Egypt in (more) pictures

These additional photos from Egypt will have to speak for themselves for the time being.......click on them for better views. I hope you enjoy them.

Down the Nile with Chuck Berry, Agatha Christie and boat called Relax

Well, no one got it. Or was it just that I offered no certainty of a prize? The room arrowed in another image of this hotel - the Old Cataract at Aswan on the Nile - was, or so I am assured, taken by Agatha Christie to inspire her during her writing of Death on the Nile


But Egypt, my Egypt for a memorable nine-day winter break, was about much more than that. It was even about more than the incessant begging, and hassle from street vendors with merchandise that you'd never wish to possess, that dogged us from Cairo airport to the Valley of the Kings to the Aswan Dam and the Pyramids and back to Cairo airport.




Our first guide, Ibrahim, had a great answer to the problem. Just feign deafness, he said; do not on any account engage in conversation, even to say: "No thank you."
It saved us from destitution and handed me a half-decent headline for my midweek column at The National. You can read Deaf on the Nile by clicking here.






About Memphis, I have a little story to pass on. Long distance information, you might say, informs me that many years ago, the excellent folk-rock band Fotheringay were playing a concert in Manchester.

Their first album had included a traditional song, Banks of the Nile. Throughout the concert, a group of fans kept yelling for it. Sandy Denny and the boys clearly didn't want to do it.

Come the encores, Sandy shouted: "Do you want Banks of the Nile?"

"Yeah!" the audience called back. And the band launched into Memphis, Tennessee. Someone suggested at Salut! Live that the band must have known that the city of Chuck Berry's song took its name from Memphis on the Nile, Egypt's first capital. Oh no they didn't, came the reply from Jerry Donahue, who was the band's guitarist. It was just a coincidence.




M and Mme Salut! are not cruise people. They had never been on one, or even thought seriously of going on one.





They have changed their minds. Sailing down the Nile - does the fact that the river flows from south to north make it "down the Nile" when you go from Luxor to Aswan? - was as relaxing an experience as I can remember (the fjords of Musandam, only last month, were certainly soothing, but I knew then that a five-hour drive awaited me at the end of the day's cruise).

There was even a cruise within a cruise. For a small sum, we took a small boat on to the river while berthed in Aswan to get some terrific views from the water of Agatha Christie's hotel, a glimpse of the river birdlife and some stunning locations on the island opposite the port.


The boat was even called Relax. I did, even though the two-man crew encouraged me to take lengthy turns on the tiller, which I rather enjoyed (while suspecting their sanity in entrusting me with such a task).

The Nile cuts through a beautiful corridor of the country. Any visit to the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel and the Pyramids is likely to leave a profound impression.




But I have one question, suggested by Billy Bob Z Redneck III and his wife Cindy Lou........



Just why did they go and build the Pyramids next to that electricity pylon?

37

As anyone who has visited Salut! Sunderland in the past 24 hours will know, the United Arab Emirates - Salut!'s home for 14 months or so - was 37 yesterday.

The country was born two weeks after M and Mme Salut! had the second part of their wedding; that event took place at l'église Sainte Jeanne d'Arc in Le Mans, a church honouring poor Joan of Arc and said by Mme Salut! and others to have been built by Henry II as a sort of "I'm sorry" after the murder of Thomas à Becket. (The legal knot had been tied in the more prosaic setting of Bishop Auckland Register Office a fortnight earlier).

So before I get down to news of recent travels to Egypt, here are a few of the pictures I took last night as Abu Dhabi poured on to the streets to celebrate its 37th anniversary.



Thousands were out on and around the Corniche. My drive home normally takes seven or eight minutes, but last night I abandoned my car several streets from home after getting nowhere in half an hour.




Everything was good-natured and colourful, with people hanging precariously from cars, klaxons hooting and families picnicking on available bits of grass along the promenade.



And people from all over the world joined in; with some estimates suggesting that 160 or so languages or dialects are spoken here, a street party with only Emiratis as guests would be a necessarily quieter affair.

But what of Egypt, from which I returned in yesterday's early hours?

Salut! thoroughly enjoyed being nowhere near a computer screen for eight days. We knew nothing of the grotesque events in Mumbai until the siege was virtually over.

Sailing slowly down the Nile turned out to be one of the most relaxing holidays I have taken - all the more so because the persistent street vendors and beggars of Luxor and Aswan could not reach us on our cruiser.

I will bring words and pictures very soon. For now, let me just see whether anyone knows what happened in the room arrowed above? No competition on this occasion - I'd hate Louise and Bill to think I was trying to attract readers to Salut! - unless I change my mind...

Fjords popular in Musandam

Ten hours or more, there and back, on the road. But the trip to Musandam was worth it.

The journey is at best unspectacular, at worst a combination of dicing with death (Abu Dhabi to Dubai) and enduring the dullness of the coastal plains north of Dubai.

But this, or as best as I managed to capture it, is what awaits you on arrival in the mountainous chunk of Oman that is cut off by the UAE from the sultanate's main territory to the south.

As some of you will have seen from the photos already posted at Salut!, it is a remarkably beautiful corner of the Gulf.

We had only one night there, but this was followed by a magical day afloat as our crew navigated a slow course around the striking fjords.

It was a welcome relief from city life. Nothing happens in a hurry in Musandam.



And as a bonus, my Blackberry had no signal all day.

All photos are clickable for a better view....the hanging text will have to wait (in other words, I have no idea how to fix it).

One minor irritation. The dolphins are becoming blasé.

Cajoled by the spirited handclapping of our crew, they broke surface several times but then flatly refused to put on anything approaching a full show of tricks. Shame on them!

Nationalised Salut!

Someone posted a recent comment at Salut! saying that my musings on life in Abu Dhabi had been a factor in his decision not to apply for a job at The National, the newspaper launched in Abu Dhabi in April.

Well, I have certainly mentioned the dreadful problem of where to live, since only a fool or liar wold deny that excessive demand has combined with insufficient supply to produce outrageous rents for such homes that trickle on to the market.

Otherwise, I think I have been mostly positive and sometimes even warm about the place (and not just because it is very positive about itself, and also exceedingly warm).

The same applies to the weekly column - soon to be one of two weekly columns - that I write as part of my work.

You can find all of my contributions to the paper by searching for me by name at The National's website. There are also direct links from a list of columns that appears in the left column of Salut!

What is Salut! Salam?

Good question.

I am Colin Randall. I came to Abu Dhabi to help launch The National, a serious daily newspaper for the UAE and beyond.

My blog Salut! is reasonably well known. Its offshoots - Salut! Sunderland on the ups and downs of supporting Sunderland AFC, Salut! Live on folk and folk-rock music and Salut! North on North-eastern (England) nostalgia - have more specialised readerships.

What they share in common, beyond being mine, is that they are inaccessible to many, perhaps most, people in the country I have made my home, the United Arab Emirates.

