Silent Sunday: Where did my baby go?

DD’s bedroom. Yesterday it was pink, purple and sparkly princesses. Today it’s greasy-haired upstarts from One Direction. What happened?

On travelling vicariously

I achieved a first at the weekend: I sailed through the Suez Canal. I went through in a convoy of 20 ships and it was fantastic, not at all how I imagined it.

Well, that’s Suez done. Where next? [Pic credit: Telegraph.co.uk]

The best bit was, it cost me nothing and I did it all from my study at home in Dubai. You may remember that my mum left Dubai on a cruise? Well, I found out that there’s a webcam on her ship – my initial plan was to get her to wave to me from the deck each day, but then I realised that I could get great views from the ship as the webcam is high up and facing forward.

So I started to log on each day – I saw sunrises and sunsets, ports and miles of open ocean. I sailed through pirate-infested waters with all the lights on the ship off after dark – and then we got to the Suez Canal and it struck me that I could almost literally sail through it with mum. So I did.

It’s been a great way to see what’s she’s been doing on her three-week voyage. But there is one problem: She’s still not given me a wave!

Silent Sunday: Which way to Miracle Garden?

All roads lead to Dubai’s Miracle Garden

My middle-aged media mates

The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai, and I go back a long way. My first memory is driving past it when it was still being built, 15 and a half years ago – it was literally in the middle of nowhere and the hoardings around it named it the Royal Abjar.

But it opened, soon after, as The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai, and has since played a big part in my memories of Dubai, from media dinners and parties to press conferences and weekend stays. DH and I were even members of the beach club for many years, back in the pre-parenting era when we could laze in the pool all day, drink beers at lunch and sleep in the sun all afternoon.

A glamorous invitation

So I was overjoyed to be invited to an event last night to launch the opening of the hotel’s elegant new wing. Obviously, I love the R-C but, if you pinned me down and played non-stop Celine Dion to me, I would admit that what it lacked was a nice chill-out bar. Perhaps, in those days, it wasn’t part of the spec for a luxury hotel – not the clientele it wanted to attract, even – but Dubai’s moved on a long way in the last 15 years.

And so has the Ritz-Carlton. My favourite part of the new “Shorooq” wing, which includes 148 new rooms, new gardens, new pools, a new spa concept and new restaurants, was absolutely without doubt, the La Baie Lounge, a gorgeous outdoor lounge bar and restaurant that blurs the boundaries of wood and water.

Dotted with double day beds and decorated in a palette of sand, cream and accents of the turquoise of the Arabian Gulf (I made that up – it’s not in the press kit), it’s a welcome departure from the Ritz-Carlton’s slightly stuffy traditional style – and a welcome one at that.

But, even more welcome was the chance, for once, to put on one of my gorgeous frocks, dust off a pair of trophy shoes and schmooze with those left of my old media workmates. Drinking wine in the R-C gardens last night was like 2002 all over again…. only this time, instead of staggering out inebriated at 2am, my ex-colleagues and I were showing each other snaps of our kids and competing for taxis by 11. Middle age, eh? It gets us all.

The utterly gorgeous new La Baie Lounge at The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai

Travelling in style

Every month, in the type of magazine that I sometimes read, you get an article entitled something like “Travelling in style”. In it, some wispy thin woman with no children – or a desperately rich older woman with grown children – talks about how they pack for a trip. 

“Those were the days, my friend…”

It always leaves me incensed.

I thought, instead, I would answer the questions on behalf of most mothers of small children.

What are your top packing tips?
Magazine reply: Roll my capsule wardrobe of Ghost separates to get more in and arrive without any creasing.
My reply:  Remember everything that you need, including night nappies, the baby monitor, Nurofen Junior and insect bite cream. Anything else is a bonus.

What’s your go-to plane outfit?
Magazine reply: A cashmere sweater, jeans, cashmere socks and a cashmere throw in a capsule palette of neutrals.
My reply: Anything that’s clean and doesn’t give me muffin top. Bonus for clothes that won’t show the dirt after DS has shed remnants of disgusting in-flight pizza and melted M&Ms all over it.

What are your holiday essentials?
Magazine reply: A handful of “fun” Melissa Odabash bikinis.
My reply: Tickets, money and passports. Husband, suitcases, children.  

What’s your pre-holiday beaut routine?
Magazine reply: A series of facials, a Fake Bake tan, a mani-ped in this season’s “coral” and extra sessions with my personal trainer.
My reply: Leg- and bikini-waxing so I don’t scare the children.

How do you stay fresh on a long-haul flight?
Magazine reply: No make-up, Elizabeth Arden 8-Hour cream, no sleeping tablets and no alcohol.
My reply: As much gin and/or champagne as possible chased with as much Sauvignon Blanc as possible. Headphones in so I can’t hear the children.

How do you spend your time in the air?
Magazine reply: Sleeping, working or – guilty laugh – watching a movie!
My reply: Stopping the kids from fighting; trying to get the kids to eat the pseudo pizza; replacing headphones that have slipped off small heads; accompanying the children on loo trips; sighing a lot; and, finally, disowning the children before running around the cabin screaming silently into my pashmina.

Happy days.

RIP Mrs T

I met Mrs Thatcher once. And when I say “met”, I mean in the loosest way. Sort of met. Well, didn’t meet at all, really.

What happened was, on a slightly foggy autumnal day in 1990, her helicopter landed in my garden. 

Baroness Thatcher: The ultimate Housewife.

And, as I watched (it’s hard not to notice a helicopter land in your garden),  out hopped the Prime Minister, who then trolled her way across the muddy grass in her ladylike shoes with, no doubt, a spiffing handbag (it pains me that I don’t remember the handbag).

“She doesn’t look like a lady about to lose power as Prime Minister!” I trilled to my university friends – for the garden was in fact the lawn outside my student residences, where Mrs T had come to perform some official function or give a speech (Hoorah! Hoorah! I didn’t go).

And, when she did lose power just two weeks later, my friends bowed at my feet.

“How did you know?” they asked, reverentially, for I was not a student of PPE or P or even E – just a humble psychology student.

Well, I didn’t know, of course. I just watched the news instead of “This Morning” with Richard & Judy, and, god knows, they predicted it for long enough.

Anyway, say what you like about Baroness Thatcher. I appreciate that she wasn’t everybody’s friend. But what she was to me was a woman who held a country in the palm of her hand. She came to power as I was just becoming aware of the world. I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal – absolutely usual – to have a woman in control of the country (could a man do the same thing? I doubted it. I still do).

Whatever you think of her politics, it was thanks to her that I – a child of the ‘80s – grew up thinking anything was possible. Rest in peace, Mrs T.

SIlent Sunday: The blogging wife

The reality sadly is that I’m more often that not caught out because DH has read my blog and knows all about my new handbag / shoes / cruise before I get the chance to break it to him gently (umm, Venice, darling?)! And thanks to the lovely A for supplying this pic.