A bit of weather

What a whirlwind March has been. I braced myself mentally before the end of February since I knew that every weekend in March had an event. It's been a question of holding my breath and diving in and not worrying about having no chance to recharge my batteries at the weekend. I'm paying for it now though. I had plans for my upcoming birthday - dinner and a boogie at one of the hotels (do they still say boogie?), but have had to postpone due to lack of boogying energy. Still, on Friday I'm having my first lesson in mahjong and a nice lunch with friends, so that's probably quite an appropriate way for a woman of my advanced years to celebrate. We'll try the boogie thing next week.

The weather has been bizarre throughout the month. Two weeks ago it was pretty normal which was just as well as Al Ain Animal Friends had decided, after much debate, to hold the Fur Ball outside. This was the suggestion of Chef Hassan, who indulges the strident and giggly women (of which I am one) in our small group of volunteers. He smiles and is very polite, but you can see that he's hoping we'll make up our mind and leave soon. Anyway, it was his idea to put all the tables and chairs, buffet and disco equipment on the grass between the golf club restaurant and the horse racing track. I couldn't picture this working myself, but it turned out nice and the weather, bless it, behaved itself and was perfect for all the ladies who dressed up in sleeveless finery. The only weather which wasn't behaving at that time, was the bad weather in my head. A few years ago, while still struggling to work at City College, I went to a Buddhist Anger Management workshop which was held on a Friday evening. I was brain-dead exhausted after a week's work, but knew that I was riddled with anger post-divorce and coping with the daily grind of the abuse of Dick 'Turpin' Palmer. I paid my 5 quid and sat down hopefully with a small group of equally angry and sad people awaiting enlightenment. A young girl sat facing us, holding a book and looking anxious. Not a good start. Turned out that the 'guru' was lost in Cambridge and would be late or not make it at all. The young girl decided she would have to make something up on the hoof and proceeded to read to us extracts from a book by some yoshi or other. Every now and then she took a quick look at her watch before moving to another section of the book. I have Buddhist tendencies, but it wasn't the most inspirational of evenings. One thing I learned from her readings, (I do believe you can learn something from anything) was that when you get really angry with someone or something it's a good idea to work out why you let the person or thing make you angry in the first place. Mmmm. Deep eh? I did think to myself that if I was being mugged, raped or butchered I probably wouldn't have to wonder for very long. Still, for everyday anger moments this idea was worth following up. She also referred to anger as being 'a bit of bad weather in the brain'. I really like that and it does help me to restore some perspective when I get myself in a tizz. Which is happening a lot now that I'm deep into the menopause. I'm afraid that I had quite a bit of bad weather in my brain in the weeks leading up to the Fur Ball, mainly from frustration at other people's decisions, ineptitude and strange priorities. I, of course, was perfect. Except for the bad weather and the rude, impatient remarks. I have become quite nasty as those hormones rage through me. Still, when I hit my sixties I'm told that I'll become serene and completely self-centred. Looking forward to that.

After the Fur Ball, the weather went downhill. More high winds, more dust everywhere. When I say dust, don't think it's like that fluffy light stuff you get in Norfolk. It's either a mixture of dirty sand and concrete, with toxins picked up from Turkey, across Kuwait and Saudi Arabia right to my living room. But that's not so bad because at least you can see it. The other stuff is white and very fine and gets into everything. It's like a white bloom on every surface, but most of the time I don't notice it. Until I touch something or put a bare foot on the floor. But even dust storms I can handle, although it's unusual to have so many. Nope, the worst part of our weird weather happened last Saturday night. I paid a lot of money (and I mean a lot) to have a seat at the Coldplay concert which was held outside (because normally that's not a problem) in the Emirates Palace auditorium in Abu Dhabi. I knew that rain was forecast so I took an umbrella. No jacket, no waterproof trousers, just an umbrella. I was wearing crop pants (now ruined) and a short sleeved top. The reason for the light garb was because I'd spent the day sweating and had needed the air conditioning on. Oh, that's been another problem - unseasonably high temperatures heading into the late 30s. The main problem was the high humidity caused by all the clouds. Yes, we've had several cloudy days. What is going on? It's been like a Norfolk summer. So, back to Coldplay. All went well until we hit the security part. A tall, uniformed man looked at me suspiciously and signalled me to open my rather natty tapestry backpack which had been bought in the Night Market in Chang Mai long ago. He almost whooped with joy when he spotted something lurking at the bottom which required immediate confiscation. "Is that an umbrella?" he enquired. With the benefit of hindsight I should have said, no it's a female pleasure toy. Of course I didn't say that because I didn't think that an umbrella was a dangerous object and likely to be taken away from me. Along with my large bottle of water. The bad weather started up in my brain again, but I let it go and watched them place my umbrella, brought over here from England mainly to act as a sunshade on the walk from the car park to the college in the heat of June, in a box as I intended to pick it up on my way home.

We had a fabulous lightning show while the warm up band played and we waited for Coldplay to get themselves organised and on the stage. The first rainstorm came quite quickly and, as there was nothing going on, I left my seat and found some shelter. When the rain had stopped I decided to fetch the umbrella and take it to be checked in at the security desk, as Betty had been told to do. When I got to the box there were several very nice umbrellas in there, but not mine. Nope. So I complained bitterly. "What do you think I'm going to do with an umbrella?" I shrieked wildly at the very large South African security manager. "I can't believe you took it in the first place and now you've lost the bloody thing!". I was palmed off to another South African security man, not quite so large, called Jock, who took my telephone number and promised someone would get back to me yesterday to replace my umbrella. Did they? Did they heck. However, Jock gave me his number so I must get around to contacting him to do something. How could I possibly live in the middle of the desert without an umbrella?

Coldplay were brilliant, but we had a second heavy rainfall during their performance and, because I paid so much, I sat through it and the spent four hours wearing soaking wet clothes and feeling quite chilled. The natty tapestry backpack leaked black dye on to my beige linen pants and my sandals were caked in white cement by the time I found my car in the car park after the concert. Since then we've continued to have cloudy skies and high winds. Today we were sent home early from work because there was a tornado warning. Last week there were very localised storms with hail and snow. Tonight there's been another thunderstorm and a little more rain. Tomorrow we're promised more thunderstorms. Well, it makes the weather forecast a lot more interesting. The other day I noticed that we had rain one day, sprinkles the next, partly cloudy another day and then, finally, the return of the golden ball. Still, the temperatures have gone down for just a little while. I'll keep you posted on the umbrella saga.