I thought at first that I was being censored, either because I occasionally used pictures from Flickr (which has been banned, though it isn't just now) or because my host, Typepad, had somehow caused offence here. Typepad itself told me some of its sites were blocked.

But I am assured by the regulatory body that there is no such ban. Any formal ban, my highly place informant tells me, is demonstrated by the appearance of an on-screen messagee. Typepad blogs - or all those I have tried - just fail to open.

And that, I am told, means it is a technical issue, nothing to do with censorship. Boosters is the buzz word here.

So why am I able to get into my Salut! sites from work? This is where technological ignorance gets the better of me. My man at the regulatory body says it is all to do with the "boosters" a big media company is likely to use, and this is beyond my grasp.

But the upshot is that I have duplicated all items concerning the UAE and the Middle East and posted them here.

I just want people to see what I make of life in Abu Dhabi. Images, and the usual decoration you expect of a decent blog, will be added gradually, as time permits.

Blogging, which I began while working for The Daily Telegraph in Paris, has never threatened to make me rich. I enjoy doing it, but it is time consuming and costs money, not a lot but enough to notice.

The Google Ads and Amazon book and record shelves you'll find on my sites produce negligible amounts that do little to offset the effort and outlay.

Not without reluctance, I have installed a Donate button and if you like what you find at Salut! Salam, you may use it. Think of it as a variation of choosing whether to leave a tip at the restaurant - but rest assured that there'll be no scowl if you do not.

Making a point

Driving around Abu Dhabi, it is relatively unusual for the car driver to feel any great empathy with the people sitting behind tinted glass at the wheels of 4x4 monsters.

If I didn't like them as Kensington Tractors or 16th Arrondissement Juggernauts, I am not about to develop a grudging fondness for them here.

Maybe I am stuck with the view expressed in a piece some months ago, when I wrote that drivers were probably no worse in Abu Dhabi than in many other places I have been as resident or visitor.

But rather a lot of expats do bring the worst-case road practices of their own countries and apply them to the bigger vehicles they can afford to run with fuel so cheap and no income tax to pay.

Is it just me? Or are 4x4 drivers in the UAE really the ones least likely to signal, unless the wrong way or after completing the manoeuvre, most likely to cut across three lanes at the last second to turn left at traffic lights and racing certs to zig-zag with criminal recklessness on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway?

And yet, Salut! favours fair play, so let me declare myself 100 per cent on the side of the man or woman who reacted to someone nicking his/her parking space by plonking his/her lorry-shaped specimen so close behind that the offending saloon driver has no escape, only the need to make humiliating entreaties to the wounded colleague.

If you need to ask the price.......

I did need to ask. So naturally, I couldn't afford it.

You cannot live in the UAE and not at least consider a visit to the Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai's grandiose answer to the Eiffel Tower and all other man-made monsters of construction the world over.

They don't mess about with false modesty. A brochure readily available on request at reception is titled The World's Most Luxurious Hotel.

It stands 321 metres tall on the shores of Jumeirah beach and resembles both the sails of an Arabian dhow, as intended, and a whale that has decided to stand on it tail.

A night in the cheapest room costs 8,500 dirhams, that is well over £1,000 even before 20 per cent worth of taxes and service charges are added on. The top rate, for the Royal Suite sets you back Dh55,000 (more than £7,000 once you've added the extras). Breakfast, please note, is not included, though I suspect that with 780 square metres of space, you might be able to sublet to a few dozen others to offset the cost.





The Burj Al Arab is the only hotel I have ever visited that actually costs money to enter, since you have to book - even for pre-dinner drinks, or afternoon tea - and there is a minimum spend. No point in just turning up at the well-guarded gate and hoping to blag your way in, even if I am prepared to believe others have had more success than me at that.

Once inside, it is all surprisingly friendly and unsurprisingly slick.



The giant fish tank, ridiculously over-the-top glitter of the decor and lashings of wall-to-wall splendour make for an eye-opening visit. We asked if it was possible to take a peek at the hotel pool before we left, but were politely told: "Only if you are resident at the hotel. Sorry, but we must preserve our guests' privacy."

The waiter to whom the question had been posed helpfully suggested visiting the ground-floor Al Mahara restaurant, from which we could apparently get a glimpse. "Sorry sir," said the waiter there. "But guests are dining, We must protect their privacy."

In the 27th floor Skyview bar, from which we had spectacular views of Jumeirah until it suddenly became quite dark, we'd promised to spend Dh550 between us.




That was the easy part. In fact, we could have spent even more. The "world's most expensive cocktail", based on a 55-year-old Macallan single malt whisky, would have required a visit to a mortgage broker. It costs Dh27,321 - not far short of £4,000 - but you have to hurry; it comes in a limited edition of 10, and seven have already been sold.

The bonus is that you get to take the 18 carat gold glass home with you, and it comes in a leather case. You may reasonably conclude that I am not scratching my head where to put mine. I do not drink whisky.

Oman revisited: great country, shame about the turtles

As a defender with Sedar FC, a club playing 50km outside Muscat, Abdullah doubtless knew all about stonewalling.

He dusted down and reproduced his skills each time he was challenged him on the question of turtles.

Abdullah, it must be said, was greatly responsible for three-and-a-bit magical days in Oman. It may seem posh to hire not only a Land Cruiser (whisper it; I'm supposed to loathe 4x4s), but a driver, too. Yet it is beyond question that we saw a huge amount more than would have been likely without him.



On turtles, however, Abdullah is on the blasé side. When we joined a group waiting on the beach at Ras al Hadd in the hope of seeing them come ashore to lay eggs, he warned us to prepare for disappointment. As often as not, he said, people went away without having seen a thing.

He made us feel fortunate to have passed by a tank with a few newly hatched specimens.



And luckier still to have seen two green turtles swivelling in the large holes they'd dug in the sand. I say green with the confidence of someone who has read that this is the colour of the turtles that frequent these parts of the Omani coast. To the naked eye, the ones we saw might have been no more than piles of wobbly sand.

No picture I took of the spectacle is worth publishing here. If that is a reflection of my equipment and/or photographic prowess, it is also indicative of how little we managed to see. And it is fair to say that Abdullah showed every sign of wanting to be away as quickly as possible.

Next morning, after others at our little hotel - or, rather, collection of huts with dhow-shaped reception and restaurant - boasted of all the turtles they had watched, Abdullah shrugged his shoulders. And when we said they'd also returned first thing to catch more activity, he simply questioned their powers of recollection. "In the morning, only picnicking," he said.




But that is the minor grumble out of the way. Turtles are clearly his blind spot.

Pretty much everything we did see was seen as a result of Abdullah's knowledge, driving skills and attention to detail.

I would have driven the 4x4 A to B, missing the wadis, sinkholes, off-the-beaten-track villages and mountain lanes that help to make Oman such an invigorating place to visit.



