Tag Archives: Dubai

Contemplation by the creative mind (or some such poncey nonsense)

I love it when interesting people stumble into my life. After an initial flurry of – ooo – two or three people, whom I met in the first few months of being in Dubai, I then spent a good few years yearning for more of them to cross paths with me and become my friends.

And whilst I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have much in the way of social stimulation I can honestly say that I didn’t have a whole lot of opportunity. The first year we were in Dubai I was studying, so I had plenty of time in the day to meet people. But it didn’t work like that. I found it very hard to just ‘make friends’ with people, for starters, because I couldn’t find anything in common with most people I met. Because I didn’t have kids, I was dismissed by those that did, and because I didn’t work in an office, I was dismissed by those that did. And I dismissed them too. They weren’t interesting to me, and I started to think I didn’t fit into anyone’s world. I was bored and I was boring.

In my second year here I started work as a teacher. I didn’t have a huge pool of co workers to get to know, nor the time to spend getting to know them. Most of my days were spent in the company of twenty under-5s, and whilst they are interesting in their own way I wasn’t exactly going to be drinking buddies with any of them. After that I gave birth, and I think anyone who has done the same can say, hand on heart, that it saps all the ‘interesting’ out of you for a good chunk of time. Meeting people who make your brain come alive is only relevant if you haven’t had all of your little grey cells burned up by sleep deprivation and shitty nappies. I was irrelevant to my old teacher chums and although I met a few new mums once I had the baby, most fell by the wayside as our kids got older and we found we had less and less in common.

But when my son turned a year old, he wasn’t the only one to take the first baby steps towards independence. Upon realising that my life probably wasn’t anywhere near as awful as I made it out to be, I realised that my angst and anger at being stuck in a foreign land with a small baby and no friends really needed to be channelled into something more positive. So I went back to my roots, and joined a drama class, where I finally found the energy to be me again.

That was two years ago. The people I met in that class went from being a bunch of misfits I vaguely knew the names of, to being my friends who I can count on to have an interesting and entertaining time with whenever we meet. The class gave me confidence in myself and my ability, and has led to more and more involvement performing and learning with an ever expanding group of people who inspire me to be great. It allowed me to think again, and to celebrate the weirdo in me that had got lost in a sea of conformity somewhere along the journey into expatriateworld and mummydom.

Once the juices were flowing, it made me want to do more. I began to write again. And six months ago, I joined twitter to boost my reader numbers (because as any blogger knows, the stats page is the most important one of all, especially if you thrive on being the centre of attention like I do). And now I have friends who I have made through blogging and twitter, because we write, and we like how each other write, and although I don’t know them terribly well, I have begun to put my trust in the theory that if someone can make me ‘feel’ with what they write, or say, or how they act, that they are ‘my kind of person’. They become interesting. They become my friend.

I had assumed a rather old-fashioned definition of ‘friend’ up until this year. I was searching for people to replace the ones I left behind. It took me a long time to realise that they can’t be replaced, nor do I want them replaced. But now when I think of all the interesting people I have met through being a little more creative, and a little less judgemental and proud, I realise my life is the fuller for it. And if I really think about it, all the friends I left behind came from the same place – they too were once a bunch of misfits in a rehearsal room who over the decades, have become my family.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, of books and blogs, in preparation for my MA and to improve and invigorate my work onstage.  I find increasingly that these two ‘careers’ of mine overlap, and intertwine, so that my life is slowly becoming fluid again, and instead of wearing many hats in a day to try and fit in with everyone else, I find my world as a mother, wife, friend, and ‘creative person’ is about life fitting in with me. The two things I loved doing in life twenty years ago – writing and theatre – have once again become central to my life today. And life – mine and my family’s – is all the better for it.

People thrive on different things to get them through life. How I keep forgetting, and how I only just figured this out again, is beyond me. I have the attention span of a fly, clearly. But in my life, being busy doing creative things is key. If I am not creative, I am not inspired. If I am not inspired, I am not interested. If I am not interested, then I am bored. If I am bored, then I am thoughtless, and lonely, and sad. And right now, I am horribly, smug-tastically happy with my life, which is full to the brim with busy all of a sudden, doing all the things I love, surrounded by people who make me smile. Which can only mean I’m getting it right.

