Double deal: On having two homes

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There’s something I should reveal about expats in Dubai: we lead double lives.

Most of the year is spent in our adopted country, the place where we’ve made good friends, the kids go to school and we work, have pets and own a 4by4. And you can feel perfectly happy and settled there, until July – when you realise you could probably fry an egg on your car so off you go on your long summer sojourn to your other home.

During this time in the motherland, I’m always reminded just how much I love seeing family and old friends, how much I enjoy cooler air, greenery, more effective customer service, and people who understand what I’m saying.

There’s an initial period of adjustment, of course. A kind of reverse culture shock, where you have to get used to looking the other way to cross the road, taking a brolly ‘just in case’, knowing only two people in your childhood town and feeling a bit disconnected. But once you’ve settled in, your old life fits like a glove (helped along by the fact you’re there in summer not winter and everyone’s happy to see you after so long).

This means that, however much you enjoy the country you’ve moved to and also call ‘home’, returning to it after an extended holiday always evokes mixed emotions. As the plane takes off, you look forward to getting back to your own space, re-instating old (and easier) routines and no longer living out of a suitcase.

But there’s also sadness at leaving and guilt, too, because you’re taking the kids away from loving grandparents and extended family. You know you’ll miss family get-togethers and that Facebook doesn’t make up for not being there in person when things happen at home.

The exhilaration and impossibleness of cramming a year’s worth of socialising into one or two evenings with your oldest and dearest friends also leaves you wanting more.

Unless you’re a frequent flyer who jet sets regularly from one home to another, transitioning from one country to the other is never as easy as you think it should be.

Dubai International Airport: The first clue that everything's super-sized

Landing in Dubai after a prolonged stay away is also the only time you see the city through a tourist’s eye. The cavernous, marble-floored airport, with its elevators the size of my first flat, wall of water and endless shopping. The heat and humidity that hit you as you step outside. The crazy drivers on the six-lane highways and, outside our compound, the sandy dunes that stretch for as far as the eye can see, punctuated by desert shrubs and the odd tree.

Seeing camels by the roadside is a novelty again – as is coming across a bus shelter that looks like this:

Comfort zone: One of the city's air-conditioned, enclosed bus shelters, although if the air-con doesn't work they tend to turn into roadside ovens

The contrast between the two countries couldn’t be greater and it takes a few days to reacclimatise – to get back in the saddle. But soon it should cool down, and with some precious memories from the summer and the kids back to school today after the epic 11-week holiday, it feels good to be home with DH.

My hat trick on the airplane

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You may have noticed that BB wore the same hat all summer long.

It’s a mini pilot’s hat that we bought while living in the States.

He’s never really shown much interest in it until now and had only worn it once before, when we went trick-or-treating in the US.

But this summer he became so attached to it, he’d hang it on his bed post and, every time he got up in the middle of the night, would actually remember to put it on.

His hair underneath has even moulded semi-permanently to the shape of the hat and now forms a quiff at the front that I think looks quite cool, though DH isn’t so sure.

Since he’s never become attached to an object before, I did wonder if it was because he was missing his Dad during our five-week sojourn. How sweet, I thought, imagining it was a link to DH, whose busy flying schedule meant he was working out of Dubai for most of the summer.

But then we found out the real reason.

“Will the hat be coming back to Dubai?” enquired my mother one evening.

“Yes,” he replied adamantly. “There are birds in Dubai too.”

“Birds?”

“Yes, I don’t want them to poo on my head,” he said, almost shuddering at the thought.

Turns out that, despite laughing at his brother at the time, he’d been quite disturbed when we found a bird dropping in LB’s hair earlier in the holiday.

I did tell him that it’s actually good luck if a bird dropping lands on you, but, no, the hat’s staying on apparently.

Until a little incident on the plane ride home almost landed me in deep trouble.

It was all going really well, thanks to a very noisy baby nearby who actually made my two look quiet. So there I was, basking – for the first time in five years – in the glory of being the mother of the less disruptive children, when BB handed me the hat for a minute to put his headset on – and I lost it.

Somehow, due to being sandwiched between two boys, three meal trays and all our in-flight paraphernalia, I’d totally lost track of it. We searched everywhere. BB crawled on the floor. I got down on my hands and knees too. But to no avail.

