Driving Middle East style

Need an adrenalin rush? Want to take your life in your hands? Try doing the daily school run - in Bahrain.

Roads in the Middle East are the second most dangerous in the world - only Africa's are worse. This statistic comes as no surprise to those who live here. Venture onto Bahrain's roads on any given day and chances are you will see an accident, or at the very least several near misses brought about by unbelievably stupid driving manouevres.

When I applied for my Bahraini driving licence, I received a copy of the Bahraini Highway Code. The rules of the road are all in there, all up to international standards. The trouble is, no-one adheres to them and no-one enforces them.

So just so you are in the know should you ever come to the Middle East and be stupid enough to hire a car, here are my top ten tips for driving like a local:

1. Seatbelts: don't fasten them, they are a nuisance and will crease your clothes. And never, ever allow your child to wear one - much better to keep them amused while you are on the motorway by bounding around the car, leaping from front to back, draping themselves across the dashboard or sticking their heads out of the windows or sunshine roof.

2. Car seats: don't buy them; they are totally unnecessary. Put baby in the front on his mother's lap or if you are a lone driver, sit him on your lap.

3. Mobile phones: only use them while driving. Journeys can be so boring and a good chat with your buddies provides a welcome distraction from everything else going on around you.

4. Seat position: if you are male, under 25 and drive any sort of Toyota or Nissan, then your seat should be near to horizontal so that you struggle to see over the steering wheel (which you must only clasp with one hand as the other is holding either your phone or cigarette). For anyone else, the only rule is that you must position your seat so that you can't see in any of your mirrors (if you are even aware they are there and serve other purposes than applying lip gloss).

5. Indicators: don't use them. All that pushing the lever up and down - such a waste of energy. And anyway, you know where you are going.

6. Parking: if you must park in a designated parking area, then make sure you park at such an angle that you take up at least three spaces. Otherwise, use pavements, garage entrances, verges, the hard shoulder and, on Fridays, the lane of the dual carriageway closest to the mosque.

7. Motorway driving: overtake or undertake - both are fine as long as you are exceeding the speed limit and then cut in front of the person in the next lane close enough to take out their front wing. Oh, and tailgating is de rigueur.

8. Roundabouts: always make sure you are in the wrong lane to exit so that you have to suddenly and dramatically cut across cars in the other lanes to reach your destination - without indicating, of course: see rule 5 above.

9. Traffic lights: if you are at the front of the queue for a red light, make sure you edge forward into the junction ahead so that you get the best possible racing start when the lights change. As soon as the lights are green, any car behind the lead car should honk its horn madly and incessantly in the hope that all the cars in front will instantly vapourise. And most importantly, never forget the 10-second-rule: once the lights turn red again, cars must continue through them for at least 10 seconds or risk the car behind ramming into them.

10. Road markings and signs: on the whole, it is best to ignore these. Drive the wrong way up that one-way street if it's your quickest route home; always drive into that yellow box to make sure you block rush hour traffic from all other directions; and never ever take any notice of chevrons or double yellow lines.

Good luck! You'll need it.

All in a good cause - possibly

About a year ago, two employees of Ian's company were shot dead while working in Afganistan. Last weekend, the company organised a fund-raising rugby match at the Bahrain Rugby Club in their memory.

Now rugby is Ian's sport. He loves it and watches whenever he can. It doesn't seem to matter who is playing and in which league or competition or indeed which code - union or league, both will do. The only reason we pay a flogging fortune for a gazillion satellite channels of utter rubbish is so he can savour the two sports channels which show the rugby.

Many years ago he used to play too, starting off as a flanker when a young lad and progressing to hooker as the years and kilos took their toll. He last played about 15 years ago; a memorable match in which he dislocated his shoulder.

So it was with some trepidation that he signed up for the charity match squad, but peer pressure is a powerful thing and I have to admit I too was keen for him to have a go and enjoy a game again. I dutifully sourced boots and a mouthguard and was to be found in the stands among the keen rugby groupies last Thursday night.

He spent the first half on the bench, running through tactics and limbering up for his second half guest appearance. As the half time whistle blew, I was gasping for a drink. I trotted off to get two wines for my friend and me and upon returning discovered the second half was already in progress.

"Ian's on - quick!" yelled my friend. Sloshing wine as I went, I hotfooted it back to my seat and frantically surveyed the pitch for my rugby hero. Where was he?

