Beautiful Simbithi

We have arrived back at our piece of heaven on earth. Lots of outdoor activities planned. Looking forward to 6 weeks of fun.

Damien Hirst Relics Exhibition

I had been putting off a visit to the Relics Exhibition by Damien Hirst out of fear that it would make my stomach turn and it would be disgusting to look at. But on the very last day I took the step and went on my own. I knew I should not miss it.

Damien Hirst is the UK's richest living artist. Death is a central theme in his works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved - sometimes having been dissected - in formaldehyde. While he probably errs on the side of glass half empty I was throughly fascinated with his work from a scientific point of view (a microbiology background I guess) and the amount of bling on display in the form of diamond encrusted human skulls. 

I was so taken by the enormity of the sharks that I rushed back after school with Owen and Erin so they could take a look. Owen kept snapping away on his leap pad and was blown away but lots of displays. Erin wasn't keen on the cows head being separate from the cow though.

A dove suspended in formalydehyde

Circular display of butterfly wings

A basking shark in formaldehyde

Damien with a human head

Owen taking a picture of a circular board with dead flies glued to it

Brendon's birthday

Thursday Brendon was the birthday boy! He took the day off from work and we spent the morning together. Fedex phoned to say that Brendon's SUP had arrived and we waited (Brendon very excited!) for the delivery before heading out. After picking Owen and Erin up from school we went to Magnolia for a celebratory cupcake (for the cherubs) and coffee (for the adults). This morning we packed breakfast, the SUP and every other imaginable item that we thought we would need and headed out to find some water. It was like being in Maldives again. We had such a good time and the cherubs were very happy. After breakfast on the beach we packed up and headed home. Brendon and Owen went to football practice and Erin and I quickly baked the belated birthday cake of "Pigs in the mud". It has been a continuous 3 days of celebration and joy.

A reality check

Welcome to Doha. Here are 3 portions of ill health to remind you of what you left behind for 7 weeks. Erin and Owen are sporting full-blown colds and I am erring on the negative side of average. Brendon has escaped the nasty but his reward is work tomorrow. We are not a happy bunch! We took a stroll to the pool yesterday hoping that after the illness we would be able to recline by our oasis once again. This is not to be. The pool water temperature resembles that of a warm bath. We will have to investigate other compounds whose chillers work adequately so that our aquatic leisure time does not have to be postponed until the beginning of winter.

Now I am trying to be a glass half full today but am slowly leaning towards a glass half empty. I am in a state of mourning. When we entered our home Thursday evening it got all my senses buzzing with pure joy. Minimalism at its best. It was clean, uncluttered and the right ambiance was emanating from each room. Well that was before Owen, Erin and the 140 odd kg’s of luggage entered the front door. Owen and Erin quickly unpacked their old toys from under the stairs and thought that they had arrived. Miles of smiles. The luggage was piled up neatly behind the couch waiting for the next day to arrive so it could erupt onto my bedroom floor.

After 2 days of being home my subconscious is calling “Premola, where are you?”. She is in fact holidaying in Hyderabad, India and won’t be back until mid-September. I am at the denial stage of mourning. In my mind I think she is coming back but the reality is she is not returning as our cleaner. I had to face the facts and so went out and bought marigold rubber gloves and environmentally friendly floor cleaner. Actually after washing some dishes by hand the gloves give them a soft feeling! Noooooooo! My expat comforts have been severed and now it is time to move on. It doesn’t help that the ironing is piling up and I haven’t actively ironed in almost 3 years. I wonder how long I can leave vacuuming until the need to wear dust masks become a necessity? How long before I cannot find Erin and Owen in their natural habitat?

Anyway, moving on. It took a whole morning to unpack the bags, that continuously spewed items out, and find place for all our newly acquired gwell. I have also started the process of out with the old and in with the new. There is something liberating about purging the system. Owen has even allowed me to recycle some of his books to make space for his new ones.

It’s a contradictory life we lead. We would have a lot more time if we had less. 

Less stuff to dust = more time

Less stuff to move = more time

Less clothing to iron = more time

And yet the clutter that fills our houses, fills our minds, empties our bank accounts, robs us of our time for important moments continues to satisfy our fleeting moments of emotional fulfilment. Bring on minimalism I say! From tomorrow...........