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And they all lived happily ever after

I’ve just finished watching the season one finale of ‘Once Upon a Time’, which turned out to be surprisingly good in the end. I suppose given it’s by the same people that made ‘Lost’, that I should have expected an awesome pilot episode to hook me in, some fairly random and dramatic twists and turns during the early part of the season, a few ‘album fillers’, followed by a blinding ending; it would appear that’s exactly what was delivered. Here’s hoping that, unlike Lost: a) the second series is as good as the first, b) it continues to make some sort of sense and c) it doesn’t limp on aimlessly and draws to a neat and comprehendible conclusion by the end of the third season.

A classic fairy with a wand

I wish for…a perfect place to live  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyway, it got me thinking about Dubai vs London, and how it’s often kind of like living in Fairytale land vs. Storybrooke (for those people who haven’t seen it – which I’m guessing by the audience figures reported on Wikipedia, is the majority of you – Storybrooke is the town full of fairytale characters who live under a curse of unhappiness in a land with no magic i.e Maine, USA). And like these places, Dubai and London are worlds apart, one’s glitter to the other’s grime – but sometimes there are parallels. Usually about stuff that irritates me. In fact, the things we most often moan about in the UK are quite often startlingly similar to the ones we complain about the most in Dubai, too. Here are my top three ‘mirror, mirror’ moments, that bug me just as badly in both places:

1. Driving

It takes HOURS to get anywhere in a car in London. It never ceases to amaze me how bloody long it takes to get out of London as well. It has been known on a bank holiday weekend to take me three hours to reach the M25. The traffic officially moves slower than it did when horse and cart was the only thing available. And yet ironically there are cameras and speed humps everywhere, to catch you out when you are finally moving faster than 20mph and riding a wave of euphoria. White van man with his abusive and cavalier driving is the scourge of society and everyone hates anyone in a flashy car. You can never find a place to park and traffic wardens are evil. As are cyclists, pedestrians and buses.

vs

It never takes very long to get anywhere in Dubai unless you are a) headed towards Sharjah or b) you get into an accident with a fundamentally stupid person and die on the way to your destination. The traffic officially moves faster than the speed of light, except when there is a hidden camera in which case everyone will jam their brakes on really, really hard just as they reach it and cause even more accidents. White toyota truck man is the scourge of society because they drive at about 30km/hr everywhere and use the indicator stick to hang their lunch bag on, and everyone hates people in flashy cars, even other people driving flashy cars. Everyone except you is terrible at driving and it’s each man for himself AT ALL TIMES. There are no pedestrians or cyclists because you would have to be certifiably insane to be either and expect to live.

2. The Weather

London is wet, windy, dark and cold for about 13 months of the year. It seems to take everyone by surprise each March that spring does not produce daffodils, farmers markets and glorious sun-filled Easter egg hunts in Hyde park, but instead is just a slightly less dark version of winter. Summer yields about 2 weeks of glorious weather which everyone gets very excited about and when, it’s true, it is the best city in the world to be in. (Luckily that’s the bit I’m normally there for). Outside of these precious 14 days, Londoners experience soggy tennis, Shakespeare in the park shivering under umbrellas, and endless rained-out BBQs. The saviour of all this atrocious weather is The Pub, which can be relied on in all situations to be warm and sell alcohol. Two things which Londoners value above all else.

vs.

Dubai is hot, all the time, and when it isn’t hot it’s hotter – or alternatively, hotter than Hell. It seems to take everyone by surprise each May that it’s time to decamp until October. Although a few silly people insist it’s ‘mild for the time of year’ as they boil in 110 degree heat to eat their dinner, mostly everyone just sits inside and moans about how hot it is. Air conditioning is a way of life, and for four months a year most people do not breathe fresh air or see the sun unless they can absolutely help it. Everyone gets sick as a result and with pasty sallow skin and dark circles from too much partying to make up for the lack of fresh air (well that’s my excuse) they mainly look like they live at the North Pole, not in the desert. In the winter season, which is glorious, it usually rains for about 2 days, torrentially, in localised patches. Everyone calls their friends and people get jealous if they miss it.

