from working in Noma (the best restaurant in the world yadayada) and the food was grin-inducingly stunning. I laughed my way through the meal, my usual reaction to glorious food. And glorious it most certainly was.

We went back for a treat on our last night and watched in dismay as the service fell apart in a Hell's Kitchen sort of way, stacks of plates waiting on the pass, comped drinks all around as the floor staff tried to make sense of it all and failed. It was like the Keystone Cops of food. All it lacked was Gordon Ramsay screaming expletive-laden abuse at them as they tottered around getting everything horribly wrong. The food was still great, it just took three hours for them to get it all out to us. A shame, really.

We visited things. We walked a lot. We learned that cyclists are the new superpower and own both cars and pedestrians. Watching them beasting bewildered Japanese tourists who have wandered unknowingly into the cycle lane was astounding. The Danes don't talk about the Second World War very much, it's sort of missing from the historical narrative which we found generally to be patchy outside of the Christiansborg Palace, which is all very palatial.

We spent quite a lot of time trying to convince people that living in the UAE doesn't mean you have three heads, a close affinity with ISIS and a wife kept in purdah. We've never before been quite so keenly aware of how deeply ignorant people in general are about this place. Maybe it's us.

As for the rest of it, a whirlwind of nieces from both Heaven and Hell, the occasional nephew and many in-laws; friends, family, places and things. We bought a house, as you do. And then we found ourselves sitting in The Oriel at Terminal Three, waiting for the flight and wondering quite where the last three weeks had gone.

It was almost a relief to be back, except it is - as always - very strange to suddenly be plonked with a bump into our real life away from real life. Petrol's gone up, I hear. Other than that, we don't appear to have missed much. In a few days it'll feel as if we've never been away; it always does.

Hey ho...

Belfast: Of Marches, Parades And Protests

We put away a serious Irish Breakfast Merchant style, then took to the rainy streets to clear our heads having put in a considerable amount of 'research' at various venues, a team effort that concluded at The Spaniard, the nearest thing to a Hamra bar to be found outside Hamra. Belfast's weekend nightlife has got SO much of Beirut about it - the same frenetic, buzzed vibe packed with shiny, happy people and dotted with oddballs, eccentrics and generally eclectic splashes of colour in the serried hordes of overdressed fellas and half-dressed Lovely Girls.

A glorious evening, not without its subsequent toll exacted on Mr Potato Head.

We started spotting coppers dotted around, our first thought being maybe TK Maxx had been turned over by some enterprising souls as we - and the rest of Belfast - were busy carousing. And then a column of white PSNI (Police Service Northern Ireland) Range Rovers filed by, all black cages and white concrete roofs. Yes, I kid you not, concrete. They each weigh six tonnes and are designed not to be a pushover. These babies are riot equipped and if we didn't by now work out something serioo was up, the appearance of two water cannon tankers put things beyond all doubt.

I wandered up to one of the clearly hundreds of officers on duty, little clumps of them at every street corner, huddled in shuttered shop doorways away from the rain. What's the craic? I mean, it's nice of you chaps to be putting on the Range Rover Fan Club annual gathering but...

They were happy to chat: they were all on time and a half or double time, but none of them were particularly pleased at spending most of their Sunday arsing around in the downpour waiting for 4,000 marchers protesting internment (the controversial imprisonment of suspects without trial employed by the Brits during 'the troubles' in the 1970s) and the opposing marchers protesting the protests against internment.

'Put it this way, when I've finished being dressed up like a Ninja Turtle this afternoon, I'll pulling on me jeans and shirt and going for a load of pints an' try and catch up on me weekend,' one chap told us. They were all cheerful, approachable and open - pretty impressive PR for a force created out of the sectarian disaster that was the infamous RUC - and all clearly had no time for the marchers or their opponents, seeing it all as a throwback out of pace with the movement of the times.

'Who wants this? Who, our age - with a life and kids and a future - wants to go back to this?'

