Bahrain: A Dispatch (Or, What I Did On My Holidays)

To be a proper blog I suppose I should have completed a daily entry but, due to problems with internet access (i.e. there wasn’t any), you’re getting a sort of over-long thematic overview. As a further caveat, it’s possible that I’ve totally forgotten some of the things we did, or put them in the wrong order. I can’t imagine that anybody will be too bothered.

So, Thursday night: James and I arrive, triumphantly, laden with a litre of gin and vodka respectively. For it is Ramadan, and there is no alcohol to be had in the Kingdom of Bahrain. I should add at this point that, contrary to my initial fears, Gulf Air were nevertheless happy to serve us a constant stream of food and rather robust G&Ts. Aside from the ridiculously hot weather, it feels rather like being back in Hackney as we pour our first drinks and distribute our offerings from the Old Country. Heidi and Tim have, I think, already explained the concept of Inshallah, by which this charming Kingdom appears to be run. I like to think that we settled into this ethos rather comfortably, quickly abandoning any idea of rationing our limited supplies and enthusiastically ploughing through most of the gin (and a significant amount of the vodka), happy to leave the rest of the weekend in the hands of some higher power.

This had the sadly predictable effect of limiting our sightseeing abilities on Friday, and we were generally restricted to a spot of hungover lounging by the pool.

A renewed flurry of activity on Saturday commenced with the collection of our hire car, a plucky Citroen C3 which, despite its woeful acceleration and occasional reluctance to start, did provide us with freedom to explore and lovely, lovely airconditioning. Did I mention it was quite hot in Bahrain?

A brief digression: driving in Bahrain is a bit of an experience. They have many miles of beautifully maintained 3-lane highway, within which they have managed to cram numerous flyovers, roundabouts and traffic lights (English style). I would offer the following words of advice, however, to anyone thinking of getting behind the wheel:

Pick your lane and speed at random.
Overtake on either side or, if you are from Kuwait and drive a truck the size of a house, weave erratically from lane to lane through the gaps between other vehicles.
Indicators are for wimps. Want to pull out or change lanes? Just go and, inshallah, the person behind you will probably get out of the way. It’s not a safe stopping distance that they’ve carefully left between them and the car in front, it’s a perfectly sized gap for your Humvee.

First stop was the souk, where we saw lots of men in dishdasha and a quite incredible array of tat. I won’t go into further details about said tat as I’m sure you’d all prefer that your presents came with some element of surprise. I was very pleased to see that the locals do actually wear their traditional dress (i.e. long shirt-type robe, plus headdress topped with handy camel-whip). They appear to be more practical than you might at first thing, being equipped with an array of pockets from which the Bahrainis produce flashy mobile phones, worry beads and cold, hard, oil money. Our enjoyment of the souk was curtailed, however, by the fact that we could not consume food, water or cigarettes in public during daylight hours and, after a short while, we repaired slightly grumpily to the car where we took it in turns to swig from a bottle of bath-temperature water as the others watched out for passing Arabs. After a brief siesta, we were sufficiently recovered to enjoy a proper Bahraini night out at Seef Mall, which involved eye-wateringly sweet coffee and shopping until 1am.

Sunday brought the dubious pleasure of helping Heidi collect their possessions which had arrived on a big boat. Heidi will no doubt give you all the gory details but, as far as I could make out, this involved the giving up of various bribes, and most of Heidi’s dignity. As the nice man at Customs attempted to explain to me as I waited for several hours in the waiting room, “In Arab countries we don’t have rules, we have a mood. If he is in a good mood, it will be quick. If not… (shrugs shoulders).” Possessions safely recovered, we whiled away the rest of the day in Muharraq, looking at some lovely old buildings. Chinese for dinner: Chinese restaurants in Bahrain apparently operate under the own rules and serve alcohol (yes!) and pork (yes! yes!), even during Ramadan. Yum yum yum. Then off for some shisha, which was very nice but efficiently felled all of us. I think the trick is probably to take your time and appreciate that the pipe won’t go out if you leave it alone for a while, rather than smoke about a packet’s worth of tobacco in twenty minutes and give yourself an almighty apple-flavoured headrush.

