Interlopers

Dear readers, 

Apologies once again for the time that has elapsed since this blog post and the last one. Your correspondent has been waging war again, this time on the interlopers inhabiting my kitchen: cockroaches.

I have an immense and unreasonable fear of cockroaches. It’s the way they move that gets me. It’s never a great start to the day to walk into the kitchen to find a roach scurrying across the work-surface in the direction of your breakfast. Or to put a piece of toast in the toaster only to have one leap out at you as you switch on the heat. It’s my kitchen and my toaster! And it was certainly time for the interlopers to leave.

Over the course of a couple of months I had managed to empty more than two cans of roach spray into the kitchen all to no avail. The mere smell of the spray was enough to set my pulse racing and I was on the brink of giving myself nerve damage. If things continued the way they were I was quite likely to die of fume-inhalation... They would find me after several days, dead on my back with my arms and legs in the air, twitching slightly...

Things finally came to a head one evening. After a hard day of cleaning, tidying and installing new furniture, hampered by a heavy cold, I had gone into the kitchen to make steak and chips for supper. I stepped away from the kitchen for less than five minutes but came back to discover that the cooker had blown up and there was yet another cockroach getting ready to drag away my steak. It felt like a disaster of catastrophic proportions.

I called my mum. Given the gravity of the situation it was the only proper thing to do. My mum deserves a medal for the number of ledges and high places she has talked me down from over the last few months. She is remarkably good in a crisis, possessing a honed ability to set me back on course once again.

After the phone call I regrouped, drove myself to the nearest hotel, ordered the largest steak on the menu, then sat back to consider my game plan. The cockroaches had certainly won this round, but they had not yet won the war. And if I stopped to think about it objectively I had pest control on my side, so things were not looking good for the cockroaches. We would fight – fight to the death. We would go to the mattresses!

The next morning I put in two phone calls: one to the electrician to come and revive the cooker and one to pest control. Within hours of their visit there were roach corpses littering the kitchen, the hall and even one of the bedrooms. It was clear that the apartment had been harbouring a problem.

I gave it ten days and another can of spray before I called pest control back for another round, to drive out my more hardened adversaries. This time they were thorough.

The final frontier was the kitchen window. It had never been entirely clear where the cockroaches were actually coming from but I had my suspicions that the window was in some way responsible. It is no ordinary window: it’s covered and it has about it a rather sinister air. It overlooks an internal ventilation shaft and I am personally of the opinion that this is from whence the cockroaches came. I turned to the only two lines of defence left available to me: traps and boric acid.

Boric acid comes in the form of a white powder and as I stood at my kitchen window, sprinkling a neat line of white powder along it, it occurred to me that it might be difficult to explain my actions in the event of an in-opportune visit from the authorities. Once finished I laid a neat row of cockroach traps on top of the powder, creating an impenetrable line of defence against the invertebrate kingdom. I stood back, appreciated my courage and ingenuity and attempted to get on with my life. 

Things were going well until several nights later when I was back in the kitchen cooking supper. A pair of antennae appeared on the far side of the toaster. I squealed and leapt backwards – standard – and the damned thing scuttled up the side of the toaster and buried itself inside. My reaction, naturally, was to douse the toaster liberally in roach spray and only after having emptied another half can did it dawned on me that roach spray and toaster might not be an award-winning combination.

I called my mum. Given the gravity of the situation it was the only proper thing to do. She suggested I turn the toaster on. Her reasoning was that it would either fry or evict the cockroach, and if I was going to run the risk of blowing the toaster up it was better to do it while she was on the other end of the phone and able to alert someone of my predicament should the worst happen. After consideration I went with her plan and am pleased to confirm that the worst did not in fact happen. The cockroach did finally venture out, although not before time, and was quickly dispatched by me.

Since then, more than three weeks have past, and I am delighted to report that in the battle of Charlotte versus Cockroaches, Charlotte (assisted by three cans of roach spray, two visits from pest control, a variety of traps, and a quantity of boric acid) has prevailed and taken back possession of her kitchen.

So long Cockroaches! It’s my kitchen now!

A day in the life of DIFC

Dubai International Financial Centre, fondly known as DIFC, is a financial hub for the Middle East, proudly placed to fill the gap between the financial markets of London and New York in the west, and Hong Kong and Tokyo in the east.