3. People

People are quite rude in London. And pretty selfish. When I was pregnant and travelling on the underground, even though I had a badge that said ‘I’m up the duff, give me a seat please’ (yes, there are official badges) no bastard gave me a seat. No-one looks where they are going in London. No-one says ‘excuse me’, or ‘sorry’, or ‘good morning’. In fact eye contact alone can count as a human rights infringement. The only time this is not true is if you are queuing for something, when good manners abound for some reason, and everyone gets really mad if someone tries to cheat. If there’s one thing we Brits can do right, it’s form a line. But other than that, most of the time, Londoners could learn a few manners and it would be a nicer place for it.

vs

People can be pretty rude in Dubai too. Except if you are pregnant or have a small child, or are paying for something, in which case no-one can do enough for you. Except if they are having a bad day or are terribly important with a small penis, in which case they will still be a complete a-hole. Queues, like car indicators, are an urban myth. They ignore the laws of physics, refuse to go from first to last person in a line, instead they generally form a sort of seething mass of humanity grouped from front to back in roughly the following order: Local, Female, Western, Regional, Female & Filipino, Other. If you are female and western, lets face it, this is an excellent system – but I imagine it pisses off large portions of the expat population no end. Hence system B of queuing which goes like this: Bunfight.

Yes, two cities… different yet the same. I’ve not even started on tourists or the cost of living. But I guess there are things that are annoying wherever we live. My husband and I once conducted research on where would be the best place in the world for us to live, with the intention that we would be there by 2005. We took into account weather, education, work, housing, ability to travel, potential to die from a natural disaster, political climate, taxes, and distance away from our families. The place we came up with was San Diego, CA. We went there on holiday to check it out, so serious were we that this was ‘our place’. It was crap. We just didn’t feel the love at all. A year later we ended up in Dubai. Which I guess just goes to show that magic isn’t always where you expect it, and true love is a city you can bitch about and still want to live in, happily ever after.

Or at least for another few years.

If it ain’t broke…it’s not Dubai

Last September, upon our return to Dubai, our coffee table melted. Literally sank to the ground, in a sort of Wicked Witch of the West moment, crying “I’m melting! I’m melting! Oh cruel world!” Well, ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, our coffee table wasn’t well known for it’s Wizard of Oz impressions (although as a small aside, I am – to such an extent my brother in law calls me the Wicked Witch of the Middle East he is so funny ha bloody ha). However – back to the point – it really did melt. We’d been back a matter of days, and one minute it was fine, all smooth glossy black glass and shiny legs, and then I heard a creaking sound from the kitchen and came out into the living room to find the mdf base the legs were bolted to had been slowly dissolving during its five years of service and the table was gracefully sinking to the ground with the legs folding up underneath it. I took it as a sign there and then that we had been in Dubai FAR TOO LONG if our furniture was falling to bits.

Margaret Hamilton as the Witch in the 1939 fil...

If my brother in law is to be believed, this was me at school drop off earlier this morning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The year before was pretty special too. The air circulation machine-thingy had stopped working and so although there was air conditioning there was no ventilation in the hallways or bathrooms. Obviously there was a touch of mould here and there…and OMG on my HERMES handbag and ALL my suede boots and shoes…it was a disaster of epic proportions that I have never fully recovered from. And, despite being sent to Paris for some R&R at the Hermes Home for Sick Handbags, my lovely little black number has never been the same since either.

Every year we come home from our summer trip to find something has gone wrong in our absence. It’s hardly surprising given how long we are away for, although it always amazes me that so much can still break in a house whilst it’s not being used. This year’s list goes something like this:

– Oven ignition not working on the grill and intermittently on the top gas rings, new front panel required

– Handle of tumble dryer broken off in my hand (of course my sheets were in there) and requires replacing, unless the maid can replicate my spanner-prising technique for the next year until the whole thing inevitably breaks down next summer

– Front door swollen and stuck, door has also dropped a few millimetres making it almost impossible to lock or unlock it. Other doors that have swollen and won’t close or open include the ensuite bathroom in our room and my son’s bedroom door i.e. the two doors we use most in the whole house.

– Shoe cupboard showing signs of mould again – but this time only one casualty, a pair of wedge platforms c.1996 that I only keep to remind me of why the 90s were a bad fashion decade. So no biggie.

– Car requires four new tires. Immediately. Oops. Ker-ching.

