Another of those Dorothy moments...

I don't often get upset about news stories, even the miserable, depressing tales of human tragedy. Spending a year or so working at a regional news agency plumbing the depths of human misery for an honest(ish) wage will cure most people of that, including me.

This one really bothered me though, as it made me have another one of those "Dorothy" moments, again, that  I had in this very old post, when you realise how very far from home you are even though in reality it's a six or seven hour flight back to London. Sometimes, the Dorothy analogy extends a little further when you look around, and you realise it's not that different after all, in the same way that the audience realises that the Tinman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion are three of Dorothy's uncle's farm hands in costume and she knew them all along.

It started with this story, about a two-year-old who died after being left alone in a locked parked car. I thought to myself, such a thing could never happen in the UK. Remember the fuss was made when  police officer left his dogs in a locked vehicle for too long?

But then, there was this story, about a child in the UK who died after her parents, for reasons best known to themselves, did not realise that leaving her in a zipped tent with a smoking barbecue could be potentially fatal, and, I thought, perhaps I am naive in thinking we in the UK are more clued up which made me rethink that a little.

Then, today, another story appeared in the press about another child who had died as a result of being left locked in the car in the heat of the day. That's twice, in the space of a week, that a child has died in this way and it has left me wondering why more was not done after the first incident to publicise the fact, that would seem obvious to many, that leaving your child locked in a car in the height of summer, even for a short, if you can call two hours short, period of time, is potentially fatal.

I don't know how extensive the Arabic-language press is here for the simple reason that I don't speak or read the language well enough to gauge how widely the story was covered, but I keep coming back to the fact that actual human beings need to have it explained to them that your child can die if you leave them in a car with no air con when the thermometer is nudging 50 degrees, and the fact that the story has been covered in a fairly low key manner makes me wonder if this more common than is being reported.

It's worth explaining this in more detail from a motorist's point of view because the way in which those children must have suffered is playing on my mind. I rarely drive the car here without having the air con on at least on low, except in the winter months when the temperature falls to the low 20s during the day and the mid to late teens at night.  When I pick him indoors from work in the evening, it sometimes involves a five or 10 minute wait which involves sitting there without air con on because I refuse to become a Jumeirah Jane cliche sitting with my engine running burning fossil fuels and contributing to the steady death of our planet while the air around the car becomes increasingly fume-filled, hot and unpleasant for everyone walking by.

As soon as you switch the engine off, the air in the car starts to feel nasty, stuffy and warm. No point opening the window because it will get worse because you let the hot air in quicker, particularly when the humidity is high. Within two or three minutes, and bear in mind this is in the evening when it's cooled down a lot, you start to sweat and after about five minutes, you start to feel fed up and irritably drum your fingers because you're over-heating and where is that husband, anyway? After 10 minutes, you consider putting the engine on just for a few seconds so you can take the edge off with the air con.

This is the experience of an adult, who has the luxury of being able to sweat to cool herself down, unlike a child, and who probably has a bottle of water with her and perhaps most importantly knows that him indoors will be along in a few minutes so we can start the engine, whack the air con on and go home. Imagine, sitting there trapped with no ability to turn the engine on, wind the window down, reach for a drink, for hours.

Having written this, I suspect I will have nightmares about being trapped in a car in the desert heat praying for either suffocation or heat exhaustion to kick in and at least render me unconscious in so it's over before the dreaded panic sets in.

Why did no one think about this when they walked off, apparently, if the articles are to be believed, forgetting that these children are in the car?  I can't begin to fathom why that was the case, and why there is no mention of a criminal investigation in either incident.

This is in the week when, a particular bugbear of mine, #UAEdresscode, is still trending on the dreaded Twitter on a weekend when it's reached the international press including the Washington Post and the BBC.

I find myself more than a little uncomfortable about this fact and wonder if it's down to some kind of international PR push by the campaigners or whether it's due to the fact that it's silly season and no one has much else to write about now that they've got over the Barclay's scandal a bit.