BB thought he might have left it in the toilet, so checked every single loo on board. I asked a flight attendant if it had been handed in, but she didn’t quite catch what I was saying and thought I was after the captain’s hat as a freebie.

Until, finally – after landing – a lady three rows behind suddenly produced it. How it got back there, I’ve no idea, but, luckily, it let me off the hook and BB’s avian coprophobia (fear of bird poop – I know this, because, ever the journalist, I looked it up) is being kept under his hat.

Did Saudi spot the moon too soon?

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With the UAE returning to work today (Sunday) following the Eid holidays, I’m hoping I’ll have better luck chasing some of my late payers for the bits and pieces of freelance work I’ve done lately.

I had a go at getting paid during Ramadan, the quiet month of fasting, during which workers enjoyed reduced hours, and was told, ‘Sorry we took three weeks to get back to you, everyone’s tired.’

Not surprising, I suppose. But now that it’s business as usual, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the staff at this particular company are in a more productive mood.

Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, started last Tuesday, after the Moon-Sighting Committee spotted the new crescent moon.

Rather like Christmas or Thanksgiving, it’s a celebratory time for Muslims, with gifts, good food and family visits. Homes are decked out with lights and this year there were fireworks, concerts, carnivals and magic shows.

But, unlike British or American holidays, you never quite know when the days off are going to fall – because Islamic holidays such as Eid that are based on the sighting of the moon are not announced until the night before. Which is why towards the end of Ramadan you’ll find me and my friends gazing skywards going ‘C’mon moon! We know you’re there.’ For workers, you literally leave the office not knowing if you’ll be back the next day.

This year, Saudi Arabia announced the start of Eid at around 8.15pm on Monday evening, with the UAE following suit shortly after. Interestingly, though, there’s an unconfirmed rumour that the Saudis got the timing wrong. Some people are questioning whether the Saudi Moon-Sighting Committee in fact mistook Saturn for the crescent moon.

If this is true or not, I don’t know, as I also read that these days the calculations are done largely by computer, rather than by eye, and that neighbouring countries work together to agree on when holidays are declared. Whether Eid did kick off a day early or not, I hope all our Muslim friends enjoyed the festivities!

A treat for our taste buds
Over here in England, I’ve been in a celebratory mood, too, with the climax of my holiday – my oldest and dearest friend’s 40th birthday. She invited us to ‘tumble down the rabbit hole’ with her at a Mad Hatter’s tea party at a London hotel and I wanted to include a photo as it was truly a gastronomic adventure.

The hazelnut praline ice cream lollipops literally exploded in our mouths and the blueberry lollipops were designed to turn your tongue from hot to cold. But the best thing was the bizarre concoction in the enticing-looking bottle labelled ‘Drink Me’. Each sip actually delivered a totally different taste, starting with apple pie, then turning to lemon curd, and ending with English toffee.

We went from this wonderful potion to a cocktail-making lesson later, followed by cocktail drinking and merriment. A great night and a fantastic end to my English summer.

Back to the sandpit
Today I’m packing for sandier pastures and remembering how travel is so much easier if you’re five and don’t have to think about anything. BB appeared with the most enormous box of Lego, thinking it would miraculously transport itself back to Dubai. So I’ve given him his own suitcase to carry, which he WILL be responsible for!

Meanwhile, my mind is boggling at all the passports I’m juggling – look at this ridiculous number, and these are just mine and the kids’ (citizens of both the US and the UK). So if you hear about a tired-looking blonde with two small boys holding up the queue in the arrivals hall at Dubai airport tomorrow, that’ll be me.

One or two are expired but still have valid visas in them, so I need to keep tabs on the lot.

Boys’ toys and vintage memories

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I was so impressed on holiday when my seven-year-old niece was given a kit of interlocking pieces and managed to keep all the bits together – apart from two segments that were duly searched for and located.

Lego bricks: Still popular after 79 years

Having produced two unruly boys, our toy boxes are a mish-mash of broken pieces, bashed-up trains and planes, crashed cars, severed Lego heads and stray batteries.

