A Brief History of (a) Time
Many years ago, I found myself gainfully employed but homeless in Dubai, and in urgent need of accommodation for about six months. My Bulgarian friend (it's a cosmopolitan city) used her influence to secure me a long-term stay in Bur Dubai Panorama Hotel. So strange was this place that I had to commit it to paper, or at least to Blogspot. To this end, I dubbed it the Paranormal and myself, Paraglider, and set to 'work', immortalising...
By any standards, the Paranormal is an unprepossessing building. Six residential floors in low quality concrete, clad in pink crud. Still, the rooms are spacious and functional enough, once you get used to the idea that the cold water, in summer, is too hot to touch. But let me leave the description of the ground floor to a Professional Travel Writer. This, from a travel website:
Guests can also sip various beverages at Jockey's Pub, while enjoying various entertainments.
Jings. Quite apart from the strange 'various' fixation, in many years, possibly amounting to man-years, in Jockey's, I can honestly say I have never witnessed the ignoble perversion of 'sipping'. Gulping is the good honest norm. The same travelogue-ist observes:
During the daytime, the visitors can enjoy various (!) activities like dune bashing, camel riding and sand surfing on the sands of Dubai.
Yes, but, selfsame sands are not cheek-to-cheek with Paranormal and it is arguable that the hotel's camel stock has dwindled to less than one. In fact, our nearest sands are the car park to the right and the graveyard to the left. The graveyard is best observed from 2nd floor bedrooms and above. There are dead people there, but that's OK too. They don't make too much noise, and don't sip any more, if they ever did. Still, s/he was right about 'various entertainments'.
These comprise: a DJ with the good sense to play popular music quietly until about 9 p.m. when the volume and the bar prices go up, a few wall-mounted screens showing Sky News and Sky Sports, a dart board mounted on a pillar (think about it!), and, of course: Helga's Chickens.
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