Dubai priorities

Forgive my silence. I was on holiday.

Well, I say “holiday” but, as all expats know, a trip back home can, at certain points, seem more like a month in a Victorian workhouse than it can a holiday. For a start, the children are off school and, unless you either ship your full-time, live-in helper over to the UK with you or don’t mind your offspring ripping each other limb from limb through boredom, you have to come up ways to keep them entertained.  Constantly.

The roots! No-one must see the grey roots!!

The maid-less status also means there’s no help with the washing, ironing, cooking, washing-up and certainly no help spooning dinners into reluctant children’s mouths as they run full pelt around the garden (not that that should ever be happening, but…).

As if that in itself isn’t enough, I have the type job that doesn’t stop over the school holidays so I spent the last month entertaining children with my toes, washing clothes with my elbows and typing with my teeth while Googling ‘Fun things to do with children in London’ once I’d finally coaxed the little darlings into bed. Which, in itself, is an issue when the sun doesn’t set till 9.40pm.

But I’m not complaining. I do enjoy doing it all myself for, as the ads say, a limited period only.

One of the things that does tend to fall by the wayside while I’m in the UK, however, is beauty. Last night I flew back to Dubai with two children, three suitcases, two boxes of Playmobil, an inch of grey roots, a six-week-old pedicure and a rather embarrassing bikini line.

No surprise then that I was up at eight this morning, inhaling coffee and dashing off to a hair appointment I’d made over the phone from London.

“But you haven’t even unpacked!” DH muttered from the depths of our bed.

Priorities, darling: priorities.

Playmobil days

We come to England each summer, the kids and I, to get away from the scorching hot summer of the Gulf; the summer that stops the children from being able to play outside and leaves us little choice but to spend three months sucking air-conditioned air into our lungs in shopping-mall play areas, or roasting like boil-in-the-bag meals in the boiling-hot sea.

So we come to England where the children can reconnect with their granny, run about in the garden and breathe fresh air. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

But we’ve been here a week now and the number of hours spent running in the garden has, so far, been zero. It’s been raining cats and dogs. That’s phrase I never use in Dubai but it’s the only way to sum up the amount of water that’s fallen out of the sky onto my mum’s garden this week.

The Playmobil plane… hours of fun for a rained-in DS. It’s even got a loo on board and I hear the meals are better than Emirates.

Even the children – and this is saying a lot – are fed up with it. They’ve been throwing themselves around the house moaning, ‘What are we going to do today? I’m so bored’ while I’ve been shivering in my fleece and wondering how many times a day I can ask Mum to put the heating on.

But there has been one silver lining in all this: Playmobil. DS is massively into Playmobil, those indestructible, plastic German toys that I had myself in the 1970s.

Despite Playmobil being incredibly expensive in Dubai (think remortgage the 5-bed villa to buy a Playmobil house), we have a few pieces there. I bought them in England and smuggled them over as part of my 30kg EK baggage allowance last May. But now we’re here and it’s raining, it’s fair season on the Playmobil. All I can say is, thank heavens for eBay.

The end-of-term time warp

Mid to late June is a funny time for mums in Dubai. School pick-up in the sweltering heat, as I mentioned here, requires the stamina of a carthorse, the endurance of Duracell battery and the patience of a saint but, beyond that, as the end of the year approaches, the children are tired and the mums are tired. Everyone needs a break.

I borrowed this picture from fellow blogger joyploy.wordpress.com for no other reason than it looks exactly how I feel right now.

And now, with the summer holidays so near I can smell the coconut scent of the sunscreen I won’t be needing in England, I picture myself crawling on bloodied hands and knees towards the finishing line of what is the marathon of the school year, and something strange happens: time warps.

I don’t mean to sound like Dr Who, but it really does warp.

