The Passing Of Billy Blues

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two Dubai landmarks are going to disappear after this weekend - old skool icons Billy Blues and the Cactus Cantina are to close.

First the Red Lion, now these two. What is it with the city's old haunts?

The 8th floor of Rydges Plaza in Satwa has been Spot On's watering hole from the first days back in the mid-'90s. Established by gravel voiced Southern Gentleman Rudy Rivas - the man that brought us Pancho Villa's, Dubai's first Tex-Mex joint (complete with sombrero clad dwarf) - Billy Blues was originally constantly strewn with peanut husks as bowls of the things were snarfed down along with assorted appropriate libations. You get what you pays for in the wood-panelled bar - blues memorabilia, generally bluesy music (with some occasional odd lapses that just add to the charm of it all) and a good ole menu of ribs and the like. It's always reminded me strongly of the many quirky and deeply individualistic bars that line the streets of Hamra - I contend it's the nearest thing you'll find to a Hamra bar in Dubai. Opposite lies Cactus Cantina, the Tex Mex joint that took over where Panchos left off - including the long tradition of 'ladies night'.

When Rydges changed hands and became the Chelsea Plaza, the new owner appears to have decided on a complete refresh. There's a Cactus Cantina at Wafi now, but when the 8th floor closes for business, Billy Blues is a gonner.

I'm off there tomorrow night (Wed 28th August) to say farewell with a few pals from about 7 o'clock onwards. You're more than welcome to join us!

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.

The Guinness Storehouse Experience

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We went to Dublin on da trayun to visit Guinness. We'd been meaning to do this for a while and now was our chance.

The Guinness Storehouse could - and should - have been a wonderful display of brewing, the history of Guinness as a company, a growing industrial conglomerate that came to define Irishness and a social phenomenon that grew and developed throughout the C20th.

It's not.

It's a badly organised mess - a machine to process the animals and spit them out, a two-dimensional pastiche that could only have been devised by the ad agency working with a committee of interns from the marketing team. Any interesting or creative idea would have been squeezed out by the committee's messaging mafia, any intelligence sacrificed on the altar of corporate PC.

Mistake the first - it's not all about the visitor, The annoying carbon-based lifeforms that are fed into the sausage machine are subjected to the experience rather than being served up an experience. You stumble into the darkness and, your tickets duly bought, are lifted up by the escalator, greeted by man with microphone, then pushed on and up into the helix. Videos play of a master brewer - who shouldn't have been allowed to be in the video as he has no talent for it - over-excitedly telling us about the Majesty Of Guinness and flitting through the actual brewing process. There's no history on offer here and precious little insight.

You suspect the social history of Guinness has been excised because Diageo's marketing bots were worried about their present day workers asking for some of the same perks. It's strange - there's so much richness in this company's story and yet that story is totally not told here.

The whole thing starts with ticketing in Stygian darkness and takes you up level by level to the bright glass circle of the 'Gravity' bar. Either the plasterwork is very, very bad or someone has intentionally roofed the thing with a white bubbly render. Oh, wait a second, it's a metaphor! The entire Storehouse is a pint of Guinness! Dark at the bottom and light and with a foamy white head! How clever. What a shame the whole scheme offers so little consideration for the saps paying over 16 Euro a head to be force-fed Diageo product messaging as they're herded around the multi-storied wasteland.

As we rise to the top, to the pinnacle of our 'experience', the content thins out. The tactile display of bran and water on the 1st floor gives way to some old mash tuns, barrels and videos together with a cafe style outlet on the second. The food on offer here is most certainly not child friendly, by the way. And packet sandwiches and soft drinks for four (and a Guinness pie, the most child-friendly food on offer) set us back 40 Euro.

Onwards and upwards on our journey to the metaphorical pinnacle we rise like nitrogen bubbles to the third floor, where nothing in particular is happening beyond the Tasting Experience and some dappy 'drink responsibly' stuff. Nobody is fooled by this. Guinness makes daddy silly, no matter what Diageo wants to be seen to be telling us.

The tasting experience aims to elevate drinking Guinness to a oenological catharsis. As we queue for our experience we get the feeling someone's pulling a Blumenthal on us - the Guinnessy scent in the air is strong but just slightly not real Guinness. One member of our little group thought it smelled like a pub the morning after. We're trooped, baaing compliantly, into a white room with four white bin-like things steaming away.

A mildly annoying person with a throat mic introduces us to the four bins which are exuding the scents of malt, hops, cow poo and Guinness. We have to plod around them wafting the scents and guessing which is which. This is to prepare us for the challenges of tasting responsibly.