For sure, I wouldn't have indulged in 20 minutes of expert dune-bashing on the Wahiba Sands. Abdullah was particularly proud of being able to negotiate the steep descents using a manual gearbox.




If you would like to read a little more about my trip to Oman, I have written about it in my weekly column at The National. See this link. I may get round to posting a few more photos in one of the Salut! satellites.

Caught in a Blue Peter moment

This is one I made earlier. Pressure of work is inevitably creating gaps between postings but I thought it would be interesting to run this piece, written during our pre-launch trial runs but now past its shelf life for an Abu Dhabi audience. Are there cultural/pop culture events you left it late to see, or never got round to experiencing?......


There really was little excuse for taking so long to see The Mousetrap, and equally little reason to suppose that unpaid thespians in Abu Dhabi, performing at a social club built on land donated by the UAE's founding president, Sheikh Zayed, would end up filling my cultural gap.

It is hardly as if the long history of Agatha Christie’s whodunit, and the slightly shorter history of me, failed to offer an opportunity sooner.

First sprung on the public as a radio play, The Mousetrap made its debut on the London stage 55 years ago.

For 23 of those years, I lived in London and for a time nurtured a voracious appetite for all things Christie. I devoured her novels, studied the mysteries of her life and felt honoured to be sent as a young reporter to cover her memorial service in 1976.

And when I think of woeful shows I have paid good money to see, it is strange that I should never have got round to attending one of the 23,000 performances of that extraordinary run. But The Mousetrap remained, to me, a closed area. So now that I have rectified the omission, catching the Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society’s presentation of the play at the Club, I must surely be a satisfied man.

On the contrary. I feel only relief that the seat cost 50 dirhams (about £7), not extravagant West End prices.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the production. Alan Daft, the director, may have been a little, well, daft to suggest in his end-of-run speech that the cast reached standards indistinguishable from those of professionals. But it was a highy commendable effort all the same.

From the splendid set to impressive acting, this was a work of which the company, despite a vast range of experience (including, in the case of Graham Clews as Detective Sergeant Trotter, none at all), can be proud.
Just over 700 people attended the three performances, a hearty endorsement of the society’s reputation for excellence. The source of my disappointment, however, was beyond its power to remedy.

The Mousetrap is not, in truth, a particularly good play. Assuming that the cast stuck closely to the original script, it is a rare damp squib in the sparkling Christie archive. The plot is weak, a few characters are unbelievable and some of the twists and turns lack finesse.

Amid the mutual backslapping and banter of the closing night party, I learned one or two things. For instance, Agatha Christie would not have resented my unflattering verdict too strongly since she never placed the play among her finest work.

And if the Abu Dhabi society suddenly uprooted to Aberdovey or Derby, I discovered, it could not legally present The Mousetrap at all. As long as the play is running in London, copyright law prevents any impresario, rep company or amateur society putting it on elsewhere in Britain; indeed, there are even restrictions on it being published in book form in the UK.

This will doubtless encourage people to flock to St Martin’s Theatre, and the world’s longest running show, for years to come.

Each will want to know, and try to guess, Who Did It. I now know, of course.

But I feel dutybound to observe a noble Mousetrap tradition, also mentioned by Alan Daft to his Abu Dhabi audience.

My lips, accordingly, are sealed.

Out of the frying fan, into the fridge

So this, chez Salut!, is the pièce de résistance.

Looks and is great, with plenty of space to relax, entertain and take in the striking city view. But we are about to discover how resistant our pièce is to the Abu Dhabi summer.

For weeks, people have been warning that the balcony, the feature that makes a tiny flat seem spacious (it was marketed as two-bedroomed, but is actually nothing of the sort), will soon be out of bounds.

Beneath the heat of the day, with temperatures edging upwards of 40 degrees, it is already difficult to stay out much longer than it takes to water Mme Salut's attempts to relocate the Royal Botanic Gardens somewhere east of Kew.

But at night, and especially during the early evening, it remains usable. And I suspect it will continue to be pleasant enough to sit out and eat an evening meal for a few more weeks to come, before it gets really hot and humid.

The last time I bought fans was during a heatwave in London in, I think, 2003. After a fortnight of sticky, oppressive nights - one colleague whose flat had access to the roof was using it to sleep on - I paid good money for the last two fans available in the nearest departmental store. I had just enough time to get them home before the weather changed completely, and they were barely used until they were exported to the south of France.

Here, I have drawn the line at those monsters you see in one or two shops, enormous fans that blast out a gale and blow a huge hole in the bank balance. But I have bought a couple of smaller ones again, confident this time that the only change in temperature and air quality will make them more, not less useful (provided I don't leave them out in the sun, where they will surely fry).

Seasoned expats around the world will know better, but my own guess is that the balcony will seem a welcome haven for another month or so, and may still be OK most evenings for a little while after that. And then we need only wait patiently for October, from when it should be bliss.

And in the meantime, there's that forthcoming sojourn in chillier climes. Even the Var may seem on the fresh side after here, but there are cooler places to visit first:

* London, where one friend says the weather has been splendid ever since Boris was elected (by way of balance, another friend threatened not to set foot in the capital again until he was thrown out of office)

* Middlesbrough, which I am sure will be Middlesbrough

* Gothenburg, where I will be too busy representing Abu Dhabi's new daily at an international newspaper conference to worry about how cold Scandinavia is in June.

Does size matter?

The cartons from England have been delivered. A man from Bombay organised a pick-up truck to transfer a few possessions across town for about £12, a mattress is due on Sunday night and the bed and wardrobe should follow on Monday.

After five months in hotels, on the floor of a colleague's then empty flat and now staying with a friend, I am finally about to move into a place of my own.

Not Colditz, the flat with an extensive terrace but three significant problems: there is no access to it from inside, a 7/8ft wall is the only view from all but a tiny part of it and the building is still not read for occupation. Salut!, having given that one up as a bad job, will settle for a small apartment that boasts a large balcony, great views and cheerful rooms with bags of light and, in the case of the lounge, a tree outside the window.



The only drawback is size, or lack of it. It is one room and a hallway short of ideal. But the flat is in an excellent location, Khalidiya, minutes from the Corniche and central Abu Dhabi. And, unlike so much here, it is not hemmed in by tower blocks but occupies the top floor of a converted villa.

Abu Dhabi has achieved so much that is to its credit - economic success, crime-free streets and a high degee of religious and social tolerance - that it can afford to apply some thought, and perhaps some radical solutions, to the appalling accommodation shortage and the rip-off rents and practices that result.

The crisis will not go away, and it is pointless to pin so much faith on skilled people from outside when they cannot get good, affordable homes and struggle to find school places for their children. Rents have shot uo by 30 per cent or more in the time I have been here.

At last I am no longer a part of that crisis. The contract is signed, Mme Salut will soon be on her way back and she will be followed, doubtless in business class, by Monette, the ungovernable French cat that has made more moves in less than three years of life than many people experience in a lifetime.

