Mozzarella, disappointment and Euro-pop....

I ate an entire ball of mozzarella cheese yesterday.  I ate the first half at lunch time; I wanted to eat the entire thing until I read the calorific content on the back of the package (over 500 calories) so I divided it in two and put the rest in the fridge.  However, the other half played on my mind all day and eventually after 9 o’clock (aka wine o’clock) I simply couldn’t help myself and devoured the second half along  with some lambs lettuce, cherry tomatoes and olive oil.

I’m telling you this incredibly dull piece of trivia to demonstrate how bored I am at present; the idyllic fantasies I had entertained of renting a lovely country home surrounded by fields with grazing cattle and sheep, with a huge garden so the children could run wild, while I baked soda bread by day and wrote poignant insights at my fireside in the evening, has fallen slightly flat. 

Instead of a buccolic haven, I find myself inhabiting a house on a small, run-down cul-de-sac, flanked on either side by eastern European drug dealers (a conclusion based entirely on the sighting of a man in a hood; a Honda civic; and a brief exchange around the back of the house) and deserted wives.  And despite the fact that the surrounding countryside is indeed beautiful, I wake, not to a pastoral view from my bedroom window, but to a grey concrete-block wall.

You could say that things, in all truthfulness, haven’t gone entirely to plan.

Suddenly my (long) list of complaints about my life in the UAE are ringing rather hollow.  One in particular makes me blush now on recall –

Me: ‘I’m so bored in Al Hamra!  There’s nothing to do but go to café Shakespeare for coffee three times a week while the cleaners come in and clean my (gorgeous three-storey) villa!’

DH: ‘I know, it must be tough’

Me: ‘Yes, it IS! Thank you for understanding!’

Ah yes, instead I’m now cleaning a house which has an interesting collection of broken curtain rails, a carpet which makes me want to put plastic bags on my feet when I walk on it, and which, although it claimed to be ‘furnished’ was lacking luxury items such as beds, or curtains which actually meet in the middle, and which has sofas so repugnant I’ve been forced to throw bed sheets over them in order to be able to sit down.

The property crisis in Ireland has brought the country to its knees and into the bargain made it virtually impossible to rent a decent house as people clambour to sell up before the repossession orders arrive on their doorsteps and indeed the countryside is heavily peppered with large, gorgeous, field-flanked houses with ‘for sale’ signs outside of them.  The rental market is thinly populated with ugly, badly maintained hovels (at least in east Galway), one of which I happen to be living in.

Only forty minutes down the road I own a beautiful house with a bright pink front door; it is surrounded by cattle-grazing fields, and is five minutes from the sea.  Unfortunately another family happily resides there; I didn’t feel it was wise to evict them until I was sure what our next move was.

And so, here I am in a town with so little going on in it that even the library can’t be bothered to open.  There are a couple of delapidated looking pubs, a post office which also sells packets of biscuits and cartons of milk, and an enormous church which was obviously built in a time when the catholic church still had some relevence in Ireland.

The hovel is thankfully just across the road from the little country school which my children are happily attending and where my sons are learning to play the traditional sport of hurling (a rough sort of hockey); my daughter is struggling to master ‘down by the sally gardens’ on the tin whistle (ouch!); and where all of them are being rigourously drilled on Jesus, Mary and all the holy saints.  On questioning eight-year-old boy (a big fan of Greek and Roman mythology) about what he had learned about god, he gushed – ‘My teacher only knows three gods! – Marry (sic), Jesus and God…oh and a shepherd.  I told her that I know loads more gods – Apollo, Ares, Athena, Hercules, Kratos…. loads!’ 

I, by contrast, spend my days listening to the daily scheduled ranting which is Irish radio (no telly) shuffling around in pj’s, sweater and scarf, making endless cups of coffee while attempting to ’live chat’ with DH; a slow and ultimately unsatisfying occupation since he types three words for my every thirty (the quote comes to mind –'I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me'  - Sigmund Freud) The high point of the day comes when I wander around the corner to the petrol station to buy whatever is the 6 euro special offer of the week -- currently Nuggan estate Shiraz -- which will get me through the dull and lonely evenings, grieving for DH and telly.  

We left the UAE because DH’s job seemed to be increasingly under threat and we didn’t fancy being one of those unfortunate families who are forced to make a break for it, Von-Trapp-like, in the middle of the night, in order to avoid the heavy hand of the law should he lose his job unexpectedly. Leaving seemed a wise move after the latest batch of terminations at work, combined with a salary that at times was hitting the bank account up to four weeks late (this month being no exception).  Of course, with perfect UAE timing, DH was duly promoted four days after our departure, leaving us all wondering whether we’d made a big mistake.

And so, it seems that in the most dramatic, hat-eating about-turn since Robbie Williams swallowed his pride and re-joined Take That, we shall in all probability be returning to the UAE sometime after school finishes, just in time for my annual rant about ramadan.

And finally….

I ‘listened’ to the Eurovision song contest* last night on the radio along with ten-year-old girl and eight-year-old boy.  I didn’t think it would be possible to enjoy something which, despite its name is very much a visual spectacle with the songs being pretty much secondary to the theatrical proceedings, without actually seeing it; but oddly enough, by the time we reached the voting stage we were punching the air every time Jedward ** received a score and booing every time Blue***did.  Of course the annual scramblings among the Balkan and Baltic states to curry favour with each other by presenting each other with the elusive douze points meant that Azerbaijan won the prize (I thought that was central Asia?)

Yes, oddly enough it was an enjoyable evening (helped along no doubt by the aforementioned shiraz) and they climbed into (my) bed happily singing ‘Lipstick’ while I pulled the entire curtain rail off the wall in an attempt to draw the curtains…

I might start looking at some flights…

Footnotes: For those non-Europeans among you….

*Eurovision Song Contest – annual celebration of all that is bizarre, tacky and just plain bad about Euro-pop (Abba was the high point) - the winner provides the venue for the following years contest – this years contest took place in Dusseldorf.

**Jedward – (Irish entry) idiotic, semi-literate twins who were finalists on the X Factor a few years ago but who have described as a ‘much needed boost to a demoralised nation’ (we’re obviously in much worse shape than I thought)

***Blue – (British entry) ex boy-band, cobbled together to reclaim some former glory -- rubbish then, rubbish now