Former Brigg Grammar School pupil and Brigg Town cricketer, Bill Eaton, has sent us a message from afar. He likes reading Brigg Blog to keep in touch with what's going on round here.
"I'm resident in the Middle East nowadays, living and working in Riyadh, so I'm particularly keen to see how your weather is. Out here there's only one weather...... whether its very or just plain because it is always HOT!" he reveals.
"I really should coincide a visit home to Newcastle with a Briggensians' Sports Day and see if I can still turn my arm over," he adds. "Take care and I'll keep on reading the daily exploits of a little town in Lincolnshire from a growing city in Saudi Arabia."
The problem with the Middle East is that they have too much weather.
ReplyDeleteI was in the Middle East in the late 60's....Aden and later the Trucial States - now the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai.
This was the time when oil had just been discovered in this part of the Gulf and everytning was very traditional - almost biblical.
The temperatures were very high, but being near the coast, humidity levels were often intolerable.
Move inland down the wadis, or into the dunes of the Empty Quarter, the temperatures remained high, but the heat was dry and the ambience became more pleasant.
Most striking events were when the trees in the oasises along the wadis become entombed in mass blankets of butterflies in the spring.
If it was going to rain, it would come down in a short-lived, often violent torrent (almost like monsoon rain) this time of year (August).....after which desert flora and fauna flourished.
The ground was often sun-baked, impermeably hard and ground water stood about for some days - and this pools became the teeming focus
of life - from snakes, scorpions to sudden flowering plants.
Once you became acclimatised, it was often deemed quite chilly at night - but this was relative as temps remained in the 70/80's even in the 'cool' season (winter).
Swimming in the Gulf was like taking a bath....there were disadvantages however....someone had to be on the raised platform with a high-volicity rifle watching out for sharks; there were sea-snakes that sometimes joined swimmers in the water and, on land, hornets, the size of the inner tube of a toilet roll.
Essentially, the weather in the Middle East become monotonous....even a small cloud would cause massive excitment and when it did rain, everyone rain outside and danced about like idiots.
....And don't mention blood-eating bed bugs!!!
.....and what constantly puzzled me was when you struggled about the bondu and came across a some folks, they always had a fridge full of coke and 7-Up.....no food......although coconuts, dates, babanas hung about on the nearby trees/bushes.
After all these years, I wonder if the weather has changed.
Do you still have too much weather, Bill?
Do they play cricket out there Billy ? Think I saw a progrom where some scrolls were unearthed near the dead sea which included a scorecard of a match Riyadh Nomads X1 v Taureg Dromaderys . The game was abandoned due to a lack of MCC qualified umpires and the fact that no batsman could hit the ball over the boundry due to a sudden sand storm which deposited several sand dunes in the outfield ( or outdesert as it is known in Saudi.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough the scorer was a Mr K Harrison of Arabia who signed the scorecard 'The Wrawby Raghead ' ?
To GMSmithy: seems we have got some Far Easterns annoyed.
ReplyDeleteYou're nearly right....the scorer was Khalid (Harem) Harrison - my forebear and sometime wadi-dweller and occasional nuisance.
During my time in the Middle East, the ground was not suitable for cricket; it was either too soft, or too hard (caused by a layer of perculated salts causing a widespread slab called a 'salt-pan', or 'hard-pan' on, or just below the surface.
It was common for footie, and for the Brits, to play rugby...but the pitch easily turned into soft sand, which, while making tackles, falling over and such like easy, the ball became dead in the soft sand, lacked bounce and remained motionless until a player kicked to ball to repeat the sequence.
Now the area is so rich, its imported an International golf course. (watered from nearby solar-powered desalination plants)
However, the major population of the coast dwellers were tolerated Pakistani (men only) illegal immigrants. They crossed the Gulf in arab dhows and were essential in the economy as labourers in the Dubai creek docks and in the traditioanal arab suques.
The native arabs lived furher inland away from the high humidity.
Before oil became the focus, these arab states were well-known gold and silver smuggling areas.
One had difficulty find somewhere to get a pint - normally bottled Tiger beer - but one could easily trip over gold ingots lying about the suques.
Stoning and hand-choppy-offie still remained fairly common. Public punishments were fairly common just after Ramadam and attracted a large crowd of specatators and camel-buger sellers. Everytime something 'special' happened, the rifle-wielding (some with machine guns) locals let off a volley of shots into the air and danced about....the the combination od dancing about and the firing became a little precarious as 'into the air' shots could become 'just above head' whizzing bullets.
If one already had a driving licence, a local licence could be issued, but if someone wanted to get a licence, the test involved driving around a red and white painted oil drum and a coconut palm tree....one could even bribe the local police, or examiner.
I heard a story of a waiting candidate for this simple test being hit on the head by a falling coconut - before he was rushed to hospital, he was deemed to have passed as his parked car was not involved in the accident.