I do go through their vast toy collection from time to time and try to sift out the debris, but it’s a losing battle – the pieces seem to breed and I’m forever finding broken axles and airplane parts scattered around the house.

I can’t remember the last time we did a puzzle that had all the pieces. If a toy does happen to be in good condition, it’s probably because it’s ‘too boring’ to play with.

Then there’s the ‘creative’ way they use objects that aren’t toys at all: I’d already mentioned how, on a previous visit to England, oldest son rolled the living room pouffe everywhere pretending it was a boulder. On another visit, he hung mum’s entire silk scarf collection over the stairs, fashionably arranged as make-believe snakes.

Today, he found a novel use for a garden tent and raced around the garden with it on his head in a Dalek-like manner.

An antique when I was little, this rocking horse must be 100 years old!

All this brings me to something I do enjoy while staying at my parents’. My mum keeps everything, and while I may get frustrated when the drawers are full to the brim, I just love it when she pulls out my old toys.

There’s the antique rocking horse, my old china tea-set, wooden recorder, the Jack-in-the-box (which scared the living daylights out of BB when he was little!), my brother’s wooden train that you pull along by string, original Mr Men books, and my dolls’ house with electric lights (now used by my boys as parking space for the lead-paint-covered veteran matchbox cars that were actually ‘Made in England’).

The model railway in the garage: Dad

But the thing train-mad BB loves most at our British abode is my Dad’s model train set, which dates back to the 60s. It now takes up the whole garage and BB can disappear in there for hours. And when he’s had enough in the garage, he comes outside to be the not-so-fat controller of the steam train running on Dad’s garden railway.

I was sure that somewhere in the attic there would be a Girl’s World circa 1982 – the styling head that gave me hours of make-over fun (and one of the most inspiring toys a girl could own back then!) – but I just found out she’s no more because I chopped all her hair off when I was nine. And there was me thinking that little girls always play nicely!

Operating the garden railway

A revelation: On discovering that people can be any age, shape or size

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Silver expats don

BB has noticed, since being in England, that there are a large number of grannies who aren’t just on a two-week holiday, but actually live here.

It’s a reminder that society in Dubai is sharply skewed towards younger people: families with small kids, older children and teens, and 20-somethings who’ve moved to Dubai to work hard and play hard at the city’s bars and beach clubs.

There are no communities of grey-haired grannies living the good life in Dubai. Aside from issues such as the high cost of living, frenetic pace of life and the heat, it’s tricky to obtain a residency visa once you’re 60 years old. So expats in the UAE have two choices: to repatriate to their home country or become a ‘rebound expat’ and choose another country, such as Cyprus, Spain or Portugal, in which to retire.

So it’s always nice – and very refreshing – to see the full range of society on our trips to England. And that leads me to something else BB has spotted: the fact that there are a fair few people here who are, shall we say, rather portly.

Dubai, in comparison, is geared up for thin people, from the smaller clothing sizes for the Asian worker population to the size10 svelte image aspired to by Jumeirah Janes.

JJ might even consider surgery to keep up with the ladies she lunches with three times a week

In an attempt to lose some baby weight, I joined a Weight Watchers-type group in the UAE and as we sat sipping skinny lattes in the Art Cafe, I realised it was the slimmest group of slimmers I’d ever seen. I swear no-one was bigger than a size 14.

The downside of BB realising that obesity is common in the UK is he’s also noticed my still-not-what-it-once-was tummy.

“Is there a baby inside?” he asked the other day, his eyes wide with horror.

“Nooooooo,” I screeched indignantly. “Absolutely not. Never. Ever. Again.”

He blames the fact I don’t race around the whole time pretending to be a train, like he does. I blame my mum’s delicious apple and raspberry crumble, with custard of course, which I’ve become rather partial to this holiday.

So, now, because it’s so light in the evenings here, I do what BB calls my evening exercise. I don my exercise shoes – not quite trainers but shoes I can power walk in – and do two laps round the park. It’s not much, but I’m hoping it’ll keep me from acquiring slummy mummy status while on my summer hols.

Soaking up the greenery in Royal Windsor

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Today was a British bank holiday Sunday, complete with heavy rain showers and crowds of people off work. Just how I remember such weekends.

