Merry Christmas Everyone, or, tim's speech regarding home and the commonwealth

So, it’s Boxing day and, working in a multi cultural office as I do, I have officially become the oracle on all things, “why is boxing day called boxing day?” and despite their asking, they still argue with me when I tell them that it is the day that the tradesmen would open the boxes into which the rich people would have been depositing coins in the run up to Christmas.

What can you do?

Anyway, we have had a typically Tim and Heidi Christmas: went out on Christmas Eve – to the local expat pub, woke up way too early on Christmas and did the presents thing, then, upon realising our error in waking so early in the day going to bed for another few hours.

Thereafter, we did what is expected of us and ate smoked salmon and scrambled eggs washed down with the first bucks fizz of the day.

Christmas here is weird. It is just like a normal day for most people. As such, throughout the day our soundtrack was split between the plaintiff calls of the wood pigeons that have nested in our air-conditioning unit in the living room and the industrial grinding of the Indian construction workers that never seem to take a day off – ever.

But it was good. With the arrival of Christmas day, all the stress and hassle has passed. I nearly flew home a week before Christmas to go Christmas shopping on oxford street. It is not that you can’t buy things in Bahrain, it is just there only two tiers of retail here: really cheap and really really expensive. Someone could make a fortune here catering to the middle income normal people like me and the ho.

Maybe it will be me.

So, yes, with the coming of the Christmas morn, life is serenity and peace. We cooked, and I will let Heidi tell you about her accomplishments in the kitchen – we drank and were merry.

In the absence of any proper Christmas TV, we put on Indiana Jones and the last Crusade and dozed in front of it after lunch, drinking wine and not moving very much.

We missed the queen, obviously, but have seen a transcript online today. Same ol’, same ol’ really. One year, I would like it, if the queen went off message and just said what she really meant. I’d like it if one day, anyone in the public eye did.

There are photos, of course. They are in the group pages on the flickr site. You can go directly to them by clicking here

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bahrainandlondon/

What else what else? I’m back at work tomorrow – after not finishing until 2 on Christmas Eve and then going on to a work Christmas lunch. But that’s not too bad; they have finally given me my pay rise and are sorting out my CPR.

So, life is good.

Missing home, missing people. But loving Bahrain. Things are good here.

My apologies to those of you that I haven’t spoken too. I will call you all soon. Time just kinda ran away from us on Christmas day and then it was gone.

Take care all.

XxX