Aussie husbands

It's official. According to a recent study by a British academic, Aussies make the worst husbands. This isn't great news - I married one.

Reading the smallprint, I discover that the reason for their low ranking among the 12 countries in the study is that Aussie blokes are really bad at helping out with the housework and child-rearing. I suppose I have to admit, mine's not exactly known for his domestic prowess.

Still, there are surely other considerations when choosing your life partner over and above their ability to do the ironing and change a nappy?

So it is with some optimism that I read the results of another survey in Brisbane's local paper. Around 90% of Australian males believe in true love. Only 54% of Australian females do. Maybe they equate love with laundry skills?

"Isn't that great?" I said to Ian. "The overwhelming majority of Aussie men believe there is such a thing as true love."

"Ah yes," he replied "but you are assuming that the figures apply to a man's love for his wife or girlfriend. Obviously there are loads of other types of true love. True love for the footie, or fishing, or cricket, or beer..."

He didn't get a chance to embellish any further as he was too busy nursing the enormous blow I administered to his right shin.

Still, I am better off than many wives in other societies. In Afganistan, a bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette this month and become law.

And all I have to moan about is an unstacked dishwasher.

Downunder Highlights

The annual Aussie pilgrimage is at an end for another year. Here are the highlights (in no particular order):

1. Hand feeding the wild dolphins on Moreton Island. During the 1980's, dolphins started feeding on fish thrown to them by fishermen from the jetty at Tangalooma. To this day, dolphins from the same pod come into shore each evening and can be hand fed under the guidance of marine biologists from the Tangalooma resort. An amazing experience.

2. Main beach at Stradbroke Island. Possibly the best beach in the world, particularly at this time of year (Aussie winter) when there is no-one on it apart from a few surfers at dusk.

3. Toowoomba and the Aussie countryside or bush. This year we visited friends from Zambia who have relocated to the Queensland country town of Toowoomba. This is the view from their new backyard. We hadn't been inland for a number of years and I had forgotten how beautiful the bush is. Olivia (who is working on her Aussie-ness) told us she really liked being in the bushes!

4. Mars, Pepe, Strudel and Curly, the various family pets (voted by Olivia).This is Mars - probably the most indulged and most photographed dog in the world.

5. Going for walks and the kids being able to run free - appreciated enormously since living in Bahrain.

What were your holiday highlights?

The Annual Pilgrimage

July/August each year sees us embarking on the annual pilgrimage Downunder to visit Ian's Brisbane rellies (as they're called here).

The girls and I left last weekend and Ian joins us soon. A bit like the Royal Family, we never all seem to travel together - though I always cop the kids, while Ian travels in splendid isolation.

The girls are now seasoned long distance travellers and relish the fact that this is their one chance each year to fully indulge in their telly-addiction without being chastised. Olivia solemnly informed me before take-off at Abu Dhabi that there were only 11 films she really wanted to see before we touched down in Singapore.

They were brilliant though - not a peep out of them the whole time. The only hiccup was after landing in Brisbane, when it looked like one of the passengers may have swine flu and we would all need to be quarantined. This seemed a bit of a drastic measure for avoiding the in-laws.

Happily the airport doctor allowed us to disembark and we are now safely ensconced at Ian's sister's house in picturesque Shorncliffe awaiting the much-anticipated arrival of the prodigal son on Monday.

To burqa or not to burqa?

That is the question currently being debated in the letters page of our local rag, following Nicholas Sarkozy's recent controversial comments.

I thought it would be interesting to give you some snippets of the debate.

A recent letter claimed the burqa is liberating and that the veil simply covers and guards modesty. It is a symbol of total submission to God, not subjugation to husbands, fathers or society. The same writer went on to claim that actually Muslim women are more free than those in the West, because we literally starve ourselves to fit into skimpy outfits just to look appealing to men. A Muslim woman's image or self-esteem, so the writer claims, is not governed by what men think of her looks, since she is not a commodity for display and pleasure. The burqa covers the body but not a woman's brains.