We found ourselves at Windsor Great Park, the Queen’s back garden. DH, though not with us, was very much in my thoughts because he’s always telling me that Windsor, the picturesque setting of the royal family’s Windsor Castle, is practically joined to nearby Slough, a sprawling town he remembers fondly from childhood.

The reality is Slough is ‘da hood’ that Ali G pokes fun of and the suburban location of the comedy series The Office. But since DH is always trying to find excuses for us to visit Slough, I usually nod in agreement.

But back to Windsor, this afternoon we found a gem amid the beauty of the royal park. The Savill Garden is well worth a visit, even if, like me, your knowledge of garden plants stops at daffodils and daisies.

The boys ran through the hidden, interlocking gardens with wild abandon while I enjoyed a greenery fix. We followed the sculpture trail and couldn’t quite believe the price tag on this stainless steel eagle: £16,670 (that’s US$27,230)!

Some elderly folk, who were coo-ing over a baby girl, only looked mildly aghast when oldest son screeched through the otherwise quiet glasshouse in express train mode, and my green-fingered mother managed to keep her scissors in her bag: she famously took a cutting from a plant while attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace with my father and actually managed to grow it in our garden!

So nice is the Royal Borough of Windsor it made me want to move there. But, alas, we’d never be able to afford it.

Oh well, there’s always Slough. It’s more or less merged with Windsor, you know.

I even stopped to smell the roses!

INSOMNIA: What thoughts run through your mind in the dead of night?

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Two-year-olds – could they be any more mercurial?

One minute full of joy and laughter, the next minute angry tears rolling down their red-hot faces as frustration takes hold.

LB had a terrible tantrum yesterday. Everyone else went off on an errand, leaving him and me behind. To say he was devastated is not an exaggeration. He flung himself at the front door, his little fingers clinging to the letter box, and screamed like a banshee for a good 30 minutes.

The only thing that stopped his uncontrollable sobbing was spending the next half an hour standing by the road waiting for the car to come back.

Then, last night, he had another treat in store for me. I’ve mentioned before that he’s not a good sleeper. In LB’s case, it’s not a run-of-the-mill night-time disturbance that’s easily dealt with. He wakes up with full-blown insomnia and it keeps us both up for a couple of hours while he tosses and turns.

It’s really very annoying – and tiring.

Here are some of the random thoughts that went through my mind in the small hours last night, after my mum (who has also been getting up in the night, bless her) deposited a wide-awake LB in my room:

– “In the morning I’ll google diseases that make small children wriggle so much at night.”

– “Has my sister-in-law forgiven me?”

– “Should I get a proper job?”

– “Maybe I should research little-known reasons for night-time fidgeting right now. My iPhone’s by the bed.”

– “Why are beds in England so narrow? This double bed is only just big enough for LB and me. Someone – probably me – is going to end up on the floor.”

– “I wonder if my sister-in-law got my email. Perhaps it got lost.”

– “Is it worth trying to go back to Dubai via Nice and get DH to meet us there? I wouldn’t have to do the long Dubai flight by myself with the kids.”

– If LB goes to sleep in the next half hour and it takes me another half an hour to get to sleep after that, I’ll get another three hours’ sleep. That’ll be ok.”

– “I really had better research what wriggling could be a symptom of right now. Or would LB just want to play games on my iPhone?”

– “We could take the Eurostar to Paris. BB would love that. And do Eurodisney. Could I face it? How crowded would it be at this time of year?”

– “Oh god, it’s 5.06am. STOP fidgeting and GO TO SLEEP!”

– “Should I give him medicine?”

– “Perhaps my brother’s cross with me too?”

– “What should I buy my best friend for her 40th birthday. Crikey, I can’t believe we’re turning 40. How did that happen? Weren’t we just teenagers?”

– “DON’T kick me! You just nearly gave me a nose bleed.”

– “Why isn’t LB talking in sentences? He’s nearly three. When my friend’s boy was three he could read the health and safety notice at nursery. That’s amazing.”

– “I wish I lived closer to this friend. It’s been so nice seeing old friends with shared history while in England.”

– “Oh no, is that light creeping round the curtains? I’m not in the mood for the bloody birds to start chirr-uping.”

