The Songstone

Exam resit week for the employees. The 'excellent' have passed and gone; the 'no-hopers' who cannot pass have also gone; I am left with the middling rump, who can still pass if they get off their Blackberries and do some work. The class is now fragmented, with the students  all  having different modules to get through, which means more work for yours truly in preparing separate materials for them. In the midst of the hurly-burly comes a call from the bank. "Mr. Simon, sir? It's X here from Al Khaliji." "Yes, yes, what do you want?" "Mr. Simon, sir, your new card is ready. Are you free to come to the bank to pick it up? "No, I'm busy. Call me at 1 o'clock." (fawning) "Yes, Mr. Simon, sir." 1pm : "Mr. Simon, sir?" "Yes, I have no time to come to the bank." "Where are you, sir?" I tell him. "So I will come there at 2 o'clock to give you the card. Is that OK for you, Mr. Simo...

I've never been in a desert before. High Wycombe, where I spent my adolescent years, does not qualify, geomorphometrically, so it was a pleasure to take a jeep out of Doha a couple of weeks ago and see the sand: Camels I couldn't avoid the ghastly trap of paying 10 riyals to a Bedouin tout to hold his hunting falcon: A bird in the hand Well, that's Qatar for you: sand. And sea. And Doha. No rivers, lakes or mountains. Still, it has its charms; one of my students has promised to take me out for some falconry. If he passes his exams. Any suggestion that I will now pay him extra attention in class will be vigorously rebutted...

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile: BBC Middle East and Al Jazeera have rolling coverage of ‘The crisis in Egypt’. Many Egyptians here are glued to their screens watching events, while the government in Egypt has taken to blaming the foreign media, including Al Jazeera, for inciting the protests. This war of words escalated recently: Qatar itself has come under fire for allowing Al Jazeera to broadcast. Tunisia, Egypt, the splitting of Sudan, protests in Jordan and Yemen; I have come to the region at an interesting time. Sad news and good on the ornithological front. Mother dove (for that is what the bird on my window ledge was) abandoned her eggs, one of which soon became putrid in the sun. But 4 days later a new dove has come in and laid two more. The nest, which looks like a mass of multi-coloured electrical wire because it IS a mass of multi-coloured electrical wire, is thus i...

I'd like to tell you about adventures of derring-do in the souk ; how I went there with an English rose; how we were set upon by a posse of qat -crazed fiends intent on infamy; how they were fought off with cold steel and stiff upper lip. However, despite sharing a birthday with Rider Haggard I can’t go that far: the rose was tired and we've put it off till tonight. I was given a class this morning! Perhaps not the keenest students I have ever encountered, they are studying to be security guards and firemen. They knew 'stop' and 'fire', or at least most of them did by the end; they should go far. Cooler this morning; a wind from the North made it like a Spring day back home, but the sun is out now and it’s 25C. I'm looking forward to getting home for a nap and then the evening ahead. Toodle-pip.

At once, as far as Angels ken, he views The dismal situation waste and wild: A dungeon horrible on all sides round ran through my mind as I surveyed the outside of Marks and Spencer, Doha. Carrefour is OK: for me at least it’s mildly exotic, but M&S? I didn’t come to the Gulf for fucking M&S; there isn’t even a food section. It was a quiet weekend. I spent much of Friday cleaning, unpacking and trying unsuccessfully to get my mobile to connect to the Internet via WiFi. I called the Indian who acts as our block’s general dogsbody and barked a few complaints about broken lightbulbs. I went wandering in the district looking at Turkish and Lebanese eateries. Most of the time I just slept and watched films. I have taken the first step on the road to the Residence Permit with the blood group test, which involved a prick on the finger and a few drops squeezed onto a glass slide. Two minutes later I had a printout declaring me A negative. Next comes the full medical, which ...

Had lunch with the boss yesterday in the Villagio ; lamb with couscous and iced coffee - delicious. She bought me a SIM card, which in theory cannot be obtained until one has a Resident's Permit, which takes a long time. There is WiFi in my apartment, so I shall be experimenting with mobile internet, something completely new to me, but it's free. I was told the stark and awful story of the Canadian 40-something teacher who had sent amorous texts to his 20-something secretary. They had to get him out of the country in two days, because if her father had complained he could have gone to prison. In a country where there are 4 men to every women I can imagine that desperation might set in, and 'lock up your daughters' is clearly the local response.