There was an almost frenzied response to this viewpoint. Muslim women, claimed the burqa-objectors, have very little freedom compared to Western societies. The laws here in Bahrain (and other countries are worse) favour men hands down - no freedom to remove yourself from an abusive marriage, no freedom to retain the rights to children after divorce, no freedom to live alone and make decisions about your own life. Just because Western women do not cover themselves, does not mean they are immoral or immodest.

And so the debate raged on. And in the midst of all this indignation, the iconic King of Pop, Michael Jackson, died. How are these two issues connected? Well, for those of you who didn't know, Michael Jackson made Bahrain his home for a time a few years ago, to escape the furore surrounding him after child abuse allegations. As we all know, he was paranoid about privacy and covering his face in public, and what better means to use than the burqa? Here he is at one of our local shopping malls in 2006. Now that really is wierd..........

Sizzling in the heat

It's official. I have just sweltered through the hottest June since records began in Bahrain 107 years ago. The average temperature was 35.2C and, on June 18th, the mercury rose to a blistering 45.8C.

It's difficult to comprehend how hot this really feels unless you are here - a bit like not being able to appreciate the speed of Andy Roddick's serve unless you had a seat on centre court.

To give you some idea, my June mornings went something like this:

4am - wake up sweltering despite the aircon and with the sun streaming through the gaps in the blackout curtains. Try to go back to sleep.

4.30am - Just nodding off again, when the Mullah has other ideas. I know the call to prayer is supposed to be a peaceful refrain but at that time of the morning it's just not.

5.00am - Garbage truck arrives loudly just outside bedroom window.

5.30am - Give up on sleep. Turn on shower to wait for water to run cold.

5.35am - Give up on cold water and take hot shower under cold tap.

6.30am - Collect paper from garden. Plastic wrapper is practically melting in the heat. Breakfast then do teeth in hot water - YUK!

7.45 am - Drop girls at school. Open door to car and walk into what can only be described as the feeling of a large industrial hairdryer on the highest heat setting blowing sand in your face.

8.00am - Get back to car which is now an ambient 48C. Sweat. Sweat some more.

8.30am - Back home. Take another warm shower under the cold tap and dream of snow.

Wish you were here?

School plays and prizegivings

It's that time of the year again - school reports, prize givings and end of term productions.

Wednesday morning saw the girls partaking in the school production "Be Our Guest" - a seemingly never-ending medley of songs each related to an ingredient for a soup. Olivia was a peperoni, Isabelle a chef. Ian couldn't make it (I'm beginning to think these meetings are just a convenient excuse), but I think the edited video replay was enough.

On Sunday morning I will be at the Gulf Hotel for the end of year prize-giving. Isabelle has beenawarded the Year 4 prize for French and the Year 4 prize for effort in English. And while her older sister wins for trying the most, unfortunately for Olivia there was no category for the being the most trying.....

Weekends and water parks

Last weekend we took a family outing to the Lost Paradise of Dilmun waterpark - or LPOD, to those in the know.

While the girls certainly loved the slides, boat rides and rafts, the most bizarre aspect of the whole day was how LPOD seemed to be Paradise Found to large swathes of local lads in their late teens/early twenties, who congregated there from mid-afternoon.

It was hard to understand the attraction. The rides, while fun, were hardly of the white knuckle variety normally favoured by young blokes, and of course they weren't there to ogle the nubile young local lasses in bikinis, as their religion forbids them from fraternising with the opposite sex and from uncovering in public. In fact the only female bodies on show belonged to expat mothers, like me, well past their prime. And they obviously weren't there for the booze.

All became clearer a bit later on, when the girls wanted a go in the wave pool. We could barely get in for the large groups of Arab youths. Suddenly a DJ at the other end of the pool started up some local pop music at full blast and the lads all began swaying, dancing and singing with each other.

Bizarre as it may seem, this was clearly their answer to a lads' night out and they were loving it. Each to their own..............