Dubai Summer Part II: The Escapee

Amanda is excited beyond words; she is leaving Dubai at the end of June and not returning until sometime mid-September – the longest ‘sabbatical’ she has wangled to date.   Although, annoyingly, she hasn’t been able to persuade their maid to accompany her this time; Latchme has never quite recovered from the copious dog hair and freezing temperatures of the in-laws’ farm in Scotland last summer.  How on earth she’s going to cope with two children on her own until her other half comes over is beyond her but she supposes that everyone has their cross to bear.  However, this inconvenience hasn’t dampened her spirits enough to stop her reminding her friends exactly how many days she has left until she leaves the ghastly Dubai sauna.

It doesn’t take long nevertheless for the dream to fade.  Forced to fly BA rather than Emirates, Amanda finds herself having to look after her own children for the whole flight meaning she arrives feeling like a wrung-out flannel, with a large coffee stain covering her crotch.  Having looked forward to the wonderful smells of fresh nature she so misses in her own country, her senses are assaulted by the airport’s heady odour of bodily fluids while she queues for hours to be accepted into her home country.  When her passport is given a very skeptical and thorough examination by a clearly eastern-European woman, it’s only the sheer size of the inspector’s girth that stops her thumping her fist on the desk and holding forth on her rights as a citizen of this country, etc. etc.

Finally Amanda is on the road and, despite waiting at a petrol station a good 15 minutes before realising she has to get out and fill the tank herself, her spirits are beginning to rise.  Unaware of the many offended drivers whom she carves up, undertakes and forgets to thank for giving way, Amanda dreams about the first supermarket shop and buying all the things she’s missed for the past year.  She will have to pack her own bags though, she thinks with a grimace, and considers whether she can persuade her mother and father to accompany her.  Her children stare open-mouthed out of the window as the rain starts to come down – a look they will adopt for most of the summer.  The novelty wears off for them fairly quickly after the first few attempts to go outside are hampered by having to spend at least ½ hour putting on damp boots, hats, coats and gloves.  (They are both so scarred after the trip to the local swimming baths that all requests to go for a swim stop fairly abruptly after that).

Indeed, after only a few weeks back in her homeland, even Amanda is beginning to feel the strain.  Time with both sets of parents is taking a considerable toll on her marriage and her friends’ only question about her life concerns when she is returning home and how she copes with living in such a materialistic and shallow hellhole.  Amanda smiles politely but she’s miles away; she’s dreaming about returning to the sun, a celebratory mani-pedi and a welcome home hug from Latchme.

Dubai Summer Part I: The sufferer

After four years of living in the ‘car park in the desert’ as she refers to it, Sarah is still in denial about the 5 months of the year in which she finds herself totally incapacitated.  Similar to the hormone released after child-birth that sees millions of women forget labour and decide to have more children, the winter months seem to eradicate her memory of the previous summer and she is therefore flabbergasted and outraged every May when life in this part of the world becomes, well… uncomfortable.  This year she is particularly upset as, not only is she dealing with the usual steamed-up sunglasses, permanent sweaty pits and bloated ankles but she also now has thigh-chafing to add to the list of complaints.  (Thankfully someone has posted about it on her favourite forum so she knows she is not alone).

One recent bonus has been her husband’s decision, after much haranguing, to hire a dog-walker, so Sarah no longer has to get up at 5am to stand awkwardly on a patch of sand while their pooch performs the morning ritual.  However, she has not managed to find a ‘child-walker’ and with the exception of the mornings spent at the mind-blowingly expensive summer camps, she finds herself at a loss at how to entertain her offspring without causing herself any discomfort.  Yesterday’s trip to Teeny-Terrors (what was so ‘teeny’ about those uncontrolled, sugar-fuelled, screaming giants?) was one of the worst indoor soft-play experiences to date.  While trying to rescue her youngest from a ball-pit after he had disappeared for a worrying length of time and desperately trying to ignore the wet, squishy feeling between her toes, her eldest appeared with what appeared to be some other child’s vomit all over her dress, after she realised only too late that the previous entrant to the neon-coloured tunnel had endured an unhappy trip.  Removing a chip from her son’s nostril and wondering how she would ever rid herself and her children of the smell of fried food, Sarah decided to surrender and head home, only to find her shoes had been given to someone else and she was now the proud owner of a pair of pink Crocs complete with Hello Kitty charms.