Monday: Eid Mubarak! And food and drink were once more available. We celebrated first of all by heading out into the desert with a load of Christian South Africans for a barbecue, our only guide an initially charming but increasingly irritating 12 year old boy. The desert was the most incredible moonscape: I got rather carried away and took about 30 photographs of the sunset over various rocks. Much meat was eaten and, having narrowly avoided death on the way back (James being so taken with the view of an ancient fort that he didn’t notice the 90 degree bend right in front of us) we went for a little hotel bar crawl around Juffair. After visiting the Sherlock Holmes (lovingly recreated English pub, complete with Bahaini SH lookalike wandering the dancefloor holding a pipe) and the bar at the Al Saf (where we avoided any drunken Saudis and nearly gatecrashed an Iraqi disco), we found ourselves at the Rock Bottom Café opposite H&T’s apartment. There we joined several underage US Navy Boys in listening to a Filipino rock covers band who were, actually, pretty damn good. I think. After some ludicrous dancing, the composition of a very respectful “Eid Mubarak” song and, inevitably, Heidi flashing her knockers out of a glass lift, the evening was complete.

Tuesday brought some seriously horrible hangovers. Tim stayed at home and did computer things while the remaining intrepid three went to visit the Tree of Life (a big tree in the desert – that’s it) and molest some camels. We then had a very cultured evening at an art gallery eating a truly delicious meal and listening to sufi singers and watching whirling dervishes. Any trace of culture was swiftly removed by subsequently watching an earbleedingly loud Russian/Irish (we think) traditional man-on-keyboard-plus-singing-woman-in-sparkly-dress duo at the Clipper Bar.

On Wednesday we visited the Grand Mosque which had an open day for non-Muslims where they tried to explain that Islam was quite friendly, actually, and women didn’t have to cover up – just dress modestly. Quite why Heidi and I had to nevertheless dress up in full abaya and hijab was never fully explained. The outfits were quite fun for about 5 minutes, then I got hot and grumpy and started tripping over my abaya. Nevertheless, we good-naturedly put up with their friendly attempts to convert us (using, at one point, a flashy Nokia mobile phone as religious metaphor) and ate their actually-rather-tasty buffet lunch. This plus a visit to the Bahrain National Museum meant that we had spent a very cultural day, and felt justly smug.

Then culture of a different kind – a night out at JJ’s Irish Bar with Heidi’s friend Nada (to whom we extended some traditional British hospitality, i.e. force-feeding her shots until she was violently ill), followed by Likwid, an attempt at a proper nightclub, with house music and everything. We were led there by Tim’s workmate Shane. We only realised as he sped around a roundabout with about 7 of us in the back of his car that he was several Tequila & Red Bulls down. I can’t say I recommend being driven around by a drunken South African. Tim had previously indicated that Shane “might be gay”. After several minutes in a car with Shane (in response to directions: “Straight? How about second exit - I can’t go straight!”; on dentists: “The lengths I will go to to get a tool in my mouth!”) it became clear that Tim’s gaydar is crap. As was Likwid, although some entertainment was provided by Tim telling a burly local “See you later, take care… of your mama!” and the resultant posturing and shouting.

Some respite was brought the following morning by a traditional Texan breakfast from Rik’s Kountry Kitchen (bacon, fried eggs, chips, biscuits [dumplings] in sausage gravy [a sort of béchamel sauce with porky bits]. Quite possibly the most calories I have ever seen on a plate but absolutely brilliant.

Saturday brought more tat-tastic shopping in Isa Town and a very lovely and sophisticated dinner out, where I sampled the local dish, Machbooz (a bit like a Biryani, but spicier).

And finally, Sunday. H&T sadly had to work, so James & I caught a speedboat (woo!) to the Hawar Islands, which are about 200 yards from Qatar but nevertheless have been claimed by Bahrain. There you will find an absolutely deserted hotel resort, where we sunbathed and pedalo-d to our hearts’ content. The holiday was perfectly rounded off by a traditional Hackney roast dinner (i.e., we were all sozzled by the time it was cooked).

