I'm going slightly mad

Ask my husband, he'll tell you. That's kind, tolerant and probably slightly terrified husband who looks after me a treat, by the way. This is no tale of sorry misunderstood wife, lonely and unappreciated.

Picture a dog chasing its tail - a happy image. Picture a guinea pig chasing its tail: hmm, girth to length ratio, shortness of tail, narrow field of vision - less happy. Guinea pigs, in my experience, pootle along utterly absorbed in the minutiae of their guinea pig lives, uttering happy musical mweeeeeps as the mood takes them. Is the guinea pig aware that she has a tail? Does she care what it looks like? Nope. Not for her the folly of the hamster, similarly proportioned, and driven by some strange psychological pressure to chase round and round a sodding wheel, for heaven's sake, in pursuit of .................... what, exactly? No wonder hamsters bite.

I think I'm more guinea pig. I do. Got the figure for it. Good range of mweeeeeps. Tail's a bit of a problem at the moment though.

I read an article last month about a family who'd moved from England to France, and were now moving back because it hadn't worked for them. The crunch came when the wife - who essentially had exchanged a full, settled and purposeful life for isolation and a gorgeous view, in a country where she didn't speak the language - discovered she was pregnant. "And in that moment her future unfolded with frightening clarity. If we stayed, she would struggle to understand the midwives and doctors, and once the baby was born she would feel even more cut off."

I sympathised. We really like it here, and we never had any illusions about blending in, but we don't fit yet: not quite tourists, not quite anything specific - we're just here!

For a start, I soon discovered the downside of being an English teacher here: it's the nature of the job that, though you spend hours of every day surrounded by Spanish speakers, since they want to learn English, it doesn't improve your Spanish! Another teacher called it living in a bubble of English. And of course, in the staffroom, we're preoccupied with the complexities of our own language.

Ditto when teachers get together socially: my beloved now knows a lot more than he wants to about the present perfect and the first conditional, and the practical and philosophical differences in meaning between, say, the present continuous in English, and the present continuous in Spanish.

And we find ourselves monitoring our own speech, and that of those around us. Ooops! That was 'since' with a past simple! And I used 'much' in a positive sentence! Madre!

When your first language takes up so much of your attention, it rather dampens your enthusiasm for spending your free time wrestling with the all-important second one. After a dozen years in an Arabic-speaking country, I know that you don't learn a foreign language by osmosis (or not as an adult, anyway) so I have to do the work - but sheesh!

All of which is rather getting in the way of living here, as opposed to being an observer. (Good for yet another expat blog, but.............). I've got email invitations to theatre, talks, discussions and poetry readings, hmmmm..... After a year here, I'm frustrated and impatient with myself.

But the guinea pig thing. (Oh yeah? What was that exactly?) Well, it's like this, see. It's about life, isn't it? You know - a place, a purpose, an identity? I'm what you'd call a late developer. Twice, in Bristol and Bolton, I'd just found my niche, focus, whatever you like to call it, and laid the foundations of life as a young wife, mother, neighbour - when outside factors (a company merger, an economic recession - no, the other one...) necessitated a change of location.

In our years in Dubai, I did lots of interesting stuff, learnt a lot, made friends, and wished, for the most part, that I could go home. This wasn't an option, for a variety of reasons, and I found ways of keeping hands and head busy, and accepting what had to be. I used to wonder if there was a kind of stubbornness there - that all that really lay between me and the contentment that many other expats felt was a carefully disguised sulk at not getting my own way. There's a good little martyr. But I never felt that I had choices, only that I had to do my best to keep up. I'm fairly sure that I'm my own worst enemy. Opportunities missed or wasted, because I was treading water and holding my breath until I found the current that would take me back to my depth. I wish I'd had more gumption, more imagination, more backbone.

So we're here, putting into action the plan - such as it was - that sustained us in those final years. Except. I'm adrift. I'm lonely. I have no patience. But I don't know what to do! When we left England, I had a small son, and we left behind a close circle of friends built around the stages of early at-home motherhood - parks and toddler groups, nursery, primary school - that included husbands and neighbours. Life involved playdough, housework, boredom, silliness, common experiences, and a focus - our children and partners, our homelife. Sometimes it was tense, sometimes suffocatingly dull, but it was solid, and we were all individuals working through the same stage.