Okay, so I was lying about the cow poo. Sue me.

Now we're handed tiny shot-glass sized servings of cold Guinness and we troop into room two which is black and has some little multi-levelled plinths in it. We are to place our Guinnessettes on these plinths while a mildly annoying girl with a throat mic yelps at us about how this Guinness is just two days old and represents the pinnacle of the brewmaster's art. She trots out some tired rap about how the hops dance on the top of the palate like Fuggly ballerinas and the malt tantalises the tastebuds or some such piffle. We have cheated and drunk our shots already. We are bored and standing in a black room while someone shouts at us.

I am aware that we have been made to place your product on a pedestal. It has made me more angry that awed. I hate you, Diageo marketing team, by now. Really, really hate you.

In due course we are released, shuffling out with a feeling of mild release and perhaps a little puzzled embarrassment. The fourth floor is perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of all - Guinness' advertising has consistently led the way since the 1930s, with some stunning campaigns and a heritage of iconography that many around the world will recognise. It's not here.

There are some Toucan posters and a chance to pose in a self-conscious sort of way in a poster set-up and get a selfie taken of you by some passers-by or whoever you can convince to hold your mobile. It's crap. We're bored and miserable and pass up the chance to queue for lessons in how to pour a pint of Guinness. Why would I want to learn that? That's why God invented barmen.

There are only restaurants on the 5th floor. There is no sixth floor as far as we can tell. It's a Willy Wonka lift ride above roof level to the pinnacle of pinnacles, the Nirvana of the Nitrogenated - the Gravity Bar. Tadaaa.

It's a bit shit.

The glassed circular area is packed with tourists snarfing down their free end of tour pint. There's no seat to be had and not even a free space around the crowded cocktail tables. It's too hot and is simply unpleasant. We collect two of our free pints (the lovely girls aren't drinking) and drink them quickly as we watch the ebb and flow of uncomfortably pressed and alienated-looking people around us. We don't go for the other two pints. We're pissed off by now and just want to leave. So we do. It's not easy - the lifts are simply inadequate to the task and we have to pummel our way through mildly intoxicated jostling Spaniards who have no manners.

Ten minutes later we're out of there, walking down to the river with a mixture of indignation and relief in our chatter. We invest the next hour in Dublin's most brilliant of public houses, The Porterhouse, where we drink beer we enjoy in comfortable and relaxed surroundings. Their Oyster porter is really quite special. They feck a few fresh oysters into the brew, don't you know. A more fascinating fact than any imparted to us in our disastrous, wasted two hours learning to mildly dislike Guinness - a drink I had up until now always thoroughly enjoyed.

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'...

Life Of A Stranger...

(Photo credit: ST33VO)

It's been going the rounds the past couple of days, with nearly half a million visits knocked up in about a week or so of its existence: Life Of A Stranger Who Stole My Phone is a tumblr blog put up by a vengeful German tourist after her mobile was nicked during a drunken skinny-dip in Ibiza.

About four months after the incident, she noticed her phone was uploading images to Dropbox - whoever had stolen it hadn't disabled the feature. Worse, someone called Hafid tried to hit on her, accessing her Facebook account from the mobile. The images clearly show Dubai locations - and Hafid's love of selfies and his friends' goonish activities combine nicely with the waspish commentary of a girl wronged. It's compelling stuff - Hafid is such a numb-nut and she's so clearly still angry. Daft picture by daft picture, we all enjoy Hafid's daftness vicariously through his unwitting sharing and her witting barbs. The combination of clownish young Arab men and vengeful Valkyrie is glorious.

I have been enjoying the blog along with so many others, right up to the point where @sudanpessimist wondered during a Twitter conversation, "Probably poor guy brought it from a second hand shop. Doesn't seem to be able to afford Ibiza hols :("

That was an 'oh' moment. Because flicking back over Hafid's piccies with that thought in mind, you get the feeling that maybe my Sudanese friend has a point. Part of what makes Hafid so amusing in the context of the blog is that he is, indeed, pretty - well, basic. And if he does have a point, then something terrible is happening. Because Hafid might just have bought a second hand phone. And over half a million people are laughing at him because he's simple and poor.

I found myself caught in time. I dislike Internet mobs and I'd found myself in one. I stood and let the crowd move on, the burning brand in my hand useless and held limply to my side. The monster in the castle on the hill might not be a monster after all. And we were all so ready to believe in the monster. We always are - remember 'dog poop girl', the Korean student whose life was destroyed by a JPG?

