Early Days

You stand on the lawn holding the windfall apple between your feet. Taking care not to split it, you press the garden cane clean through it, a couple of inches into the ground. Using the cane as a slingshot, you launch the apple with all your might. High over the trees and the garden wall. Over the old warehouses and beyond, to land out of sight. Possibly in the harbour. Maybe even across the water in North Harbour Street. Who cares - the fun is in the flight, not the landing. You fire another, and another. When you run out of windfalls, you shake the tree.
When the policeman turns up he doesn't believe a kid can throw apples 200 yards so you have to give him a lesson in how it's done. He's a quick learner and a fit young guy, so his first attempt goes like a rocket. But his round-arm technique doesn't give enough elevation and his apple smashes itself to a pulp against the warehouse wall. Shocked at the raw power of this weaponry, he confiscates your cane and cycles off with it over his shoulder, to practise at home. If he'd only looked in the shed, he'd have found your air rifle and the World War One bayonet. And fifty more canes.
(excerpt from Zen & the Art of Paragliding)

Plus Ca Change

At first sight, Stufital hasn't changed at all through Ramadan, but on closer inspection the tattier chairs are seen to have been re-upholstered and the table tops revarnished. The other change, which we were expecting, is the new duo, George and not-George. No guitar, sadly. George leads from a keyboard which manages to play itself when he switches to saxophone. Not-George, whose name I'll learn in time, is a sonsie lass with a nice smile but rather less voice than either of her predecessors. Otherwise, business as usual, as witness Dindsay's state of, let's say, relaxation.

The Muntazah Flat

Just because I've run out of windows in Ayr surely doesn't mean I've run out of inspiration? After a lay-off of a few weeks from the last post in the house series, I thought I'd better start something new. So, here goes: again courtesy of Google Earth, this is my small corner of Doha. My flat is on the first floor, to the front of the building, facing the street. Across the road, the lads play football or cricket in the early morning on the triangle of burnt grass, while waiting for the ancient American school bus to come and take them to work. Adjacent, to the left, is the Dubyani Restaurant, a taxi drivers' howff, or tea-howff, which is quite handy because it means I never have to wait long to get a cab.

Behind is the start of mini-Pakistan, an area that stretches almost to Sofitel and is home to a large community of Pakistani workers. Most of them have been here for a long time and work in and around the old city, in shops, juice stalls, garages, filling stations, repair yards and the like. They are the city's human infrastructure; without them, the place would curl up and die. They don't work on the big construction projects or in the oil & gas plants. The guys that keep these concerns running are imported in large work gangs from the Subcontinent and are mostly housed in compounds out of town. You don't see them much because they are not given the freedom of the city. They are not even allowed to walk on the Corniche or enter the shopping malls, because it's not good, apparently, for the rich to see the poor.

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan comes round again, and with it the closing of every bar in Doha. Dubai at least allows evening opening. It's not the lack of alcohol that's the problem. Residents' permits solve that one. But it just makes for a long month when there's nowhere to go on a weekend evening. Yes, there are cafes and shopping malls, good for maybe fifteen and five minutes respectively. But these are hardly places to congregate, still less to hold jam sessions. Restaurants? Good. Let's have a Chateaubriand, medium-rare, with Bernaise sauce, accompanied by braised shalotts, duchesse potatoes and a bottle of what? Coca Cola? I can wait.