Born at Giverny, where Monet had his home and gardens (hence the name, necessarily modified to take account of her sex), she has had spells as a Parisian apartment cat, with occasional trips across the Rue de Rivoli to the Tuileries or over to the Bois de Boulogne; toying cruelly with lizards and cigalles on the Mediterranean coast and sulking beneath grey London skies while keeping out of the way of thuggish feline neighbours.

Time will tell how she will take to the Arabian sun.

Unmoved in Abu Dhabi? Not soon, I won't be

Done it. After all that whingeing; sleeping on a friend's floor; paying sky-high hotel bills; stepping over sleeping workmen; being told there was never meant to be a door leading to the terrace ("it wasn't on the plans"); hearing a new completion date every month from Nov 2007 to mid-March 2008.

And, indeed, after the spectacular triple negative of my headline. At last I have a flat. Or rather, I very soon will have one.

No one who has followed my saga of homelessness in Abu Dhabi, a city and country I have grown to like a great deal but also home to some questionable property rental practices, will be surprised to learn that this involves a dramatic change of plan.
Instead of Colditz, as someone rather close to Salut! took to calling the flat-that-shall-one-day-be-ready, in honour of its 7/8ft balcony wall, I have found a bright, charming apartment close to the Corniche, a cluster of international hotels with excellent leisure and dining opportunties and a couple of shopping malls.

Despite the proximity of all those facilities, the flat is located in a rare leafy area, with loads of parking and, a short walk away, Abu Dhabi's finest public park.

Only a bit of finishing off remains before I can start moving in. While the flat itself is smaller than I would like, its balcony is roughly 25ft by 10ft, easily big enough to serve as an extra room for the five months of the year that it is not too hot and humid to be out there - and I am sure there are ways of making it bearable for at least part of the blazing summer, too.

It is not Le Lavandou, I hear the odd heckler cry out, remembering my French idyll of not long ago (and which has not, of course, gone away in any case). But that's the sort of rejoinder that calls to mind John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, telling poor Mrs Richards when she complains about the view from her room:

"May I ask what you expect to see out of a Torquay window? The Sydney Opera House? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically..........?"
Qué?

Cannot wait to get in. Mustn't get smug.

Derby? Aberdovey? Isn't that what he said?

It has already been recorded that when Martin Newland, editor of the new daily newspaper due to launch in Abu Dhabi, rang to offer me a job, Mme Salut spectacularly misheard my end of the conversation,

"Merde!" she famously thought but didn't say (she is, after all, a well brought up French lady who would never stoop to uttering les cinq lettres), "he's not thinking of taking me to Derby."

There have been times, during our accommodation nightmare, when the East Midlands has seemed implausibly alluring. But then we remember rain-sodden days when I've been at football and she has been wandering around the unappealing city centre.

But now we head off to a much more attractive corner of Britain for the latest example of similar confusion between here and elsewhere. To, of all places, Snowdonia.



After an absence of many, many years, I decided to get in touch with Barry Skinner, a folk singer fondly remembered from his frequent visits to the North East around 1970.
This involved first asking at a folk music discussion site whether Barry was still with us, and then whether anyone had contact information.

In, with impressive speed, came the e-mail from a chap called Bill giving me a phone number that he thought was about 10 years old.

Today, I tried it. And it worked. I explained that because of where I was calling from, the call should be short; I noted his e-mail address and arranged to reach him again using that.

Barry was perplexed. Why, he thought to himself, should anyone worry about the cost of making a phone call from one part of Snowdonia to another?

The follow-up e-mail explains it well enough:
Nice to hear from you. I honestly thought you said Aberdovey, though I think you've got the better bargain.
There was also a Twain, arranged Skinner gag about reports of his death having been greatly exaggerated ("that's what happens when you get old!"). But I am just left wondering where next the location of my new job will be mistaken for. Aberdeen has to be a contender, along with Aberdawe.

And since my first contact with Barry Skinner in 20 years or more clearly unnerved him, let me bring you up to date on his life and work, work that extends far beyond folk without ever having completely replaced it. This is from his own website:

Barry Skinner has lived in Beddgelert for the past 20 years. He was born in Coventry and started walking and climbing in the mountains of Snowdonia at the age of fifteen. After a spell in retailing and interior design, he left all behind in 1964 and for the next sixteen years toured Britain, Europe and America playing guitar and singing his own and traditional songs, recording several albums and appearing on television and radio. He was one of the founding members of the first Coventry Folk Club in 1962, is still involved in performing and writing music and is available for folk club, concert and festival bookings. From 1979 until 1985 he worked for the Coventry Education Waterways Scheme, running narrow boats for school groups. During this time he wrote a large number of songs about the canals. In 1985 he came to live permanently in Snowdonia, initially building custom made doll's houses to commission and also painting and enamelling.

Architects of our home misfortune

There are times when another defeat for your football team isn't the worst thing life can throw up.

That sort of news is at least entirely predictable. The sort that came from a miserable visit to the site of my future home was only fairly predictable.

Work on the attractive new building in the Abu Dhabi suburb of Manasir proceeds at what can best be described as a leisurely pace.

In much the same way that London Underground passengers learn that platform indicator minutes are not the same as minutes anywhere else, we have come to see that construction timetables here are meant only as a rough guide.

Thus, "it'll be finished before Christmas" was a phrase uttered in no more than seasonal jest, while the promise of completion by Jan 1 was a well-intentioned gesture designed to humour prospective tenants.

After that date came and went, I became far too intuitive to read too much into the next one, Feb 1. And as I picked my way past two sleeping labourers, and watched a whole team of men engaged on the essential task of sweeping up dust in the road outside, I quickly put March 1 down to just another pipedream.

But even rough guides sometimes seem better than none. So I wandered into the site office at the weekend and threw myself at the mercy of the project director, begging for no inshallahs, only brutal honesty.

"My work will be completed in one month maximum," he said, by way of one of those good news/bad news introductions. "But as for the electricity and water supplies, that is quite beyond my control."

In other words, he finally agreed, a true completion date of some time not before April 1 - no joking - was the "logical" interpretation.

The good news/bad news routine wasn't quite over, and I am not referring to the glee of the Abu Dhabi hotel industry at the thought of the further barrowloads of dirhams it can expect to collect from me while my homeless state continues.

For before leaving the office, I had another tricky issue to raise.

When I first agreed to take the flat, back in early November for heaven's sake, its great selling point seemed to be the wonderful wraparound terrace. But recently a minor snag presented itself. There's no way out on to it, unless you feel like climbing through windows or abseiling from the roof.