Some photos will be added to the group site shortly http://www.flickr.com/groups/bahrainandlondon/

M x

J'accuse

Right then Miss Grant, you have actually heart my feelings.

You are, of course, absolutely right; my blog entries have been a little self indulgent of late and arguably of little interest to anyone other than the author. In reply, and by means of defence, I would like to cite the OED that in its definition of blog includes the following, "Blogs..contain daily musings about news, dating, marriage, divorce, children, politics in the Middle East. Or millions of other things or nothing at all."

The purpose of the blog is to relate, to share; even to indulge.

I suspect, Lotte, that you are not the only person not consuming my missives in their entirety, but in ignorance, I find bliss. Please don't state the obvious, but hurtful truth

And just because you have been so mean to me, i will not post a great picture of Mary and Heidi wearing the Abaya and Hijab.

O go on then, actually I will....



























As you can see, these formatively disrespectful harlots have come round to the proper way of thinking and viewing themselves in the world and, quite sensibly, have taken the view that they should be covered up and respectful at all times.

This photo was taken in our flat - this is just what they wear now.

XxX

Vingette 2

Driving. Driving at night; Heidi in the back, quiet and tired. Driving through the hotel and diplomatic area. There is so much glass and in it the neon reflects, illuminating the sky in darkened reds and weakened blues. You cannot see the stars in Bahrain; at least not in Manama. Maybe in the desert. That girls voice enters my head - “they went on for ever, I grew up in Arizona and the skies were always filled with little fluffy clouds; with purple and orange and red, you don’t see that any more. You might still see them in the desert.” - And I smile remembering that at the weekend, I say my first Bahraini cloud and my first sunset that was anything other than simply that: the sun setting, slowly getting less yellow and more orange until it disappears behind the buildings first, and then the horizon: the sky becoming dark. There are no great sunsets here, not yet: Winter is still too distant a thing. I turned to the Ho as we swam in the twilight - thick and rheumy like the air after a shower - and said, look, there is weather in Bahrain.

Driving past a big hotel there is a man - black jacket off and over his shoulder, head shaven and goatee trimmed - standing on the central reservation of the highway. He is looking all around him. He is looking for a taxi. He is the same man as any in New York or London or Sydney. He is the archetypal, finished-work-late-and-gone-for-a-beer or lets-go-for-quick-beer-after- work-and-ended-up-staying-for-more man and I smile at the realisation that I have been him, I have been that man. But no longer am. And so, I speed past him smiling in my rented car, my driver humming and mumbling quietly to himself.

Back at home and I realise that the stress and the expense has all been worth it. Our living room looks lovely; the kitchen like I would want to spend time there. I want to kiss Heidi; hold on to her and never let her go. But I don’t. I wonder why that is as I am getting into bed. Moving toward sleep, I resolve to make sure that next I want to, I do. Resolve to share this new world with her and not keep it wrapped up inside myself like I always have with everything and everyone else. I realise that the world remains small when locked inside you and not shared with someone else; becomes big if more eyes than two fall upon it.

Through stilted sleep I catch glimpses of happiness just out of my reach but getting closer. I wake up more tired than I was last night but more sure of something that I still cannot describe, do not have the words for yet. One day, this vernacular will descend and envelop me - soft and warm like a towel after a childhood bath - protecting me from all that has been before.

XxX

It's Sunday and i'm working!!!

It's not so bad as I have had my weekend. However, I was in work at 6.45 this morning and it is now 5.45 this evening and I am still here! Grump! I like the weekends much more.

X

Bahrain calling Britain

Bahrain calling Britain
Hi Guys

I'm so sorry you are both missing home, I suppose the feeling of being on holiday has now reached the "oh right, we live here, we're not going home, this is home" bit.
Hopefully this will wear off but if not, rest assured Britain is exactly the same as you left it, wet, windy, dirty, ignorant and a complete nanny state! As of 1st October we are advised to no longer send work colleagues birthday cards making fun of their old age - even pathetic "over the hill" ones just in case we upset them! And wo betide anyone who thinks that they may want to employ someone with lots of experience, you can't advertise for this any more in case it disadvantages young people - aaaaagggghhhh!
So, Heidi you are clearly the only person in the school who understands the word teacher and so I say go show them how it's done. Tim - the missing link is there somewhere, when you are least looking for it it will jump up and bite you on the nose!