I don't know whether I am heartened or disheartened by the fact that now it appears to not just be ex-pats and tourists who are being targeted by campaigners, although, it does appear to have been squarely aimed at women covering up with little mention of enforcing a similar law for men.

I know Twitter is an unfair representation of society full, as it is, of people of dubious morals and agenda spouting all kinds of vicious claptrap that they wouldn't dream of saying out loud in front of their hundreds of followers, but I still find myself worried by the views that are expressed.

This Tweeter condemns her fellow countrywomen for failing to cover up to her exacting standards:

Some Abayas can be widely open exposing skimpy clothing under them, some can be too tight, others can expose cleavage....etc.

This is what concerns the Twitterati, whether local women might be cheekily flashing a bit of flesh in an attempt to express their sexuality, a desire for more freedom, or whatever, I can't claim to know what motivates them, but still.... This is what matters, while two children in the space of a week have been left to die in boiling hot cars?

That is something that makes me feel very, very far from home.

#UAEDressCode

This story has been kicking around for well over a month now but I have been busy procrastinating over writing that actually pays money to post.

It all started with two young Emirati women who got fed up with seeing ex-pats wearing short, tight or revealing clothes out and about so they started a campaign which was soon trending on the dreaded Twitter with the hashtag #UAEDressCode and not long after that, a Twitter account with the name @UAEDressCode was set up with numerous calls for the dress code to be enforced by law.

For the record, I have always made sure I observe the dress code, namely that when you go to a public place where there are likely to be locals, the majority of whom dress modestly in thobes, abayas and/or sheilas, or anyone else liable to be offended, you should cover your knees and shoulders. This means there are some items of clothing that I used to wear during warm weather in the UK or on holiday that I simply can't wear in certain places but considering the air con is usually on deep freeze, I got over that pretty quickly. I should probably add that shopping malls are a big part of my life here, not because I've turned into a shopaholic but because they tend to be the equivalent of the High Street - home to cinemas, a lot of restaurants, pharmacies, doctors' surgeries and so on.

The advice on the dress code is in every guidebook on the UAE and there are signs at the entrances to shopping malls so why some tourists and ex-pats have difficulty observing it is anybody's guess. But, you can walk around the malls here and you won't get very far before you see someone in short shorts or a strapless top or something so low cut that they're in danger of knocking you or themselves out with a vital part of their anatomy. I would guess the reason they do this is because they get away with it. They do it once, no one says anything, so they ask themselves why they need bother observe it the dress code and stop wearing stuff they wear happily in their home countries.

Does that bother me? This answer has changed over the time I have been here. At first it was not really, apart from a creeping irksome feeling that if I have made the effort to cover up, why can't they? Increasingly, it bothers me more as it is the cause of pressure for a dress code to be enforced by law and by the fact that I am realising that there is a tendency among some locals to tar all of us ex-pats with the same brush, ie, assume all of us are culturally insensitive enough to ignore the fact that our skimpy clothes may be considered shocking or offensive by locals and need to be kept in line by a law.

Everybody who comes here to live knows this is an Islamic society but it is an Islamic society that needs the benefits of non-Muslims coming here to help the country develop so, there are exceptions, you can drink alcohol although it is heavily taxed and you are not allowed to drink it outside licensed premises unless you have an alcohol licence, and, you can be arrested for drinking in a public place. There are restrictions on buying pork but it is still available.

This dress code business is a perfect example of the occasional friction between the two cultures that is difficult to resolve. Locals see us walking around "scantily clad" and it irks them because they believe it goes against their religion and/or culture and is a poor influence on their children. Because they're used to associating with people who are covered, they may also feel shocked and embarrassed themselves. The phenomenal level of boozing that goes on in the UAE is easier to ignore because it is largely confined to the hotels and nightclubs where locals can choose not to go. The debate around the dress code has revealed some uncomfortable facts about the attitudes of some hardliners towards ex-pats and tourists and truth be told, it is the first time in my 17 months here that I have ever really felt unwelcome here. The campaign may have started innocuously as two young women wanting to know why there is supposed to be a dress code but people seem to ignore it and has mushroomed into claims that people who do not adhere into are 'immoral' 'indecent' and 'destroying our culture'.