I have to say, I never thought I'd see the like on Belfast's streets these days. Roads blockaded with Rapid Response Unit Range Rovers, phalanxes of cops in high-viz gilets and bullet-proof armour festooned with batons, CS gas spray and radio handsets, the lot. 'Yeah, I know. Forget us, you didn't see us. This isn't Belfast, our beautiful city.'

Well, it's all a bit, you know, Gaza... 'Don't. We've got a cruise ship in full of Israelis. You couldn't write this stuff...'

We missed the march, or parade or protest or whatever it was they were calling it. Unlike last year, when 56 cops got pounced by a group of loyalist protest protesters ('swhy we're all deployed here so early this year, we've got over a thousand officers on extra duty today. What a waste of money we could be using for schools or hospitals, eh?) it went off peacefully with only a couple of minor injuries.

It all felt a little like a tourist attraction, but then again we were just tourists anyway. We heard an Italian tourist ask a copper, 'Which side is protesting?'

'Both, love. It's always both.'

A Taste Of Helsinki

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We've taken to going to Northern Europe for a quick break every summer and so decided to follow our trips to Tallinn and Stockholm with a jaunt to Helsinki this year. I'd recommend the city heartily; there's planty to do and see there, from the insanely useless fortification of Suomenlinna (second only in historical uselessness to the Maginot Line) to the many museums and art galleries - it's a delightful place to spend a few days exploring. The hooch, incidentally, isn't as expensive as everyone insists - particularly if you're used to Dubai prices! The Finns' relationship with alcohol is similar to that of the Swedes and for this reason, Helsinki serves the world's smallest Martinis (by law they can only serve up to 4cl of hard booze at a time) - and you can only buy the good stuff from official booze shops, which is a little like finding yourself in a Baltic Ajman, if you know what I mean.

Everything else apart, we ate like kings. The food in Helsinki was glorious - the first surprise being the 'street food' in the central market, where flaxen haired girls handed out food cooked on massive griddles - the rickety plastic-sheeted tables under the orange awnings of their stalls packed with eager eaters. Each stall has a single dining-table sized griddle, split up into various foods, from sides of salmon and piles of whitebait to mixed vegetables and potatoes sauteed with smoked sausage and patties of minced reindeer. The piping hot food is piled into a cardboard bowl and slathered in garlic sauce and eaten with a plastic fork and a bottle of cold near-beer (those alcohol rules again).

At the other end, there are serious restaurants. One such is all-organic micro-restaurant 'Ask'. It had to be done, really. Ask is only about a year old, so it's not featured in the Rough Guide or other tourist maps and things you're given as you wander around Helsinki. The restaurant seems almost to encourage that understated status - you'd really want to know where it is because there's no signage on the exterior of No. 8 Vironkatu (a turn left off Mariankatu, which you'll pick up just past the Presidential Palace at the end of the market square). 

First things first - eating at Ask is a funfair ride, so you have to give yourself up to the experience. You get a four or eight course tasting menu for your 55 or 85 Euro respectively. Asking what was on the menu when I called, I was told 'We don't know - chef's still down at the market'. If you think that response is a good thing, you'll love Ask.

For another 50 (or 80) Euro, you can buy into the wine selection to accompany the menu. That's pricey, even by Finnish standards, but having gone through the wines I'd say it was reasonable value for money. One of our table of two doesn't do fish or game I explained when I booked. No problem, they told us and we chatted about what she does like. We pitched and were sat at a table for two at the back (great - the other one was near the door, which was open to a chilly, rainy August evening) in the almost starkly minimalist restaurant - tiny, with a total of 26 covers.

Drinks? A Vodka Martini ordered, only to find that we were in the grip of the Organic Police. No inorganic Martini although we could have an organic vodka and some wholesome fruit juices. Right, then - we'll take the organic champagne from Vertus instead, which was lovely. The four course menu, which most around us took that night, was brought out by the chef owner himself, with the efficient service from the waitress limited to explaining (at some length) and pouring the wine, clearing plates and offering bread. Each course was introduced, again at length. This is all part of the performance and the best thing to do is sit back and enjoy it.

