Where I went Wednesday

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I’ve been loving Mrs Dubai’s Wednesday slots – so far, ‘What I wore Wednesday’ and ‘What I ate Wednesday’.

I’m not even going to attempt a ‘What I wore’ meme because if you saw my outfit right now – navy jeans, a black t-shirt (with sequins but quite a few missing), pink strappy heels and a light grey Jimmy Choo bag that DH picked up in the knock-off markets of China – you’d be able to tell a mile off that I’m no fashionista. (Isn’t there something about not wearing navy and black together? Please tell me if I’m committing a heinous fashion crime!)

Since I’ve been running around today, I thought that for my own WIWW post I’d do ‘Where I went Wednesday’ as I’m always interested in what other people get up to, so here goes:

Yes, that's bling on the back of this pimped-out Hummer, stopped next to us at lights today

10am: Town Centre Jumeirah mall. Appointment with a Scottish nutritionist. This is a blog post in itself, so suffice to say: I’m seeing him because my blood sugar levels are all over the place (pre-diabetes apparently, following gestational diabetes twice). He told me last week my diet was ‘CARB-ICIDE’ and gave me a low-carb, cavewoman-style eating plan that’s actually working. 1kg weight loss so far and fewer cravings!

11.30am: Ace Hardware, Festival Centre to buy paint. I’m finally getting round to decorating the spare room and chose a couple of tones of green, with Canyon Dust for the ‘accent’ wall (you’d think, wouldn’t you, that being surrounded by desert would mean I wouldn’t want a sandy colour indoors, but it matched perfectly!) The plan is to create a lush-looking jungle room.

12.30pm: I should have been in Ikea, but DH had had enough.

1pm: Mirdiff City Centre. Quick stop for a low-GI Sumo Salad.

2-5pm: At home. With the kids, while on and off the computer trying to sort out school application admin.

5-6pm: The kitchen. DH took the kids out to get the car washed, while I cooked chicken in lemon-and-herb sauce, with roasted aubergine. I’m not the best cook so don’t be fooled into thinking this sounds delicious. It was ok.

7-8pm: Upstairs. Herding the boys through the bedtime routine and overseeing BB’s Arabic homework (gobsmacked when he actually wrote his name in Arabic – neater than he writes in English).

9pm: Costa Coffee. Stepped out to celebrate finally being paid for work I did 7 months ago, money I never thought I’d see. Hooray!

Quite a busy day in all. Tomorrow this mall rat is staying home.

Show me the way to go home

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Whenever anyone needs directing to our villa here in Dubai, I grab a pen and a piece of paper and start drawing a detailed map with arrows, landmarks and my phone number for when they get lost.

Addresses in Dubai are really basic. There are no street addresses, no zip/post codes or area codes – and no postal service. Our mail goes to a PO box at DH’s company headquarters, so no junk mail through the door at least, but lengthy delays in receiving post if DH isn’t able to check it for a while (just got the Christmas cards, thanks!)

As for finding places, addresses such as “Past the mosque, first right then turn left after the cat sitting on the wall” are commonplace.

If you’re having something delivered, stores often provide a space on the form for you to draw a map to your home to avoid confusion.

Directing people to our villa has another set of problems, however.

In a previous post, I touched on how a massive roundabout by our compound disappeared overnight – probably while drivers were on it – meaning everyone coming home the next day got totally lost.

Getting home has never been the same since. We now have to join a 6-lane highway in the wrong direction, make a u-turn, get on the highway again, do ANOTHER u-turn, then join the highway one last time – passing our compound a total of three times.

Confused? So is everyone who’s ever visited us.

And, because our road is literally at a right angle off a mega-highway, you have to pull onto the motorway hard shoulder – keeping one eye out the whole time that you don’t get rear-ended by a poo truck – then turn right after a brown sign and traverse some rubble before getting onto our road..

Try explaining that to a kamikaze taxi driver who’s never been here before. It’s the ride of your life, I tell you.

Of course, adding 10km onto our route home really annoys everyone so we cheat. For those who know Dubai, we can go through Global Village, but the best thing to do if you’re in a 4by4 – and there are no police around – is to go off road. Here’s what it looks like … (just don’t try this in a car!)

Hold on, put your foot down, head for the bridge and don't stop in the soft sand...

Once you're out from under the bridge and onto harder sand, you don't have to worry about getting stuck, but the tilt makes me feel sea sick

Silent Sunday

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This tree may not bear fruit, but you can be sure its signal will give your BlackBerry or Apple iPhone a boost…

Good luck finding dates on this tree!