If our young German friend decides to come to the UAE for her next holiday, she could be in for a surprise. Because of course in UAE law she has defamed Hafid by posting his private images online. Sure, you could argue it was using her private phone and her private Dropbox and the act of theft preceded his use but I suspect even if he were the thief the law would stand. But if he wasn't the thief he actually has been thoroughly defamed and the UAE's law would actually be serving justice in a way any European sensibility would recognise as fair.

Which is pretty wacky, if you ask me. And all part of defining the new moral landscape that is the Web...

Postscript. Now the Daily Mail's picked up the story. Reading it on an iPad, I realised I recognised the mosque in the pictures posted up on the blog - it's the big 'Sheikh Mohammed' mosque outside the Sharjah Radisson Blu. And the beach in shot is down along from our house.

Hotel Chocolat And Brand Positioning Online

Hotel Chocolat, Kensington, W8 (Photo credit: Ewan-M)

We were talking positioning brands online the other day on the Business Breakfast – it's linked here if you fancy a listen in - about the changes in the rules that taking an ‘offline’ brand to the Web entail. As part of that chat, we looked at some brands that had moved the other way – digital brands that have made their way onto the high street. One of the more high profile successes at this has been Hotel Chocolat.

I am, and always have been, a huge fan of this company. Started by founder Angus Thirlwell and co-founder Peter Harris as a business selling mints in 1988, by 2003 the company had become known as ChocExpress, a catalogue-based mail order business (with a website) that included a chocolate tasting club – a concept that was to be core to Hotel Chocolat and a club that today has over 100,000 members.

The trouble was that ChocExpress didn’t reflect the luxurious image that Thirlwell was after for his premium chocolates. And it was that dissatisfaction that led to the product I first encountered in my mum’s living room many years back. It was a luxuriantly packed box of chocolates, more like a hat box than a chocolate box, with a ‘Hotel Chocolat’ room card-key and a ‘do no disturb’ sign to hang on the door while you had your one-one experience with that box of very fine chocolates indeed. The chocolates had individual recipes, lavish descriptions and a little card for you to take tasting notes and send them back to Hotel Chocolat.

Here was an online business with a two-way customer communication mechanism built into its very DNA long before everyone had started talking social media.

The brand, and its promise, was incredibly strong. It was unique, clearly differentiated and communicated throughout the product offering – and the website which took over from the catalogue as the premier conduit for reaching customers. Although Hotel Chocolat was quick to open high street stores, it has been the Internet business that has driven the incredible success of the company which now employs over 800 people and has a real Hotel Chocolat in the Caribbean and its own cocoa plantation to boot. The company has launched a range of sub-brands, including boutique cocoa outlet Roast+Conch and Cocoa Juvenate, a range of cocoa-themed beauty products. There are over 70 stores in the UK’s high streets, five in the US and three in the Middle East. You can nip down to Mall of the Emirates if you fancy a chocolate rush par excellence - the only shame is that Hotel Chocolat's boozy chocolates don't get a look in. Because they, my dears, are very good indeed.

And that website’s still there, reflecting that brand positioning as strongly today as it did almost ten years back when I opened a posh-looking box of chocolates in my mum’s living room and was transfixed by the painfully smart marketing that met my eyes just before I lifted the paper covering to reveal the rows of little shinies underneath.

You know, I might be lying about the positioning. It might just be all about the chocolate after all…

Hatta - The Track That Is No More. And Summer Rain.

We spent the weekend at the sublime Hatta Fort Hotel because we've been married 22 years and both of us needed to get away to overcome the feeling of utter shock.

The Ramoul Bar at the hotel is one of my favourite places on earth. Seriously. It has many fond memories dating back two decades and more - and it's one of the most wilfully retro experiences to be had in the UAE. Built in 1981, the bar is sheer '70s wonderfulness, all dark brown velour walls, a walnut ceiling dotted with the original spotlights, square glass lights and brown silkscreen prints on the wall. It's glorious. The original furnishings and leather bar edging were cream, they're red now and the Millbank speakers on the wall have been replaced by Bose units, but much of the original bar is as it was the day the hotel opened up in those faraway hills. It suits a Martini as well as anywhere suits a Martini. Lemon twist, no olive, thanks.

The Hatta Fort still does silver service. It's wonderful - food is revealed from beneath silver covers, caesar salads and crepes are made at your table. It doesn't get much better. The hotel runs like clockwork, it knows who it is. Its staff actually want to help. It has beautiful grounds, makes a brilliant breakfast and is more chilled out than a quantum hyper-chiller.

