Firstly, a big thank you to new and old readers. I made it to 20,000 hits this week!

Secondly, the end of school is nigh, and reality is setting in fast. Could someone please tell me what on earth I am supposed to do with my son for the next nine weeks? Yep, you read right. NINE WEEKS. Hampered by the small matter of a degree to study for, we are unable to leave Dubai along with the other 200,000 expat wives and children this weekend, and instead will sit here for half of July, alone and extremely bored. I am still resolutely looking on the bright side, but several factors are now chipping away at my previously perky demeanour:

1. The boy has refused to attend summer camp at the local nursery because ‘nursery is for babies’. That’s my fault: in an effort to encourage him into his pre-school at the start of the year I announced nursery is for babies. Now he has taken me at my word.

2. Ramadan is looming, meaning the end of cafes, leisurely lunches and munching popcorn in front of the latest Monsters, Inc. Whilst we are escaping to Italy for ten days of it, we will be here for another two weeks afterwards. This rules out going anywhere for longer than a two hour time period unless I want to spend half of it dragging the boy into a toilet cubicle with me in order to swig water and the rest trying to avoid being taken out by zombie drivers denied food and water for hours on end in the middle of the summer in the desert.

3. The clement spring weather is definitely over. Now it’s just the same as it always is: unbelievably hot and humid. Touching surfaces with bare skin is not recommended unless you don’t mind losing the top layer, and outside, even for breakfast, is becoming a sweaty and unpleasant business = No more outdoor play.

4. The only outdoor play we can still manage is a spot of swimming. So what better message to receive yesterday than our club pool is closed for maintenance for the whole of July. Great timing guys.

5. I can’t find Wimbledon on the TV.

Nine weeks sounds so dramatic. It’s true, ‘only’ three and a half of them are in Dubai, and then we are off to enjoy the delights of rain and reality tv at my mother’s house for four weeks. But it’s enough to make me nervous, because I know with nowhere to go, no-one to see and nothing to do, with a nearly-4 year old insisting I am on tap to entertain him at all times, there is a limit to how much time I can spend pretending to be holding it together. The horrific realisation is dawning that everyone I know will be gone in a matter of days and my husband is travelling for work for much of the duration, leaving me very firmly in the ‘I only spoke to my pre-schooler this week’ crazy lady category specially reserved for trailing spouses in the desert in Ramadan.

It’s just another expat summer. And it starts tomorrow. Wish me luck.