I’ve obviously been going round Dubai with my eyes closed though, because when I posted this photo on Twitter yesterday, I learnt that this telecoms-tower-disguised-as-a-palm-tree is not the first by any means. We saw this on Saturday while on a day trip to the emirate of Umm Al Quwain, but apparently they can be seen all over the Palm and around The Meadows in Dubai. The Meadows is an upscale real-estate development, which – like other communities such as The Greens, The Lakes and The Springs – was named with a ‘desert oasis’ theme in mind.

Wild boys! (and for once, not mine)

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The sound of Duran Duran’s sing-a-long favourites rang out across the desert last night as the pretty boys of ‘80s rock proved they’ve ‘still got it’, minus the shoulder pads.

With a full moon, fiery Mars and countless stars shining down on us, Duran Duran belted out tunes such as The Wild Boys, Rio and Girls on Film, catapulting the audience – most of whom must have been orbiting 40 (not a teeny bopper in sight!), back to an era when teenagers awoke to posters of the five British Midlanders plastered all over their bedroom walls.

The band left the stage with a bang

It was a flash-tastic, energetic performance – even better than in the 80s, according to one Duranie who also saw them in 1984 – followed by the prettiest fireworks I’ve seen in a long time.

Which leads me to a confession: I think I might be a Duranie myself. Twenty-five years too late. At school, it was my great friend Joanne who set her sights on becoming Mrs Le Bon (move over Yasmin, Joanne-Joanne sounded just like Duran Duran, we reasoned). I was a Culture Club chick. But in adult life, I’ve seen D-D twice they’re so fantastic live (muffled video clip below!).

I also realised three other things at the Rugby Sevens venue last night:

– Firstly, wearing heels to totter around in sand is not a good idea – you just end up walking on tip-toes.

At least two heads taller than everyone else! But he's forgiven because he kindly didn't move much and his statuesque height meant there was plenty of space

– Secondly, there is no denying I’m getting on a bit. Okay, old. Simon Le Bon – who I remember for his boyish face, puckered rouged lips and knee-knocking baggy silk trousers – is still a sweetie, but now looks like George Michael crossed with Ricky Gervais. John Taylor, meanwhile, appears to be morphing into Keith Richards.

– Thirdly, a height restriction should have been imposed on the audience. The 8ft man just in front of me must have had the best view in the house, lucky chap! Though, actually, standing behind his towering silhouette worked in my favour, because the vacuum behind him was the perfect space for bopping around, even in heels.

Back in the day

DH’s office in the sky

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Many moons may have passed, but in an entirely different life two countries ago, it was my job in women’s magazines that people were interested in.

It helped that at the time I was seeing someone who ‘worked in computers’. Not many people knew exactly what he did – and nor did I – so people would turn their attention to me and ask questions about working in media.

They loved hearing about the problem page I did for a health & beauty magazine. Were the problems made up? (yes, some of them!). What kind of letters were in the postbag? (some corkers!) Did readers reveal explicit details about their sex lives? (yes, eye-opening).

Then, when they found out I also worked for the Mirror newspaper, they’d be really curious about the stories I wrote. Again, were they true? How did you find those basket-weaving, identical twins who gave birth at Butlins?

I’d tell them about my baptism by fire into the world of tabloid journalism and explain how I had to find a whole class of teenaged school girls, with a willing head teacher, and persuade them to keep diet diaries for an attention-grabbing feature on osteoporosis.

Love, sex, food, fashion and family - in women's magazines, these are familiar territories

The original brief was to have the girls X-rayed – but as this wasn’t ethical (not to mention entering nervous breakdown territory for me), the diet diaries were the easier option. “Just don’t mention smoking,” said the head. And I didn’t – until the article got rewritten so the intro described the schoolgirls as ‘living on crisps and cigarettes’ and the headline blared ‘Junk-food generation: Crippled by the age of 35’. Not quite the publicity the principal had in mind for her fee-paying school.

People also wanted to know about the press trips I was lucky enough to go on. Monaco, Germany, France, Prague, Portugal – the French one involving travelling by private plane to the launch of a nasal douche (a squirter the manufacturer was convinced would become as popular as toothpaste – it didn’t, not in the UK at least!) and the Monte Carlo trip accompanied by a ‘sexpert’ to report on the launch of a condom with an applicator (try keeping a straight face during *that* demonstration!).

