Remember our Lebanese friend in the hotel? We made the mistake of asking for his advice on where to go for dinner one evening, and he took us to a Lebanese restaurant he knew, ordering an enormous quantity of food, and then paying the entire bill and leaving before we realised what he'd done. During the ordering stage, he took us through to the singles' section so we could see all the food, and it was pretty awkward. We could tell from the reactions of the othe...

Good morning. It's Friday, and therefore basically Sunday. The Big Day Of The Week. So everything in Riyadh is closed until 4pm (luckily Mia and I managed to get a nice big breakfast to see us through). It's pretty toasty out - 11.15am and 39 degrees already. I've made a little list of the things I wanted to include in here, so I'll do my best to work through them in vaguely chronological order so I don't go round in circles and repeat myself and talk about thi...

I very nearly missed my flight from Heathrow, and screeched up to the gate, having done a dramatic Hollywood-style run through the airport (but without any annoying kids in tow), just as it was about to close. Lessons I learned from this: 1) check your handbag really carefully for liquids. Forgetting a small, nearly-empty bottle of moisturiser holds you up quite a lot when there are so many people waiting to have their bags searched. 2) Kindles count as large e...

This morning I was finally, after almost 4 months of twiddling my thumbs and checking my emails every 5 minutes, given a date of departure. I will be flying to King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, KSA, on Monday 25th June. In honour of the occasion, I have eaten some pork. I've been told the name of the hotel I'll be in to start with, but no indication yet of how long I'll be there - if it'll just be a couple of days before they relocate me to AlJouf up i...

From a year of revolution to a year of … more revolution? Once again, I have been slack in getting down to this. I'm telling myself it's because my life is just so exciting; you can believe that too if you want. Having said that, my life is a little more exciting at the moment than it has been previously. In early December, I went home for 10 days - ostensibly to get a new visa. I didn't do anything particularly exciting, just enjoyed the comforts of home, ...