Dubai

A friend from work has made the move to Dubai.She left a couple of weeks ago and has been offered a well paid sinecure. Fortune favours the brave. She has left behind wretched office politics , the cold and Canterbury.

I went to Dubai in 2008 just as the financial ordure hit . The Emirate has great weather and offers a surreal playground for the expat. A desert port on the Persian Gulf has turned itself into a global city. As its oil reserves dwindle the emirate took the decision to diversify its economy. Its business is now tourism, real estate and financial services.

You either love or loathe Dubai. I liked it but the timing was wrong for a move. As the credit crunched I heard tales of abandoned Jaguars and BMWs at the airport. When job losses loomed the expats fled the possibility of loan default and its consequences. Dubai does not take kindly to those who dishonour debt.

These concerns were minor in comparison with the wretched treatment of Indian and Pakistani construction workers. Brought to work on the boom that gave the world it's tallest building, Palm Island and other pointless exotica many faced ruin when the boom became bust.

I could tut further but Dubai has a relatively good human rights record - according to Wikipedia it is superior to the United States. I found the city fascinating. As a European you have to reorientate - the world as seen through the prism of the Middle East. As the Dubai economy improves a move is tempting but unlikely.

At Dubai International Airport I had time to spare waiting for the return flight. I went to the perennial favourite of the plastic Patrick - the Irish pub. Nursing a Guinness I struck up a conversation with a fellow Patrick and traveller. He introduced himself as Brian. Brian was an Irish American on his way home to Boston from Iraq were he worked as a contractor. He told me he was looking forward to a planned stopover in Dublin were he would meet his wife and kids . They had a long planned holiday in the old country.

Brian was a former marine who now used his skills as a soldier in the security business. He said he had no illusions about his country's interest in Iraq - it was based on the dollar. He was an interesting man and did not strike me as a Walter Mitty character .He was laconic with views based on experience.

I spent my last hours in Dubai in the convivial company of a man employed as a professional killer.

 

Rough Sleeper

We went for a meal on Pimlico Road in West London. It was a get together for my wife's family.

After the meal we walked past a young woman sleeping rough on our way to the tube station. She was preparing her bed for a cold night in a shop entrance . The shop was a boutique affair selling overpriced tat to the foolish.

Mrs Emigre wanted to give the young woman some money. It was cold and she was vulnerable on a West London street. We approached and offered money which she declined. She was at most 20 and spoke good English with a Scandinavian accent. She wanted to know if we lived in the area. If we did a blanket would help. We didn't and we were no help.

My wife and I stood for a moment feeling useless with the realisation we were intruding. The woman was preparing for a harsh night in the cold and we were invading her privacy. She had not asked for our help and her story was none of our business. She sounded well educated .Was she a student ?. We will never know.

We walked away confused and chastened. We had enjoyed a nice meal in a warm fancy restaurant . With good intentions we had stumbled heedlessly into someone's life. Our intervention was unintentionally patronising.

If someone asks for help give without expectation of thanks or the warm glow of altruism. Every rough sleeper has a private narrative that should remain private unless offered in friendship.Someone can be made homeless by a storm in the Philippines or grotesque inequality in Neo-Dickensian London. Whatever the cause everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

I hope one of the wealthy denizens of West London has a spare blanket for an extraordinary woman.

 

Sermon

Another Sunday has passed without an act of observance.

Since moving to England I have rarely troubled the inside of a church . I did frequent a high Church of England place of worship called St Botulph's on Bishopgate for a while . It was near Liverpool street station and proved a sanctum of peace amid the rush of the city. I liked the candles and aesthetics. My forebears and countrymen would be aghast at my lighting of candles. My native Church of Ireland is austere . The various Presbyterians sects and schisms are more austere still.

My mother finds solace in her church. She attends service every Sunday . Her observance is a spiritual matter which has nothing to do with politics or allegiance .

My attitude to organised religion is one of ambivalence . I lost my faith but have slowly moved from atheism to agnosticism. I don't agree with Mr Dawkins and his dismissal of faith as a mental aberration.If it is private and presents no harm to others then people should be free to worship as they wish. The problems arise when religion mixes with politics.

