It is easy to forget as you sit sipping your Starbucks in a shopping mall surrounded by shops you have shopped in for years that you are living in the Middle East. But sometimes there are reminders. The other day for example, we saw a camel in the back of a pick-up truck. You don’t get many of those in Chelsea.
Yesterday there was a sand-storm. You feel like you’re in Star Wars as the sand flies around you and I was half expecting to see some of those evil little sand people. Actually you can’t really see anything, it’s quite amazing. Rather like a really bad snow-storm. And rather like snow, the sand leaves a layer on cars and lamp posts.
The other thing that has struck me recently is that everyone keeps saying how “unseasonably hot” it is. That’s a phrase you had to be alive during the heatwave of 1976 to hear in England. Not that I was, of course….
Yesterday was Mother’s Day and the girls sang me a Mother’s Day song in Arabic. I remember when I used to find them singing in French exotic. Now that seems almost mundane. Although slightly more comprehensible than Arabic. But only slightly.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009
Not exactly ‘unseasonably hot’ here but we do have something that Abu Dhabi lacks – Spring.
Here the primroses on the banks, in the fields and under the hedgerows are more numerous than stars in our clear Alpine skies. The steep climb up to the church is made worthwhile by the clumps of violets vibrant in the sunlight and, to top it all, yesterday in the woods above one of our fields, I heard the cuckoo. We’d love to share it all but you are miles away so we share in spirit, N & M.
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