Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

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, ...

So we're heading back to Ireland, at least for a few months, leaving DH behind to sweat it out in the sandpit they call Abu Dhabi. Predictably, trying to leave the UAE invokes every conceivable complication and at times makes me want to throw my hands up and shriek 'OK, I'LL STAY! ' out of sheer defeat. Normal things like trying to move out of a house here, no matter at what point into your year's lease you are, requires that you forfeit the remainder of the year's rent (which has cleverly been demanded in advance). Imagine that! Being a landlord here guarantees unlimited, undeserved and unearned wealth -- I should have bought a property here the second I arrived; DH wouldn't have had to work a day after that (and don't get me started on the sub-species they call estate agents -- suffice to say I've yet to meet one that understood the concept of fairness or reason, and I've dealt with them as both a landlord and a tenant). Of course the ...

There is an article in this months ‘She’ magazine describing the expat lifestyle in Dubai.  It serves up the usual profusion of adjectives such as ‘luxurious’, ‘opulent’ and ‘lavish’ to describe the lives of those of us living in the UAE.   Gold vending machine Abu Dhabi As I type, I’m sitting in my lavish, diamond-encrusted study, on a platinum chair imported from Brunei, typing on my gold-plated keyboard.  And while we’re in the realm of fantasy, the plumbing in my luxurious villa on the beach actually works, the kitchen sink in my designer kitchen doesn’t leak onto all the products underneath it and it’s possible to lock my back door.    While undoubtedly Dubai is the poster-child for all that is glitzy, expensive and just plain gauche; the champagne brunches, glittering malls and luxurious villas certainly do exist here-  this is not the lifestyle that I or any of my friends experience. In fact, Christmas day was the first time w...

Christmas is coming and I am still fat.  In spite of my best efforts, there is still too much of me and those slinky numbers which hang, corpse-like, in my wardrobe remain as strangers. Of course there’s not much hope of anything changing until January at this stage as the season of overindulgence beckons. I do love Christmas, or the feelings and memories the season evokes. A time when, even in the desert, we can pretend we live in Dickensian London -of course sidestepping the fact that life at that time was actually nasty, brutish and short- instead believing that tartan is a good choice for the living room and fake garlands are a tasteful addition to the staircase banister. It’s also a time of shameless over-spending in a manner which would make even Paris Hilton blush; of throwing things into our trolley’s, virtual or otherwise, without stopping to analyse the long term benefits of such items as a set of bath towels with snowmen on them or a family set of matching rein...

Warning : I get a little bit serious in this post but stay with me dear reader, I promise a return to trivial drivel next time... They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but a keyboard is nothing against someone with a grudge (and just on that, if someone is coming at you wielding a samurai sword, I really don't think writing 'don't kill me' on a piece of paper is going to stop him in his murderous tracks). To explain: someone recently posted a clip on an expat women’s chat forum, of a TV interview with an Imam in Yemen (or Qatar…somewhere in the middle east). In it he explains the rules surrounding the beating of ones wife. Believe it or not there are guidelines; no bones must be broken, blood must not be drawn and the stick must be of a certain width and length. He also went on to explain how this method of discipline can only be used in one specific circumstance: if said wife refuses to sleep with her husband. However, this must only be used as a last reso...

You'd have to be living under a rock in the desert to be unaware of how dangerous it is to drive here in the UAE.  On the drive from RAK to Dubai, the side of the road is literally strewn with burned- out tyres and car parts and you're guaranteed to spot at least one major accident on any journey lasting longer than half an hour.  It's a topic which occupies much headline space and even has its own facebook group 'if you can drive in the UAE you can drive anywhere' .  I joined this group, not because it was going to achieve anything (much like 'liking' a group called 'murder is wrong' isn't going to throw potential murderers into a moral dilemma and stop them in their murderous tracks) but because it creates a sense of belonging among a small, marginalised minority- i.e. those people in this country who can actually drive. As I see it, the problem lies with two distinct groups- i) those who seem to have no idea how to take a left hand turn,...

DH assures me I’m ‘ ready to calf’ which is culchy-speak for ‘childbirth is imminent’ and, bloodcurdling as that thought is, I’m just looking forward to a proper night's sleep.  My nights are currently a revolving door of bathroom-bed-bathroom-bed and my sleeping positions have been reduced to a choice of precisely one: the left side, since sleeping on my back feels like there is a baby seal crushing all my internal organs and sleeping on my right seems to bring about all the symptoms of a minor stroke.  And it's been several weeks since I've taken breathing for granted. Yes, nature has cleverly conspired to ensure that the closing weeks of pregnancy are so utterly uncomfortable that the agonising and horrific ordeal ahead is seen as a blessed relief. I am slightly concerned about giving birth here in the UAE though - just ordering a coffee can be trying at times - so the idea of trying to explain my wish for an epidural could prove to be challenging.  I have t...

' Are you sure you want to know? ’ asked the German doctor as I stared up at the squirming, leaping form on the screen in front of me. ‘Yes, god yes please yes’ I begged, thinking pleasantly of the gorgeous pink, frilled things I’d spotted in Carter's baby shop the day before. The four children sat silently wrestling each other in the corner, squashed into two armchairs, watching the show. Occasionally there would be a muffled giggle as someone would whisper ‘I see its butt!’ I started to daydream- ‘I’ll call her Delilah….or Jezebel’ I mused , ‘ and she can share a bedroom with nine year old girl…it will be perfec t….all pink and sage toile de jouey I think…’ ‘I see a little penis ’ said the German laconically, jolting me in to reality. I fell silent for a moment, confused and disoriented. I had been absolutely certain this child was female, the pregnancy to date having been a carbon copy of my first. ‘Oh! ’ I quickly adjusted myself, brightening, ‘lovely, anothe...