Let us not rush to judgement. It cannot yet be said to be beyond reasonable doubt that the simple matter of providing access to such an appealing feature required more perceptiveness than the architects possessed. There may well be another explanation that hasn't occurred to me. There may also be a perfectly good reason why the terrace is, in any case, enclosed within a high, prison-like wall. I am ready to be persuaded.
At the end of this hapless site visit, I discovered that a colleague already installed with his family in a nearby building was inviting us for drinks. His home is, as will be ours, a penthouse flat. It also has a vast terrace. He is not only able to get on to it, from any of three exits; once there, he can see over a normal-sized wall. I am trying very hard not to hate him.

"Look at the positive side of things," said my smug friend. "You can always paint your wall in nice Provencal colours. And when they said the flat would be finished by Christmas, they didn't specify which Christmas. If they meant this year, they could end up completing it months ahead of schedule."

Dubai gallery, DJ's galère

Tacky or smart? A fifty dirham (£7) taxi journey from Dubai Creek, this elaborate wintry scene has been created in the the vast Emirates Mall. Pop inside for an pseudo-Alpine experience. Just the thing for when Mad Dogs and Englishmen finally wish to escape from the searing Arabian sun, midday or not........


We wanted a museum, but the cabbie who picked us up after a boat trip on the creek seemed perplexed by the request and took us to yet another shopping centre instead........


A visit to the old town is something of a must-do when you go to Dubai, even if you have no desire to acquire anything in the garish yellow gold many of these shops sell.......



On the quayside, tons and tons of goods bound for Iran can be seen piled high in crates prior to loading. We saw cloves of garlic, cardboard boxes full of bedding and packages containing various household goods, though none of those electronic circuit boards that come in so handy for bomb making........



Wandering the streets in search of food led to this opportunity for alfresco lunching. It may look unpromising. But it still served up tasty kebabs, washed down with Diet Cokes, for just under £1 apiece........




This waterfront scene seems unthreatening enough. But between those palm trees is the Dubai court building. Westerners planning so much as a transit stop in the Emirates on their way to or from more liberal jurisdictions, or coming here on holiday or to work, should be aware that if they end up there for possessing drugs, they face a minumum four-year jail term......



There was already little excuse for not knowing of the country's strict laws on illegal substances (guilt can be established by no more than traces of cannabis in the system the day after a joint was smoked in London, or indeed the discovery of certain medicinal drugs that are perfectly lawful elsewhere). After this week's imprisonment of the BBC disc jockey Raymond Bingham - Grooverider - even the dimmest traveller will surely now take heed.

Empty praise

......and to think that less than a fortnight ago I was complaining about the thoughtless characters whose incessant chatter made going to the movies in Abu Dhabi such a challenging experience.

Last night, we returned to the multiplex cinema at the Abu Dhabi Mall that was the scene of the original crime. There cannot have been a picture house anywhere in the world where the evening's programme was followed in more respectful, appreciative silence.

I would like to say that this was entirely the result of the quality of the film. How indeed could anyone not sit enthralled by The Kite Runner, with its moving story of boyhood friendship and betrayal in the Afghanistan that existed before a great land was torn to pieces and set on the road to barbarism by an ugly process beginning with the Russian invasion?
No one in the cinema made or received irritating mobile phone calls. No babbling conversations or loud guffaws broke out around us. There wasn't so much as the crackle of popcorns to compete with the soundtrack.

We watched the film from the last of nine rows, each row containing 10 seats. From start to finish, not a sound could be heard from any of the other 88 places. Every damn one of them was empty.

Don't call us, Carlos

It must be practically against the law to dislike Santana.

Carlos is indisputably a terrific guitarist. His band has been carefully assembled and produces a big, slick sound. Adoring fans flock in their thousands, as in Dubai on Friday night, to watch them.

So why did I find myself leaving a concert at the interval for the first time in 20 years or more? Plainly put, because I couldn't face another half of the same.

Having recently devoted many words to a defence of a North-eastern band, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, after they were subjected to absurdly insulting jibes at a folk music discussion forum, for no better reason than that they are not to everyone's taste, I refuse to perform a comparable hatchet job on Santana.

Indeed, I invite any of their admirers to put me right on my own misgivings. It is fair to say that I enjoyed snatches of the first set, while allowing myself the occasional glance at my watch as I tried to work out how much more there was likely to be before it would be over.

Luck was with me. Mme Salut felt broadly the same: good band, virtuoso playing, but little obvious showmanship so that a little, to use a phrase I first heard on the lips of my wise Belfast pal Neil Johnston, goes an awfully long way.

The last time we'd left a concert so early was in Hammersmith in the mid 1980s. Clannad were playing. They'd started as an upmarket traditional Irish band before being persuaded by a spot of chart success with the Harry's Game theme that they ought to reinvent themselves as a misty, peat-bog Donegal version of Fleetwood Mac.

While waiting for the concert to start, we'd been treated to the sublime sounds of the original Moving Hearts album. The main act simply couldn't, for us, follow the warmup.

The Santana concert was different. No one could have expected or hoped for much other than what they served up. It would be unfair to describe Carlos as a Richard Clayderman of the guitar. But when next morning, one of those great instrumental hits of his popped up as piped music in the brash Festival City mall, I suddenly felt reinforced in my own obscure musical allegiances.

A hard-fought win

There is a telling moment in one of Agnès Poirier's amusing books on matters Anglo-French when she offers an instantly recognisable snapshot to support her assertion that while the French may be rude, the British are hypocrites.

When the Englishman bumps into another in Oxford Street and says "sorry", she writes (more or less), what he actually means is: "Get out of my way, you ******* retard."
My latest encounter with British understatement did not involve a sorry, or anything like one. Rather, it was a "Thanks, mate!", muttered through gritted teeth not once but twice as I eased effortlessly into the role of Least Popular Man in Town.

Everyone wanted rugby
Picture: hel (taffie) Not more than a handful of Salut! readers could care less that Sunderland achieved a hard- fought win over Wigan at the weekend. But I am thinking more of my own hard-fought victory in being able to watch the game at all in the sort of place where expats gather for these purposes.
The system is simple enough and runs like clockwork most of the time. As a consequence of the way TV rights work abroad, all Premiership games can be viewed live in Abu Dhabi provided you subscribe to the right package from the relevant service, which here is Showtime. Where I chose to view Saturday's game, notices are posted on each available screen, clearly stating which match can be viewed on it.

The coincidence of Six Nations rugby can cause complications. So I took the trouble to phone ahead before committing myself to the trek across town. This was to ensure that whatever was being done to cater for oval ball supporters, my game would be shown too.

Even so, I was relieved to arrive and find that while most screens would be showing - were showing, given the earlier kickoff - the Wales/Scotland match, one had been dedicated to the football from Sunderland.

A crowd of a dozen or so was packed tightly into the area where this particular television set was installed. That should have alerted me to a possible snag. Why on earth should this clash of unfashionable clubs attract such interest? Another alarm bell might have sounded when a man on one the couches responded frostily when I asked if there was "room for a littl'un" next to him. "I don't seem to have much choice," he said without obvious warmth.

