Nick Hardcastle

The weather has changed. At four this afternoon it was warm and dry – pleasant enough for a run. Only a week ago it was far too hot and humid to run much before dusk.

About half way round my circuit I noticed that an unusual number of cars were blowing their horns at me as they went past. I waved to them as usual; most drivers here are rather friendly. Then someone threw a plastic box at me – the rapper from a packet of biscuits. I chased after the car. Not a race that I was likely to win, as they were in a Suburban. Still, I gained on the car a little before it sped off, the passenger extending a one fingered salute.

It was only when I was chatting to Sue on Skype that I found out that Ramadan has begun a day earlier than expected. So the horns were for my bottle of water, not the usual friendly greeting.

Petrol, gas if you are from the US and are not quite sure of the various states of matter, has been exorbitantly priced in Saudi Arabia for some years now. Filling my Toyota Echo (about the same size as a Corolla) would cost me SR33 every ten days or so. A rare eccentric here might drive a Smart Mercedes, but in general my battered six year-old is the smallest thing on the road. Overlooked and ignored, we weave in and out of a forrest of Suburbans and GMCs, trying not to get squashed. It is probably the owners of these behemoths that the king was thinking of when he decreed that they price of petrol should be brought down to a more sensible level. My full tank was a mere SR23 today, GB£3.18 at the current exchange rate. Of course the expatriate drivers of the huge 4WDs and the petrol station attendants are unlikely to benefit, but the sensible price of petrol here still makes me smile. Until I go back to the UK at least …

I haven’t had much inclination to write in this blog for a while, but as I have had several people write and ask what has happened, I thought I might start again.

It is hot here in Saudi at the moment, and probably the most humid that I have experience in my six years here. Gill and I climbed yesterday. It was so sweaty that we needed to chalk up between each move and failure to do so was disastrous. I fell from Mango Tango for the first time ever. My hand just slid slowly down the big inverted jug beneath the roof. Yuk. At 48 degrees and what felt like 90% humidity, we did well to climb for an hour and a half. In that time I drank two and a half litres of water and two mugs of coffee.

The liquid intake precipitated somewhat of a crisis on the causeway to Bahrain. It is a three day weekend in Bahrain this week as they are changing the official days off from Thursday and Friday to Friday and Saturday. Perhaps that was why the causeway was so busy. Sitting for an hour in a queue with a bursting bladder is no fun at all.

I’ve decided to make a real effort to study French this year and I was in Bahrain to register for a course with Alliance Française. It will involve traveling over to Bahrain on Monday and Thursday evenings, which could be tedious if the traffic is bad. We will see.

My father has bought a Skype phone, the handset of which does not have to be connected to the computer. We used it for the first time this morning. Excellent sound quality and the convenience of a normal telephone without any cost (other than the usual internet connection costs which we pay anyway). How things have changed since I came to Saudi six years ago, when calling home cost more than a pound a minute.