Curiously, and in contrast to Canary Wharf, it’s one of the few places in Dubai that doesn’t sport a skyscraper. Instead, the centre piece of DIFC is The Gate which, true to Dubai form, can only be described as iconic. Modelled on the Arc de Triomphe, the immense yet elegant cube with an equally enormous archway through the middle is described as ‘a gateway to a new financial district in Dubai’ – the architect’s words, not mine! I’ve actually tried walking under the arch while looking up to the ceiling with dizzying and near-disastrous consequences.

A friend of mine reckons DIFC is the place where it all goes on; the place where the deals are sealed, the money is made and the cogs of the financial world never cease turning. Granted he does work, sleep, eat and party within a 500 metre radius of DIFC but I think he’s probably right. As financial centres go, this place is pretty damn impressive. Apparently, its offices are the workplace of more than 11,500 employees, 97% of whom are expatriates and 35% of whom are women, working for over 1000 different banks, asset management firms, insurance companies, law firms and host of others. It has its own legal and regulatory framework and it’s very own courts to ensure that those laws and regulations are upheld. It also has its own underground shopping precinct, a gym, dry cleaners, hairdresser, a collection of modern art galleries and some of Dubai’s finest restaurants and hippest after-work hangouts. It would be entirely possible to live your life in DIFC and never have to go elsewhere.

Now, I have to confess that I am not fortunate enough (or misfortunate enough, depending on your point of view) to be employed by any of the firms that operate out of DIFC, so I can’t vouch for what goes on within the offices of some of the world’s most prestigious firms. But I have spent sufficient time in DIFC, in search of coffee and Wi-Fi, to notice that daily life in the public areas has a rhythm all of its own.

The day kicks off around 7am as the cafe staff and shop attendants, the early birds, and gym goers arrive. For the maintenance and cleaning staff, almost all of whom are from the Sub-Continent, the day started much earlier and initially the telescopic cleaning brushes, mops and dusters far outnumber the suits and laptops. By 8.30am the umbrellas on the balcony are up and the cleaning staff have faded away. Prime commuting time has commenced and judging by the queues at Caffe Nero and Caribou Coffee, one can only assume that a considerable number of the morning’s financial transactions will be fuelled by a quantity of caffeine in a take-away cup. You see the odd person wander past with a Bluetooth ear piece – because that early call just can’t wait – and there seems to be a trend among the women for bringing their lunch to work in a mini cool bag. It goes without saying that there are no men sporting cool bags.

By 9.30 most of the DIFC community are tucked safely away in their offices, save for the canny few who managed to pass off coffee and a cigarette as an important morning meeting. Around 11am a small crocodile of tiny children with attendant day-care nannies wind their way round the balcony on their morning walk. They smile and wave, the cafe staff smile and wave back, and if you look carefully you will notice macho bankers wearing the kind of slushy grin that is most carefully concealed from broody girlfriends.

Things begin to hot up on the balcony around 12pm, as people emerge from their offices to ‘do lunch’ and by 1pm the place is buzzing. Tune into any of the conversations around you you’ll hear such classic lines as, ’We need to figure out how to monetise that.’ Meanwhile downstairs in the Marble Walk the queue at Subway extends around the cafe and out the door. I was under the impression that no self-respecting professional should ever actually be seen buying food in Subway but this clearly isn’t the case in DIFC.

Back on the balcony the lunch rush is over by 2.30 but the cafes continue to hum. Visiting friends and proud parents who dropped by for lunch mill around, reluctant to return to where ever they came from. I’ve also become aware that there is a significant and rather sneaky contingent of people who arrive for a working lunch with a collegue or client and manage to eek out their lunch with puddings and several coffees until well into the afternoon...

Going-home time starts about 6 and runs right through to 8 or 9 in the evening. 10pm and place is virtually deserted, save for Zuma, hottest spot in town, which I’m reliably informed is always busy.

And so another day has passed in the desert and somewhere in the bowels of the building a small army has arrived for another night of cleaning. In just nine hours the financial market will re-open and another working day will kick off all over again but for now it’s time for your correspondent to sign off and head home.