But, as I said, this was all a long time ago. Turned out Computer Boyfriend wasn’t just working in the tech industry – he was also working on another girlfriend. We broke up. I was reunited with my teenage sweetheart, who became my DH. We moved to Florida five days after marrying and the rest is history.

Nowadays, given that my work is more of a side show, and the rest of my time is spent attempting to control and entertain two small boys, wiping bums, soothing tantrums and refereeing fights (on far less sleep than when I was working under the tightest deadline as a freelance journalist), it’s DH’s job that everyone’s interested in.

Where do you go? people ask. Do you ever have celebrities on board? (Hilary Swank, Natalie Imbruglia, Gerard Depardieu are a few he’s mentioned). Have you ever had a near crash? Seen a UFO? Isn’t it on auto-pilot the whole time? And from guys: ‘Do you get to hang out with the flight attendants at the swimming pool?’

On his most recent trip to Germany, there were even spectators when the plane came down to land – and people videoing the aircraft’s arrival and departure (the A380 has only recently started flying into Munich and is still turning heads). I’ve watched the video footage on YouTube.

Where we live there are more pilots than you can shake a control stick at, so when we’re at home, it’s all very routine, very normal. It’s when we’re mixing with people outside the aviation world that the interest is sparked. But the thing I find funny is how DH views office life. He’s only ever spent three days in an office – three days – and that was just ‘work experience’ when he was a teenager.

He watches programmes like The Office with the same fascination that I watch shows like Airline or Pan Am. Consequently, he thinks that in officedom we spend our whole time hitting on each other, photocopying body parts and hiding the stapler. When I told him that at work, someone had actually stapled my co-worker’s post-it notes together, he thought this was hilarious.

I’m quite truthful with him, pointing out the realities of office life – because don’t you think that his fantasy version of the 9-5, complete with a hot secretary in a short skirt, office cubicles and a resident prankster, is the equivalent of a cockpit kitted out with a remote control, take-away pizza, pin-up poster girl and fluffy dice?

The Airbus A380 dreampit

When the cat’s away…

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It’s another dusty, windy Saturday afternoon and I’m drinking tea at a formica table while the boys burn off energy at an indoor play area.

There’s noise, bad music, lurid plastic, flashing lights, crying children and constant interruptions, but this is my downtime – two hours of respite from being the sole parent in charge today.

I’m sure all mums will know what I mean when I say single-handed parenting can sometimes be like doing a marathon in Manolo Blahniks, backwards and with no-one to tag.

OK, so on DH's list I left off the work bit, the jet lag and travel fatigue, but you get the picture. Jealous? NOoo

From the early morning wake-up calls to tantrums at bedtime, from oldest son’s non-stop, brain-bending questions to youngest son’s refusal to eat anything but chocolate, it always feels like a HUGE responsibility being the only adult on duty at the weekend.

[Said in a hushed voice]: They don’t leave me alone, not even to go to the toilet! And don’t get me started about the fighting.

So when I waved DH off this morning, to the bierhauses and beautiful architecture of Munich, it was with a hint of jealousy on my part, even though I’d actually hate to have to leave home the whole time (and, if the truth be told, I wouldn’t swap roles with him in a million years – nor did I actually see him off as he left even earlier than the kids got up).

But I missed his help when, in the car today while trying to concentrate on traffic, BB started shouting, “MUM, L.O.O.K!! LB’s got his willy out!” – upstaged only by an incident at the supermarket 10 minutes later which saw the Little Boy FLASHING shoppers while my back was turned getting cash from the ATM.

“Enjoy every moment,” well-meaning, nostalgic parents always advise. “It goes by so fast.” And I do try to savour it – just not *this* moment. Or the moment last Saturday when I discovered they’d etched a 1.5 metre-long scratch on the TV cabinet and filled the CD player up with soil.

Angels in standard-issue devil's horns: Nice try BB, but I don't think this will stop your brother from bugging you!

I’ve actually got off pretty lightly today – on previous occasions when DH has been gone, far worse has happened. I came home from work a few weeks ago to be told, by our nanny, that she’d lost BB that afternoon and found him up on the roof, hollering to our neighbours.

We do have lots of fun, too, when it’s just the kids and me, but it does seem that while the cat’s away, the mice will play up, especially on weekends.

When DH gets back from trips, he scoops up the boys, his eyes shining with joy. “They’re such angels,” he’ll say, turning to me.