As it soon became clear, he had already guessed. And he gave fair warning that this screen was showing rugby. Quoting from the printed notice stuck to the set got me nowhere. "It's not what it says there," he said. "It's what we're watching. And we're watching rugby, not soccer."

To my surprise, when I asked if another screen was available, someone from the bar staff sprang bravely to my aid. He reminded the rugby fans that he had taken care to explain the house rules, that the television would have to be switched to football should anyone ask for it. That, amid much grumpiness as the group shuffled out, is where my "Thanks, mate!"s came in.

I tried pointing out that several other screens around the place were tuned to rugby. It was half time in the Six Nations so there was time for people to rearrange themselves. But that cut little ice, and it was plain that I was not in the company of people who would be inviting me to dinner in the forseeable future. There was more mumbling as they settled at other tables, even though these were within easy sight and sound of their game.

Of course it was easy to see why they were upset, and I felt almost as rotten about being the source of their disappointment as I was anxious not to have made a frustratingly wasted journey. I would have been delighted to take up position in front of any small screen tucked into a corner to watch my game.

In the event, I saw mine - and a rare win for my team - and they all saw theirs. But Agnès Poirier has lived in Britain long enough to appreciate the distinction if I say that it was perhaps just as well that the aggrieved individuals were rugby, not football fans.

They were also, if the sounds coming from around the other screens were a useful guide, mostly or exclusively Welsh and anyone Welsh was destined to end the evening in exceedingly jubilant spirits. One of the group, who bumped into my wife later, asked how our team had got on. "Not mine, my husband's, but they won," she replied. "Oh good," said the Welsh woman. "So everyone's happy."

Health food, comfort nosh

One of the most pleasant dining out experiences in Abu Dhabi takes you to the Fishmarket, on the water's edge behind the Intercontinental Hotel.

Omani lobster, shrimps and prawns of many types and sizes, fresh tuna, mullet, squid and the local fish hammour are all arranged in a tempting display. Diners choose the seafood they want, select vegetables and then give instructions on how they wish it all to be cooked, and with which sauces.

It is expensive by Abu Dhabi restaurant standards. The only prices shown are by weight, and this can be a little worrying at first. But you end up paying a great deal less than for anything comparable in, say, Paris or London. So £70 or £80 for two, wine included, will buy you an immeasurably better and more relaxing meal than would cost, at a guess, at least 180 euros or £150 in those cities.

And the whole experience feels thoroughly healthy.

So why, Mme Salut wanted to know, do they insist on preceding it by serving baskets of battered hammour to each table? I am a sucker for such titbits, but even I would be hard pressed to think them remotely healthy (I managed to help myself to two pieces; the rest were then unceremoniously thrust back towards a passing waitress - and not by me - though this did not stop her returning soon afterwards, proffering a newly filled basket).

The lesson is clear. If I want my fix of comfort nosh to precede the goodness-itself main course, I suppose I shall just have to sneak back when someone else is safely detained in the hotel gym.

And where does Rambo fit into this? Nowhere, save to add that I road - or, rather, aisle - tested Craig Courtice's description of Emirati film-goers' habits with a visit to the Grand Cinemas at Abu Dhabi Mall.

Needless to say, I did not watch Rambo. In Salle 2 was showing the Coen Brothers' dark but outstanding No Country For Old Men.

A dozen or so other souls were present, and three of those I recognised from the office. A few seats along our row were two young men in local dress. And just as Craig reports from his own experiences, they chattered noisily into their mobile phones throughout the movie, an accom

Unmoved in Abu Dhabi

February 15 seems a long away when you have been waiting for the completion of a flat found in November and theoretically due to be completed before Christmas.

To my untutored eye, as I walk a shaky gangplank into the building and poke around an interior that seems to have months of work left to do, it begins to look absurdly close.


Everything has a distinctly unfinished look, from the doorless rooms and piles of rubble to the curious absence - so far - of any door leading on to the terrace. Meanwhile, the one man obviously working is on a ladder, coating a wall, while another makes pleasant small talk and a third lies fast asleep on the rooftop.

But mid-Feb, I am assured, is when my flat, on the top floor of this impressive building close to the palace of Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, will be ready. Inshallah.

Add to inshallah the need to organise such trivial considerations as electricity supply and you are already pushing back any hopes of occupancy to, possibly beyond, the end of the month. I prefer to look on the bright side, however, and enter what I hope is the closing phase of my homelessness with optimism and even a little excitement at the prospect making a new home in a far-off land.

There is no need to get carried away with the exotic aspect of this adventure. We may be 3,500 miles from the North Circular, but one of the first ports of call when handover of keys is finally - and dependably - imminent will be the premises of that well-known purveyor of Eastern furniture and fittings, IKEA.

No one told me it would rain

Perhaps I should have paid more attention during those geography lessons. Then I might not have been quite so surprised by the past four days of steady rain.

This has followed a spell of pleasant weather, not unlike a good English summer in case anyone remembers one of those, when long-established expats were telling us: "Make the most of it while it lasts. It's by far the nicest part of the year."

There is, I am sure, no serious risk of rainfall continuing for weeks and weeks to deny us the promised moderate levels of sunshine and warmth before we reach the fierce, unrelenting heatwave of the long summer.

But the streets and skies have had a wet, grey and distinctly Manchester look to them since the weekend. Moreover, I am sitting in drenched clothes because it was impossible to find an empty taxi this morning.

Being unable to get a cab is not the sort of predicament that is calculated to inspire sympathy back at home. But if you have no car or bicycle of your own, it is pretty much the only way to get around Abu Dhabi. The Tube doesn't exist, of course, and a bus is not so much rare as an endangered species.

In theory, taxis hog the nearside of the long avenues waiting to pop into a layby or side road to pick up passengers. There is no strong queueing instinct. People think nothing of positioning themselves ahead of others who have clearly been there for some time.

Most days, the system just about works, though people complain continually that there are nowhere enough taxis on the road. Today, though, was a bad day to be in a layby. The rest of the carless population was there with you, and every taxi that appeared was already occupied.

So I set off on foot. It would be an exaggeration to say this was the desert equivalent of the Lyke Wake Walk, but it was a fair old trek given that the two-mile route is not especially picturesque unless you have deep fascination with tall buildings and fast, wide dual carriageways.

And the rain ensured that it was not an agreeable stroll. Cabs whizzed and splashed by and, while you stood a good chance of taking a roadside shower, it was clear that there was no point in trying to hail one. Passing the Al Wadha shopping mall, I briefly cheered up when I saw there was no one in the taxi queue. But there were also no taxis, which rather cancelled out the benefit.

If we are to be brutally honest, Abu Dhabi does not give the impression of being a city well prepared for downpours. Water stands deep on roads and pavements and surfaces seem dangerously slippery, adding to the hazards of sharp or high steps and kerbs.

