Shopping for fish

When we lived in Brussels, we had a fishmongers on our street. Family-run for generations, it was enormously popular and on Sunday mornings the Bruxellois would queue out of the door for the fresh mussels, prawns, sole and monkfish to conjure up some culinary delight for their family lunch. Fish was filleted in front of you on a huge, ancient wooden block and on your way out you could pick up a bottle of the best Sancerre or Chablis to enjoy with your purchase.

The Bahrainis are also fish-lovers and many families have been fishermen for generations. They have been suffering in recent years as reclamation and development work has not only robbed them of their harbours and jetties, but has also led to a loss of fish stock to Qatari and Iranian waters.

While some fish is available in supermarkets, the best place to go for the freshest catch is the fish market. Fishermen yell out the prices of their daily catch, the floor swims with briny water and the smell by midday is overwhelming. It is a part of Bahrain that, for now, remains unchanged, unmodernised. And while the fishmongers may not have the panache of their Belgian counterparts, they have a charm all of their own.

New Year, New You

Every paper and magazine I pick up at the moment is full of those early January articles extolling the virtues of the post-Christmas detox, the latest exercise fads or the most recent innovations in skincare.

I arrived back from the UK with flu, and looking decidedly less healthy and more sallow than when I left Bahrain in December. So I decided that perhaps I should heed the advice in some of those articles and pay more attention to my skin.

Unfortunately, most of the new, high-tech skincare products on offer in the UK have not yet arrived in Bahrain. But my scouring of the shelves of the local pharmacy did reveal a range of alternatives, my favourite of which (located right next to the New Zealand bovine colostrum pills) was this offering from the Philippines:

This herbal beauty soap promises to renew damaged skin tissues and fade away blemishes and contains a healthy dose of placental enzymes to help you on your way. The box doesn't specify where the enzymes are sourced.

A quick bit of internet research revealed that placenta extracts have been a popular health and beauty product in the Far East for centuries and products containing them are now being touted by swish Swiss clinics and top-end skincare lines beloved of Madonna and the like.

My sister has just had a baby. We were discussing her placenta only last week. Somehow I can't bring myself to open the packet.

Travel chaos

I have neglected the blog. I have been busy working, mothering and preparing for Christmas.

We debated long and hard about whether to go to the UK for Christmas; December is such a glorious time of the year in Bahrain. But the girls were adamant. They wanted snow.

And snow we had. In abundance. Too much of the damn stuff. So much so that although Heathrow was open when we left Bahrain on Saturday, by the time we reached UK airspace six hours later, the wretched snow had closed it.

We diverted to Frankfurt, along with 70 other planes. We waited on the plane for four hours before being told Heathrow would not be re-opening that day. We waited another hour for a bus to come and take us to the terminal.

"Look, snow!" I told the girls as we disembarked. They didn't look enthused.

Once inside the terminal building, no-one seemed to know what to do with us. The Gulf air ground staff seemed to have vapourised. A nice lady from the airport was getting harassed. People were getting angry. The airport lady rang control and told them she was abandoning her post unless help arrived. The lucky passengers were finally steered through passport control and onto a bus to a hotel in Wiesbaden. Those without EU passports or visas were shown the transit lounge. I silently thanked the Lord for Ian's Belgian passport.

Now if you are going to have an enforced two-night stopover, Wiesbaden's not a bad place to have it. It has an attractive town square, a river and we were in a comfortable hotel. The only problem was no-one had any luggage. And it was Sunday and thanks to a strong "Keep Sunday Special" movement, nothing opens in Germany on a Sunday. So no toothbrushes, no clean undies and for many, no outdoor clothes. We were lucky. At least we each had a coat and closed shoes.

By day two, there was a real Dunkirk spirit in the hotel. GF003 passengers were the only guests and it was easy to identify people as they were all still wearing the same clothes. Friendships were forged in the hotel bar and rumours abounded of when Heathrow would reopen, whether Frankfurt would close, whether we would be home for Christmas.

Hotel staff tried to keep us amused by sending us en masse to the town's Christmas market. Off we trooped through the snow. The local gluhwein drinkers were seen giving their empty glasses a bemused glance as a group of veiled Bahraini women walked past, followed by a British girl with flip-flops and shower caps on her feet wrapped in a Crown Plaza duvet. You had to hand it to her for improvisation.

Monday morning brought good news. Heathrow was open. We landed. We cheered. We stopped. We couldn't get to the terminal because of the snow. The entertainment system was switched back on (never a good sign). We waited. An hour later, the plane shuffled forward and the terminal was in sight. We stopped. The Sri Lankan Airways plane that was due to move off our stick had developed a serious technical problem. We would have to wait some more. At least I could finish the movie.

Heathrow was chaos. London was worse. We passed the poor, shivering passengers waiting in the five-hour-long queue for the Eurostar and boarded a train to Peterborough. I have never been so glad to get there.

We went shopping today. The queues were horrendous. I've forgotten how crowded the UK is.

"It will be a long wait," I told Isabelle.

"That's OK, mummy," she said. "In the past few days I've got used to waiting."

By Royal invitation

I had a taste of Kate Middleton's future this week. On the morning her engagement to Prince William was announced, I was being presented to Her Highness Shaikha Sabika, first wife of King Hamad of Bahrain.

It's Eid Al Adha and a friend of mine, who is an Ambassador's wife, had been invited to attend the Shaikha's majlis (a special gathering) to offer good wishes. She's allowed to bring along fellow upstanding members of the community and so it was I found myself in the Ambassadorial Jag heading to the royal palace at Riffa.

As we swept up the long driveway lined on each side with gold coloured lampposts topped with a castle, my friend pointed out the Royal stables where a magnificent collection of Arabian horses is housed.