"He's not the guy on the ground, is he?" I asked her nervously. We both peered. Yup, it was definitely him. Out cold.

"What happened?" I demanded.

"I've no idea, I wasn't watching," she admitted. Well, that made two of us.

The medic came on and he was hauled off the pitch by two of his team mates. I rushed to his side (as a good wife should).

"He was tackled from behind, knocked out and then had his head rammed into the ground by four guys jumping on top of him," summarised the medic. "Oh, and he's concussed. Listen!" she continued and to prove her diagnosis asked him, "What's your name, love?"

One of Ian's Indian colleagues, who was clearly baffled by why anyone would want to partake in such a dangerous sport and was very concerned for his boss's wellbeing yelled, "Ian! His name's Ian!"

Once said colleague had been muffled, the questions continued. We discovered Ian didn't know what had happened, had no idea what day it was and was showing alarming concern for the whereabouts of his mouthguard. I timed it: he asked for his mouthguard five times in as many minutes and there was no calming him. If only he would show such concern for me now and again.

So it was off to hospital for us and off to the bar for his team mates. As these things are in a rugby club bar, the accident was relived, analysed and exaggerated beyond belief. Ian is now a DHL rugby legend. But he's never being allowed to set foot on the pitch again.

The Gallery: Paint a picture of the world we live in

This week I've decided to take part for the first time in The Gallery, run by Tara Cain over at Sticky Fingers. This is how it works: following her prompt, I post a photo/photos and write about it/them. This week's prompt: Paint a picture of the world we live in.

Bahrainis love to shop. And although Bahrain has more than its fair share of glitzy modern shopping malls, the most authentic and fun shopping experience is to be had in the souks. There's no better place for buying spices and herbs for the evening kebab!

And then after shopping, they indulge in their second favourite hobby - tea and coffee drinking. There are many of these cafes dotted around the souks. Tea is flavoured with fresh mint and sugar and drunk in small glasses. Arabic coffee is thick and sweet and often flavoured with cardamom. And the gossip never stops.

Adam's not coming home

I last posted about Adam Jones in November. 10-year-old Adam attends the same Bahrain school as my daughters. Last October he went to Qatar with his British mother, Rebecca, to visit the family of his late Qatari father. His 77-year-old Qatari grandmother was supposedly ill and wanted to see him.

During the visit, Adam's mother was asked by his uncle to sign some legal papers, ostensibly concerning property in Qatar. In fact, the papers were nothing to do with land but instead allowed the grandmother to file for custody of Adam, which she duly did.

Rebecca has been in Qatar ever since, fighting for Adam's return. She feared that if she left Qatar, she may not have been allowed to return. Her second husband, Barrie, has remained in Bahrain taking care of their four-year-old daughter.

The Qatari court awarded full custody to the grandmother in November and Rebecca was denied visitation rights. She immediately appealed the decision and was awarded visitation rights at the end of November, allowing her to see Adam twice a week. He was distraught when he discovered the truth of what had been happening. Up until that time he had been told he was staying in Qatar because of the swine flu scare in Bahrain.

Rebecca has received threats from locals in Qatar and the Qatari uncle has supposedly used his influence with the police to intimidate members of the court and Rebecca's Qatari sponsors, without whom she has no standing to bring a court case.

During the appeal process, the court heard from Adam for the first time. He said he wanted to come home to Bahrain with his mother. His wishes have been denied. Judges have now dismissed Rebecca's appeal against the custody order. Adam will remain with his Qatari family and Rebecca's visitation rights will be entirely at their discretion. Rebecca and her family are devastated.

Throughout her ordeal, there has been strong support for Rebecca in the English-speaking Bahraini press and from the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society, which claims that by not properly considering Adam's wishes and welfare Qatar has breached the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, to which it is a signatory.

There have also been letters to the local English-speaking paper from people who have experienced similar custody battles, whether as parents or as children who were forced to leave their mothers to live with their father or their father's family. Rebecca and Adam's case is not unusual, particularly given the large number of Gulf residents who are married to expatriates.

The Qatari courts apply Sharia law, which generally awards custody of male children over a certain age to the father or, if he is unable to be custodian, to another of his family members. In particular the court considers the parents' religion, where they live and to whom they are married. Rebecca remarried without the consent of her former husband's family, resides in Bahrain and sends Adam to an international school - along with many other Arab children - and all this will have counted against her. However, whatever the court's guidelines, it will often make exceptions, particularly in cases in which a parent is from an influential family or has powerful connections in Qatar, as seems to have been the case here.