The school year, which, in September, stretched out before us, an endless and, to be honest, quite tiresome ocean of homework, spelling tests, mental maths tests and packed lunches, concertinas up in the strangest way: now, with just 10 school days left, just as we should be sliding gracefully towards a gin & tonic on board our Emirates flight home, there are suddenly too many things to fit into the remaining two weeks.

In the space of 10 school days,  I have two end-of-year concerts, two moving-up meetings, two mums’ nights out, the school ball, two mums’ coffee mornings, a shop full of leaving cards to buy, thoughtful end-of-term presents to buy and wrap, two school trips to remember (disposable lunches, PE kits and water bottles-on-a-string), next year’s name tags to order and still, of course, ten packed lunches to still to think about.

Oh, and did I mention: I have work to do as well? (How my laugh tinkles.)

I am, as I said, dragging myself towards the finishing line but – and here’s another quirk of the universe – even as I do so, I dread the last day of term. Why? Because it’ll mean the children are off school for nine and a half weeks.

And we all know what that means… on second thoughts, roll on September.

The best-laid plans…

So here we are at the start of the marathon that is the school summer holidays. With endless free-form days stretching ahead into the blue yonder, I do find the ankle-biters get fractious, start fighting each other and nagging me if there’s no structure to our days, so I plan the entire nine weeks like a military operation.  

Not quite the fun week I’d planned! Poor DD.

My little darlings have seven weeks of organised fun (by that I do mean being bored in different countries) this summer, and two weeks in which to relax: one week at the start of the holidays and one at the end.

This week was ‘relaxing week 1’ – we were going to do one thing a day that the kids ask to do all year and to which mean-mummy usually says no. A water park, Kidzania, ice-skating, beach, cinema, play dates. 

And, just as I’d arranged the week, slotted activities into the right days, matched play dates to relevant activities and got it all inked in my diary, DD fell sick. Not just a little sick, but horribly sick with the potent throat virus that DS had last week. And I had to cancel the lot.

Happy holidays.

The second cruise

So, as in spring a young man’s thoughts turn to love, mine turn to the summer holidays and I’ve been giving some serious though as to in which direction I’d like to throw DH’s salary this year. To Italy? To Portugal? To Corsica? Sicily? 

Endless sea, sky and sunshine – my enduring happy memories of last summer’s Med cruise

And then I remembered the cruise. The cruise that I had so much dreaded last year. My only lasting memory of the cruise now is of the curtains billowing in the Mediterranean breeze as I was lulled to sleep by the swell of the sea (don’t underestimate how amazing this was for an insomniac). The feeling of waking up every morning refreshed and ready for the day; the under-eye bags almost disappearing; the sight of the Moon reflected on a calm, black sea; the bright blue horizon stretching into eternity with the hot sun baking into my limbs.

“How about another cruise?” I asked DH and he looked as I imagine he would if I told him I’d eaten DD for supper. Seriously, that shocked.

“What,” he said in a strangled little voice. “So soon?”

Anyway, I started looking up ships, itineraries and gorgeous cabins on exclusive decks of very fancy ships and DH’s interest was a little piqued, so the discussion continued for a day or two more.

And then I realised that, while DH didn’t truly mind the idea of cruising again – especially on the very private deck of a very fancy ship with a particularly enticing itinerary – the problem he had would be in admitting he was now a “cruiser.”

To cruise once, because your parents asked you to, is one thing – to cruise again because you chose to is quite another. Hello middle age!

Anyway, needless to say, I’m now searching villas.

What did you achieve this summer?

As we prepare for the start of the new school year (am I the only one who’s still not yet put the name tags into the mountains of new school uniform, checked the state of last year’s pencil case and taught their child how to put on a school tie?), I can’t believe the summer’s already over.

Two minutes ago, it seems, I stood teetering on the brink of the holidays, the prospect of 10 weeks without school yawning before me as insurmountable as the Grand Canyon – but then, in the blink of an eye, I’m back to making packed lunches, getting up at stupid o’clock, coaxing DD through her Year 3 homework, and spending the majority of my day driving up and down the same wretched stretch of Emirates Road like a frustrated long-distance lorry driver.