– Several toys appear to have completely run out of batteries despite not being touched in months although I am not sure I am hurrying to fix them

–  Living room rug covered in stains and ripped up by the cats so badly it needs replacing. This was true before the summer too but coming back and seeing it after some time away made me realise how totally gross it really looks

– Our mattress has two distinct his and hers dents in it. I moan for weeks on end about wanting my own bed and come home to find it’s really uncomfortable. Brilliant.

So it’s a month of expense and boredom waiting in for repairmen that never come and trawling the shops for replacements to stuff I didn’t want to replace. Yippee.

Still, looking on the bright side, I haven’t found any spiders yet.

Show me the way to go home

King's bed at the Louvre Museum

Man I miss my bed. It looks just like this too. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Less than 48 hours to go and my seven week long jaunt around the world is over for another year. It has been a wonderful holiday full of great memories, the boy has been AMAZING (I attribute this to great parenting on my part, obviously) and I will no doubt be shedding a few tears on top of the ones already parted with as I say goodbye to my dear, dear friends and family for another half year. We have spent time at the beach, in the city and the countryside and immersed ourselves with trips to farms, aquariums, museums and theatres, saturating ourselves with both social and cultural experiences we just can’t get at home. My heart aches at the thought of leaving behind days playing in back gardens with my friends and their kids, and of nights spent in pubs or gazing out to sea or tucked up on the sofa with family all around.

But deep down, in places I don’t talk about, as much as I have had a great time, I’m rather looking forward to being back in Dubai. I would even go so far as to say there were things about it I have missed. A neat ten in fact. So here they are. See you back in the sandpit…

1. My bed

2. My cats. And (and this is a first) my friends. Plural.

3. My kitchen

4. Swimming. Or more realistically, lolling about in a pool to keep cool.

5. The driving (I appear to have gone native and driving in a civilized manner bores me rigid)

6. A manicure, pedicure, massage, eyebrow threading, hair cut and colour and a facial. Words fail to describe the general degenerative state of me right now. I need help, fast.

7. Shopping

8. My weekly thespian fix (the build up of attention seeking behaviour and the need for adulation and applause is overwhelming)

9. My shoe collection. Six pairs of shoes seemed excessive when I was packing two months ago, but I now have serious high heel withdrawal.

10. Going out for dinner with my husband. Well actually, I just miss my husband. See you in a few days babe. X

Better late than never…a half year review

Well actually the year is nearly three quarters over but the end of the summer and the start of the school year seems like a good time to take stock and make sure there is still time to get the outstanding things done before the year end.

I am feeling pretty good about life actually. Almost to the point of smug,  but I’m not smug, I’m going to be 38 in a week for goodness sake and that is NOTHING to be smug about…no, really I’m just thankful that I worked it out finally this year, how to be an expat and a trailing spouse, and a mother, and not go crazy living in the sandpit.
The trick, I have discovered finally after a mere six years of trying, is to adhere to the Expat holy trinity :
1. Keep busy
2. Keep making new friends
3. Keep making the most of it
 