Be happy, send me your address so I can send you stuff and just think about the fact that soon you will be able to eat and drink whenever you want. I didn't realise that everyone had to obey Ramadan whatever creed they are.

Miss you loads, love you lots, enjoy Mary and James.

Love Liz xxxxx

Sit back, relax and listen to the rant...

Let me tell you a bit about where I work...

The building is amazing, you would not believe a school could look like this. It is all beautiful marble floors, Grecian columns, and walls free of 'fuck off you teacher scum!' The people are lovely, will bend over backwards to moan about the children. They are also a bunch of incompetent arseholes! I have never encountered a bunch of more lazy, untrained, unqualified housewives in my life. Tim says that it is no wonder Bahrain is still third world when they all take a three months off over the summer and then go back to work for three weeks and then start doing half days for Ramadan.

I had my medical today. A thouroughly unpleasent experience. For some reason, inspite of everything else being segregated, including some restaurants, men and women are allowed to undress in front of each other, when they are at the doctors. So after a hugely humiliating experience with my fellow Muslim colleagues I return to work. I brace mysely for the fact that none of the cover work set will have been touched. I do not anticipate the state that my classroom is in. Books are left out. Chairs are over-turned. Pages from story books have been ripped. Two of my displays have been torn down from the boards. But, this is the best bit, someone has let a child see my mark book. The child has scribbled erraticly in black felt tip all over this terms marks. How would you even think that allowing a child anywhere near the mark book was ok?

Non of the teachers here are trained, one for example has never taught before in her life, she had never been inside a classroom before September (apart, obviously when she was a kid.) I spend most of my days wondering why these parents pay money for this. Most staff think that teaching is about making children copy off the board. One teacher even bit a child the other day for not doing his homework. Now I know i've thought about it, but I wouldn't do it. There is no work ethic here, so consequently people are too lazy to even sack people. If you fired half the people in the school it would run as normal.

Anyway, rant over. I do quite like my job as all of this incompetence makes me look like a super teacher. Am doing the inset on Sunday about lesson planning and one in a few weeks about teaching and learning. It really is ok, I finish at 2.30 (1.30 at the moment) and then I get to go swim. The kids are really nice, but again lack a sort of intrinsic motivation. Some blame the climate, I blame inshallah.

I miss you all so much, am really looking forward to seeing Moo and Jimbo next week, and thanks to the lack of work ethic I have the whole week off.

Just to let you know, it is a positively mild 36 here and tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy. This is the coldest it has been since I arrived, and I can really feel it, last night I contemplated putting a jacket on.

We are going to see a Syrian Sufi singer and a whirling Dervish over Eid. Actually thats another thing I can rant about. I can't eat or drink at work at the moment. These people do not seem to realise that whole empires crumble if they are not allowed regular cups of tea. Tim has allowed me my first over-priced-expat-homesickness-comforter, I have English breakfast tea tea leaves, and they are Twinnings. It ammuses me that in this time of fasting they Bahrainis spend four times as much money on meat than at any other time. They also, whilst remembering the poor spend 100BD (about 175 English pounds) on an Eid outfit, that they wear for one day. Am looking forward to celebrating the end of the month of abstanance though.

Lots of big kissess to you all...
XXX

Vignette 1

Afternoon people,

So, it is half past two and I am hungry. I really should go and have my lunch. Instead, I am sat at my desk with my headphones on in an office full of women. One, Saudi but utterly anglicised; she went to university in Dundee of all places and studied English literature and Philosophy, is my boss kinda and she is in a bad mood. We take it in turns to deal with Angela; a Briton who is thoroughly Arab in her approach (she’s lazy and inefficient and just doesn’t understand, anything). The last is Bahraini and the total Muslim. She sits mute in her hijab until her mobile phone rings - one of her mobile phones, she has three - and then she warbles into it like some kind of bird.