In Dubai, school was across town, with maids, drivers and buses as an extra layer of insulation, social life was built around shared interests, and the close friends you made generally upped and bloody left. I abandoned knitting and sewing, planted some pots, got a job, joined a choir and a drama society, made dear friends who didn't up and bloody leave - and who blog! - survived a couple of horrendous crises, waved son off to independence in England, learnt some Spanish............. and................... left. But not to go home. (I know, what's home, especially after such a long time?) I miss my friends. I miss my students. I do not want to go back, but I miss being connected to people. I'm working on the networking thing, but I know I come across as a dotty old auntie sometimes, all over-wide smiles, ever-ready apologies, and comic gestures and facial expressions. Maybe I could do silent movies? Street mime? Ah..........!!! Of course........ Living statues! You really need to speak the language to network. What a shame that the babel fish is fiction. Dang!

This week has been grim: tears before bedtime, also before getting up and over meals. Oh woe was me. It had been coming on for a while, staved off by the demands of work, but the moment I took my thumb out of the dike for purposes of having time off, relaxing, and doing what I wanted, the puzzle landed in my lap with all the spitting insistence of a furious street cat. Claw! What was I going to do? Claw? What could I do? Claw! And who with?! Huh? Who?! And what was the point because who was it for and why are we in another country where we don't speak the language so we're bloody foreigners again and it's still hot and the bijou-piso's still too damn small - and are you making excuses and feeling sorry for yourself again?! - and - phphphnnyyyaaaAAARRGGHHHHHHHHH!?!?!?!?! Claw!

And before you lean as far away as possible because you've just realised I'm completely freakin' nuts and you're afraid it might be catching, may I direct you to the title of this post? You were warned. Whoever you are. If you are. (sniff). It's ok. I'm back at work in a week.

Anyway, I fought back with an expensive foray into water colours since I have no space for sewing, and no space to put any finished product (moving to a bigger place some time soon); shopping for my WWOOF trip; practising Spanish; blogging; reading; and attempting - huh! - to write fiction. Ha! Can't do life, can't do sodding fiction either! Claw!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand what it all boils down to is that, for all the fabulosity of new life and adventure in gorgeous capital full of really interesting people, being foreign is hard work, even for people with the advantages of education and choice. Quite apart from the mechanics of shopping, sorting out utilities and reading manuals (even from foreign manufacturere, e.g. neither my Samsung mobile, nor my Nikon phone offer instructions in English), when you're tired and just want to relax, your own language is part of that. And when you want to join in with something local, get to know someone on their own turf - well, there's a language barrier isn't there?

And although I have plenty of acquaintances and colleagues, and I caught up with my sister and sisters in law at Dad's birthday bash, and yes there's the Internet, I miss the friendships I had, and am generally tired of transience. I'm auditioning for a choir next week. I went to a knitting circle on Thursday evening. I found a patchwork class yesterday. My provisional timetable for the coming year (starting October) makes all of these - and Spanish lessons -possible. The timetable may change, but something must pan out. Every mother has to find a new focus after her children move out. Everyone who relocates has to be patient and persistent. Not every couple get to start fresh adventures together after the first big one of building careers and raising a family. The really interesting stuff does take effort, and effort often hurts til you get used to the new rhythms. And if you keep going with this kind of paragraph you can suffocate under the weight of your own platitudes.

So I don't feel at home yet, but I know I'll feel different a year from now. We've come a long way in a year, whatever the shortfall from our hopes - expectations would be too strong a word. New country, new job, starting out again at 50 without the energy and innocence of 20, and empty nest too - our son has just moved into his hall of residence for the first year of his degree course, so I'm going to finish the scarf I started making for his birthday two years ago!

It's been clear for some time that we've returned to Europe in time for a global economic crisis far worse than the one that sent us to the middle east in the early 90s. Which is a bit of a sod really. At least we have a lot less to lose than we did the first time round - when we eventually lost our house. Our son is up and out, and we're doing our own thing. It doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I've had my insanity week, and I think I've worked out my gameplan for the near future.