I’ve learnt to smile sweetly and respond – in a measured way – “Yes dear. Little angels.”

“Both of them.” Before retreating for what I consider to be a well-earned break.

This has been doing the rounds on Facebook recently - love it!

Silent Saturday

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Bloggers will know this should be ‘Silent Sunday’, but as Sunday is the first day of the working week in the United Arab Emirates, I’m posting one of my favourite photos a day early. I think the recent sandstorms in Dubai may have left sand on my brain – probably blew in through my ears – because I’m sticking with a desert theme. The Arabian Desert, from which the city of Dubai grew, is truly beautiful – some of it punctuated with shrubs and the odd tree, and some of it absolutely pristine.

The Big Boy and me, on top of a sand dune – you can just see the Hajar Mountains (Arabic for stone mountains), which mark the Dubai-Oman border, in the background.

Turning the desert green

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“Have you been inside?” It was the question on all my neighbours’ lips last week.

“Yes, twice today,” I heard mums reply. “There’s even a pork section,” – met with an intake of breath, a smile and a wide-eyed “Really?”

We were excited, you see, because we’ve waited three years for a grocery store to open in our compound here in Dubai.

Not only does it mean we don’t have to do a 10km loop anymore just to get milk, it also puts our community firmly on the map – quite something when you consider that in 2009, there was very little here.

Located outside the city in the desert, our newly built villas had sand lots for gardens when we moved in. The front- and backyards were, to the boys’ delight, literally giant sandpits.

The houses are painted a lemon colour – and with rolling desert for as far as the eye could see beyond our compound, the first impression was of acres of yellow, set against the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky.


For a long time, the only way in was via a bumpy, pot-holed track that 4by4s could just about handle without falling apart, but meant cars had to pick their way along, dodging craters, at a snail’s pace.

The roads around the compound were still under construction and I remember well the traffic layout changing overnight – a whole roundabout (a huge one!) vanished and everyone driving home the next day got completely and utterly lost.

Our compound wasn’t (and still isn’t) connected to a sewerage system or a mains water supply – poo trucks take sewage away and water trucks deliver desalinated water to a storage tank.

While everyone loved their brand-new villas, it did feel rather far and sparse, and calling a taxi in those days was like directing someone who doesn’t speak English, and is really only pretending they understand you, to a needle in a haystack.

The vast expanse of undeveloped desert where the boys play - perfect really!


From humble beginnings, our compound has slowly been added to – the swimming pool finally finished (once they worked out how to fill it with no mains water supply), a playarea, gym and dry cleaners opened, as well as a spa offering manis/pedis, massages and hair appointments. The shop took three years because of an electricity supply problem.

Planning is not always Dubai’s strong point.

How does your garden grow? Waiting for the newly planted clumps of grass to merge. In case you're wondering, an irrigation system automatically waters the whole garden twice a day (and yes, we did leave a sizeable sandpit for the boys round the back)!

““Get those villas up as fast as possible, fill ‘em with expats and we’ll worry about the utilities later,” must have been the developer’s mantra.

Today, our compound is even looking green as most people have landscaped their gardens, either planting clusters of grass that slowly merged to form a lawn, or rolling out instant-gratification ‘carpet grass’.

When our own grass was planted, in clumps, LB’s hair was just sprouting too and the race was on to see if our lawn or his locks would grow first.

The boys’ disappointment that I longed for grass and flowerbeds was quickly forgotten when they discovered the enormous patch of undeveloped desert just outside our compound, which we often zoom across in the SUV for fun. Perfect for kite-flying, excavating and quad-biking, there’s even a ravine with steep sides that the kids (and DH) slide down, nicknamed the Cliffs of Despair.

So that’s the story of our house built on sand. With the pioneering early days now passed, it feels like this corner of the desert has been well and truly conquered – and with the help of an awful lot of water, the desert has even been turned green.

Our lazy (but sweet) expat cat

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We have a cat – a rather rotund black-and-white female moggy who predates both our kids and has never really gotten over the arrival of two rambunctious boys into our formerly quiet household.

Love decorating, love patterns (DH not so much), and look - Chandelle is practically camouflaged ...

Despite being unbelievably lazy, she’s a well-travelled cat. We acquired her as a kitten from an animal rescue charity when DH and I were newly-weds, living in Florida. My husband named her Chandelle, which I know makes her sound like a voluptuous porn star but is, in fact, an aviation manoeuvre (don’t ask me what!).