 
Keeping busy has always been the seemingly easy bit, but it would appear that historically I haven’t really been busy at all. I’ve been shopping, which is not the same thing. Now I am hurtling towards the start of a masters degree which will eat up most of my time whilst my son is at pre school, as well as spending my evenings in the pursuit of dramatic excellence. Inbetween times being the most excellent mother and wife of course. I am so fearful of this new version of busy I have (shock horror) started to think things like “when will I get my manicure done?” and secretly worrying I won’t have time for the gym and the occasional coffee in the sunshine, but my husband has reminded me that the hours will expand to fit it all in and I live in hope that he is right. I may have to compromise on Internet browsing and shopping trips but that is probably no bad thing. (god I sound like a spoilt brat).
As my son will be starting his new school in a few weeks I will no doubt be kept busy with this as well. And it will certainly be a time for making new friends. I will have to work hard to overcome my ‘do I really have to be endlessly nice to perfect strangers in the hope of finding one or two I actually like, AGAIN?’ issues, but I remain confident I can add a few new mummy pals to my depleted post summer collection in time for the cooler weather and a myriad of playdate opportunities.
Which leads, of course, to number three: keep making the most of it. We have a while left yet in the old girl that is Dubai before we pack up our kit bags, but it’s fair to say the majority of our years here are (hopefully) behind us and the majority of the hard work of baby/toddler parenting is also (hopefully) drawing to an end. So it’s time to get on with that bucket list.
Our son is three and the variety of things we can do with him grows week on week. Trips to the beach no longer require a flotilla of nappies, specially prepared lunches and endless toys. A bucket and spade, money for a hotdog and a towel are pretty much all that is required to spend several hours on the sand, which instantly makes the proposition a whole load more attractive. Going for brunch on the weekends has become a walk in the park since he stopped napping and figured out the iPad, and weekend evenings have become a far more relaxed affair since he proved able to stay awake without morphing into the devil child by 6pm. I am already dreaming of the moment some time in November when it will be cool enough to picnic at the polo or enjoy a pizza whilst watching the sun go down over the warm waters of the gulf – pleasures denied for the past few years but that I would dearly like to take advantage of before we leave this amazing life behind.
And the sand. The glorious sand. We have visited the desert a lot in a kind of sanitised 5 star hotel fashion, which i have little intention of giving up of course, but this Christmas time I hope we will be able to really make the most of living right next door to it and partake in some carolling, Dubai style, around a campfire amongst the dunes. In fact the build up to Christmas should be altogether alot more fun this year and I am looking forward to a much more relaxed time than the past few years when the business of having a small toddler has stopped us from taking part in many of the festivities.
There are so many things we simply haven’t done yet. There are waterparks to visit and zoo trips to be made and parks to be played in, amongst the beach/pool/desert activities that will fill our winter time and make us glad to be here instead of freezing in the dark damp of those dark satanic mills. We can go to watch the dolphins leap and see the king penguins waddle around the ski slope, and maybe even brave the Olympic ice rink to see if we have a future figure skater on our hands. And hopefully we will get some visitors this year to share all this with us, to make us make the most of it even when we are tired from all the keeping busy and making friends bit.
I guess it goes back to what I wrote at the start of the year. If we can just set aside the annoying bits about living here and be happy about it then it’s a good year done. So, September, and my return to Dubai, do your worst. I have my three laws of expatriate survival and my Q4 2012 Bucket list and I’m ready and waiting to come and get you.
 

Greener grass

Grasses

Green green grass of home(s) (Photo credit: Matt Ohia)

Well here we are at the halfway point of the trip, a little bit over even…and my heart is already quietly lurching at the thought of returning to Dubai in three weeks’ time. We are tanned, relaxed and happy and I am appalled at the thought of reversing all of this. To go from fresh air to air conditioning, from beaches to shopping malls and skanky soft play areas, from being surrounded by family and friends to scrabbling for play dates, it all seems so far away still but I can feel it creeping up on me and I don’t like it one bit. There was a time maybe a week or so back that I was missing a few aspects of my Dubai life, but now I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I know this feeling well of course, and I know it is inevitable that we do have to go back, and by the end of August might have even kidded ourselves we want to go back – but the bottom line is we will still have another eight weeks or so before life in Dubai becomes an even remotely attractive prospect. And that eight weeks is guaranteed to crawl in comparison to my time away of course.

I like Dubai, I do. It’s a little unfair of me to draw comparisons of everyday life lived anywhere to a 7 week vacation including a two week holiday spent on a beautiful beach with not a care in the world. Clearly no matter where I lived the beach would win. So I’m sure I will surrender to my return easily and without too many tears. And come November I will no doubt be saluting the gods who made it possible for us to live in a place that enjoys such glorious winter weather. It’s just that I know, in my heart, that we never enjoy ourselves quite as much as we do when we are home (home to me being at least three different places on two continents, but home all the same). I try to counteract my feelings with the practical facts of the matter: we are on holiday and people make a special effort to meet with us, that life wouldn’t be the same way if we lived nearer etc. but the point is that I’m sort of past all that thinking. I accept that real life would be different, and potentially not as much fun, and there might be fewer trips to museums and beaches and so on involved….but equally there might not. There is nothing to say we can’t do all those things, in fact one would argue there is more time to do more of them if you don’t have a return ticket to worry about.