We took a turn up the Hatta track - as was. It was raining when we got up for breakfast, a fine, soft drizzle and a yellow cast to the sky, the mountains slowly enveloped in the encroaching mist. Breakfast looking out over Hatta watching the mountains fold into the meringue, then we set off.

There are few things finer than cool summer rain in the mountains.

Oh, my dears. Who remembers the Great Hatta Track? We first travelled it together, Sarah and I, the week we met during GITEX 1988 - 25 years ago. We hired a Corolla with a colleague of mine and Sarah's housemate and we took it out to find the Hatta Pools. We overshot. Four wheel drives passed us, staring. The girls got out and pushed at one point as the Corolla's little engine heaved to negotiate the rutted, vertiginous passes. We stopped at the village of Rayy (now spelled Rai for some reason) and asked directions at the mosque. It was a Friday. A wasp got into the car, cue the exit of two girls wearing shorts. Legs up to their bums. It's the only time I've ever felt intimidated in the Middle East, in the middle of nowhere, more callow than Callum the Callow Marshmallow and the locals furious at two prancing half-naked beauties decorating their Friday devotions. We beat a hasty retreat and ended up in the wadi at Shuwayah, playing with frogs in the glittering wadi waters that wove through the hot rocks.

In a Corolla. We did it in a Corolla. The hire company was furious at the state of what was eventually returned to it. But what to do?

It's just a memory, now, that track. It's blacktop nearly all the way, the only exception one short section where the road has to cross a particularly fearsome stretch of wadi that spates with road-destroying force. They've blown up the mountains to make the passes (three of them) more passable, so they don't climb as steep or high. The biggest was a first-gear climb, especially when the track got rutted up and you were traversing as well as climbing. The swoops down into wadi beds with their stomach-churning bottoming outs have all gone. It's just, well, a road through the mountains.

But they are still glorious, arid, scalloped mountains that surge from the land with all of the enormous splendour of their volcanic uplifting from what was then the ocean bed. They fold and thrust, patinated by purple outcrops, ochre faces and grey-white striations. Shuwaya is a memory of a wadi pool now, drained by snaking black plastic piping - and the Oleander Waterfall is clearly no longer visited - the old track as it originally was, washed away and accessible only to the brave who knew it was home to a little waterfall and a welcoming campsite on the high ground above the temperamental wadi bed.

The rain petered out, the heat intensifying as we drove down onto the plain, still blacktop all the way where it had once been gatch track, a road through the Madam plain and then up into the mountains past the Omani check-point and then back up to Madam through Vilayat Madha.

I felt intensely sad at the passing of those tracks. But that, I am sure the architect of the new roads would tell us, is progress.

Game Of Thrones. I Am Clearly Unbalanced.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Kindle has turned me - a lapsed bookworm - once again into a voracious reader and it's touch and go whether I've made more money from Amazon than I've spent on there. I'm constantly on the lookout for new reads, but it's hard - there is so much dross out there, it's not true and I'm not just talking self-published dross, either.

It's hard to get to the good stuff sometimes. I need a literary Hillary Briss...

I've just finished re-reading Frank Herbert's Dune, a book I read back when I first starting working in the Middle East. It's just as amazing now as it was then, although the 'writer' in me did unearth no fewer than three lazy instances when a sandstorm was described as being the colour of 'curry'. Jalfrezi or bhuna?

In hindsight I probably shouldn't have approached an unknown from such a high, but that's the breaks.

One of the things that makes Kindles so brilliant is whim. At a whim, I can have pretty much any book I want. So I downloaded George RR Martin's Game Of Thrones. Not because I've seen even one minute of the HBO series, but because I'd seen such intense praise for Martin's original books. The Kindle has made me considerably more catholic in my reading, I'm more up for an experiment than I would have been at £9.99 and 2 Kg of paper. I had Game Of Thrones in my hands within the minute.

Three days later I've finished reading it. I haven't finished the book, just finished reading. I got bored. Terribly, dreadfully, terminally, mind-numbingly bored. It's like The Bold and the Beautiful on horseback wearing leathers, a sort of two-dimensional fantasy version of a slightly dumbed-down version of English history with obvious situation played out over obvious situation in a sort of millefeuille of obviousness. The baddies are clearly bad, the goodies are clearly going to get into trouble. It's Punch and Judy on a lavish budget with some legendary dragons.

I can't finish it. The world's raving about it, glued to its TV sets with purple drooling faces, slack-jawed and wide-eyed as each trite event plays out on that flat backdrop painted by a four year old with wax crayons, a sort of medieval history lite with one-cal fantasy trimmings.

I am obviously alone in this, the only person still alive in a planet of shuffling, brain-eating zombies. Either that, or I'm simply unbalanced.