She went on a three-day road trip from Florida to Minnesota when we moved to Minneapolis, then flew half-way round the world – via a pet hotel in Amsterdam – when we relocated to the Middle East.

Quite a long way for a cat, no? Well, she’s made up for it since by staying put – on our bed. She hardly moves, except for when she’s chased by one of our boys. So content is Chandelle to spend her days lolling on our bedsheets that I actually designed the bedroom to match her. She blends quite well with the black-and-white print of the throw, don’t you think?

For somewhere that gets really very hot in the summer, Dubai is home to loads of pets. You’d be surprised how many people own cats and dogs here – as well as more exotic animals such as lions and tigers (seriously!).

Being Dubai, pampered pets are well catered for, with pooch pedicures, organic shampoos and conditioners, Fursace doggy bags and designer dog gowns just some of the luxuries available at high-end pêt-à-porter boutiques. For £2,000, you can even indulge your pet with a Swarovski crystal-encrusted wooden bed, complete with velvet sheets on which you can have your dog’s name engraved.

Expats are content with feline and canine friends – although we had quite a shock when an escaped giant iguana appeared at our patio door, so big our housemaid was convinced it was a crocodile and started taking photos. But, in Emirati circles, larger exotic animals have always found willing buyers. Lately, illegal African cheetahs have become popular pets among those rich enough to afford one.

I mentioned before that my boss at work peered into a car on National Day at what they thought was a funny-looking dog, but turned out to be an adolescent lion. Well, it’s happened again and here’s the proof. This picture of a tiger hanging out of a car window was taken in the Marina Promenade area and caused a frenzy on social media sites this week … Lovable? Hmm, I’m not sure.

The school assessment

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It might only feel like yesterday that the Little Boy was born, but here in Dubai children can start school at three – providing they pass ‘The Assessment’, in which your kid is expected to perform tricks like a monkey. Except it would probably be easier taking a monkey along than a stroppy three year old.

“We should have got his hair cut,” lamented DH, as I tried to comb LB’s overgrown mop into a tidy style on the morning of his first assessment last week. “And done more prep. A captain I flew with told me they’d done loads of prep with their son.”

“It’s ok,” I retorted. “He’s great with colours – and he knows all our names. Watch,” I said, running through our family names, only hitting a problem when it came to my name. “Cath-wynn,” he replied. Erm, close (she’s our nanny) but no!

“He can hold a pen – and count in no particular order,” I ventured, grasping at straws at this point.

Bittersweet: It's hard to believe that in the autumn I'll have two boys at school!

This assessment – for a nearby school so popular it has a 10-year waiting list – was the easy one out of the two schools we’re applying to because we didn’t have to be there. A teacher came to LB’s nursery and ‘observed him’. All we had to do was get him there by 8 in the morning and keep our fingers crossed that he didn’t bite anyone in front of her.

I knew all along that today’s assessment for his older brother’s school would be harder, for several reasons. It was at 7.45am, we had to go with him, and every time we take him to BB’s school, it’s to ride bikes in the kindergarten play area, not be asked questions by a complete stranger with a clip board in a room full of kids he doesn’t know.

As I filled in a form about LB’s behaviour, routine, strengths and weaknesses, I was acutely aware I’d come across as a complete liar. “He enjoys playing with children,” I put, as LB – who’d just thrown the predicted tantrum over not being allowed to go to the school play area with his brother – clung to me for dear life.

“He’ll play independently,” I wrote, while DH tried to prize him off me, with no luck.

“And his love of Lego suggests a future Norman Foster … That is, if the accuracy he displays when throwing things at his brother’s head doesn’t lead him to play sport competitively,” I toyed with the idea of putting.

With ALL the other kids playing happily, DH and I tried using bribery, coercion and even logic to get him to participate, until finally a teacher came over and asked if he was part of the assessment. “YES … It might not look like it, but yes!” I fumed in my head… “Certainly not here, Mrs Clip Board, at this ungodly hour for the fun of it.”

If it sounds like I was getting stressed, I was.

From this point, it actually got a bit better. He ran through the colours, mumbled a few words, and drew a train. He flunked the numbers and refused to jump when asked (“That’s just silly,” I could tell he was thinking), but it was enough.

They emailed later to say that – pending receipt of his birth certificate, passport, visa, his fourth-cousin-once-removed’s passport, nursery reports from birth, finger print, iris scan and 20 passport photos – Monkey Boy was in.

In return, a G&T at the door would have helped. A lot.