Until next time dear readers, TTFN xxx

Quirks

The other day I passed the Emirates Macaroni Factory. It’s located somewhere between the glassy towers of Business Bay and the dusty chaos of Al Quoz industrial estate and nobody seems too sure as to why it’s there. As far as I’m aware the UAE is not famed for its production of macaroni. I’ve filed it as an odd quirk in a city laden with quirkiness.

Take taxis. Taxis are a relatively cheap and fast way to get around Dubai but it is a well-known fact that most taxi drivers have only been here two weeks, speak limited English and have absolutely no idea where they are going. A sweeping and unjust generalisation you may say, but I have first-hand experience of the hysteria into which taxi drivers can descend if you ask them to take you somewhere other than the Burj Al Arab. Granted they are not helped by the government’s propensity for removing signposts and re-routing roundabouts overnight, but London cabs they ain’t.

I managed to reduce a taxi driver to the brink of tears the other day by asking him to take me a gallery in Al Quoz. ‘I thought you knew where you were going!’ he wailed, increasing his speed with every fresh wave of panic, rendering it virtually impossible for me to work out where we were, let alone where we needed to get to. He eventually ejected me onto the side of the road, begged me not to come anywhere near him and tore off in a cloud of dust. When I finally tracked down the gallery I asked the manager why they don’t have any signposts outside. Apparently the Municipality has a problem with them advertising their existence. Curiouser and curiouser.

Sticking with the theme of transport, let us turn our attention to the road to Abu Dhabi. Dubai is just one of seven Emirate states in the UAE and there comes a time in every Dubai resident’s life when a trip to Abu Dhabi becomes unavoidable. But how to get there? I stopped briefly to consider all the public transport options there are for travel around the UK: train, bus, plane, ferry even. Well, despite the vast acres of open desert available there is no train; the bus takes nearly to a day to travel in each direction and it’s too close to fly. No, there is just one road to Abu Dhabi and embarking on the journey means putting yourself at the mercy of all the madmen on the road, chatting away on their mobile phones, feet on the dashboard, roaring down Sheik Zayed Road at 180 Km an hour with only a finger on the wheel. You suddenly become very aware of your own mortality and, after two trips to Abu Dhabi last week, I have vowed not to go again for a really long time.

On a different note, whose grand idea was it to install revolving doors at the entrance of every building? There must be a higher concentration of revolving doors in central Dubai than anywhere else in the world. The smarter the building, the more likely the doors are to have their very own set of pot plants or antique urns. Unfortunately your correspondent has something of a phobia of revolving doors. I can’t help the suspicion that one day I am either going to be crushed or disrobed by them and it is a real effort of will to maintain my composure.

Then there are the encounters with maintenance staff. Our fridge freezer has been performing under par from the day we moved in to our flat. I promptly informed the maintenance manager of the problem and a series of visits commenced. The men come in threes: one in charge, one to carry the spanner and one to watch. Sometimes there’s a fourth but he usually waits outside... There is much standing around and sucking of teeth. They open the freezer door, they close the freezer door. Then the one in charge commands the one with the spanner to make a tiny adjustment. He closes the freezer door once more with the utmost delicacy and care. ‘No problem!’ he says, the door is fixed. Please sign the maintenance papers. ‘No, no!’ I cry and demonstrate what happens when door is handled a little less delicately. We appear to have reached an impasse: I refuse to admit defeat (and suffer several years of melted ice cream) and they refuse to admit there’s a problem.

I suppose that’s what happens when a multitude of different cultures converge upon a dusty spot in the desert and set about trying to develop it at a rate of knots. There are bound to be some quirks and points of tension. You end up living an odd existence in which it is entirely possible for your bank to send you a text within seconds of buying a pint of milk, to inform you that you’ve made a transaction, but you have to present yourself in person, with a ream of supporting documents if you want to pay your water bill.

Certainly some of the frustrations westerners face in Dubai are a result of the British colonial bureaucracy imported from India, presenting us with hoops which we find both irritating and unnecessary to jump through. But then, as my dad observed the other day, matters could be worse. We could be living in Kuwait. The Kuwaitis, it seems, have imported the French Napoleonic legal system from Egypt, so they’re really screwed.

And so another day draws to a close in the desert.