Today began with persistent but relatively light rain, but grew later to a torrent. "I've been here for four years and never known it go on for day after day and be this heavy," said a Canadian colleague.

It was even worse in Dubai, as my second photograph shows. That was taken by Alam Khan, who will be the sports editor of our new newspaper in Abu Dhabi, outside the internet cafe where, unable to get here by road, he spent the day working.

But I won't be letting a spot of uncommonly wet weather rain on my Abu Dhabi parade. Salut! readers who have followed me here from France will know how delighted I am to have found, at a bistro called Beaujolais, my beloved andouillettes. It would be pushing it a little to make some link between climate and cuisine, but I am sure everyone feels better for knowing that I am not being deprived of pig's intestines while here.

Lebanese gold

When I lived in France, I shocked some British friends, and even one or two French ones, by sticking up for the Gallic approach to customer relations in shops.

Everyone else seemed to have had appalling encounters with surly or downright rude serveurs and serveuses who clearly regarded the attentions of members of the public as an intrusion on their day.

Without pretending never to have been confronted by a curt or scowling French assistant, I had become so accustomed to polite and helpful welcomes that my only concern was to make sure I didn't forget the obligatory bonjour as I entered a store.

The same had not been true of most of my recent attempts to shop in Britain, where I became weary of the non-availability of staff and their inability, when finally located, to be of much assistance. The blank faces that so often greeted requests for gift wrapping made me long for the automatic "désirez-vous un paquet cadeau, monsieur?".

Bearing in mind that I loathe shopping in any case, and spend as little time and money doing it as possible, I am happy to report that the Abu Dhabi experience still more closely reflects the France of my rose-tinted view.

There is such a cosmopolitan mélange of people here, and an almost exclusively foreign service sector, that you cannot put this down to the Emirati temperament.

But whenever I run out of excuses for avoiding the garish but functional malls, I am amazed at how painless shop staff try to make my visit. In fact, I am deterred from going there at all less by the possibility of receiving poor attention than by the likelihood of a long queue for a taxi afterwards.

The night before last, a charming Lebanese assistant at the Al Wahda mall - rather smaller than the sprawling Marina Mall featured in my picture - suddenly stopped describing the merits of a particular piece of electrical equipment and led me instead to a far-off counter where, from a drawer, he produced a different version.

"I won it in a seminar," he proudly announced. "Take it away. If it works and you like it, come back and pay me if you feel like it, but not even half what you'd have paid for the other accessory. Otherwise just bring it back."

The object quickly proved perfectly suited to my needs, and a phone call established today that I could leave it as long as I wished to pop back to settle up.

I'd love to share the man's name and even photograph with Salut! readers. But while he may have a golden touch when it comes to customer relations, his career prospects would perhaps not be enhanced if his employers knew he had deprived them of a sale. There'd be no further seminar prizes, for sure.

Where is home?

Christmas seems as good a time as any to ask the question.
For the last two months, my unfixed abode has been Abu Dhabi, first in a hotel, then in the unfurnished flat of a colleague-to-be. Student style, I have slept on a mattress on the floor. I did buy a desk and chair, a small fridge and toaster but somehow this has not quite made it seem like home.

For a start, the man from the nearby curtain shop didn't take very well to my suggestion of selling me some cheap material to stick over the windows with tape.

He wanted to put up a rail; I thought that would be a sure way to fall out with colleague-to-be even before he starts work so settled for pages from the Gulf News and Sunderland Echo (pink football edition, sent by a friend though he didn't realise the use I'd find for it).


The office is where I spend most of my time, and even though we are now entering an interesting phase of our plans for the newspaper launch, that is clearly not home either.

Now I am back in London for Christmas and New Year. But after four years of living abroad, I no longer feel much affinity with the capital. Beyond the presence of family and friends, it has little to offer that I actually want. I am also freezing but that is another matter.

In nostalgic moments, I think of the North East of my childhood and youth and tell myself that County Durham is my real home. But then I realise I am probably indulging in self-delusion; I cherish brief returns, but would I truly feel settled in the highly unlikely event of living there again for the first time in 35 years?

When I return to the Middle East, I will - inshallah - be that much closer to moving into my own flat. I cannot bear the mattress on the floor any longer so will take a modest hotel apartment room in the centre of Abu Dhabi. The excitement of our project, and the knowledge that Mme Salut should soon be able to join me may induce feelings of belonging.

But for now, to give an honest answer to the question with which I started, I need to think back only to the check-in desks at the airport on Thursday. Alongside my queue for Heathrow were lines of other expats preparing for flights to Dublin and Manchester. And Paris.

And while two-and-a-half years in the City of Light most certainly did not, for all its attractions, make it the place I call or consider home, I did find myself envying that queue. Why? Because at the end of the journey to Paris, passengers are an hour's onward flight or a pleasant TGV ride away from Toulon, itself only 30 minutes or so from Le Lavandou.


Ask me again a few months from now by all means. But while wishing all Salut! readers a very merry Christmas and superb new year, I declare Le Lavandou still to be home. If cats could read, that thought - and with it the prospect of reacquaintance with the lizards and insect life (and other cats) of the Var - would be music to the ears of Monette, currently skulking about the house in dread of being put out in the cold and grey of London.

Benazir, gold & white cabbies and me

One brief meeting in Islamabad did not make me a friend of Benazir Bhutto any more than the collective wisdom of 100 or so Pakistani taxi drivers in Abu Dhabi gives me unique insight into the woes of their country.
But I do know both that the world seems a poorer place without Bhutto's passion and eloquence and that only a minority of those cabbies will take the same view.

It is, I suppose, the ultimate straw poll, a survey restricted to the thoughts of a group of men I meet because there is no other way of getting around Abu Dhabi if you do not have private transport.

Almost all the drivers of the rather tatty gold and white cabs appear to be Pakistani. Their English is often limited (though many could talk to you in Hindi, Arabic and Farsi as well as Urdu) and the conversation during a six dirham ride across town tends to follow a formulaic pattern.

The key words, followed in parenthesis by the questions prompting them, are - or were before I came home for Christmas - Pakistan (where are you from?), Peshawar (where in Pakistan?), cricket (which do you like more - football or cricket?), very bad (what do you think of Benazir?), very good...very strong (and Musharraf?).

In the case of Bhutto, several of them would go further, even if they also professed to detest the Taliban. And they are the ones that would have been rejoicing in response to yesterday's news from Rawalpindi.

By no means all of these Pakistani drivers wanted Benazir dead as a necessary extension of their antipathy towards her. Salut! readers may recall that one, who spoke much better English than most of his colleagues, told me that although he had much admired her father, he simply regarded her as corrupt.

That conversation took place a day or two before the murderous bombing in Karachi that greeted Bhutto's return from Dubai months ago, just after I'd arrived in the UAE. But I later came across some Pakistanis who regretted that the blast had not claimed her life, too, as was intended.

