Safe, innit?

I flew back from a visit to the UK yesterday. I had a minor altercation with the BA check-in guy at Heathrow Terminal 5 over a particularly heavy suitcase (courtesy of the Amazon booksale).

BA now charge a hefty excess baggage charge for any bag over 23kg, even if your total luggage allowance has not been exceeded. Health and safety of the baggage handlers, don't you know. Although I, a slip of a thing at 8 stone, managed successfully to manoeuvre said suitcase in and out of a car boot and onto the scales, it was too heavy for the blokes out the back. Apparently I should have more bags and expect my 7 year old daughter to lug one of them.

Anyway, in the midst of our discussion, one of BA check-in guy's friends came over, I think, to say goodbye and wish him a pleasant day. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: Yo, bro!
BA guy: Yo, bro, howzit travelling?
Friend: (something incomprehensible)...,innit?
BA guy: Safe, man.
Friend: Yeah, safe, bro, safe.
They embraced. Friend left.

They were speaking English, but I have absolutely no idea what their conversation was about. Still, it was obviously good news, as I got off the excess baggage charge.

Writing tag

This is a writing tag from Anne.
What word do you use too much in your writing?
None in particular, but I do have a tendency to be too wordy and end up having to edit extensively pieces I write.
Which words do you consider overused in stuff you read?
"in time", as in "moment in time". Is there any other sort of moment?
What's your favourite piece of writing (written by you)?
My first published article - a travel piece on Kerala, India. Although a nostalgic choice would be the five-year diary which I kept as a teenager and recently rediscovered.
Regrets, do you have a few? Is there anything you wish you hadn't written?
The odd email, typed in anger, sent in haste and repented at leisure.
How has your writing made a difference?
Studying journalism has made me look at anything and everything I do through new eyes. The most mundane, everyday events now become potential stories.
Favourite words
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt signs in preparation for landing." Music to the ears after a 28 hour journey to Australia with 2 kids.
Least favourite words
"This cream is from our range for the more mature skin."
Do you have a writing mentor, role model or inspiration?
The journalist Helena Frith-Powell, whose light, witty style I hope to emulate.
Writing ambition
To have a travel or lifestyle article published by a UK national newspaper.
Plug:
Keep following the blog for more ins and outs of life in the desert and elsewhere.

The Ashes

Enough said!

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..........