Until next time dear readers, TTFN xxx

Destination: Dubai

I’m sitting here eating a piece of desperation cheesecake, so named because desperation is the emotion its purchase was borne out of. We’re talking about the kind of tired desperation that stems from trekking the entire length of Dubai carrying your life in a bag; the kind that leads you to try opening the front door with your metro card; the very kind that results in you needing to buy the over-priced piece of cheesecake necessary to relieve this unpleasant emotion.

I’m only slightly perturbed that desperation is the emotion that marks the end of my third week in Dubai. As a quietly confident and eternally optimistic being I have no doubt that the feeling will pass. Active job hunting is really quite tiring, hence the cheesecake, but one could hardly say that the last three weeks have been dull. In fact, they have been something of a social whirl wind. Your correspondent has been spotted at the races, the polo, a VIP lunch at Art Dubai, not to mention the book launch brunch.

For the first ten days I was at the mercy of the Mothership, obliged to do her bidding at every turn. Thus, I spent many hours trailing round Ikea and the like, desperately (there’s that word again) trying to look engaged as we discussed the finer points of bedroom furniture. On the upside there were plenty of pit stops for food. It was a bit like my childhood memories of trips to the garden centre: enduring tedious hours of wandering with the promise of an ice cream at the end.

With the Mothership safely dispatched, I turned my attentions to the serious business of finding a job, setting up office in coffee shops sporting WiFi. I’m now on my third coffee shop, having picked up a series of unwanted yet persistent admirers along the way – apparently this is one of the hazards of studiously minding your own business in a public place. Happily, my efforts have resulted in at least one interview, so progress has been made.

In my additional capacity as housekeeper I’ve been mostly responsible for managing the move to a new apartment, soothing the Fathership as we’ve encountered teething troubles and liaising with the well-meaning but somewhat quirky maintenance team to get our troubles fixed.

On moving-in day the Mothership and I arrived in the new apartment to find it an inch deep in water. We beat a hasty retreat. With the aqueous issue resolved, it was the turn of the removals crew. They were glorious to watch: within two hours they had delivered, unpacked and installed all the furniture, swiftly removing all traces of packing material as they went. It was like a military operation – with smiles – and the only casualty of the whole affair was a light bulb, broken by me. One of them even nipped off for prayer half way through.

Dubai is rather different from life in the Indian Ocean but it has its own idiosyncrasies and the promise of plenty more material to fuel your correspondent’s amusement with local life. I anticipate a long and happy relationship.

So until next time dear readers,

TTFN xxx

Farewell Ihavandhoo... for this year at least

Following a serious packing error and a four-week period of separation, the Lamp-top and its power cable have been reunited, allowing your correspondent to liberate a final blog post. While I appreciate that most of you have seen me and are reasonably sick of hearing about how wonderful island life was, it feels wrong not to bring this year’s adventure to some sort of conclusion. So indulge me for a moment.

The beginning of the end was marked by the arrival of the ‘Mother-ship’. I’m still not sure quite what Bella was expecting of my mother, based on the tit-bits of information I’d supplied her with throughout the year, but the title ‘Char-pants’ mum’ clearly wasn’t going to cut it. For the successful entertainment of any visitor, Bella and I had learned that a programme of activities was necessary. First up was a resort mini-break to Manafaru where everything was deemed ‘wonderful!’ We then returned to Ihavandhoo for a few days to allow her to experience life as a cast away and to meet all our friends. My mother leapt rather than fell into island life and by 9am each morning she was already up and in full flow about her domestic achievements with the twin tub washing machine. Snorkelling on the reef induced further coos of delight and by the third day she had made firm friends with at least half the island’s population. It was like having a celebrity to stay.

When it was time to leave Bella and I escorted the Mother-ship to the airport, ostensibly to check she was alright but also to ensure that she did actually board the flight and return to reality. As we moored up at the jetty the new management of Cinnamon Island Resort pulled up alongside us. “Come for the weekend!” they cried, “It’ll be a cash-free holiday!” All protests about not having any of our belongings were ignored and we were borne away on the resort boat for a weekend of fun.