You order your main and they do the rest. If you're frustrated by the limitation, don't play - you'll just end up angry and muttering. If you're willing to give it all up and go along with the game, fling yourself in with a whoop. An amuse bouche, a vegetable stock foam with herbs. Delicate, surprising and fun but served with clunky wooden spoons that somehow didn't suit the precision of the dish. And now we have a green salad, little leaves and flowers sprinkled on a cut glass dish with little dabs of a rich, creamy dressing and a spray of elderflower dressing pumped by chef as he chatted then sprayed over the collection. Our first wine, German and surprisingly dry for all that. The combination was sensational. One flower was a little camphorous, something medicinal in there, a hint of coal tar. What was it? Yarrow. Of course. Yarrow. Silly me.

The second course, a Riesling (if memory serves) - again, complex and drier than expected - accompanying, was 'egg, roots and buckwheat'. We're playing, of course, it's altogether more complex. A moment of fear from Sarah the fussy eater opposite as an egg yolk is spied sitting on top of the rich and meaty-tasting (but no meat involved) buckwheat porridge. She don't like runny eggs. But no, the sunset-orange yolk was cooked to perfection, just firm and yet tender and yielding. The roots, painfully young (it was a guilty vegetarian pleasure, a little like eating veggie veal. We were giggling about the idea that hard-core vegetarians would be demoing outside this place within the year about cruelty to young beets), were tender and their little sprigs crisp and salty - a parsnip and carrot (both the size of a delicate lady's little finger) along with a tiny beet and some crispy wisps of green and a drizzle of oil finished off the tiny dish. It was grin-inducing perfection, a variety of flavours and textures that absorbed and entertained. You'd almost ask for the Curly-Wurly at this point. A pause, some conversation. The rain started to come down hard and, finally, the front door was closed against the chill.

The main - chicken (rooster, in fact) was served across from me as a result of our chat on the phone. I had the wild duck. It was so wild I got a nice crunch of lead shot as proof. Introduced as wild duck, chanterelle and kale, the dish was a set of pink slices of rich duck breast cooked on the bone and served off, laid on a mild mustardy bed with fried kale and dabs of wild buckthorn. The plate could have been warmer, tell the truth. The rooster was perfection, served to the same accompaniments which didn't quite serve the lighter meat as well. However, a burned butter was poured over the chicken rather than the red jus with the duck and both were glorious. A Puligny Montrachet (organic, natch) with the chicken and a chilled French red - a Beaujolais as I remember, it was all becoming a bit of a procession of things by this point and I'm not quite pretentious enough to spoil a meal by taking notes - were both a welcome change from the German stuff and both were complex, fine wines that sat perfectly with the food.

We're happy and thoroughly relaxed by now, sitting back and chatting about the food. Because yes, it is all about the food. A wee dish of beetroot snow and red berries appears before little tulips of dessert wine appear followed by a dish of warm, crispy waffles surrounded by bilberries and sorrel leaves and topped with a scoop (chef allows himself a flourish by now as he serves it) of burned butter ice cream. Smashing - absolutely smashing.

Coffee (the filter system is introduced, the one time in a night of long introductions when I wanted to switch the patter off), Panamanian and organic of course. The cups are 1950s vintage Arabia porcelain (Arabia is Helsinki's premier porcelain factory and something of a national monument. And no, it's got nothing to do with Arabia Felix). Fine, but don't feel you have to tell us that, dear. By now the intros are wearing thin. The receipt for your bill tonight is printed on handmade organic paper using squid ink from outer Carpathia. Sorry, wandered into over-introduction reverie there.

Petits fours - a meringue, a little cream with a berry (a rare misstep, the cream was floury) and a tiny warm chocolate liquorice cake, the size of a thumbnail and reminiscent for some reason of one of Pierre Gagnaire's crazy little ginger biscuit with salt topping moments. A Finnish apple brandy for me and the evening rounded off by a walk home through the drizzle. I went to the toilet and came back to the brandy, thankfully missing its introduction.