Meanwhile, my husband has just defrosted our USELESS refrigerator with hairdryer, newspaper, kitchen towels, wooden spoon and carving knife. He's talking about grocery shopping, but I think it would be a kindness to take him out for a beer.

Tonight we're going to see Mamma Mia! again - but in Spanish this time. Working on the language skills, see?

Down time

It's been a long and tiring week, but it's the weekend now, and tomorrow I get to LIE IN. So that's ok. I had planned to go back to Parque de Peñalara tomorrow, and walk to the Laguna de los Pájaros and back, about 4.5km each way, compared with last week's 5km round trip. But not this weekend. Even though I think it's going to be perfect weather. Uh uh. Pooped, cream crackered, and more than a little sorry for myself.

Nope. Tomorrow morning will be devoted to waking up, turning over, and going back to sleep again, just as often as I can manage it. Then I've got geraniums to re-pot, and a garden to re-visit. As long as the weather holds.

The forecast is for moderate temperatures and maybe some cloud, but tonight, up here on the 7th floor, the canopy's showing nautical ambitions, and may have me in mid-Atlantic by morning - oh - and that was lightning. Forked, horizontal, and slightly closer to my right elbow than I'd like. I hope it doesn't rain.

Inspired by an Iranian friend's nostalgic memories of summer nights in Shiraz, when the whole family used to sleep up on the roof under the stars, I've been sleeping on the terrace since the middle of June. (Actually, on a sofabed on the terrace. Intrepid I ain't.) (..............and that was more lightning. No thunder though.) I love it. Of course, living above one of Madrid's most happening plazas can make it a little difficult to get to sleep,

especially when some really good buskers show up at 1.30 a.m. But if they're that good, you might as well get up and hang over the wall (This also goes for firework displays.). And if they aren't, well that's why we have earplugs.

And in the meantime, you can enjoy the cool nights, the wild moons,

even the occasional eclipse (last Saturday, but no batteries left for the camera).

At night, there are little black bats and big white moths. In the morning, there's a sky full of squeaking swallows (or there used to be, for months - not anymore, at least since mid-July).

And who needs an alarm clock, when you've got the sun rise?

Climbing back into bed with a cup of tea was never so satisfying.

I hope it doesn't rain tonight.

Big Zeds.

Habibi snores. He always has. It's the way he's built. In any position, and without a trace of alcohol in him, he snores gently, or breathes peacefully, occasionally snuffling like a newborn baby. Adorable. But with a late night glass of wine or beer inside him, he snores like a good-un, like a tractor in a field down the road. Anything more, and we get road works, a digger, a combine harvester, an ancient central heating boiler that rattles, roars and shudders with terrible force................... and intermittent silences of almost eerie intensity. Give this man spirits, and I could sell tickets.

When we stay with friends or family, they look at me with sympathy, and him with something approaching awe. Overnight camps are a real community experience.

Over the years, he has tried pillows, throat/nosedrops and snorestrips; while I have tried pillows, muttered requests, sharp commands, nudges, earplugs, cotton wool, headphones (with cotton wool), headphones (soft background music), ear-protectors (yellow ones), separate beds, separate rooms and over-the-counter sleeping pills. Also lie-ins, afternoon naps and early nights. Vitamin B compound. Deep breathing. Visualisation.

Over the years, at 3 and 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, I have considered divorce, murder and suicide. Made tea. Made sandwiches. Read. Blogged. Written miserable diary entries and farcical rhymes. Gone for walks. Cleaned out the fridge. Ironed.

I have lain next to my darling husband and trembled with cumulative fatigue, distress, self-pity, fury and loathing.

What I want to know is: how the hell does he sleep through it?

I really wish the alarm wasn't set for an hour and a half hence.

Help? Anyone?

P.S. Sorry honey.

Buen Fin de Semana

I'm halfway through a long weekend. Last week, we had Thursday off, and last month we had the 12th, but I feel less spoilt than relieved by this humane spread of public holidays. The past three months have been so interesting, so stimulating, so delightful, so satisfying. At the same time, between new country, new job, new people and new language, it gets tiring!

It all got a bit much on Thursday morning, and I had a rather weepy conversation with Habibi - he wasn't weepy, I might add, just quietly practical: yes, it gets a bit much sometimes, but we've covered all the bases, and we've nothing to worry about. What I needed was a decent night's sleep, and - ideally - a long weekend to cool my overheated brain, and generally chill.