The day God looked out for Brendon

The day started well. 4 suitcases, 3 hand-luggage bags, 2 strollers, 2 kids and 2 adults arrived in time to catch the Hoppa bus to Terminal 4. This is the day that for sure I know there is a God and he had given Brendon protection from me. Brendon was a little pale on arriving at the check-in as there was a lady and a man free for check-in. Colour returned as he saw the man’s hand signalling us to step forward as later he explained that you should never go to a woman if you have extra baggage. Even though we had off-loaded our extra 20kgs of check-in luggage with Cobus and Ulrike we were still overweight on our hand luggage. The man carefully did the calculations while we held our breath, gave Brendon a pass to the business class lounge and handed him the boarding passes and passports back. Phew! Step 1 – check. Next was security. Our liquids were in a little bag, belts off, laptops out, strollers packed up. This part of the process is Brendon’s nemesis. He eyed the convoy of bags through the scanner and under his breath said. They have one of the bags! I politely went over to retrieve it and answered the security officer’s questions about liquids and sharp instruments honestly. I told him that there were no liquids and sharp items but amongst other things presents in the bag for the kids and I would prefer they did not see them. He must have had the gift of discernment (or a wife and kids) because he suggested I let Brendon sort through the bag with him and I step away with Owen and Erin. In hindsight it was the right thing to do. He scratched through the bag and eventually pulled out a full large zip-loc bag containing 6 sunscreens (each one over the 100ml limit) that I had asked Brendon to put in the checked-in luggage the day before. Before I knew it a non-fruit of the spirit word flew out my mouth silently as they both looked up at me. I must have resembled Cruella deville as they both looked visibly moved! Brendon looked guttered at the prospect of a 6 hour flight with nowhere to escape to while listening to me yarning on about the incident. The security officer looked like he also had a wife and recognised the scale of the matter. He politely asked Brendon if he would like to check the bag in. “Yes, I really would appreciate that!” Brendon said. The problem was not the cost of money (which amounted to more than £ 100) but the fact that I had embarked on a painful 6 week research of chemical and mineral sunscreens to find the ones that suits each one of our skins and in a blink of an eye they would be in the bin and I would be on our way back to Doha with no sun-protection. 

After calming down I sat next to the security exit with the cherubs thinking how relieved Brendon must be feeling about dodging the bullet on that one. My eyes gazed down to the boarding passes he left with me. Boarding time: 09:50. Seat number: 49E!!!!! What the blazes!! I was expecting 10 or 11 E not an extra 30 rows behind that. This was the worst seat reservation in our almost 13 years of marriage. This was unacceptable. Brendon was sure to see an upside down smile greeting his right way up smile when he came around the corner. He was in for the high jump again. Let me begin by saying that I know I am extremely blessed by even having the opportunity to fly. I know that. I am grateful. But over the years I have become anxious about flying, to the point of nausea. I am always convinced that the tail of the aircraft will fall off on take off or landing. Statistics show that those who die in an aircraft are the ones that sit in the very back of the aircraft. And where were we located? 4 rows from the VERY back! I was not a happy camper. Brendon apologised for his inconsistency in getting it right all the time but he was happy to let it go this one time because he felt that spending too much time with the check-in person might raise an awareness about our hand luggage weight. I did not let it rest and was still grumbling 1 hour into the flight about our rubbish seats. Eventually the novelty wore off and I stopped playing the broken record.

6 hours and an uneventful flight later we had to buckle up for landing. One more time of holding my breath, expecting to be skidding along the tarmac with metal sparks flying around while looking at the rest of the plane detach from the tail end, we touched down in Doha. It was not our day to die! I told Brendon, who had stood up to leave, that he had better take a seat as there were 30 rows ahead of us that had to disembark first. The dissatisfaction with the seat number was rearing its head again. He was all ready with the hand luggage when the aircraft personnel announced over the intercom that we would be disembarking from the rear of the aircraft. Brendon saw his moment of glory and piped up “All is well that ends well!" God shone down on Brendon today! I later apologised for being the world’s worst wife with a dog-with-a-bone personality! Moral of the story: to keep the weight down, keep the credit card away from the wife! I see the error of my ways!

The second last day in the UK

We woke. The sun was shining. Birds chirping. The last leg of our trip was before us. Brendon was having an anxiety attack about the weight of the luggage for the umpteenth time. So while Owen, Erin, Cobus, Ulrike, Clarabel and Benjamin went to the park to play we left him to it. I just couldn’t understand how reshuffling items were going to hide the extra 20kg’s we had.

Two minutes into our park adventure I found Owen playing with some broken glass. I asked him politely to leave it alone as I was not too fond of having to visit a NHS A&E 4 hours before we had to catch a taxi to our overnight hotel. He listened to me and dropped the glass distracted by one of the girls on the climbing apparatus. Owen was in a really good mood and went about showing it in a manly way but racing around the playground at top speed with accompanying vroom noises. He jumped onto a horizontal pole slipped backwards and the right way up smile turned into an upside down one. He had hit his head on the ground. He got up and came to me holding his head with blood spurting out of it. Owen’s head had found the one tiny stone that was in the soft flooring. Image the odds of that. I marched him over to Brendon for a quick handover as I don’t do blood very well. Luckily after a little pampering, with Ulrike slotting into her previous occupation as nurse with ease, Owen was back on the road to recovery and a trip to A&E had been side stepped. A shot of Agent Oso was on hand to help the recovery along. Before we knew it the taxi arrived and after goodbyes and leaving the 20kgs behind in garage of our friends we were on our way to our last port-of-call, The Premier Inn, Heathrow.

Exploring the countryside

While Brendon headed off to the dentist in Kings Lynn and Lynese had me time, Owen, Erin and I walked down the road to find the public play park. After investigating the fruit on trees and wheat in the fields we eventually arrived at the park. We met Jake (7) and his great grandad (83) while we were there. Owen and Jake had races and Erin got Jake to push her on the round about and swing. After some time we wandered to the local shop to buy milk and then headed home.

After dinner Brendon, Erin, Owen and I decided to find the river at the end of the field. After a detour past the greenhouse containing tomatoes, cucumbers and beetroot where Owen gave them some water we headed out to find the river.

We got home exhausted but happy that we had ventured out. Owen and Erin had a quick bath and into bed. Ready for another busy day tomorrow.