– “Should we try counting sheep together? 1-2-3. No, it’s just bonus stimulation time for him. Can I remember anything from that baby yoga class?”

– “If I had a proper job, I wouldn’t be in such a mess with my invoicing.”

– “He’s sleeping – at last! Only lightly, but he’s lying still. Now I just have to get myself to sleep. Right here goes.”

– “What if Catherine the Great doesn’t come back to us after her vacation in the Philippines?”

– “Can’t sleep. The edge of the bed is really uncomfortable and I daren’t move for fear of waking him. Feeling panicked about getting to sleep now.”

– “Omg, what will I do if Catherine doesn’t come back?”

– “Oh no, I can hear people going to work.”

– “Should I give myself some medicine?”

– “Agggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

This post was inspired by the very talented Mrs Dubai.
Image courtesy of animalclipart.net

Extreme Shopping: Could Brits in Dubai become copy-cat rioters?

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Picture the scene: looters running across the marble floor of the Mall of the Emirates, heading for Harvey Nicks. When done there, making their way across the city on the Metro to rampage around the Dubai Mall, helping themselves to cushions and lampshades at Galleries Lafayette. Then hot footing it to the Gold Souk for some free bling.

It doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?

I was fascinated to read today that a top UAE police official has warned that “What happens in Britain could happen here,” citing the large expatriate worker population.

He went on to tell Reuters that Dubai police were monitoring social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook for signs of attempts to organise protests or strikes.

Now, nothing has appeared on my Facebook wall yet and I doubt it will because my Dubai friends are either too busy entertaining their kids during the long summer holiday, or are travelling at the moment – and the last time I looked, none of my friends in the UAE were sporting hoodies.

If there are any troublesome Brits looking for a fight in Dubai (you do go totally stir crazy indoors over the summer, after all), they should read up on the Dubai Police first. As Annabel Kantaria, one of my favourite bloggers at Expat Telegraph, points out: it may be a coincidence, but since the London riots, the English-language media in Dubai has published a slew of articles on the Dubai Police, including how they’re equipped to deal with any riots and how, if negotiation fails, they have special electric truncheons that can stun up to 100 people at a time.

Wow, we’ve been warned!

Certainly, the expat community in Dubai is huge: 80 per cent of the population, in fact. But to think that hooligan Brits might start rioting in the UAE is rather far-fetched. To put it bluntly, chavs don’t move to Dubai, and with year-round sunshine, a tax-free salary and so many other benefits to the ‘expat lifestyle’, most Brits in Dubai are perfectly content with their lot.

This is not to say that there aren’t people in Dubai who would, with good reason, revolt. Asian labourers, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, have held strikes in the past over poor wages and bad conditions. But British teenagers breaking off from their tennis lessons and pool parties to have a pop, I don’t think so.

Quite tempting, no?

Gold Souk credit: http://www.dubai-information-site.com

Wildest Wales: We survived!

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Five adults, four young children – all related – sharing a holiday home in a remote part of North Wales. What could possibly go wrong?

The adults sipping wine, watching on as the children play happily in a grassy field. Long walks through beautiful countryside and tired kids falling into bed at the end of the day.

Well, no. Not exactly.

But it was, mostly, lovely, and everyone enjoyed our time en masse.

I discovered, however, that being taken to deepest Wales at least 10 times while growing up in no way prepares you for going as a grown-up and having to think about things that never even cross our minds in Dubai, like wellies, water-proofs, fleeces and socks. Things that, in North Wales, stop your kids from getting hyperthermia. Things that my mum, thankfully, remembered every time I forgot.

Here are some more important lessons I learnt (and sorry to my friends on the blogosphere for some repetition here, it’s all still sinking in!):

>• The road trip there is short by American standards, but long when you factor in the whining from the back, Shaun the Sheep on a loop on the DVD and Electronic Eddie’s devious short cuts along winding mountain roads so narrow they only fit one car.

>• You’ll need to pack at least five bags for every outing to carry the necessary wet-weather gear, plus spares of everything – and, even then, your kids will end up in their swimming stuff (the only dry clothes left) for the ride home. Spare pairs of wellies are also a good idea because when water comes over the top, they take a week to dry.