But in the knowledge that this time I do have a deadline, I will make sure the remaining three weeks are full to the brim with people and happiness and seeing and doing as much as we possibly can. Now is not the time to mourn the end of our trip (and in fact if the olympic coverage by NBC wasn’t so dire i wouldn’t have thought to even start). There is plenty of time for sulking inside with the aircon blasting when we get back. The grass is certainly greener on this side of the planet, the air is fresher, and our hearts stay west with our loved ones even as our bodies travel east. This year I take comfort in this knowledge rather than being depressed at the thought, and is a far better feeling to have. It doesn’t stop me from dreading the end of our trip but it certainly will take the edge off being back.

In the meantime I say what i hope is a temporary goodbye to our magical little spot on the shores of cape Ann…and it’s onwards to destination number three: Big Apple time!

There’s no place like it

English: Illuminatable Earth globe, Columbus, ...

Pick a spot, any spot

Home. As usual our time in London has flown past in a blur of rainy days, sunny days, drinking, late nights, laughter and love, this year with a bit of Olympic excitement thrown in for good measure. We are physically exhausted but emotionally refreshed, and for a brief shining moment our Camelot-on-Thames has been the centre of my world once more.

With each passing year I get more used to the hellos and goodbyes, but this year as the faint whiff of hope surrounds me that one day we may come back, I have started to really think about what it would mean to return to London for more than just a holiday. There will be many good things about coming back that would have been lost on me had I never left. Staying in London as a comparitive tourist rather than living and working here has opened my eyes once more to what an incredible city we have at our feet. Walking the streets (walking! An unimaginable pastime for the average citizen of Dubai) and enjoying the weather, the people watching, the architecture, the noise – it is something of a musical dance whose moving parts make up the sum that is this city, full with life in a way that Dubai cannot possibly hope to master. The wonderful parks, museums, galleries and theatres that we have enjoyed the past ten days would never again be taken for granted or left unvisited by the repatriated version of me. Neither would the myriad of bars and restaurants and coffee shops that decorate the streets, or the boutiques and nick nack shops that nest amongst them. But have I been gone so long that I can’t see my city through anything but my sunglasses? And rose tinted ones at that?

With all the thoughts of registering with schools and so on, to plan for this hopeful but currently unsecured comeback, it occurred to me that I may have left a Londoner, but I will return as one third of an international family, a repatriated trailing spouse with an american husband and a third culture kid in tow. It is not going to be as easy as I think to become ‘English’ again, if ever.

My son will be homesick for a place neither me nor my husband call home. And yet, Dubai is our home, and by the time we return it will have most likely been so for nearly a decade. We are long time expats now, and even for me, the only true brit in the family, calling London home again will take time. I struggle with the basics of contemporary London life already, like how to charge my oyster card, and what can I recycle in those orange bags, and do I turn right at the lights if there is no oncoming traffic? And that’s just the start. I have no idea about tv (there were 5 channels or sky when we left), I’m a nervous wreck getting on the tube with my son in case we both magically leap off the platform or get split up by a closing door, and pretty much everything I have in my wardrobe is too white/shiny/expensive to be trotting round cobbled streets in the rain. To repatriate will be a difficult journey, I see now. I will not just simply slot back in, and pick up where I left off. I think it is good to be aware of this now, to start accepting that things will feel different, and that we may not always like it.

We are lucky to have a relatively international set of friends, full of expats and repats and hailing from around the world. They all call London their home and the city is such a melting pot that it hardly matters we’ve been away in that sense. But as I pack our bags and leave behind my beloved city to travel across the pond, I realise I am, these days, just as excited about returning to the US – I get that same familiar, easy feeling from the cities of Boston and New York as I do from London, and with the other 66.6% of the family unit holding a US passport, I am finding it increasingly important to promote American culture in the house and feel as comfortable with it as I do my own.

I wonder had we not lived abroad if I would have found it as easy to bring two cultures under one roof. I wonder if it would not have seemed so important, that my son who belongs to two countries and was born and raised in a third, should have the best experiences of them all and be truly international in his identity, rather than coming ‘from somewhere’. I wonder if coming ‘from somewhere’ has actually ceased to be as important to me. I certainly feel distinctly foreign when people talk about the jubilee, or the Olympics, or David Cameron. Well not foreign, just remote. I can’t relate to these things that people feel so passionately about, and yet I feel like a I should because I am ‘from here’.