Take this article in The National, an interview with one of the campaign's initiators, it states clearly that it is not about changing the law, and the headline is about 'tourist dress code', ie those who are short-term visitors to the UAE who could perhaps be accused of not taking the dress code seriously enough because they are relaxing and on holiday and are not used to the oppressive heat. Yet, what do we hear, just two weeks later? Certain factions want a change in the law to force people to adhere to the code. And, it confirms that for some, it's a tit-for-tat gesture, a sideways swipe at some European states for banning the veil. While I would never choose to wear a veil myself, in my view it was a mistake to ban it for this very reason.

Within a matter of weeks, a campaign by two young women for tourists to wise up and cover up when they're out and about has morphed into a call for a change in the law which could mean criminalising people who fail to cover their knees and shoulders when they go shopping. I object to this for a number of reasons.

1.  Believe me, I have no desire to go shopping in a boob tube and hotpants, because at the ripe old age of 32, soon to be 33, even in the UK there would be sundry cries of 'put it away love, you're putting me off my chicken fillet selection' should I attempt that, but what I do object to is the idea of being branded a criminal if I happen to forget to make sure my skirt covers my knees or someone decides what I am wearing is too transparent. Case in point, The National's advice columnist explaining to a correspondent that wearing black is a good idea because it's not transparent.

2.  I am fundamentally opposed to the concept that my shoulders or knees are in any way shocking or disrespectful to those who look upon them. I do not mind compromising by covering them in certain situations but making me do so by law suggests that my knees and shoulders are in some way a moral hazard to the population at large.

3. These things always end up being about women and telling them what to do. Case in point, that column again which says the knees and shoulders rule is a 'guideline for ladies'. A tweet also appeared suggesting "fashion" choices for women not just covering their knees and shoulders but all the way to the wrists and ankles.

 lovely flowy summer maxi dress with light strechy longsleeved top under, looks pretty & better protection from Sun too ^__*

I will be the judge of what 'looks pretty' on me, thank you very much, and that is not it. I would look like a Playschool presenter from the mid 1970s if I dressed like that.

4.  Then there's the creeping xenophobia, an example being in reference to the non-local presenters on Dubai One who aren't sufficiently covered according to some. Another Tweet:

 you are right and this is big mistake to make non local to run any madia channel. Result will be unacceptable

5. The obvious desire by some to prevent any debate or questioning, just tell everyone to shut up and obey. More from Twitter:

Our rules, codes, traditions, culture are not to be discussed its to be highlighted, taught and obeyed .. Thanks

6. Then of course there's that old chestnut, those who are scantily clad are 'asking' for it or will come to harm because of it: Again from Twitter:

Wearing properly & looking modest can be fashionable as well. Nothing will harm you if u dressed like that

As for the claims that failing to cover 'destroys our culture' and that no one has the right to do that, I agree that no one has the right to do that, but who does this sound like? Who excuses their prejudice by saying another culture is destroying their's? It's the mirror image of right-wing extremists in Europe who claim that the continent is being "Islamified". Not the tolerant image that the UAE would like to present to the world at all.

I perhaps would not mind about the potential new law if it weren't for the fact that the selling of none dress code clothes is big business here in Dubai and the wider UAE. I went on a clothes shopping trip and I found it pretty much impossible to find a dress that covers my knees and my shoulders in any of the myriad western High Street shops in The Dubai Mall.

As I wondered around, I became increasingly irritated by the fact that if something was long enough to cover my knees, it invariably didn't cover my shoulders, or was too see-through and here I was potentially handing over my hard-earned cash for something that could be deemed illegal if this law does come in.