I’m in a grump I guess. Not really a grump, just a little tearful, but not really. Missing home a bit, but again, not really. Me and the ho were talking about this the other night. We miss our friends and family of course, but what gets you the hardest is the familiarity of home. Stupid things, like TV and busses. It is not that you miss anything in particular, more the ménage of every day things that one comes to understand as your life. And I suppose that it is that that I am finding, if not upsetting, then difficult to reconcile with my new life. There are just so many things that I want to leave behind; need to leave behind. And I have. But I am not sure that I have found the things I need to replace them yet. And into that gap flows an emptiness. It is not a sadness, not really, more a lacking. A lack of something definite. Yes, that’s it: I lack the definite article.

I am being cleansed, but worn away also.

And that’s why I miss the busses and TV, why I miss the over crowded and dirty streets of London. Not because I do, but because I have not yet found their equivalent.

To that end I have decided to create a series of Vignettes:

French, "little vine" A short composition, designed with little or no plot or larger narrative structure. Often vignettes are descriptive or evocative in their nature” web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_V.html

I like to think of them as postcards, but the front and not the back. I want to catch a series of images and make the permanent by describing and sharing them. Maybe then I will initiate my actual departure from London and begin to embrace Juffair, Bahrain as my new home.

I lit my second cigarette right off the back of the first. Two cigarettes and two twelve inch mixes: the Stone Roses and the Charlatans. That’s me this morning. Waking up. I thought of about Alex and then deleted the thought just as surely as I had I deleted his number from my phone. I got up. The cats were awake now too and have started making their noises in anticipation of getting fed. I had my phone with me so the music followed me throughout the otherwise silent flat. She had gone. Left for work early again. I wouldn’t be seeing her now until I got home from work late. I sat down on the sofa and thought about our new life here. Of the things that are different; the things that are still the same. Later, on the drive here, I saw that Indian woman again, still carrying her English leather handbag, still carrying the black umbrella with the brass point at the top as she crossed the busy roads on her way to work.

So that is Vignette number one look out for more as they occur to me.

Take care folks.

Rave Safe.

XxX

ramadanadingdog

Ramadanadingdong

So, it is with some trepidation that me and the Ho took our first tentative steps into the holy month of Ramadan. For those of you not fully versed in the ways and mores of our Islamic brethren, during the month of Ramadan one must abstain from the consumption of pretty much everything during the hours of daylight. This means, no food or drink – not even water; no cigarettes; no sex and no generally doing anything that isn’t in the mode of contemplating the greater good that is Allah or the magnificence that is Muhammad.

I don’t have an issue with any of this. In fact, I am almost jealous of it. Western religion is apologetic when asking its believers to do anything. We would like you to come to church and worship; on Sundays, so as to not interrupt anything important. O, you can’t make that. No problem. It is no longer even a sin to not attend church. This came a massive blow to me when I found out because going to church, or rather, not going to church, but pretending to, is one of the key signifiers of my childhood. And now I discover that all that effort, all that sin – lies – to hide the other sin – not going to church – was in vain. How many steps have I taken toward hell hiding something that is no longer even a sin?

And Christianity has no imagination when it comes to thinking about what it wants its believers to do. Where is its pilgrimages – Lourdes, just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid – where is its fasting, its denial of privileges? Before you say anything, I know what Lent is supposed to be, but I also know what it actually transpires to be. The thing is, with Christianity, of course it can be taken to extremes, but in the main, it isn’t.

I think the reason that this is so is because instead of separating the religious from our other lives, we have fashioned the rest of our lives upon the basic tenants if our religion. Capitalism is borne of Christianity. It is not a new development, the religious elite have always been rich, have always been powerful. But in Jesus - a lowly carpenters son – we have the first exponent of what would become the American Dream. Work hard, take the knocks and then stand back and reap the rewards. This idea of small town boy made good is still eulogised today. Look at the cult of Bill Gates, of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Are these not the latter day saints come to deliver us for ourselves and from the shackles of our ignorance?

