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.

Beware: kids and roos crossing!

I was sorting through our Australian holiday snaps this morning and had to share this photo, taken at a school crossing. I'm not sure how the lollipop lady copes with the kangaroos, but I'm sure she does her best...

Letter from Oz

Apologies for the long silence. We are in Brisbane and I have been preoccupied with the annual family catch-up. This week we've been on the beautiful North Stradbroke Island, one of several sand islands just off the Brisbane coast, with spectacular beaches, great surf, dolphins, whales and the odd shark.

A woman was taken by a shark here in recent years swimming with her dog at dusk in murky water. All the rules broken at once: don't swim at dusk (feeding time) with a dog (lots of splashing) in water where you can't see the bloody great shark coming at you. If attacked, Ian assures me, the thing to do is biff the blighter in the snout with all your might. Uncertain as to whether I would have the presence of mind to do anything other than wait to be swallowed, I avoid the surf and what lies beneath, to the amusement of my more gung-ho Aussie relatives.

Frankly, I think it's quite healthy to have a fear of all things deadly. As well as sharks, I am also terrified of encountering poisonous spiders and venomous snakes - and let's face it, Australia has more than its fair share of these nasties. When I lived here, I spent the first few weeks religiously shaking out my shoes each morning to dislodge any lurking scorpions. Ian nearly split his sides laughing at me when he found out and I suppose he was right to point out that any scorpions were unlikely to scale three stories of an inner city apartment building and end up in my work shoes. But you can never be too careful...

So it felt rather brave to suggest a bush walk the other day - five kilometres or so to the freshwater Blue Lake in the middle of the island. "We may even spot a koala or two," I told the girls, although my eyes were firmly on the ground searching for snakes. I should have been checking out the tree trunks as we rounded a corner and spotted this staring at us:

Now I know it's not deadly, but it had a steely prehistoric glare that was quite unnerving all the same. Undaunted, we trudged on through the bush, forded the odd stream

passed some very odd looking plants

until we reached the lake.

We found a spot by the shore to eat, our only companions two council workers and a group of overly-amorous German backpackers.

As we were tucking into our lunch and I was pondering why sarnies Downunder always have to include a giant slab of beetroot, the council workers came over shaking a large, half-full plastic bag.

"Youse eat prawns?" they inquired. "Goddem off a mate's boat in Amity this mornin'. We can't eat 'em all. Youse can 'ave 'em if you want."

Ian did want and as the workers ambled off, I reflected life must be pretty good for them on Straddie - fresh prawns for lunch, surfing after work before heading to their house with a sea-view (now worth squillions thanks to the influx of townies wanting second homes) and just time for a quick stubbie and some footie-watching with their mates before their Sheila tells them grub's up. No wonder Ian's looking wistful. It might be time to come home.

Dinner at the Embassy

We were invited to dinner last weekend, at the British Embassy no less; a smallish casual gathering with people the Ambassador and his wife would like to see more of - yikes!

I should explain that neither Ian nor I have previously socialised with the Ambassadorial couple. No, the reason for the invitation was Olivia, who is at school with the Ambassador's daughter and has been on a couple of play-dates at the Embassy and has obviously made a bit of an impression.

"What's an Ambassador?" asked Isabelle when I told her and Olivia of our new, improved social standing.

"Well" Olivia began, "K's dad does all the Queen's work in Bahrain when she can't be here. They live in the Queen's house and her dad makes all the Queen's important decisions for her. Oh, and they have cannons at their front door and royal toilets."

"Really? I must check those out!" I said.

"Yes" she continued, "and they are really lucky because they have one dog and two cats and they used to have two hamsters, but the cat ate one. It's OK though, because the hamster belonged to K and not the Queen so they don't have to tell her."

Well, thank goodness for that! We wouldn't have wanted K's dad ending up in the Tower before the weekend!