It didn't help that I then came across this sign in a one shop in which I could not find a single item which adhered with the code:

Buy buy buy, in other words, the exhortation of Dubai consumerism and a neat example of the dichotomy that exists here. It is fine to take money for "indecent" (the term used by some) clothes but do not, whatever you do, wear them and offend people in the very same shopping mall where you bought them. 

The reality is that much as the UAE may be becoming uncomfortable with so-called westernised culture of people dressing how they please without concern for others, tourism is a huge part of the economy, and the country relies on ex-pats coming here and being able to a large extent to continue their western existence undeterred. The first ex-pat or tourist fined or imprisoned for flouting any new law will make headline news around the world and will be doubtless deter many from thinking that the UAE is somewhere they really want to visit or live.

Bring Timmy Home

This man has been missing in Dubai for more than two weeks. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please use the contact details provided above to get in touch. 

You should be so lucky

I haven't updated for a while but I'm back now, alright? Want to make something of it? *holds up fists and does boxer style dance.* So, on with the blog.

A place him indoors and I have been meaning to go to for a while is Lucky's Furnitures in Sharjah, home to reasonably priced somewhat eccentric looking Indian and Arab style furniture. It's based on a somewhat non-salubrious industrial estate but, you know, seeking out these hidden gems is part of showing that you're a REAL PROPER EX-PAT now who knows what's what in the UAE and not some fly-by-night who's on a six-month secondment through work who's here today, gone tomorrow.

So off we set, one blazingly hot May day, well, they're all blazingly hot now until Octoberish, on the tandem air-conditioned broomstick for aforesaid establishment. If you think I'm stretching the witch and wizard related analogy a bit far, you just wait.

Lucky's is almost, if not exactly like the Room of Requirement in the Harry Potter books. OK, it may not be quite as complex and grandiose looking as the set for said room in the final two films, but that's what it reminds me of, if, in fact, the thing you most require at that moment is a distressed hand-painted cabinet, an eccentric-looking and potentially lethal cot for your baby, a carved elephant, a selection of antique lamps or a wooden Hindu or Sikh idol.

 
OK, so it's more like the Room of Requirement in appearance than actuality as these rather poor pics show, but you know what I mean, work with me people.

Now this is a garden swing:

It's a bit big for our balcony and heavy to bring up 22 floors, otherwise I would have purchased it, obviously.

We came away with a tallboy that resembles Wizbit, Paul Daniels' yellow cone-shaped pal from the children's TV programme of the same name, but not before we had spent at least an hour getting lost in the warehouse.

There are actually three warehouses which you dart in between to escape into the air con from the blistering sun as quick as possible. We narrowed the choice down to two cabinets - Wizbit or another one which handily had spaces for bottles of wine. Unfortunately, the wine cabinet seemed to disappear. We couldn't find it again. Eerie that, isn't it? We trotted up and down all the rows of the three warehouses returning to the place we thought it was, asked the staff, which was admittedly a bit of a pointless exercise as they spoke very little English and didn't look like the wine drinking sort, so probably had little idea what a wine cabinet was even if they knew what a cabinet was in the first place. But no, it had vanished like Draco Malfoy's vanishing cabinet, and yes, before you say it, I know that it's things or people put in Draco's cabinet that vanish, not the cabinet itself, I told you I was straining the analogy.

So, Lucky's clearly decided it was a Wizbit-shaped cabinet that we really required, not a wine cabinet.  It was probably right. It would probably have just made us buy more wine.

Welcome to the Wild Middle East

I would like to share a little anecdote with you that made me have another one of those: "Oh, Toto, we're not in Kansas any more" moments the other day.

I was casually chatting to a chap I come into contact with at work regularly and he informed me he was on his way to the Marina to sell his boss's boat.

"Oh," I said, "Your boss (who I also meet from time to time) has a boat? I didn't know that." Aforesaid boss was rapidly sinking in my estimations as I had previously thought he was ok but I was now envisioning him being one of those ex-pat pillocks idioting around the World Islands on a boat covered with emaciated bikini-clad promo girls. But that's beside the point.