So, in short, if you're going to Helsinki, book this restaurant. Pay the price. Go with the flow, sit back and enjoy the theatre. It's worth every penny and every second. They could pare back the introductions a tad, perhaps. But that's just cavilling - we had no complaints at all really. An altogether remarkable meal.

And if you're thinking about spending a week somewhere interesting next summer, give Helsinki a shot. You could do a lot worse, believe me.

Leave (ing on a jetplane)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back from Wales, off to Helsinki. Well, why not?

We've been whizzing around Pembrokeshire on our new mountain bikes - they have silly names like Raptor and Vengeance Is Called Rex and stuff. It's not until you screw up the gearing hitting a hard uphill (the nice chap at Halfords, asked to explain how Derailleur gears work, started, "Right, then. I'll try to be polite but it's not easy...") that you truly appreciate why gym training people make you do squats.

Up until the point where I first skulked into a gym two years ago - and then spent the following week walking like a strychnine-poisoned octogenarian with the staggers - I'd thought squats were what happened when you ate out in Cairo...

The weather's been lovely, all cumulo-nimbus and sunny spells. It's summer and the hedgerows are teeming with life, the air is rich with the smell of cut hay and the buzz of bees. Most of which, I swear, have slammed into my forehead as we've been whizzing along those undulating country lanes.

And now to the Home of Nokia, expensive booze and, apparently, inwardly focused existentialist angst. So far, every arrangement has been made over email with responses so fast they've met our outgoing mails, Tangoed them and made it into our inboxes three seconds before our enquiries left.

This, then, is 'leave'...

Back In Station

Disney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's like a tetanus jab - every time you do it again, it feels worse. It's a sort of disorientation, a mixture of homecoming and going away, of relief at familiarity jumbled together with doubt and loss. What the hell are we doing here (the question we asked each other across a green table cloth in the President Hotel one night some nineteen years ago) and it's good to be back fighting each other against the background of flight-weariness and the strange unreality of leave fading away.

It's hard to talk about being back to reality when you live in Disneyland, but leave is hardly time in the real world. You've got money and time on your hands, everyone's pleased to see you (they haven't seen you for months, so they're naturally excited. If they saw your ugly mug every other weekend it'd be a different story, wouldn't it?) and you can pretty much suit yourself. The long-distant memory of the grey daily grind of life in the UK is forgotten as you have your 'Cider with Rosie' time off. That feeling of homesickness you get landing back in the Emirates is actually a hankering for a distorted vision of home that's even more unreal than Lalaland, The Home Of The Shiny.

We actually went to the real Disneyland, part of a glorious week in Paris and a chance for little niece Ellen to meet Mickey Mouse, which was a moment of pure magic for a wee girl. I didn't tell her his head comes off, she's too young and there's plenty of time for that yet. I can only marvel at the genius of an organisation that can make you queue for forty five minutes to meet a dancer in a mouse suit then gouge you twenty Euro for a photo of the meeting on the way out. Genius of a truly evil order.

We also spent a brilliant (if heart-rendingly expensive) week in Sweden, which is too long a story to tell. If you ever find yourself in Stockholm, stay at The Grand and eat at Fem Sma Hus in Gamla Stan. Don't ask questions, just do it.

They've opened a Carrefour around the corner. It's hot. I've got the manuscript of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller back from Robb The Editor and there's a load of work to be done before it's ready for publication.

I've got a paw on the hamster wheel and a gentle shove confirms that familiar old squeak is still there. Time to hop on again...

Ma’am

Has anyone out there realised what a mad month December’s going to be in the UAE? It’s certainly great news for certain teachers I can name: National Day falls on the 2nd/3rd of December (1 day for the private sector), then Eid Al Adha will likely fall from the 7th-10th December. And then the English schools break up on the 18th December!