We had this conversation while strolling through the neighborhood - my choice, as I'm less likely to snivel if distracted by the necessity of watching where I'm going and not making a show of myself. We wound up in a little side street cafe, where a film was playing unnoticed on TV. After a while (The TV was sited over Habibi's shoulder.) I registered that the protagonists had taken off their clothes and started doing things of a highly personal nature - not exactly washing behind their ears, you understand. Around the cafe, various other people noticed, watched for a bit with all the interest of cows chewing a stem of grass, and then went back to their conversations, or to gazing over their coffee cups. Fresh from the Middle East, we were a little more distracted, but not much. I almost felt sorry for the actors - all that psyching yourself up for a Nude Scene, and for what? Of course, it might have been different with the sound turned up.......

Outside, there was real entertainment: the tail end of a shouting match between a man and a woman; and a window display to die for: a scattering of bright autumn leaves, and heaps of beautifully made chocolate leaves, chestnuts and acorns, and chocolate-dipped walnuts. Mouthwatering artistry!

From there, I went off to my Spanish lesson, children's English classes in two schools and two adult classes back at base. The first children were as good as gold, and I was proud of them: they're a lively bunch, and its taken some doing to get to that level of concentration and involvement. Let's see if we can continue like this! The second group, an after-school class, and usually pretty focused - were completely hyper at the prospect of a long weekend starting as soon as they got out of class. Ah well.

The adult classes are - naturally - quite different in nature. I find that being a Spanish learner adds an extra dimension to being an English teacher. The challenges that my students face in mastering English are mirror images of the challenges I face with their language. They, of course, are considerably more advanced in English than I am in Spanish, so I have yet to deal with the grammatical and idiomatic points that they are wrestling with now. On the other hand, while they struggle to first hear, and then reproduce English vowel and consonant sounds, like our long 'a' (plate, spade), soft 'sh' and crisp 'ch', I am making a total hash of the lisped Spanish 'c' and 'z' which are somewhere betweenEnglish 'th' (thought) and 's' (sought!). It's a good job I prefer vino tinto to cerveza!

It's ironic that, as a resident here, I have the advantage of total immersion in the language I want to learn; but as an English teacher, I operate in my first language for most of my waking hours, and I can't even take it for granted, because of the need to explain and model it for my students. Not much comfort blanket there!

Out and about, of course, mundane tasks and conversations, and the radio, posters, shop signs, street signs and newspapers of my environment- provide one long practice exercise. Between the particular demands associated with each language, it does get tiring.

I have no complaints though - oh no. I am intrigued by this process of becoming bilingual - as I aim to be, eventually. I love the day-to-day contact with the people I meet in shops, cafes and classes. I get a tremendous buzz out of understanding snatches of conversation and lines from songs.

Anyway, it's the weekend now, and I'm enjoying it!

Flu with deadline

have flu and horrible chest thing -
also have Flukit, cough medicine, antibiotics-
am totally disgusting swamp creature snuffling & hacking in disorderly nest of bedding and tissues -
am very soory for self and grateful for Habibi -
if survive combined effects of lurgy and medication, will be lurgy-free by 03.30 takeoff a week today -
otherwise could go cargo -
either way, good to go - snrghlfngggghrflnghgh......

totally irresponsible to take lurgy to public place for long leaving do yesterday -
so nice but next victim(s) will be cursing that bloody woman in a few days' time.
Oh dear.

so much to do, so little interest

better tomorrow

This week's hot air epic. A culture of complaint?

I could do a word count on this but my nerves wouldn't stand it. It started off as a comment on a UAE Community Blog posting, and sort of continued. If you've been here before, you know the score!

Thanks to Woke, for linking to this 'Aqoul piece. ' There's a link to 'Aqoul, and other community blogs, in the top right hand column of the UAE Community Blog.

Someone - I can't remember who - sorry! - SOMEONE blogged recently on the phenomenon of the complaining expat. Surely when there's absolutely nothing that you can say or do to improve an unsatisfactory situation, the only harmless option is to grumble? It might not help the listener or reader to get through another month, but it surely releases the mental and emotional pressure in the complainer.