Game of Thrones is a Dorothy Parker book - not to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force...

Book Post - Stuck

(Photo credit: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center)

It's an odd place to be in. Having finished Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, I'm having the odd potter with the manuscript, tidying a sentence here, clearing up a point there and adding little dashes of colour where that seems the right thing to do.

But if I tell the truth, I'm sort of marking time. It needs to go off for editing now, but I'm still waiting for one agent's feedback before I give up - again - on 'traditional' publishing. I'm reconciled to the fact that Middle Eastern spy thrillers are not going to sell to a UK publisher.

Which begs the question, what to write next? It's probably not going to be a Middle East spy thriller, given events so far. It's been great that loads of people have enjoyed Olives and Beirut, but 'loads' is relative and it hasn't added up to more than break-even with the project so far - and certainly isn't going to pay to have Shemlan printed. I'm still down a few thousand dollars on the deal. In fact, the only people who've made money so far have been the editors, printers and distributors.

Which makes one of us pretty dumb. And there are no prizes for guessing who's wearing donkey ears around here.

So what to write next? I know I will write a new book - it's already killing me that I haven't started. I've got a number of projects jostling for attention. A retired IRA bomber who's blackmailed out of his rest by modern day terrorists. A psychological thriller based around a damaged woman with amnesia, a whistleblower and a battlefield drug trial that's gone horribly wrong. And, oddly, an allegorical comedy based around a logical man's battle with authority are among the candidates that are banging around in my head like dodgems in a power surge.

The result of which is I'm stuck. I literally don't know what to do next. I've never had writers' block, but now I've got something worse - book block.

The answer might be to start on a romantic comedy or a vampire fantasy or something more 'commercial'. Trouble is, of course, neither I nor the publishing industry really knows what's 'commercial'...

In the meantime, I guess I'll just carry on tinkering.

The Emirati Indian Road Rage Assault Video

So Twitter was all a-twitter on Monday night with chat about a video posted to YouTube. The clip, taken from a car adjacent to the incident, clearly shows an Emirati man beating a cowering Indian man with his aghal (the black ropey headdress thing worn as part of the traditional Arabian costume) and punching him. The Emirati appears to be driving a Lexus Land Cruiser with a three-figure plate (a status symbol here), the Indian a stationery distribution company van.

By Tuesday, the YouTube video had been taken down but these things, once done, are hard to undo and it was soon back up thanks to LiveLeaks. Why would the video be taken down? Well, because it's illegal to photograph or film someone in the UAE without their permission - and this was certainly a case of a video taken without permission. The taker obviously gave in to wiser counsel, although his act in sharing the video was a brave one, presumably motivated by sheer indignation.

Dubai Police acted quickly after a large number of people brought the incident - and video - to their attention, particularly over Twitter. The Emirati - a government official as it turns out - is currently 'in custody' and faces a charge, according to 7Days, of minor assault. This carries a maximum jail term of one year and a maximum fine of Dhs10,000.

The Indian gentleman who took the video and posted it to YouTube was arrested after the official's son lodged a defamation case against him with police and is apparently 'being questioned' after his computer was seized by police on Tuesday and now potentially faces a charge of recording without permission and defaming a person, which carries a TWO year sentence and Dhs20,000 fine. Abusing someone's privacy and putting private material on the Internet can result in a six month jail term, the newspaper tells us.

Can we be quite clear. Defamation applies here in the UAE as a criminal case and includes publicly sharing evidence of a thing that would lead to punishment for the person so defamed - regardless of whether the alleged act took place or not. The UAE cyber-crime law makes this clear. You can, in fact, defame someone in the UAE with the truth.

Dubai Police have told press the man should have shared the video with them rather than post it up publicly, where hundreds of thousands have now seen the incident. The son told media the video had damaged the reputation of his father and family. You'd be forgiven for thinking that beating cowering men who know full well that if they raise a hand in defence they'll be for the high jump and likely end up being deported for it was what damaged anyone's reputation, but who am I to judge?

At one rather poignant moment in the video, the poor man appears to hand the dropped aghal back to the official who continues to beat him with it.

I thought there was a telling paragraph in Gulf News' story about the arrest today. Here, have a go at seeing where YOU would put the bold text emphasis in this paragraph quoted from that story:

"Major General Al Mazeina said the case will be transferred to the public prosecutor. He said the Emirati official has been arrested over beating up an Indian man in the middle of the road in clear view of other road users."

My mum said I should always tell the truth, but she never told me you should go to prison for telling it. 'spose it just goes to show what my mum knows...