In the absence of appropriate swimwear, and feeling somewhat guilty about our second resort mini-break in a week, we decided to be productive with our time and visit Farm Boy on his farm just a stone’s throw from the resort. Farm Boy is head honcho of Maafahi farm island where 50 staff, of 4 different nationalities, strive daily to maintain a hydroponics plant, banana, papaya and coconut palm plantations, an odd assortment of tropical fruit trees, a fish canning plant and a herd of goats. The trip was both enjoyable and educational and the food was simply excellent.

We returned to our beloved island with just one week of school to go but with exams already over, the school year seemed to fizzle out, rather than coming to a definitive end. The only slightly startling event was the departure of the Indian and Sri Lankan expatriate teachers who disappeared during the night... Bella and I had to make our own arrangements for getting home and decided to linger a little longer in order to take in the delights of Big Eid.

To pass the time until celebrations got under way we resolved to go out for a trot to find what Maldivians do when school’s out for the summer. We hadn’t got very far before we encountered Khusham and Suhail, on their way to fetch us – well, mainly Bella actually – to complete an important assignment: the filming of a commercial to advertise Bella perfume, a fragrance of superior quality. And that is how we came to spend two hot but happy afternoons on the beach, striking extraordinary poses, while Khusham crouched in the sand with a camera, just centimetres from the perfume bottle.

Having wrapped things up on the film set, we made our way to an awards ceremony on the jetty. It was Ihavandhoo’s answer to the Variety Club Golden Heart awards, honouring the hard work and dedication of some more senior figures on the island. At least, I think it was. The whole shebang was in Dhivehi and no one was adequately able to explain what was going on.

The dress code for the event was Maldivian traditional dress. Cast your mind back and you might remember that my last run-in with Maldivian traditional dress had ended with me looking somewhat like a raspberry, so Bella and I settled on more modern Maldivian outfits for the evening. Our wardrobe choices had gone without remark until we ran into Captain Haddock, who deemed them wholly unfit for the occasion. We were hauled off to the Haddock residence where we were kitted out in the real thing. The captain was not leaving anything to chance and was he who styled our hair to complete the effect. The effort was worth it though, purely for the reaction from the crowd. People we’d never even met were queuing up to have their photo taken with us.

Big Eid was all we had hoped for and more. There was a holiday atmosphere, food, a stage programme and hundreds of small children and babies dressed to the nines in the most extraordinary array of party outfits.

Finally it was time to go. Leaving a place that has been your home for a year has the potential to be a highly emotional affair but we were spared any melodramatics for the simple reasons that Maldivians don’t do public displays of affection and they don’t say goodbye. Their approach to such awkward situations is more ‘ignore it and hope it goes away’. As such, our departure was swift and relatively painless, with little time for wallowing or sadness.

And so, a year in the Indian Ocean has drawn to a close. It has been a pleasure and I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about it. I’m not sure what the next year will hold but once I find out I’ll let you know. Perhaps we can go on another adventure together.

Until then, dear readers,

TTFN xxx

Volley

Greetings dear readers. The publication of this blog post has been delayed by nearly a week, ironically, because your correspondent (who should have known better than to leave a piece of work nearly finished) trotted off to volley practice and sustained a nasty sprain to the wrist, rendering her unable to complete said post until today. Doing justice to the entertainment volley brings us is quite hard but here goes… 

We play volley every day. Seven days a week, for the last seven months, provided it’s not already raining, we play volley. It’s never referred to as volleyball, just ‘volley’, and it has become such a huge part of our lives that it deserves a blog post all of its own. It was The Boy who started it. We had always known that there were people who played volley on the sandy area next to the football pitch but it had not really occurred to us to get involved, nor would it have been right to charge in and invite ourselves along. Participation for foreigners is by invitation only. And so it was, in April, that we first donned our volley clothes and ventured along.

 The daily routine goes something like this: at around 4.20pm, 20-odd 20-somethings rock up at the volley court. Two teams play against one another. The winning team stays on and swaps sides, and the loosing team goes off to be replaced by a fresh team of competitive individuals who want to oust the current champions from the court and stay on for more than one game. While it brings out everyone’s competitive spirit on-court, volley is essentially a social affair, presenting a perfectly legitimate excuse for us all to ditch whatever we happened to be doing up until volley time and hang out for a glorious hour and a half.