By adopting, or reshaping - crafting in our own image - the religious tenants associated with personal rather than societal gain, we have eroded the ceremonies and ritual of our religion to a point where they no longer interfere with our work day or mess up our weekends. We have allowed capitalism to become our sacrament. We may still have individual faith in our god, but faith can only be defined by one person at a time. When thinking about faith it is important to understand the parameters of the question. Do we have faith that god exists? Do we have faith that the texts ascribed to his teachings are true? Do we have faith that Christianity, as a whole, and in its entirety, speaks for us as it moves forward in millennial time? Faith just doesn’t cut it any more. We have gone beyond faith to a point where our (desire for) personal freedoms out weigh the need for communal deliverance. Faith is simply a word now, something we apply to ourselves like a job title or a qualification. Hi, I’m Tim: Personal Trainer and Christian. Hi, I’m Heidi: Stay-at-home-mum and regular Church-Goer. It is the media that has done it, but the media merely reflects what society has done to itself and then accelerates the process like petrol bomb. In a mediocre world, we use labels to define the individual we all strive to be. But there are only so many labels available. In the west, we don’t have the imagination to be truly inventive in defining ourselves. We are too bound by the labels that society will allow us. And those label are printed by the fact that our culture is based on a religion so inept at answering anything with a straight answer; is so grey when what we need is black and whites; is so vague in its descriptions of anything that it absolutely no problem at all to accommodate it into our really, very busy schedules.

Christianity sucks man, but I can’t even be bothered to get worked up about it any more. It is just irrelevant. Except of course that it isn’t, that the worlds most powerful man talks about the war on terror in terms used to describe the battles in star wars: the axis of evil, the arc (or should that be Ark?) of moderate influences. We are reaching the point where the final war looks likely rather than possible. Christianity is the natural resting place of the mediocre, Islam is not. Western society is determined to be the most mediocre there has every been. Middle class, middle educated and middle income. The west is not filled with geniuses and the influential. It is led by them; we follow those that we deem to be greater than ourselves. We follow those that we have gifted power in due democratic process. Democracy elevates the individual in incremental steps so small that the shift is never questioned. And yet one day, the man on the street can be George Bush. And this is seen as progress, as something we should encourage all over the world; should be forced on peoples all over the world.

Whatever.

The above actually was not the rant that I intended when sitting down to write this. The rant that I planned was about Ramadan and the fact that it is used to foster the aspirations of an entire region. Aspirations that can be measured using only the numbers zero and a little. If go here: http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php you, like me can waste as many hours as you deem sufficient just look at interesting stats. For example, did you know that the Belgians suffer the greatest tax burden - at nearly 56%? Or that Kuwait has 39,902,530.317 barrels per 1000 people in oil reserves whilst south Africa has only 177.425. The problem with this sitye is that I have now given up on this blog and am compiling a piece of work based on stats about Bahrain….

I might, one day, get this blog about living with Ramadan finished……

See you later.

XxX

dreams

11 times already this evening I have thought about my dream. So, 11 times I have been taken back there. It is not unpleasurable being back there, nor entirely quieting.

Yesterday, in the fog of flu, awake for only 4 hours across the whole day, I dreamt that I had four butterflies. They landed - as they will, these flutter by’s – near me; unannounced and unsummoned, they landed on some fruit that I had not paid for and had not grown. Once settled, they remained. Still, like paintings; shimmering like a dream. And at the end of the day, unmoved, I moved toward them expecting them to arise and flutter by. But they did not. They remained. I lifted the fruit, and still they stayed.

On my way home I held the fruit on my lap; the bus could plainly see. And soon I was approached by a posse of men in local dress. And they were offering me money for my fruit and its cargo of butterflies. They offered me a hundred. Then two. Speechless, they offered me five. As I stepped onto the curb I heard one man call out; I will give you a thousand, my friend, and my youngest daughter.

At home, showered and changed, the fruit shelved and safe above my books. My mother approached, all kisses and hugs. Tired, and embarrassed by her caresses I blurted out about my prize. Forlorn with exasperation, she demanded I show her; demanded too, that I be quick – and quiet – so as to not worry my father. From my room I fetched them; still unmoved from upon the fruit, my little shimmies lay: wings folded like half full moons. One blue. One black. One White. The last, coloured like a setting sun.

