Tag Archives: UAE
Burning Up on Re-Entry
Having lived as an expat for nearly five years now, during which time I have seen many fellow expats come and go (it’s a transient sort of place), I have noticed that, while many take back to British life like ducks to proverbial muddy water, others find it a little bit more tricky to adjust… …
The Paths Untaken: Making the Most of Where We Are…
We’re all guilty of it: never visiting that National Trust property that’s only half an hour away; never getting around to trying that lovely looking restaurant passed every day on the way home from work; never walking the promising public footpath that cuts back across the fields just before the motorway turn-off; never exploring the …
Tree-Hugging and Forest-Bathing
‘Tree-hugger’ is a vaguely insulting term for those perceived as hippy environmentalists, used fairly indiscriminately to describe pretty much anyone from an animal rights activist to a bypass protester. It’s also an epithet that has come to be associated with Prince Charles following his mid-1980s confessions about talking to his trees and plants to encourage …
Dark Mornings and Grey, Rainy Days
This is, apparently, one of the most depressing times of the year for British folk. The sparkling fairy lights of Christmas are long gone, but the winter drags on – bitingly cold and remorselessly damp. The mornings are dark and, throughout the grey days, the evenings loiter just beyond the horizon, bringing back the night-time …
A Winter’s Tale
It has been a lovely winter over here in Dubai. Usually the winter is only distinguishable from the rest of the year by a slight drop in temperature: in all other ways the weather remains the same – blazing blue skies and relentless sunshine. This year, however, it has rained A LOT. We’ve had proper, …
Dutch Sprouts, Christmas Shopping and ROAST Syndrome
Another Christmas away from home and here I am, listening to ‘Carols from King’s College’ and eating hot mince pies while the warm sun shines outside in a bright blue desert sky. It feels cooler than usual for the time of year – a very pleasant 25 degrees or so, with a wonderfully refreshing breeze …
Walking back to Happiness
I am about to head home again for a week of British autumn and, as I pack my suitcase full of thermal undies and attempt to zip it closed (having first removed the dozing cat from within), I am reminded of the last time I packed my bags for a flight – back home in …
Like a (cautious, considerate and law-abiding) bat out of hell…
I had never driven an automatic before, or driven on the right, or driven on the crazy roads of Dubai. But we were moving house and buying furniture and transporting fish tanks and cats, and the whole thing would have been a nightmare without a car, so I grasped the proverbial nettle… The advice I …
“A HANDBAG?”
Brace yourselves. This is going to be a highly controversial post in which I risk alienating myself from my more fashionable readers (that’s you. No, really…). Here it is: I don’t really get designer handbags. The marvellous Caitlin Moran wrote about designer handbags in her book How to be a Woman. Like me, she couldn’t …