When we’re not playing, Bella and I mostly sit on the wall and give a quiet but highly finessed fashion commentary on everyone else’s clothing, hair styles, and chosen facial hair of the day. We have it down to a fine art. We’re aided by our collection of nicknames, bestowed upon our volley-playing friends at a time when we had absolutely no idea what their real names were. And here they are, the Volley Crew: The Boy and Coach, Handbag Man, Ali Mansoor, The Tank, the Oomper Loomper, Red T-shirt guy, Goat Man, The Gooseberry, Daddy Longlegs, Cheeky boy, Dhonbe, Yummy Mummy and Yummy Daddy, Nappy pants, Junior Team Member, Afro Man, Yellow Shorts guy, The scrawny one, Vin Diesel, Twiggy, the Accountant and, occasionally, Captain Haddock. There are others but their names are perhaps best left unpublished!

Aside from our own private set of nicknames, volley has its own language:

• Outoo = out
• Bodu outoo = badly out
• Charlotte, ready?! = Charlotte, are you awake and ready to hit the ball?!
• Receive, receive! = Wake up team and make sure one of you returns the serve
• Back! (as uttered by the Tank) = person in the middle smash the ball back across the net
• Saadha-game ball = 14 points to the winning team and it’s game ball
• Ethere = in
• Egaara = eleven
• Ehvaru = equal/all e.g. eleven all

The final three words in the volley vocabulary are easily confused, and if you’re not careful you find yourself shouting “eleven!” when trying to tell your team that the ball was in. Volley was also the forum in which we learnt to count in Dhevehi. Most of the time we play to 15 points and so for a long time our Dhivehi counting went like this: eke (1), dheyh (2), thineh (3), hathareh (4), faheh (5), hayeh (6), hatheh (7), asheh (8), nuvaeh (9), dhihayeh (10), egaara (11), baara (12), theyra (13), saadha (14), game ball, much to the amusement of everyone else.

The events that take place on court during a game, the interactions between team mates, and the stances adopted by each of the players are a social science study all of their own. Most of the time play is extremely good-natured but from time to time a team member will be roundly chastised for screwing up a shot. Occasionally there are altercations and you can usually tell if someone’s upset The Boy because (much to the delight of Bella and I) he begins to puff up like a rhino about to charge.

Seven months of careful observation have led to at least one conclusion: humans the world over find other people’s misfortunes funny. On an almost daily basis we will be crippled with laughter as some highly improbably shot sends the ball flying in an extraordinary direction, bopping an unsuspecting person on the head as it lands. And when Maldivians find something really funny, they have to sit down. So you’ll be in the middle of a game and something ridiculous will happen and suddenly everyone is creased up and sitting cross-legged in the sand.

It is widely accepted I am crap at volley and generally not to be trusted with the ball. Despite my indignation their beliefs are not unfounded. I often find myself paraylsed, rooted to the spot, unable to move into the path of the oncoming ball nor out of it. In a moment of bravery I will stick my arms nervously in the air to receive the ball, only to second guess myself at the last minute, leaving my team mates to dive for the ball and avert another lost point.

I am also unfortunate. One of my baby fingers is now a completely different shape to the other as a result of two ill-judge catches, which mashes first one joint and then the other. And until recently there’s been something wrong with the angle of my scoop shot, causing me to send the ball flying straight into my own face, instead of back across the net. On more than one occasion I’ve ended up in a heap on the ground after tripping over the lines.

Then there are the injuries sustained as a result of poor positioning. The Boy has a killer spike. It’s his party piece. The setter sets the ball; the Boy takes a run and jump, and comes down on the ball, wham! Sending it flying across the other side of the court. It’s terrifying for anyone to be on the receiving end but it just so happens that my head is in the direct trajectory of the ball if I stand five paces back from the net.

The first time it happened the Boy and I were rather more than ‘good friends’ and there was outrage that he could have slammed the ball straight into his girlfriend’s forehead. For my part, I was stunned – literally! The second time it happened, there was nothing to do but laugh. The chances of the unfortunate incident occurring again were so remote that it was hilarious. And so, it was to The Boy’s horror and my incredulity that just that other day I got in the way of yet another killer smash and sustained the sprained wrist that delayed the posting of this very blog.