It's a shame that there is no mechanism by which the general population - Emirati and expatriate - can be heard; that we are regarded in much the same light as ants or bees, whose sole purpose is to build, and then give way to the next generation.

The trouble with suppressing and ignoring the popular voice is that resentment and cynicism eventually supplant contentment and optimism. It is hard that expatriates are so readily castigated as materialistic, grasping and self-centred, with no personal investment in the development of Dubai, when in fact we are actively discouraged from feeling that we belong here.

When I first came here, there were institutions created by expats on land generously given by the ruler. These institutions were about community, not profit, and so they continued year after year, charging modest subscriptions, and relying on volunteer or basic wage workers: individuals came and went, but the cricketers, the rugby players and the sailors continued, uniting adults, occupying and training children, entertaining the city, supporting charity.

Other groups - the animal charities, the charity challenge group, the choral societies, the drama groups, the bands and orchestras, the art centre, the social clubs, the lending library - have rented space for years.

Individuals of all nationalities, not just expats, but ordinary Emiratis too, volunteer in charity shops, prisons, special needs establishments and schools; organise and participate in the Terry Fox Run, the Walk Against Hunger, and raise funds or donate goods to relieve the suffering caused by natural disasters in the region.

All of this activity, the good will and energy that engenders it, and the satisfaction, the friendships and the ethos of organic community arts, sports and humanitarian action engendered by it, constitutes a vital part of 'Dubai, The City That Cares'. Dubai Centre for Special Needs, Rashid Paediatric Therapy Centre and Al Noor School have all benefited enormously, for decades,from the activities of expats who believe in 'putting back' into the community. BCAF (The British Community Assistance Fund) and support groups and organisations from other nationalities - Filipino, Sri Lankan and Indian cultural and charitable societies, the churches, the Russian School, the Japanese School - all these organisations, and others like them, help us foreigners to maintain our identity, but also enable us to contribute to the diversity and humanity of this place we live in.

Culture begins with community, and a community is a living organism, its parts interconnected and interdependent. Destroy the connections by shutting down or bankrupting socially beneficial organisations and visibly stratifying and segregating the population by income or nationality, and you get umpteen variations on 'us and them'; hardly the best social model. Now we have blogs and letters pages, but no-one's listening. Gifts have been taken back, and living groups cut off, cut out, because there's money to be made, and there must be no obstruction to the making of money. Who's materialistic, grasping and self-centred, with no personal investment in the development of Dubai? What a betrayal of goodwill and decades of selfless effort. What a waste of human resources.

Perhaps the fundamental problem is one of scale. The old, small Dubai was run by the ruling family, and individuals could bring issues, concerns and suggestions to the majlis, knowing that they would be heard thoughtfully and treated fairly. It was a paternalistic social order, in which father and children had a direct personal relationship; it might reasonably be called quite democratic.

It certainly worked as well as, if not better than, many another system.

However, as the family has grown, and all the foreign cousins have moved in, the father, though admired and loved by many, appears to have become more remote.

It has not happened by design. In terms of community, Dubai has become a victim of its own success. The analogy of the over-achieving executive comes to mind: working so hard to give his family the life and opportunities he dreams of, that ironically they start to feel that he only cares about his job. His children reach adulthood, surrounded by the things he's bought them; fit and well, with straight teeth; enriched by education and experience; but resentful of his preoccupation, his apparent assumption that they are not sufficiently responsible, intelligent or imaginative to know what's good for them.

Meanwhile his doctor is talking bluntly about over-exertion and blood pressure. So much effort, such good intentions: how did he end up being the bad guy with the heart problem? It's not fair. End of apparently endless analogy.

Hissy fits in newspaper interviews and letters about ingratitude, subversion and disloyalty will not silence the complaints or settle the discontent they reflect, nor will PR, however stylish and ubiquitous.

Eventually there has to be a system of conference, a mechanism for sharing ideas and points of view for the general good. Not an off-the-shelf import of an Nth generation system which has evolved to suit an entirely different culture. (None of those systems are perfect anyway, and transplantation would only magnify the flaws.) On the other hand, studying the successes and failures of others, and applying the lessons, is the Dubai way.

A new majlis for a new era?