Life wouldn’t be quite so bad however if she and her children weren’t all suffering from streaming colds having endured Dubai’s altogether less pleasant version of a Finnish spa procedure: running the car-to-building gauntlet. Leaving behind the dank furnace of the mall car parks to enter the sub-zero climates of the malls inevitably results in a shivering cold-sweat.  As a result, Sarah is wiping noses like she were back in the UK in January (what she wouldn’t give for a walk in the pissing rain and biting wind!) and making enough trips to the doctor’s for the receptionists to greet her on a first-name basis.  Typically her own air-conditioning is programmed to break-down on a Thursday night, forcing them to look for alternative cooling measures to survive the weekend and commit retail hara-kiri: Carrefour on a Friday afternoon. 

In Sarah’s mind, there is only one upside to this miserable time of year… FINALLY, she doesn’t have any bloody visitors.

The Campers

For their friends, it is a constant source of wonder and amazement that Brian and Debbie Fine’s marriage has survived the various camping ‘adventures’ that they have embarked on over the years in Dubai.  Brian can’t get enough of it; a man who could never be outdone on kit, camping provides the perfect opportunity to spend a vast amount of money on totally useless items, which he swears are ‘invaluable’.  He laughs off his friends who refer to him as ‘Brian: all the gear, no idea’ while searching through his Explorer library for any gadget he might have missed or not had the chance to update.  Poor Debbie meanwhile laughingly refers to herself as a ‘Glamper’ while desperately trying to ignore the feeling of rising bile that occurs every time Brian proposes another ‘expedition’ (“It’s Fine dear, not Fiennes…”)

Debbie was originally quite excited when Brian suggested they take their first camping trip.  The name ‘Big Red’ sounded so romantic and Debbie couldn’t wait to watch the sun melt over the glowing dunes while enjoying a G&T.  How wonderfully colonial!  Sadly, a wrong turning near Dragon Mart meant that they arrived as the sun was going down and had to set up camp in the dark, stumbling over one another and cursing at the dunes.  Debbie didn’t need any light to know that her chicken drumstick was charcoaled on the outside but was thankful she couldn’t see how raw it was inside.  She was slightly preoccupied by how she was going to remove the sand that she knew had managed to lodge itself in places only the guy from that infamous Ibiza holiday of ‘92 was aware of.  Brian meanwhile tried his best to point out some constellations while shouting over the roar of quad-bikes that seemed to be attempting their own version of a military tattoo around the Fine’s campsite.  This episode did nothing to quell Brian’s camping desires however and, in an attempt to avoid the quad bikers, their next trip was planned for the oasis known as Hatta Pools.  This time even Debbie was prepared – she had brought an inflatable mattress, a duvet and the feather pillows from her bed plus a pair of trusty earplugs.  She tried hard to hide her disappointment when the place failed to live up to its name and a stagnant festering puddle greeted them instead. Even Brian couldn’t withstand the flying rubbish and bizarrely static flies that seemed to sit on every single surface despite the mad swatting.  He tried hard to cheer up his grim-looking wife by suggesting they retreat to the Hatta Fort Hotel but two flat tires on the way home meant that Brian was denied any form of affection for at least a month.

Their latest trip is to Liwa, where even Debbie has been persuaded they will escape to a desert sanctuary.  Brian decides not to mention the potential to spot a sand cat to his wife, despite his own excitement.  He stands happily by the barbeque, talking his friends through the various implements in his travelling BBQ toolkit while simultaneously blinding them with his head torch.  They’ve already endured a half-hour display of his new GPS system and hydraulic winch.  Later he will thrill them all by breaking out the guitar and howling, eyes-closed, a slightly repetitive attempt at ‘Wonderwall’.  Debbie on the other hand sees drink as the only way to cope with the evening - a decision she will come to regret heavily the next morning on waking at 5am to the boiling sun and a miserable 6 year-old who needs to do a poo.  A lone camel appears to be munching through their only loo roll and, as Debbie is forced to use her copy of Ahlan! as an alternative, she repeats to herself the well-rehearsed mantra: “Never again.  Never again.”

The A*sehole

You can tell a lot about Dick by the car he drives.  A matt black pick-up that appears to have taken steroids, even its headlights appear menacing.  At some point in his unremarkable past, Dick was probably a fairly decent driver but sadly, along with many other residents, he seems to have been infected with a highly contagious brain disorder that claims many as its victims if they live too long in this country.  Resulting in powerful delusions of supremacy and a disregard for standard road practice, the disease has ramifications for many: it is fair to say that on every journey that Dick takes, he offends, horrifies and even terrifies some poor innocent road user.  Sometimes his actions lead to hilarity, although this is more often than not because the victim is dangerously close to a nervous breakdown.