So they’re getting to work a whole seven days in the whole month! And while they’re swanning around on the beaches complaining about being bored, the rest of us have to negotiate a highly disruptive ‘day on, day off’ month at work.

Grrr. I’ve never really liked teachers...

Back

Back in town. Need a couple of days to get over that...

Greenwash

It's funny sometimes how you get back home and find yourself out of 'the buzz' - particularly, in the UK, if you speak English with an English accent but don't know what an Oyster card is on a bus or, even worse, try and poke a pound coin in the slot the tickets come out of.

These days I'm usually caught out on leave one way or the other, so being asked in a Marks and Spencer service station off the M4 if I wanted a 5p plastic bag, I naturally asked "And the alternative is?"

I got an amazed look, a glance to a colleague that said 'I've gorra right one here, Carol' and then the rather acid response to my question: "You have to carry the shopping yourself."

I elected to do so, as did the bloke in front of me: I picked up the crisps he'd dropped and handed them over to him as he left the till clutching at his armful of food.

Walking away from the shop with my Dr Seuss-like pile of of sandwiches (a little old lady kindly picked up the smoothie I'd dropped on the way and gave it back), I found myself irritated. Why 5p for a bag? If I want to give 5p to an environmental charity, I will. But I couldn't believe that the compliant Brits were willing to walk away with tottering armfulls of food because some wee fascist retailer has suddenly decided to charge for bags 'to help the environment'.

What really got me going was the obvious greenwash here. M&S gives 1.85p of the 5p, 'the profit' according to the company, to Groundworks, an environmental charity it supports. The remainder, 3.15p, presumably goes to Marks and Sparks to pay for the bag, the administration and associated costs. So Marksies get to save the costs of the 394 million plastic food bags it hands out every year - now we pay for them. And it gets a nice slice of greenwash uncritical media coverage. And we get inconvenienced but all keep quiet about it because we're, well, just terriblhy British.

More fool us.

I think it's crap that M&S has got us to pay for its bags and dressed it up as a 'green' initiative. If it really gave a hoot, it'd match the donation the hapless consumer is being forced to make - in M&S' name.

Sarah, of course, thinks that I'm a total twit for getting worked up about this...

BTW - I forgot to do the maths on this. At 3.15p per bag, M&S is set to save £12.4 million a year out of this greenwash.

Back to Life: Back to Unreality

Watched Chaos on the plane back. Jason Statham. I can’t quite believe that I’ve an appetite for Jason Statham films but I do: even the mad, badly scripted Transporter in which Statham does a strange mid-Atlantic accent that doesn’t quite patch over his Cockney roots. I only ever watch films on the ‘plane (bar the occasional DVD buy): I’d be furious if I’d paid to see most of the crap I’ve watched. If I’d paid to see Shrek III, for instance, I’d have been at the box office demanding a refund with threats.
Talking of threats: why do UK immigration and security have those signs that say their staff have the right to work in a safe environment and if they’re presented with foul or abusive language and threatening behaviour you’ll be in for the high jump? I’m suffering from the deep seated need to enter the UK next time wearing a sign that says: “I have the right not to have to deal with overbearing, officious, brusque, superior and downright rude tossers and to react negatively if I am presented with such situations.”
I wonder if anyone would bother reading it…
Back to airline movies. I caught the end of the Nicholas Cage one about him being able to tell the future. It wasn’t great, but I’m a little biased: I still haven’t forgiven Cage for fronting the Hollywood sanitised Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I can’t believe that Louis De Bernières, an author I have so much respect for, let that happen, but then he’s minted and I’m not and if I think he sold out his integrity over a sorry adaptation and a horribly mutilated ending that negated the entire purpose of a great book, then I’m quite, quite sure he don’t care.
BTW: De Bernières Little Birds buys forgiveness for all sins: a terrible, beautiful book that tells the story of the Anatolian massacres with heart-breaking skill and panache. He paints with words like Durrell when he wants to.
Back to airline movies. I enjoyed all of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. I think only because Johnny Depp is so fundamentally mesmerising. Someone mad and dangerous enough to have Hunter Thompson confer the honorific ‘Dr’ upon him must be a man apart, though. I wonder if Depp ever met Steadman?
There was a waiter in Italy (at the Irish Society Wedding of the Year) that looked a bit Deppish. He was convinced that his curly-haired good looks had Sarah in a tizz. Sad for him: it was because he was in charge of doling out the (excellent quality) Prosecco and our girl is a devil for da bubbles. She'd flirt with a tramp if he was toting a frosty bottle of DP rosé...
Anyway. We’re back here now. Buckle in for at least a week’s worth of black and snarly posts as the reality of life back in Lalaland bites…