Custody battles are always distressing. Sharia law appears to favour the father, certainly in the case of boys. Although they are now adopting a more balanced approach, where joint custody couldn't be agreed, UK courts traditionally awarded custody to the mother, often resulting in loss of contact with the father. However, in the UK, the best interests of the child are paramount when considering any custody issue and where a child is old enough to express his wishes, he should be listened to. To me, this is where the Qatari decision has fallen down. Adam wants to go home to his mother; he has expressly said so in court. He should have been heard.

Rebecca now intends returning to the UK to commence proceedings under the UK court system. I wish her luck.

Grecian adventure

Sorry for the lack of posts; we've been in Greece.

First stop was Athens. Ian had been before, though barely recognised the place from his previous trips - it was given a facelift before the 2004 Olympics and is now much less down-at-heel, with excellent shopping (the cheapest Zara in Europe apparently) and countless trendy restaurants (things have moved on since the days of the ubiquitous kebab and Greek salad).

The Acropolis was impressive, particularly at night when you couldn't see all the scaffolding. We didn't need a tour guide as Isabelle had the whole story of Athens down pat. She's a sucker for a good Greek myth.

And we watched the changing of the guard by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma Square. Olivia: "Mummy, why are the soldiers wearing dresses and tapping shoes?"

Answers on a postcard, please.

After Athens we spent some time on Hydra, one of the Saronic Islands off the coast of the

Peloponnese.

I knew it would be good when the blurb on the internet described it as the St Tropez of the Greek Islands. Unsurprisingly, Ian didn't recognise this one either from his days-of-yore bachelor trip round the Greek party isles.

Hydra is very definitely not a party island. It is sophisticated, stylish and picture-postcard pretty. The Greek Prime Minister spent his Easter here and while we didn't see him, we could see why: wisteria-covered cottages; grand mansions built by pirates with their ill-gotten gains; glorious coastal walks; crystal clear seas; and white-washed chapels at every turn.

And the best thing was the quiet. There are no cars or motorbikes on Hydra, except for 2 rubbish trucks by the harbour. Transport is either by donkey (pretty pricey at Euro 10 a pop for the shortest distance) or on foot.

It's amazing how much noise traffic makes. At night, the silence on Hydra was almost deafening. I haven't slept so well in years.

How to prune a palm tree

I came home the other day to be confronted by a strange rustling sound in the garden. Looking up, I saw the gardener up one of my palm trees with a machete and no form of safety equipment. And it's a long way up (or down, depending on how you look at it).

It turns out that date palms need pruning at this time of year, so the gardener shins his way up the trunk using only a small band of cloth attached to a circular chain for support. Once he reaches the top of the trunk, he slithers out of the cloth and climbs, totally unsupported onto the palm leaves, draws the machete out of his belt and begins hacking away.

Pruning over, he hurls the machete down to the ground (luckily I'd ushered the kids into the house), wriggles back into his "harness", poses for a quick photo and them shimmies back down the tree. Time taken: 10 minutes.

Now imagine the same scenario back in Europe: the health and safety issues; hydraulic platforms to transport the gardener; the required permits; not to mention the cost.

Some aspects of life in Bahrain are definitely simpler.

Photo meme

I have been tagged by both Julie at The Sardine Tin and Natural Mummy in a photo meme. My first, so I hope I get it right.

The instructions are:

1. Open the first (oldest) photo folder in your computer library

2. Scroll to the 10th photo

3. Post the photo and the story behind it

4. Tag 5 or more people to continue the thread.

So here's the photo. The quality isn't great as it was a photo taken with a video camera.

The date is 5 November 1999. The place, St Luc Hospital in Brussels. And after about 16 hours of labour, Isabelle was born. I'd forgotten to pack a hat for her (they insisted on newborns wearing them in Brussels) so she wore a sock on her head for the first couple of hours.

The day after she was born was the final of the Rugby World Cup and Ian came into the hospital to watch it with some friends and some champagne. Just what a breast-feeding new mother needs - alcohol she can't drink and friends she's too exhausted to converse with.

The Wallabies won. Ian was ecstatic. "Aussies rule the world again" ran the sporting headlines.

But my little Aussie and I slept through it all.

So now let me tag the following bloggers with this one:

London City Mum

Selma at Selma in the City

Fraught Mummy at Brits in Bosnia

Anne at The Pineapple Tart

Celeste at Coconut Radio