Well, it wasn't his boat, it was given to him as collateral by a client who couldn't settle his bills with boss's business. The understanding was that it would be given back once the client had settled his bills. Unfortunately the client hadn't settled his bills so boss had dispatched the chap to sell the boat to the highest bidder. I resisted the temptation to ask if previously mentioned client was also currently at the bottom of Dubai Creek wearing a concrete overcoat.

Can you imagine such a transaction taking place in Britain unless you happened to be called Phil or Grant Mitchell and living in a fabricated working class community in the East End of London? Perhaps I am naive but I had no idea such things went on. "How very Wild West," I said. But no, it was a lot worse than that a few years ago during the boom times, apparently.  Another lesson learned. I wonder if our next landlord might consider taking Kevin the Toyota if we find ourselves unable to afford our next rental payment?

Sand Witch's tips for a burkini body

You may remember that last year Nigella Lawson got a lot of flak for wearing what the papers like to describe as a burkini on the beach in Australia. Who knows why Nigella wore the burkini? Was it 1. She didn't want paps snapping pics of her larger than size zero and therefore 'scandalous figure'. 2. Worried about skin cancer as she has beautiful youthful looking alabaster skin and perhaps either doesn't tan well or wants to keep it that way. 3. It was a bit nippy, or perhaps, 4. She's a free citizen of a free country and can do what the **** she likes.

Anyway. Some speculated at the time as to where she bought it. I can confirm that these garments are on sale in The Dubai Mall should you wish me to purchase one for you if the bikini diet isn't going too well and you have an urge to 'do a Nigella' during your summer sojourn to sunny climes.

I am pretty sure it's a swimsuit not a general workout suit as the mannequin is wearing goggles. I haven't seen anyone wearing them on the beaches of Dubai or at the swimming pools but I have seen fully dressed women in their head scarves and robes walking into the sea up to their waists to paddle with their families. There are women only days at the beaches here so perhaps such things are more commonplace then, although, perhaps the women only aspect would negate the need for a burkini in the first place. I have never been to the beach on a women only day because the Sand Warlock's drag act sure ain't as convincing as it used to be.

I have been thinking about women who choose to cover themselves playing sports a bit recently partly because of this story about the debate surrounding women's ability to play sport in Saudi Arabia and compete in the Olympics for their country and because International Football Association Board has just voted to lift a ban on women players wearing hijabs.

I can't speak with any authority about what is going on in Saudi Arabia, obviously, but there are a couple of women who wear hijabs, trousers and long-sleeved shirts who attend my running club from time to time and no one bats an eye lid. Another reason it has been on my mind a bit is my own musings about what I am going to wear to go running once the weather starts really heating up. Although it is a chilly 19 degrees today, it was much warmer than that as well as muggy and humid at Friday morning's session so my gear, some of which was bought for trolling around Ealing's Gunnersbury Park on chilly mornings, is not going to cut it any more. It's a tricky balance between wearing something practical and the very, very slight risk that someone will be offended if your clothing is deemed 'immodest'.  

Who says nothing grows in the desert?

A few of  you may have fallen about laughing at my enthusiastic plans to create a balcony garden detailed in this article which I wrote last year. But, I have been as good as my word and attempted to create a garden on our terrace, although, in not quite the way I had planned. There are two reasons the garden is not quite what I envisaged.  First, at the time of writing, we were living in a tower on the 13th floor and I fully expected to still be living in a tower with a very small balcony as opposed to a low-rise with a freakishly large (for Dubai) terrace. Second, a chance encounter with a fellow Brit ex-pat at Dubai Garden Centre.

The main news this ex-pat had to impart was that he had recently acquired a chicken from a school fete which was in chick form at time of acquisition. Unfortunately after it had grown up a bit, the chick turned out to be a cockerel and his insistence on waking the neighbourhood up at dawn every day from the balcony (yes keeping a chicken on a balcony was probably not a good idea anyway but this is a city in which one sees tigers riding in the front seat of cars so one becomes used to such eccentricities) had caused him to be evicted from his flat.