But I fear I am not, anymore. Part of me is sad about that, that I have accepted a slightly nomadic existence that will no doubt continue to affect the way I live for a long time to come. That other part of me embraces the fact that I am living this incredible life that spans continents and oceans, that I have learnt and adopted new and different ways of doing things because of who I married and where we live and all the things we have seen along the way. I am daunted and yet excited by the prospect of raising my TCK to appreciate his place in this world. To belong ‘everywhere’ instead of ‘somewhere’, which must surely mean there are more places in this world to call home. To feel connected in these huge cities but undaunted by change. I hope this for him, but for myself as well, that the lessons I have learnt through moving away will stand me in good stead for moving back. To say ‘home’ to me now it means so many different places and I love each one for different reasons. So, from one home to another, we fly off on the next part of our summer journey. Tell you what, if Dorothy lived my life she would have been hard pushed to end up in the right place even with those ruby slippers…

Food glorious food

I  love food. The only reason I endure going to the gym three times a week (OK, mostly I only make it twice. Or once. Or not at all on busy weeks) is that I can justifiably stuff my fact for 8 weeks a year when we leave Dubai and travel back for the summer. (We’ll save discussing what happens in Dubai the other 44 weeks of the year for another time…) Anyway, for me, one of the things that I really look forward to about going home is all the yummy food I’ve missed the rest of the year – stuff I just can’t get in Dubai. And as it’s just under a week until I get on a plane out of here (HOOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!) I am already salivating in anticipation of a Waitrose shopping trip. Here, in no particular order, are the top 10 things I am looking forward to eating when I get home:

Fish and chips, a popular take-away food of th...

Fish and chips and a muddy estuary: you can’t get better than that. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Chicken with skin that actually goes crispy

2. Really, really good pork sausages that go sticky in the pan

3. Mashed potatoes that don’t just consist of lumps of starch amongst a watery gloop

4. Fresh salad

5. Big ripe beef tomatoes that taste of something akin to a tomato. Served sliced with a beautiful red onion and lashings of oil & vinegar, and a french stick for dunking.

6. Fish and chips from the chippie not some posh pub grub wannabe nonsense

7. Lush wholemeal/seedy/brown sliced bread that doesn’t resemble particle board

8. Asparagus that doesn’t take a chainsaw to cut through.

9. A chinese takeout with prawn toast, seaweed, duck pancakes, crispy chilli beef and vegetable spring rolls, all of which arrive actually crispy. (Dunno what you’re all having)

10. A picnic. With booze and friends involved. And pork pies.

Ahhh, England. It’s what maxi dresses were invented for.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

As any woman will know, finding a decent hairdresser is like searching for a needle in a haystack; and when you find the one that can tame your curly/straight/long/short/thin/thick/flyaway hair you will move heaven and earth to keep them. I have short hair that requires a regular 6 week crop and colour to maintain its precision cut and keep away the wavy 80s Princess Diana/Farah Fawcett style it would otherwise morph into if left to its own devices. I am incredibly particular about who cuts my hair and insist that they gaze at old photos of me with longer locks and bad styling before they make the first incision in order to fully understand the horror that awaits if I do not keep it short and in tip top condition.

Princess Diana on a royal visit for the offici...

I am only ever eight weeks and some hair lacquer away from Princess Diana c.1987 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Imagine then, if you will, my dilemma when my hairdressers move away from Dubai nearly as often as my friends do.

In the time I have lived here I have had no less than eight hairdressers. The first time I needed a cut I went to a local salon in the Marina where we lived and he sheared the whole thing with a razor blade and refused to let me look in a mirror until he was finished. And the end result looked…well, like I had sheared my hair with a razor blade and no mirror. After that experience I timed my trips back to the UK often enough to ensure my old stylist could do my cut and colour and when it got too unruly inbetween times I stuck a scarf on my head. Eventually (and it must have been a good year or so later) I decided that commuting back to the UK for a haircut was a little ridiculous and decided to brave the salons of Dubai once more.

