Too cool for school

Morning folks,

I trust this communiqué finds you well. That at your desks, in your places of work or in your nooks and dens or on the sofas in your living rooms you are at peace with the world and glad with it too. It is not quite 8 o’clock in morning here on a Friday that looks as if it will be another fine, sunny day. The temperatures here are at their perfect state: mid 20’s every day, never dipping below the middle teens at night. Life is good.

Heidi is sleeping. I suspect that she will be asleep for a while. Last night was the first public performance of her play; that that has been consuming so much of her time and energy for what seems like the last year of our lives. And it was wicked. How many school plays can boast a sound track that includes Orbital, The Orb, Led Zeppelin, Death in Vegas and Nightmares on Wax amongst others. This was a very funky school play and for my efforts in scoring it, I received a credit in the programme. Hoorah!

It looked wicked too. The million or so Oompa-Lumpa’s strutted in varying sizes in vividly coloured satin look pyjama things that looked like they cost a fortune. In fact they cost less than a dinar each due to a combination of exploitative working practices and, well I was going to find some other phrase to pair it with, but really exploitative working practices pretty much covers it. The fabric will have been produced in sweat shop factories with no windows or breaks for lunch where the employees must ask to leave their station, even to go to the loo – I just wrote bathroom, and then changed it, I have been hanging out with too many Americans, and too many other people that aspire to being so; must change that. And said fabric was then fashioned by Indian tailors who work quickly and with out fuss for probably less than a dinar an hour; the only recognition of their supreme skill with a needle and thread, with shears and Singer is the American cigarette that will be perpetually clamped between lips or bony fingers.

We were talking last night about maids and about how no one at home as maids. Yes, people have help, they may even have someone live in to look after the kids, but they are in the minority. Certainly a teacher would not have a live-in maid that would effectively raise the kids. We concluded that the only reason for this was that in the UK, such an entity is far too costly for the majority of people because there, they would have to be paid properly. Over here, such considerations are merely piffle and need not apply. But then, they earn more here than they do at home. So is it ok to exploit someone as long as you are paying them more than they could earn at home? And if it is, how come I have been suckered into working far harder than I ever did at home, for considerably less money? Probably because I am an idiot. One that believes that enjoying your work is reward enough. Doozer!

Anyway – the clock has just passed 8 and still no sign of Heidi. Why would she be up this early on a weekend I hear you say. Well, what you have to bear in mind that even this diminutive hour is three hours after her normal rising time. And three hours is a long lie in by anyone’s standards. Not mine, obviously. But I like sleep. I have become known in this house – amongst other things – as Timmy Three Sleeps in reference to a sometime habit of returning to bed for naps at various impasses throughout the day. I like sleep, and need it because I am a growing boy.

The kids were all mic’d up last night and at certain points you could here their unrestrained excitement backstage when they had forgotten to switch them off. It was sweet and Heidi should be very proud of herself for what she has done for these kids. The thing about school plays is that although they are hard work they are also fun, but what the kids don’t realise – and never should because it would break the spell – is that they are learning things in the production process that will be valuable to them later on. Teachers don’t give up their lives in pursuit of play, they do it because they know the secret: that on stage, you can be anyone and if you can imagine who you want to be and practice it there, then you have laid the foundations for getting there in life. The kids looked happy to me, and proud of what they had done. These are things that you cannot learn in class, cannot read or find on the internet, you have to do it. People like Heidi should be commended for giving them chance to see who they are.

(whispered: have I just said that theatre has a purpose, that it is not a dead and irrelevant art form? I may well have done, but if you repeat it, I will deny it)

In other news. There was a sandstorm here last weekend. We woke to the strange chemical light of a distant sun revealed as the precarious giver of life that it is, blocked out almost entirely as it was by tonnes of sand raised up from the earth in Saudi and transported on light Gulf winds across the sea to the tiny island of Bahrain. (This last sentence was supposed to be killer, as it is, I can’t be arsed and it is merely filler.) But it was weird man, to see a sun so strong effectively muffled by dust. The heat remained but the world was slowed. Visibility was down to metres and swatches of dust were swept across highways like ribbons at the end of a giant’s kids party and settled on every flat surface making the whole country look grubby and cheap like it was made of plastic and had been abandoned in a recent upgrade. But it didn’t stay long – it was gone by afternoon and it didn’t really impact on anyone’s lives other than the car washers who had a boon the following day.

That afternoon we went to the British club. It is a very off place filled with a strange combination of pioneering colonial types who have been here forever, people like us – in their late 20’s or thirties and here just to have lived in another country – and young blokes, either the kids of pioneering expats who here just to work hard and make money. There are also kids there. But it is a nice place and I got a wicked plate of roast beef including Yorkshire pudding that neither soggy, nor made by Aunt Bessie’s fair hand. And the bar and its restaurants are subsidized by the members’ dues. As guests, this makes it very very cheap. Hooray!

Our flat has been redone. In place of the hideous brown carpet we now have tiles. It looks great and it means that we can now see all the cat hair that the doozers moult instead of wading through it after becoming meshed with the pile and rising.

And I am off to Yemen soon. Work are sending me, or rather no-one else can be arsed to go and there is a freebie going so I get it. I’m not really sure what to expect. And I am not really sure how much time I will get to explore. It is being arranged by the Yemeni tourist board with Accor hotels so I am guessing that it will be a case of hotel, bus touristy thing, dinner. Which will be fine and they will obviously be written up very favourably. But I will be gutted if I don’t get to explore a bit on my own and find some qat.

Note to bruv: remember that stuff we used to get from the chill out bar at tripolis – I am going to its spiritual home.

I haven’t seen the itinerary yet, but there are three Accor hotels in Yemen in the different cities. So I’m guessing that means three cities in five days. And Yemen isn’t small. So I have a horrible I will see a lot of country, but through the window of a bus. O well. If I do get any time to myself, I plan to write two articles; one for the magazine and advertiser friendly, to say thank you for the trip and another, more interesting one that Paula – who used to write for Marie Claire and Vogue in Italy and the Netherlands – will help me sell in the civilised world.

Watch this space.

Heidi is up now – and talking about phonics.

As such, that’s it for now. Take it easy y’all.

BIG love

XxX

O yes, pictures of the play and others will be uploaded on Sunday