My mother gasped as she saw them. From across the room; she had to sit down.

I hurried and fetched sweet mint tea.

Recovered, she exclaimed that I truly am a lucky boy; that I brought good fortune upon the house; that I would never want and would always provide. She threw her arms around me; kissed me and thanked God for her good fortune.

This went on, and went on, and went on some more. And I learnt absolutely nothing about why these pretties had landed near me or why they had allowed me to pick them up and had chosen to stay with me. And nothing at all about how, in doing so, God and smiled upon us: this house, my family

We ate. My father was still out. Mother remained quiet in front of my brother and sisters. But she could barely swallow her food for all the smiling she was doing. We prayed before and after our meal.

Because it was the weekend I had planned to visit with friends that night; had planned to catch up on the news of the area. I had hoped to catch up on the moods of the girls that I had my eye on. But on my way out, mother called to me to ensure that I had had the butterflies secured somewhere. I told her that they were safe; that were secured inside my room. She said that this was insufficient; that I must re-house them somewhere safer. Knowing mother, I knew it pointless to argue with her and so I spent the next half hour – and more – finding, and then rejecting places to store them. After exhausting too many minutes I was happy that mother would be happy about where I would finally leave them.

They hadn’t moved by the way, hadn’t budged at all from the moment I first laid eyes on them.

Interlude. Please fill this section with anything you like.. Basically, I wrote the above after a couple of beers whilst Heidi was doing her parents evening thing and then she came home and I had to eat pizza. The ending, below, was already formed. But, as is so often the case, I hadn’t quite worked out how to get from the beginning to the end. Anyway….


That night, in bed, almost asleep and dreaming, I heard whispers from the bookshelves and switched on the light to hear them. There, smiling down on me were not four butterflies but one shimmering face.

The face of a woman. She was whispering to me and I could only just hear. She said:

You are a pebble in a shallow but fast moving stream
Feel the water wash over you.
You are being cleansed
But worn away also

And then she was gone. I thought about her words as I fell into sleep. And the butterflies returned and this time they flew. The rose up as one, and departed as one.

I never did discover why they had come, or why they had stayed. And no one ever told me why, in their coming, I had been blessed. But as I slept, I felt calm. And in my sleep I could feel a joy.

Calmness and Joyessness is indeed a blessing.

sunday the first of october

Morning all,

So, by the time you read this it will be Monday, probably. That is, unless, my mum is checking this on Sunday; unless moo has actually gone out and bought herself a lappy; unless it is my sister or Lotte, or just about anyone really. The world of telecommunications really isn't limited anymore is it? I'll start again.

So, it is probably Sunday morning or maybe Monday morning and depending upon who it that's reading this, you may or may not be hungover. You may have plans for today, your plan may just be to grab the paper and sit for the duration. If that is your plan, then I am jealous. And not just because I am at work and not just because I am about as far away from hungover as it is possible to be – it is Ramadan don’t you know – I am jealous because I miss the paper. I miss its heft and girth (MA) I miss its depth and irreverence. I miss the fact that papers at home do not suck up to the king and do not contrive to never offend anyone that may - or may not - be important.

Goddamn it, I miss the leftist intelligentsia that masquerades as the Guardian/Observer editorial team.

Anyway. It is the first day of a new month both literally and figuratively. It is the first of October and also the first day of the November cycle for Bahrain Confidential. As such, there is very little for me to do at this exact moment in time. And so the blog is getting some attention. I am gonna post a couple of things this morning. One is a rant, but not the rant I thought it would be when I first started writing it. And the other is a story, of sorts. Really it is just the description of a dream, and not a very satisfactory one at that. But it is my realisation de jour – well, actually month but I don’t know what that is in French (O, it’s mois, apparently) – and quite a revelation it was too. Although, it is a beet hippy dippy, obviously.

What else? Not a lot really. Hope you are all good. Take it easy.

XxX