The palace itself is enormous. We were dropped at the door and entered a huge glass-roofed room with marble floors and chandeliers. Off to one side was another large room with sofas and low tables stretching its length and magnificent rugs in the middle. At the end of the room, under the Royal crest, stood the Shaikha, dressed in an exquisite jalabiya and with a long necklace of the largest diamonds, rubies and emeralds I've ever clapped eyes on. Without her head covering she looked younger than in her photos.

Protocol at such gatherings demands that we first waited in line to be presented to the Shaikha (curtsy was optional) and then had to be presented to all the other members of the Royal family at the female only gathering. We could then retire to one of the sofas, drink juice from a glass engraved with the Royal crest, scoff one of the cakes on offer, be doused with smoke from an incense burner and make polite conversation with other dignatories before once again lining up to bid farewell to the Shaikha and Royal family members.

Before leaving, we of course checked out the Royal loos (very posh) and were expected to spray ourselves with one of a huge selection of perfumes set out on tables next to the exit. The smell as we lined up for our limo alongside the other Ambassador's wives was quite over-powering.

Who knows, one day Kate Middleton may be invited to the Shaikha's majlis as part of the endless round of Royal engagements which will now become her life. And, fascinating though the experience was, I don't envy her one little bit.

Happy Halloween!

I hadn't realised it before, but Halloween is big business in the Middle East, which is strange given that it is a mix of Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals with a few European folk traditions thrown in. Yet the Bahrainis love it.

Our compound takes Halloween very seriously. The owners, a wealthy Bahraini family, even go so far as to deck out an entire section of their home as a haunted house. The "Ghost Gazette" was delivered to the door last week, with instructions for Halloween proceedings and for the first time ever, I felt obliged to invest in some cobwebs and spiders, costumes for the girls and bucketfuls of sweets and lollies. And our black cat, Enid, was an authentic live accessory on the night.

The shop where I went to purchase these Halloween goodies was packed with Bahrainis clutching everything from flashing ghoul lights to vampire fangs. They were queuing out of the door and two women in abayas were having a heated exchange about who had seen a witch's hat first.

At just before six this evening, the first Trick or Treaters arrived and it was a steady stream for the next couple of hours - at least 150 people, I reckon, including quite a lot of dodgy looking teenagers (why are they still interested?) and a fair few domestic staff clearly after the free choccies like everybody else.

Isabelle dressed as a dwarf and Olivia was a witch. She managed to chip her front tooth over the weekend, so could also sport a crooked smile. The tooth now has an infection and she may need an expensive dental procedure. The false teeth I bought her for her costume would have been a far cheaper witch's grin.

Happy Halloween! What did you get up to?

Where's the envelope?

On Monday I went to the local post office to send off a copy of a report to the UK. Handing over my brown A4 size envelope to the clerk I waited while he weighed the letter twice and then waited while he spent ages tearing stamps out of various books and assembling them in a pile on the counter. He ended by handing over what looked like postcards of the Royal family.

"These are the world's largest stamp" he told me proudly. I'm not sure if this is true, but the stamp was of gargantuan proportions. And I needed three of them.

I stared at the pile. Then I began sticking and when I'd finished, the envelope looked like this:

Nine stamps in all. Admittedly not as many as Manoj Kumar Mondal, who managed to use 3809 Indian postal stamps in March to break the world record for the maximum number of stamps on a parcel, but not bad for someone who wasn't really trying.

Country pursuits

Despite spending my teenage years in rural England, I never quite succumbed to its charms. I didn't ride, wouldn't shoot and couldn't see the point of traipsing for hours through muddy fields in green wellies and Barbour jacket with a faithful hound at my heels. I never returned from such outings with rosy cheeks and healthy glow, only with frizzy hair and freezing feet.

Once schooling was done, I headed for the Big Smoke - London - and have been a city dweller ever since. Yet once the children were born, I found myself looking forward to trips home to the countryside. Maybe it was nostalgia, maybe simply that it is much easier to take a toddler for a walk across muddy furrows than down a city street.

Whatever the reason, this year not only saw us indulging in long walks and cycle rides, but also spectating at various local events, including the famous Burghley Horse Trials. Burghley House was home to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I's most trusted advisor. It stands just at the back of my old school in Stamford - we used to do cross country runs through its park - and is quite magnificent.

Each year, Burghley hosts its famous horse trials - three days of dressage, cross country and show jumping (or for those of us not into all things equine, three days of champagne quaffing and great shopping) where riders and horses do things like this:

The good news is that we Brits are actually pretty good at horsey-things and rode seven out of the top 10 placed horses. The other good news is that green wellies and Barbours are most definitely out among the horsey set. It's all leather boots and fake fur gilets now. The stand selling these boots was doing a roaring trade:

But despite Burghley's fame and splendour, it was a smaller event at a little known stately home whose park backs onto my mum's garden, that I enjoyed the most. Owned by one of the richest women in Britain, whose family money hails in part from the Astor family, Grimsthorpe Castle was holding its annual family open day.

Apart from tours of the castle - Charles and Camilla stayed here not so long ago - there was a vintage car rally, a dog show and a truly excellent sheep dog demonstration.

I can't remember the name of the well-spoken farmer who was giving the demo, but he was fantastic. Using 5 dogs simultaneously, each with their own calls for left, right, stop and go (how he knew which dog was which, let alone remembered the designated calls, is beyond me) he herded a flock of geese into a U-shaped pen formed by children from the audience. Without raising his voice above a mere whisper. Yes, he conducted the whole demo with children AND animals and not one yell or expletive. Now, William Fox-Pitt may think the cross country course at Burghley was a challenge, but for truly awe-inspiring performances, the unnamed farmer got my vote.