Pheeeeeek........

Wednesday 19th June
Just for a change decided to do something different and check out the Lusail shooting range which is about 20km north of Doha. As is the want in Qatar it is a very big complex with several rifle and pistol ranges, and ten clay pigeon shooting stands. Clay shooting is quite popular in Qatar as they won a bronze medal in the last Olympics due in no part to having such a great place on their doorstep. Not much in the way of any safety checks or licences just pay QR100 (£20) for a box of cartridges and off you go. Enjoyed it so much I had to have two goes and then a beer on the way home at the golf club.

Thursday 20th June
Final golf lesson of the six, postponed from the previous week due to very high winds. Had a short practise on the driving range and then Andy, the coach, laid on a putting competition. A very good end to the sessions but don't think I'll take up golf. Will drop in to use the driving range and the 19th hole occasionally but that's as far as I think it will go.

Friday 21st June
The main event - Pub Golf Charity event around the five star hotels of Doha. Was I mad to organise such a thing? Quite a few people thought so as they paid the QR50 'green fees' but didn't want to join in in case it got messy. Which funnily enough it did. There were twenty of us who braved it into the bloody hot Doha evening and via minibus visited the expensive watering holes around West Bay. I was very uncertain how the slightly conservative door staff might react but as it was probably one of the first Pub Golf events many of them would have seen I think they thought we were Americans coming back from a day on the course.

Some of the 'golfer' prior to the off!

First bar was a bit crowded, as Happy Hour was about to end, but lots of punters were very keen to chat to us and as the wine (a par four drink) flowed it all went well. The minibus was a God send as, unlike in the UK, the 'bars' are quite a distance apart and with the temperature at probably 30C+ there could have been a few who fell by the wayside. At the second bar we had a few cocktails and it was back on the bus into the main hotel area. The bus driver said he knew were the hotel, The W, was but gave us all a fright/thrill by ploughing through traffic the wrong way up a one-way street. Bit mad but, if you'll pardon the pun, par for the course in Doha! We finally ended up at a rough approximation of a British pub called 'Champions' which is in walking distance of were most people lived. Was a bit miffed that there was a QR60 entrance fee as there was a band playing but, as it turned out, they ROCKED! They were a seven piece Filipino covers band and they were excellent. By now Jaeger Bombs seemed to be the order of the night and the rest as they say was a terrible hangover after hitting the sack after 2am. Raised about £200 which is going to a women's charity in Rwanda that one of the evening competitors had been working for. A good night, as far as I can tell, and I think everyone got back roughly in one piece. If I haven't heard anything from the Qatari authorities within forty-eight hours I'll assume the best!

At 'Trader Vic' with a mad work colleague Colleen
Still relatively sober at this point.
It went down hill rapidly after this!

Bar #3 Wahm at the W Hotel

Saturday 22nd June
Maybe, in hindsight, not the wisest of decisions to have booked onto a trip with the Qatar Natural History Group the day after a massive bender. Woke up at about eight o'clock strangely without much of a headache but with, for the first time in my life, a bad case of the delirium tremors (the DT's if you will) - not a nice feeling at all and certainly not a good advert for excessive drinking. But off we went, Cath, our neighbour Tom and myself, to the slightly bonkers Sheikh Faisal Museum. I was expecting a few rooms with some nice bits and pieces, but what you actually got was a vast complex crammed with all sorts of stuff - fossils, ancient manuscripts, weapons, furniture, cars, motorbikes, boats, an aeroplane, more guns, ceramics, Bedouin heritage, did I mention guns, paintings, coins, and, just for good measure, some cannons. Absolutely crazy; very little explanation about where/what/who, and where it did exist it was obviously wrong. The funniest I saw, and maybe it was done by a bored curator, was a drawing of two fierce Arab warriors fighting with swords entitled 'The Arrival of the Prime Minister of Algeria' - priceless. The strangest thing was a bamboo bike from the Far East, and the most impressive a whole T-Rex fossilised head. Totally mad, but utterly fascinating. I really must go there again when I'm not feeling quite so, shall we say, delicate.

 

Never again......

....until the next time. Feeling a bit delicate after a 'cheese and wine' evening at a work colleagues place. Decided not to go to a 'all you can eat and drink' Birthday brunch earlier in the day as I've been on the waggon for both food and booze. So after drinking the best part of two bottles of white wine and eating my way through the runniest/smelliest cheesy offering from around the world I now feel a little delicate.

But what a laugh! First ever go on a Wii - can recommend Zumba Dance Off and Ten-pin Bowling. I will try to get a copy of the various videos I saw being taken for you delectation; I know you can't wait!

Feeling much better now after two cups of tea and some muesli. With Bowie blaring on the stereo and my fuzzy brain slowly coming back from wherever it went last night - life really is sweet.

Just need to go and collect the car and all be right as rain, tickety boo and fan-daby-dozzy.

 

Moment of Madness

....not what you think. On Friday morning I drove from Doha to Dukhan, an oil/gas town about 60km west, to try to locate a rendezvous point for the following day. On the way there, for a distance of several kilometres, I was the only car in either direction on a four lane motorway; repeat the ONLY car. I had a slight out-of-body experience thinking that I had either by accident turned onto a major section of motorway that wasn't officially opened yet or some sort of zombie Apocalypse was about to befall me. Neither of which was true. It was just very large road, that led to nowhere in particular, on a Friday (think Sunday) morning. Not something you are very likely to experience in crowded old blighty.

Friday afternoon I went on a tour of the State Mosque. It was organised by the main centre for Islamic Studies in Doha called the Fanar. We had an excellent guided tour delivered by a British convert, which was both enlightening and entertaining. Unfortunately I had another engagement and had to book a taxi to take me back to the city centre, and missed out on the buffet featuring camel that had been laid on for us.

 

 

 

We then had a very good night being entertained by some of Cath's work colleagues, Christine & Mark, at their villa in West Bay. Rosie, a Kiwi teacher from Cath's school, and her husband, Fred, were also there and they were, as our son would say, "Good value!" as well. Excellent! 

Saturday morning saw me heading back toward Dukhan to meet-up with Khalid Al-Suwaidi, a Qatari beekeeper I had contacted via the Qatar Natural History Group. He took me to his cousins farm near Shahaniya and gave me a very knowledgeable account of beekeeping in this part of the world. As you can imagine it is not the easiest place to rear bees what with the arid conditions and lack of flower bearing plants. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when Khakid took me on a tour of the small enclosed farm and showed by possibly twenty hives in three different locations. All the hives contained very placid bees but not great numbers - in the UK a good hive might have twenty thousand bees at a minimum I suspect Khalids hives held much less than half of that. But the bees he did have seemed very productive, bringing in nectar and pollen from the stands of Sidra and Eucalyptus trees.

 

Khalid was hoping to develop a business selling Qatar honey, as the market for honey imported from other Arab countries was very large. He did concede that it would be an uphill struggle as the climate was no ideally suited to large scale production. He did however managed to produce enough to sell to friends and neighbours from his home.

Saturday evening saw me watching the last night of the Doha Players production of Hot Mikado a 1940's rendition of the Gilbert & Sullivan favourite. It was directed by a colleague of mine, Christopher Churchouse, and was excellent. I'd heard differing, and wide ranging, reports from others who'd been previously but, given that it was an amateur production, I thought it was very good.

That's all for now I'm off to bed for a rest......