So, ex-pat, wife and cockerel had moved into a villa with a garden.  The subsidiary and arguably less important bit of news was the fact that ex-pat had successfully grown vegetables in his garden.  So, as we were at a garden centre, I immediately trotted over to the seed stand to see what food growing opportunities were on offer to grow on pots in the terrace with all thoughts of wind, sand and sun resistant plants banished. I guess a deeply English desire to cultivate one's own vegetable patch dies hard even if you have moved to a dust bowl.

One thing they don't tell you at the various garden centres in Dubai is that although one may sneer at the obviously forced grown, regimented lines of plants that line the sides of the city's roads, the heat and the dust is not the only reason that such 'unnatural' gardening practice - of growing in polytunnels then importing to the site before ripping up again when they look a bit tired - is necessary here.

I have found gardening in Dubai to involve fighting off biblical plagues of pestilence armed only with a weak washing up liquid solution. Leaf miners are the chief culprits for the slow but eventual destruction of plants, followed by black fly and then if that's not enough, some weird yellow snot resembling bugs that are currently trying to munch their way through my desert rose. There's not much you can do about bugs eating vegetable plants in Dubai. Pesticides are not widely available because garden centres have to have licenses to sell them because they are of course highly toxic, so not many of them bother, and the high toxicity could of course render the crops inedible anyway.

So, while I have successfully grown beans and tomato plants, others have fallen by the wayside.

Here are aforesaid tomatoes growing in a thicket like arrangement I expect is typical of the inexperienced gardener who was not aware of the triffid-like proportions that tomatoes can reach given the right conditions until it's too late.

Here's a closeup of said tomatoes which are getting quite big now:

They're refusing to ripen at present which I suspect may be due to lack of sun which is not as mad as it sounds given our location in one of the world's hottest places as the terrace is in shade for much of the day. I have ignored the Prince Charles approach of talking nicely to them to get them to grow and instead can be found swearing at them to get the **** on with it because that's a bit more my style.  The white squiggly marks on the leaves are the ever present leaf miners which I feebly spray with water and washing up liquid in an attempt to keep them at bay.  I think the problems with pests are down to the fact that there are not enough cold snaps to kill them off.  They certainly seemed to retreat during the cooler months but as the temperature is creeping back up again I suspect they are now here to stay.

Despite this, we have already enjoyed my first, admittedly rather small, harvest of beans:

Although the first sowing of courgettes succumbed to leaf miner followed by black fly, some of the next ones are looking pretty promising:

Growing all these edible things of course makes growing flowers seem tame as progress is so slow. I don't know if it's my lack of skill but the yield from the amount of flower seeds sown is tiny in comparison. Here's some blue asters that finally look as if they are going to flower after several months in the soil:

My attempts to grow so-called desert friendly plants are feeble. I suspect this Blue Agave would rather be in the ground than in a pot but there's not a lot I can do about that unless I decide to dig up the terrace and create a flower bed which is admittedly tempting considering our landlord's behaviour:

I have been trying to find a position for it on the terrace in which I don't walk into it and damage its spines but have so far failed, hence its slightly sad looking tendrils.

The desert rose did not like the cold (for Dubai) winter very much and is also currently looking a bit sad.

Despite the sap being poisonous to humans, that's not the case for the aforementioned snot-like bugs that have recently started attacking it. I recently pruned it rather haphazardly with some blunt shears so it's looking particularly sad which is a bit galling when I keep seeing flower covered desert roses thriving in flowerbeds everywhere. Over the winter, it sulked and threw off all its leaves if I put even a drop of water near it.  I think it's the lack of sunlight on the terrace that it doesn't like and perhaps it will start looking a bit more cheerful when the warmer weather comes.

I have the Western instinct that a garden should be green and lush so I find the Agave and desert rose's slow growing not so greenness rather uninspiring. I expect the greenness will start to disappear and fall victim to the hot weather soon so perhaps my enthusiasm for desert friendly plants will grow accordingly.