I could go on, but I have to stop. I can only hope that I have done some justice to this dearly beloved aspect of our island life.

TTFN xx

There’s a chicken on the loose, somewhere in our garden

As I lay in the hammock this morning, in an otherwise empty garden, a chicken toddled past... not a usual occurrence for a Friday morning. Neither was the search party of children from next door who swarmed the garden as I attempted to recover my wits and reach for Muslim-friendly attire. The chicken was not forth-coming.

The past couple of months have brought a new degree of acclimatisation: the daily events of life on a desert island are no less ridiculous but the ludicrous has become the normal and nothing surprises me anymore. We no longer miss alcohol or pork; the need to get things done has waned; and even Bella walks slower than she used to.

The beginning of August was marked by the arrival of Bella’s friends. When Bella first announced we were having guests to visit my reaction wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as she had hoped. Our prior experiences of visitors involved diabolical weather, apprehension from Maldivian and series of stressful rescue missions from awkward locations. And then there was the weighty presence of Ramazan looming.” It’s totally fine”, she said, “It’s only two of them – well, maybe four – but it’s totally fine.”

And she was right. It was totally fine. The days of Kirstles and Bex, K and DiGo were tremendous fun. In addition to a resort mini-break (unfortunately a wash out), we packed in a picnic to an uninhabited island, night fishing, snorkelling, volley and an 18-hour boat journey to Male. There were, of course, the inevitable clutch of incidents – a rescue mission after two days of being trapped at enormous expense on the resort in gale-force winds, a panic-stricken boat journey through the sizable waves of the channel, insect bites of giant proportions, and an assortment of lost flip flops, lens caps and the like – but these were easily forgotten as our Maldivian friends rose to the occasion and our house became the social hub of the island.

The presence of our visitors coincided with half term and just as Bella and I were readying ourselves for full relaxation, the deputy principal hauled us into the AV room to inform us of his plans to assault Grade 10 with a relentless battery of tests. Bella and I came away reeling and somewhat peeved that the end of our precious holiday would blighted by a large heap of marking.

Ramazan was a strange time. It started two days after Kirsty and Bex arrived and never before have I seen twenty-three-year-old boys looking as miserable as on the first day. We had been assured that very little would be different during the Holy month. School would be shorter but otherwise everything would carry on. It is true that most people made the effort to carry on as normal and did a valiant job, given that they had nothing to eat or drink between 4am and 6pm, but there was certain subdued air that settled over the island, induced by lack of sleep and empty tummies.

The upside of Ramazan is this: as soon as the sun sets the eating begins and they want you to eat too. We could barely leave the house without someone hauling us in to feed us. Every meal had curry, rice, noodles, roshi, mas-unhi, hedaka, two kinds of juice and something sweet to finish. It was great! We also found that people’s daily lifestyle changed. When your last opportunity to eat for 14 hours is at 3.30am it’s worth staying up for. So we stayed up too, in the garden, as a host of eligible (and less eligible) young men came by to check out the new English girls.

The end of Ramazan involved more food. At Eid, Every family had a big celebration lunch and every family wanted us to celebrate with them. We managed three lunches in two hours, then vowed never to eat again... until tea time.

Eid was quickly followed by my birthday and I saw fit to drop the fact into conversation several times before the event. Poor Bella was tasked with organising me a surprise party – tricky given that I’m with her 18 hours a day. She was actually doing a remarkably good job at keeping stum. It was the Maldivians who were letting down the side. News of the party spread like wildfire around the island and everyone wanted to be invited. People would hurry up to me, waving an invitation and saying, “Party! You’re having a party!”

“Yes!” I’d reply, “And it’s supposed to be a surprise!” It was an awesome party though. Bella excelled herself. There were candles and pink balloons strung up between the palm trees, a table laden with Maldivian-friendly English food and a spectacular cake from Mama Chief.

This morning’s escapades with the chicken were not conclusive. It chose to re-appear at sunset. Had you been in our garden at sunset you would have been witness to five of us, crouched round a large bush in the corner of the garden, attempting to capture the fugitive, which was emitting blood-curdling squawks. As the light faded she was finally detained and taken back into custody. And another day passed in the Indian Ocean.

TTFN dear readers xxx