Gosh! Blighty!

Off to The Berkeley for a couple of nights to attend the nuptials of pals Jo and Carl. The Maktoums have taken the top floor. Knightsbridge is so Arab we feel totally at home. Breakfasts at Harvey Nicks are great: the organic cafe on the 5th floor with food that explodes after our normal diet of greenhouse-reared, air-freighted food. A spin over to Wales to Casa McNabb Senior. Awful weather predicted for the journey back tomorrow. Everything's green and terribly well off.
It's strange, this going home. Everyone's pleased to see you, you've saved up and you've got cash in pocket. You do things you normally wouldn't do, blow money you wouldn't normally blow: live it up a little. Home's home comforts abound. And then you start thinking you'd like to move back, a few dangerous moments before you realise that life back down home on the farm would be perhaps a little bit different if it were the stuff of everyday life. If you were ripping yourself out of bed every driecht winter morning to plod down to the tube: just another number in the jostling crowds of pale-faced anonydrones swaying with the movements of the train, staring up at the tube map, counting rivets. Anything to avoid eye contact.
Back to lotus eating, then...

Laugh, and the World Punches You in the Face

You know you’re overdue leave when every small incident seems to bring that red mist down and you feel like you’re spending most of your day controlling your natural urge to strangle people. There are those among us for whom this is normal, everyday behaviour, of course. But for most of us, it comes in that last two or three weeks before flying off to pastures greener for a well-earned break being forced to eat stale Dundee cake by long-forgotten aunts.

Quick diversion to ask a perennial question. Why are you on duty when you go home, but they’re on holiday when they visit you out here?

So this time of year is a great time to catch one of those sights unique to the east-meets-west polyglot melting pot that is Dubai: that of a furious European shouting at an Indian guy who’s laughing at him.

It’s one of those facts of life here, where the world’s cultural tectonic plates rub, that different people react in different ways to different situations. The personal space of the average Brit is about three metres. For the average Malabari it’s about two millimetres. When Arab women see a cute baby, they like to fuss over it, squeeze its cheeks and give it sweets. Touch a European woman’s baby and she’ll mace you and leave you lying in the street in a heap, puking and crying. Northern Europeans queue. Nobody else bothers.

And many people from India, particularly the south it would seem, giggle when they’re nervous. It’s a natural reaction for them, particularly when people are so rude as to raise their voices. And there’s no better way to send an upset European’s temper into the stratosphere than to laugh at them when they’re shouting at you.

It always reminds me of that classic piece of that classic comedy, Fawlty Towers. O’Reilly the Irish builder has just screwed up the interior of the hotel and Basil’s fire-breathing wife Sybil is having a go at him. He laughs her off as Basil can be heard saying through gritted teeth, “Don’t laugh O’Reilly, oh please don’t laugh” and then, of course, she beats the crap out of him with an umbrella.

And so when the watchman in our building told a furious colleague that the basement parking would remain shut for another week (consigning us to another week circling the building trying to find non-existent parking spaces and then walking hundreds of yards in the sticky, hot humidity) and she started to shout, I found myself thinking of Basil Fawlty’s “Please don’t laugh!” But it was too late.

He giggled and it got twisted.