One could never accuse Dick of being a boring driver.  On the contrary, his actions on the road are chameleon-like depending on Dick’s mood.  If in a rush, Dick likes to nuzzle up behind the driver in front, gently tickling their back bumper and providing a disco-effect with his headlights until they become aware that his needs are vastly more important than theirs and move out of the way.   Unfortunately his heavily tinted windows make it impossible for them to communicate their feelings to him when they eventually catch up with him at the next traffic lights.  And they always catch up with him – there are too many traffic lights not to.  However, should Dick be on his mobile on the motorway for example, he likes to keep a steady 90km/hr in the lane beside the fast-lane, impervious to drivers who are forced to over-take or under-take, depending on how invincible they’re feeling.  Dick has yet to be introduced to his indicators – pointless things really – and prefers the warm glow of his hazard lights, which he likes to use to let all the blind people on the road know if it is foggy.  Such a considerate fellow!

‘Two-bay Dick’ would never be satisfied with one parking space and opts for the double park in order to preserve the paintwork on his pick-up (the back of which has never been used to transport anything of any size or shape – could scratch it).  Sometimes though, he likes to seek out cars owned by pregnant women or people with children and park right beside their doors making it impossible to gain entry.  Perhaps he likes the thought of them performing some one-player version of Twister as they try to get to their seat through another entrance.  What a lark!  They should be grateful that he chose to park in a bay at all, when he could have just left his car outside the entrance of the shop as he likes to do on occasion – engine running, stereo on.  Apparently Dick was never taught that sound-systems in cars are for the personal enjoyment of the passengers and should not be shared with pedestrians or other drivers who feel their seats vibrate as he passes them.  On exiting a car-park, usually via the entry, Dick pulls out slowly in front of on-coming traffic while hooting loudly at the car in front who is in his way.  Probably a local, he seethes; NO idea how to drive.

The Royal Wedding Brunch

If she were honest, Babs Shirley has been planning this day since she was a little girl.  Her house is an explosion of patriotic colours, the Coronation chicken is in the fridge (the full red wine recipe of course) and there is a mountain of Union Jack cupcakes threatening to topple off her dining room table at any minute.  Wearing a slightly-too-tight ‘I love WillKat’ strappy vest with one of the lucky couple plastered over each bosom and a tiara that she stole from her daughter’s dressing-up cupboard, she is jittering around her house in the Springs in a buzz of excitement while her husband (American) and children (Mid-Atlantic) watch on bemused.  Babs is feeling exceptionally British today and really quite smug about it; there’s no other country that pulls off pomp and ceremony with such class and humility after all.  With that proud thought in her mind, she flicks through the Royal Wedding playlist on her i-Pod and decides to kick start the event with Paul Potts’ booming rendition of ‘Rule Britannia’.

Some of her guests arrive later than expected having once again mistaken one of her neighbours’ houses for hers but Babs’ is unaware.  Once the ceremony starts she sits two feet from the television with a stream of tears running down her face and a tissue pressed over her slightly gaping mouth.  Her guests help themselves to ‘W&K’ sausage rolls, while Babs sighs and puts her hand on her chest every time she catches a glimpse of one of the royals.  She appears to be in competition with Kay Burley in her search for cliché-ridden hyperboles and is quite choked at the thought of Diana watching from on high.  It is only when one of her neighbours starts holding forth that Babs is silenced.  Linda Smedley-Jones, an ex-contributor to Debrett’s by the sounds of it, spends most of the afternoon pointing out ‘friends’ in the congregation, expostulating at the sight of someone called Bunty from back home (‘How on EARTH did she get invited?  MUST have been pony club!’) and tearing to shreds every outfit to enter the church.  The lunch guests are lectured on why it’s ‘ghastly’ that David Beckham is wearing his OBE and why William isn’t in a suit and doesn’t wear a ring (very American don’t you know?)  Babs only starts to smile again when another guest leans forward and whispers in her ear that Linda is ‘far more Carol than Camilla’.

Meanwhile, in the garden, a group of husbands sweat around the barbeque, where a loud man called Rob drones on about the ‘bunch of scroungers’ and their ‘stupid, jumped-up, posh wedding’.  Andy, who is desperate to get inside and watch the ceremony, decides against explaining the royals’ tireless work for charity and their contribution to the UK tourist industry at the cost of a mere 70p a year to the taxpayer whilst pummelling Rob’s ignorant tax-dodging head on the ground, and instead chews grimly on a toothpick loaded with cheese and pineapple.  Luckily for him, the arrival of the sister in that dress draws the men in from the garden like lambs, thus avoiding any violence.

By the end of the day, Babs’ is a soggy mess, dabbing her eyes with her imported Daily Mail souvenir dishcloth. She looks wistfully at the red, white and blue bunting (specially made in Satwa) fluttering in the air-conditioning and is struck with a brain-wave...  Why it’s Independence Day in a month or two isn’t it?  They will be used again!