I found my next salon from recommendations on the forum of a local website. After a single false start involving a junior stylist and six weeks of sporting a mullet only a Premier League footballer could be proud of, I was booked with a more experienced hairdresser in the same salon who mastered my hair at almost the first cut. She lasted for precisely 8 months until she got pregnant, and as it was unplanned and she was unmarried she had to leave Dubai. Something the manager of the salon failed to inform me of until I arrived one day for my appointment. She offered to do the cut and colour for me instead, so I hesitantly agreed, laid back and thought of England. Literally, because when I looked in the mirror again that’s precisely where I wished I was so that I wouldn’t be staring at my PURPLE hair. Yes, this ‘highly experienced’ manager had managed to use so much toner on my dye job that she’d given me a blue rinse. I spent 2 months using special shampoo and an awful lot of product to try and hide my ultra violet fringe.

Are you keeping score? So far that’s a tally of five. Number six saw a radical rethink. No longer a big fan of trying yet another tinpot outfit in a random high rise on the Sheikh Zayed Road just because a few Jumeirah Janes had had their uniform pencil-straight highlighted long bobs trimmed there, I decided to go with the safe but expensive option and hit Tony and Guy. Amy, my stylist, strolled in looking hip and laid back, kicked off her Loubs before snipping and sculpting the funkiest hair I’d ever had. I finally felt like I’d found my hair mecca.

Of course, this isn’t the end of the story because – guess what – Amy decided that she was going back to London. I was seven months pregnant at the time, extremely hormonal and somewhat devastated. (I may have even cried about it but don’t tell anyone.) I stuck with Tony and Guy, but unfortunately due to circumstance the next hairdresser in line didn’t really stand a chance and she lasted a mere two cuts – one before my son was born and one soon after – before I was swallowed into the world of parenthood where six-weekly trips to the other side of town to sit in a chair and do nothing for two hours were nothing but a dream. I was on the hunt again, and this time my friend came to the rescue and gave me the number for her hairdresser who did home cuts.

Enter Luca. Luca was – is – perfect. Italian, male and straight he is exactly who every woman should want to do her hair. I have always had a theory actually, that the best hairdressers are straight men. Call me hideously politically incorrect, but I think a trip to the salon should be a bit like walking past a building site. I mean, you can pretend to ignore the comments but a bit of attention never hurt anyone, right? Anyway, back to the point. Luca has been my stylist now for three years, and has restyled and resculpted my hair to the point where I am barely recognisable from when he first clapped scissors on me. I absolutely love my hair these days. Love it. So when he announced last month he was leaving Dubai and I threatened to hunt him down, bunny boiler stylie, there is a good chance I meant it.

I feel like I’m being dumped, or worse still let down gently to spare my feelings. He has promised he is keeping on his clients in Dubai and will be back every four to eight weeks, but is this code speak for that throwaway classic ‘let’s stay friends’? Am I keeping a torch burning for him when really I should just find someone new? What if I make a date and he stands me up? Then I will be left desperate and alone, starting all over again with my caveman hair.

I really thought I would make it through to the end of my time here without having to search for yet another hairdresser but now I fear the worst. I am under no illusion that commuting back and forth to Dubai from the UK will be easy to do every month and I suspect the novelty will wear off sometime within the second six months he is gone. But, like all bad breakups, I can’t quite face the thought of moving on and finding someone new just yet. So like a fool, I will do what women have done for time immemorial: I will wait for my hairdresser’s call and if the inevitable happens and he resigns completely I will start the search for someone new and hope that I can find ‘the one’ all over again.

And if not I will be headed back to London SW13 to see if my stylist remembers me from 2006.

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Ode to a Brown Bra

I’m trawling the malls for a new brown bra
Been to seventeen thousand shops so far
I’m not asking for much, just a bra with a tan
But no parachute harness – I’m not a big fan
Upon finding said bra, I will search for my size
And find, yet again, pigs are flying the skies
Is finding a brown bra just not meant to be?
Does EVERYONE in Dubai wear 34D?
There’s the Ultimo, sure, but that isn’t my fate
I don’t want my boobs used for a dinner plate
I just want a bra for all seasons and places
That doesn’t shove bosom in people’s faces
I don’t need strapless, or five-way, or padded
I don’t need patterns or lace to be added
I just want a brown bra, not to fly to the moon
So please, Marks and Spencers, get new stock very soon.

 

*Dedicated to the dancing girls of the BROS 2004 production Singin’ in the Rain