But, however little you think you achieve in a summer (sometimes, for me, it’s as simple as just surviving the days without throwing the crockery at the wall), there’s always something worth remembering. So what did I achieve this summer? Well…

My one constant throughout the (long) summer was work. It may be a little plate, but I kept it spinning.

–          I experienced a cruise for the first time. While this hasn’t ever been an ambition, I’m glad to have done it – and you’d be surprised how curious other people are about it. And many don’t even think the concept of a “Med cruise” is tacky!

–          I discovered that I’d like to go back to Corsica and that I could potentially live in Gibraltar.

–          I found a latent talent in DD for drama (actually, given the histrionics to which she often treats us, I should have guessed this sooner).

–          I learned how to park in the Gold & Diamond Park. Until this summer, it’d always been a parking black-hole to me, like Meena Bazaar and most of Deira.

–          I got all my good jewellery fixed, resized and polished (while utilising the free parking at the Gold & Diamond Park) so it fits and looks like new.

–          I managed not to acquire any new jewellery in the Gold & Diamond Park (though the same cannot be said about England, but the less said about that the better).

–          I caught up with three friends from school and loved the fact that our friendships have lasted, largely unchanged, for 31 years.

–          I finally, finally, after years of high cost and frustration, sacked the hair colourist and learned to dye my own hair (AED 37 and half an hour as opposed to AED 650 and three hours). Nice ‘n’ Easy No. 76 if you’re interested.

–          I went to Aquaventure for the first time. And liked it – even if I had to get my hair wet.

–          I taught DD to ice-skate and, with the not inconsiderable input of a swimming coach, helped her to learn front-crawl breathing (no mean feat when I can’t even do it myself).

–          I purged the toy cupboards of a lot of baby toys that are no longer needed [claps hands in the air, does a little dance].

–          And, finally, despite having two children on my hands for 10 weeks and travelling through, in and around six countries, I managed to continue doing my job – seamlessly – which, as any mum who’s tried to work from home will tell you, is no small achievement.

Cheers to the new school year.

The bittersweet end of term

School broke up for the year on Wednesday. Forget the children, I was crawling towards the date on my knees, clawing towards it through a haze of exhaustion from a year of 6am starts. I lost interest in keeping up my end of the school-parent bargain. DD lost interest in her work, caring only about the slew of August birthday parties pre-dated to June, the school trip to KidZania and, of course, the big end-of-term class party. Neither of us bothered with her homework. DS fell sick. We all longed for the end of term.

And so it came, on Wednesday, in a blaze of glory: An early finish, a play date with dinner, a bottle of celebratory white for me and the other mum, and the unbelievable joy of a three-day weekend and no more 6am starts till September. On Thursday morning I woke at 7am with an overwhelming feeling of relief, freedom and well-being, compounded by the fact that the children obligingly woke an hour after I did (utterly unheard of), allowing me a luxurious hour of peaceful reading before I had to dispense Cheerios and pancakes, make coffee and think about the day.

By 10am, all the good feeling had gone.

10 weeks to go...

“I’m booooored,” came the first whine. “What can I dooooo?”

Silence.

“Mummy! I said I’m bored.”

“Read a book? Play a game? Play with your Moon Dough? Dress your Barbies? Make something with hama beads? Do some colouring? Write a story? Try on all your clothes? Tidy your room?”

“Eeuuur!” I can’t really express the spelling of that irritated, rising crescendo, non-specific whingeing sound. “No! Can I have an ice cream? Ice lolly? Biscuits? Sweets?”

“No! It’s 10 o’clock in the morning!”

“But I’ve got nothing to doooo! I’m booooored!”

“Oh DD, please! You have a houseful of lovely toys, things you’ve begged me to buy. Now take some out and play with them.”

Welcome, fellow mummies, to the patina of the next 10 weeks. Remind me again why I was so keen for term to end.