Journalists are always told to avoid treating taxi drivers as accurate barometers of public opinion. My experiences merely show that while many Pakistanis clearly adored Bhutto, she excited equally strong hostility among others.

I have no inside track on the corruption allegations that dogged her in recent years. During our brief encounter nine years ago, she insisted that they were false (as you would expect) but said she was not frightened of being unjustly imprisoned. In her final few weeks, she spoke of being similarly prepared for an unjust death.

When I left a theatre in the West End of London yesterday and saw, almost immediately, a newspaper billboard announcing "Bhutto killed", I was sad but not in the least surprised. It was, unfortunately, the inevitable consequence of her brave but perilous electoral adventure in an unstable land.

But I must remember to ask my next gold and white driver if it is not deplorable that the act of barbarity that ended Benazir Bhutto's life should also have robbed the Pakistani people of the right to say Yes or No to her in the polling booths.

In the bleak midwinter

When you are standing on a lawn in shirt sleeves, not even the proximity of Christmas or the bowl of mulled wine on a nearby table brings to mind frosty winds or snow falling snow on snow.

Abu Dhabi in December is hardly a time for wrapping up against the chill, unless you stretch a point and count keeping his and hers accessories, pullover and pashmina, in the office drawers for when the air conditioning reaches shiver level.

Looking at startling blizzard images from home, Neil Vorano, a member of the Canadian contingent in our team preparing a newspaper launch, described himself as "feeling a little wistful".

In Timmins, Northern Ontario, Neil's mother - already concerned lest he should meet "raiders and marauders" on sorties into the desert - may take that as a cue to dispatch a hamper of Maple Leaf goodies, even if it proves impractical to include a few snowballs.

But the rest of us are broadly happy to absorb the sunshine in what everyone tells us is the most glorious period of the Abu Dhabi year.

And that, last night, led us to a jolly evening of carols in the Residence Garden of the British embassy. This fine spot may lack the majesty of the grounds of the British embassy in Paris, with which I became gratefully familiar during my French sojourn.

But it is an oasis of sorts, a corner of tranquillity amid the gleaming skycrapers and incessant bustle of Abu Dhabi life.

The onset of the Eid festival, which brings the place to a pause if not a standstill, added to the sense of occasion. A sizeable crowd of expats gathered in an orderly semi-circle in front of the steps of the ambassador's home and sang their hearts out, led by a lively, bright-eyed choir of cubs and Brownies (click here for another picture of the proceedings).

As Our Man in Abu Dhabi, Edward Oakden, observed, there was something a little incongruous about singing of deep and crisp and even snow on the ground when it was in reality the balmiest of Arabians evening.

The last time I sang Christmas carols outside was half a century ago and thousands of miles away in County Durham. Then I was wearing several layers of clothing, with a scarf tied around my neck, as I went from door to door raising money for refugees from Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution.

Winter in England has its charm, and I am sure Neil is right to feel homesick when he reads that 20 inches of snow have fallen in Canada. But I have feeling I shall miss the Gulf variety when I fly home for Christmas later this week.

* Bill Taylor's photograph capturing Toronto during this week's blizzard is from a set that can be seen in full here.

Conrad Black and Iranian Women's Lib: strange bedfellows

As my former boss Conrad Black sits on his Palm Beach terrace taking his daily tipple of "good French white wine", he is unlikely to cast his thoughts in the direction of Teheran and Delaram Ali.

Why should he? Lord Black of Crossharbour, as he styles himself in memory of the Isle of Dogs, to which he moved the Daily Telegraph 20 years ago, is more preoccupied by what he regards as one monstrous injustice - his own - to worry about another faced by a young woman in a far off land.

On Nov 30, he will be sentenced for fraud and obstruction of justice, recognisable crimes in any sane jurisdiction. Ali (pictured below) has already been condemned and faces 10 lashes and 30 months in jail for the non-crime of protesting peacefully - check that last link; it takes you to a remarkable photo essay - in favour of women's equality.

There is no true link, of course. But I have followed the Ali case because I now live in the Gulf, a whole lot nearer Iran than Florida, while my natural fascination with the Black trial has been deepened by conversations with new Canadian colleagues who also once worked for him.

And I find myself feeling sympathy for them both.

I have no real interest to declare. When Black owned the Telegraph, I was a mere reporter. He seemed a decent and successful proprietor and it is beyond reasonable doubt that the newspaper his regime produced was vastly superior to that of today. But we met only once, and I have only a couple of anecdotes worth passing on.


Unlikely scenario
Picture:HawleyB For some reason, I was among lowly hacks invited to join Black in the executive dining suite for lunch. Discussion turned to the woeful lack of facilities to eat, drink or shop on the Isle of Dogs.
"But we are pioneers," our leader roared. "Before you know it, you'll have everything here that you had in Fleet Street."

Rashly, I failed to stop myself exclaiming: "And it'll still be a lousy place to run a national newspaper."

"My, you're a defeatist," came the reply. A little later, he asked about the jolly libel trial involving two editors, Andrew Neil and Peregrine Worsthorne, the first allegedly representing Vulgar New England and the second Stuffy Old England. I had been covering the case and since Worsthorne edited the Sunday Telegraph, Black wanted to know the likely outcome.

"We'll lose," I said in my second career-threatening contribution to the luncheon conversation. "But if it's any consolation, the damages will be nominal." I was proved right - Neil collecting all of £1,000, a pathetic sum by the obscene standards of English libel awards - but it was hardly the answer the owner had wanted to hear. "You know, you really are doubly defeatist," was all he could think to say.

Afterwards, our scholarly deputy editor, Andrew Hutchinson, who also attended the lunch, told us Black had remarked on the staggering ingratitude of occupants of the editorial floor. As he strode through the office, no one had approached to thank him for a recent handout of share options.

"Please do not worry," Andrew had assured him. "All are indeed most grateful. However, it simply is not the done thing for a reporter or sub-editor to be seen ingratiating himself with the proprietor."

The lunch produced no known casualties. Black continued to preside over a profitable newspaper; journalism there continued to flourish. This does not excuse subsequent financial irregularities. If he went on to defraud his companies of millions, he deserves to be punished.

But he no more deserves to be treated as a car bomber than poor Ali deserves to be flogged. I have no wish to go behind the verdict of the jury and if he is guilty, he probably couldn't complain if he received the other part of her sentence: 30 months in the slammer. American justice has its own vicious streak, however, and prosecutors are demanding 19-24 years' imprisonment.
At least there is hope for the brave and smart Miss Ali. The Iranian courts are reviewing her case for the third time and we must hope that they will belatedly gain a sense of proportion and spare her both components of a savage judgment.

In the country that added the dreadful Genarlow Wilson affair to the history of miscarriages of justice, Conrad Black would be unwise as a convicted fraudster to count on receiving much clemency from Judge Amy St Eve.