That's MY bed! (but since you're both so cute and quiet when sleeping, I'll have to forgive you)

>• The kids (mine) will not happily settle into a routine of a set bedtime and 12 hours’ sleep. They’ll go to bed late, join you in bed and get up early with excitement. By the end of the week, you’ll be on your knees with sleep deprivation. The younger one will power nap in the car while everyone else holds onto their seats on those mountain passes, then he’ll wake up thinking it’s morning and keep going for hours. His delight at all the farmyard animals will go a long way towards making up for this, though.

>• You’ll marvel at your brother’s kids, who go to bed when told, get dressed when told, don’t snack, eat their meals and walk for ages without a whimper – both utterly lovable kids who are a joy to have around. But you’ll find you can no longer claim your own kids’ bad behaviour is a temporary blip when it lasts all week long (not to mention, end the holiday with a parenting crisis).

Child-proofing not a priority here then

>• Just when you think you can relax and enjoy a picnic, the two-year-old will find a stone wall to climb and walk along, a big stick to poke you with, or be irresistibly drawn to a pile of poo. Even in the house the kids will keep you on your toes by choosing the most dangerous area to play in – this really odd open attic, high above my bed, that became the games club.

>• Your knowledge of all things related to the countryside will let you down spectacularly because you’ll be stumped by oldest son’s questions, including: Why are there no trees on the mountains? Why are the cow pats so big? (is it because cows have two stomachs, or is that camels?) Did the chicken or the egg come first? Where’s the swimming pool?

Perfect trap for little feet

>• You’ll find that people with bigger feet have a much easier time at the cattle grid we had to lug the kids and 10 bags over every day to get to the car – parked a long way down a stony track because the access to our holiday home, over a teeny-tiny bridge that gave my brother’s car a flat tyre, was better suited to mountain bikes.

>• The alpha males of the group will attempt to keep the pack together, but find this increasingly difficult as the females are sidetracked by shops and the kids all run off in different directions.

>• You won’t enjoy having one bathroom for nine people (the horror!), the novelty of rain will wear off, and will really miss your husband (in Florida), who makes everything so much easier. But you’ll absolutely love the amazing scenery, seeing the kids enjoying the steam trains, the castles, the seaside, the cool air, the pies, the fudge and your own childhood memories it brings back.

Because North Wales was, without a doubt, the perfect antidote to summer in the desert.

Train driver-to-be: The hat stayed on all holiday

Trekking from the house to the car

Why I had to eat my words…

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There we were enjoying the sights and sounds of the countryside when all of a sudden the peace was shattered.

A buzzing helicopter was hovering in the air. Circling around our valley as though looking for something. Then coming down to land in a next-door field of cows, its rotor blades whirling round at high speed and stirring up the grass and cow pats.

The police, maybe? Had English looters crossed the border and started raiding Welsh holiday homes now? Or perhaps a celebrity arriving by helicopter for a quiet break in an interior-designed shepherd’s cottage?

Our valley and the scene of the helicopter show


As it took off again, a flare was dropped, setting off what looked like a fire, and we concluded we were in the middle of a search-and-rescue training exercise. How exciting, I thought, enjoying it even more than the boys (in my mind I’d decided it was Prince William, you see – I’ve heard he rescues walkers in these parts).

While all this was going on, BB was surprisingly quiet, which really doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time, he’s exceedingly noisy and asks thousands of questions. I have to admit we’ve struggled to answer some of the things he’s pondered this holiday, like: Why are there no trees on the mountains? Why are the cow pats so big? (is it because cows have two stomachs, or is that camels?) Did the chicken or the egg come first? Where’s the swimming pool?

I chortled at the last one and reminded him of our whereabouts, ie, far from Dubai, then, to my surprise, had to eat my words a little later that very morning, when we stumbled upon, of all things, a Welsh swimming pool. Sorry if I sound so amazed – I honestly didn’t think it could ever get hot enough here for outdoor pools (but, then again, I have become a complete cold-water wimp since moving to Dubai).

Here’s the spring-fed pool – my two boys and their cousins loved it, despite the freezing cold water. Apparently, if you’re really lucky you get to see a brown trout swimming through. Now that you don’t get in Dubai.

The local lido