This Sunday I find myself missing the childish boredom of the hymns, the hard seats and the sermon.

 

 

Stand up comedian

We went to the stand up comedian Stewart Lee in London.We had been to see him before and his performance did not disappoint.

For those not familiar with his work Mr Lee is a clever, self conscious performer. He has been doing stand up for 25 years and his work has slowly evolved into a treatise on comedy itself. He attracted some infamy a few years ago as co-writer and director of Jerry Springer the opera. He is also a man of letters and has written a novel and a fine book on comedy. Check out his work . I have made him sound po-faced and worthy but he is funny. The recent political discourse over Russell Brand's interview with Jeremy Paxman is described as a monkey throwing its own excrement at a foghorn.

He is a fan and promoter of fellow countryman Kevin McAleer. The Flann O'Brien of Omagh is an acquired taste. I went to see him perform in Soho a few years ago and watched as his performance sailed at cruising altitude over the heads of a London audience. His routine can cross the line into unfunny Beckettian farce but it is fascinating and performance art in itself . Again. Check him out.

Both men have avoided the dire boom in stand up comedy as the new rock n roll. Various folk regularly fill stadiums with their comic observations on football, self abuse and the fluff in their navel.We were walking from a train station in Greenwich a while ago when I saw flyers for courses in stand up comedy . There may even be a BA.

I am not laughing.

 

The Llamas of Bigberry Farm.

I read with appreciation the story of drunk French kids and their night out in Bordeaux. On passing a circus they liberated a Llama called Serge and took him out on the raz. They also liberated a stuffed lion toy and a trombone.

The festivities included drunken snaps with Serge and a tram ride . A humourless tram inspector curtailed festivities and Serge was ejected . He was left tied to a lamppost to await the arrival of the gendarme . I hope the revellers are not prosecuted - their snaps are posted on Facebook.

I had a llama acquaintance or three when living in Faversham. I christened the trio after the three stooges . The picture is of the imperious Larry. They were kept at the Bigberry farm outside Canterbury along with a deer herd. I am a fan of llamas - they are more user friendly than their spitting cousins the camel. I was tempted to get into their enclosure on occasion and commune.

I did a bit of research in between my trips to see the lads at Bigberry. Farmers use llamas and alpacas as guard dogs for sheep herds. A single male llama will adopt a sheep herd and provide fearsome protection against the predations of wolves.

Viva Llamas.

 

Balthazar

A friend reminded me of a shared admiration for donkeys. Equus africanus asinus is an ancestor of the African wild ass and has served as a companion and worker for man (and woman) through the ages.

My father was a keeper and fan of grander members of the equidae family. His hunter horses and show jumpers were temperamental skittish beasts. I admired their beauty but deemed them potentially lethal. It didn't help that I was allergic to horse hair . A nascent career as a show jumper on the gymkhana circuit was short lived .

Where a horse is nervy a donkey is calm and stoical. Donkeys have served Homo sapiens well and bore Jesus into Jerusalem. In Bresson's film Au Hazard Balthazar the titular donkey is treated abominably by various owners and bears a fate not unlike that of Christ.I was going to refer to the Spanish practice of throwing donkeys from a church steeple but the story is apocryphal . Before researching the tale I had taken it for fact and in keeping with religious celebration. Organised religion does not set a high bar on cruelty to animals.

I will end with a hymn of praise to one Edward Murphy (or Eddie Murphy to his friends and viewers). His comic turn as donkey in the Shrek films ennobled the perception of Equus africanus asinus . The donkey is cast as the noble steed and loyal underdog when compared with the flimsy patrician charm of the King's stallion.

Viva donkey.

 

Pale Green Ghosts

As it is Sunday we went to worship at a shopping cathedral called Bluewater. Mrs. Emigre had to buy a birthday present for a friend and after some consideration settled upon an English China gift set.Though designed in L'Angleterre the gift set was made in Taiwan.

I spent my time watching fellow worshippers pass by with bags festooned with brands. Bluewater is suited to people watching as it is designed in the round. You follow the concourse with Marks to the left and Zara to the right. Keep going and you will end up were you started.

I succumbed to idolatry and got a camera connection kit to transfer photos from camera to computer. The expansively presented bit of plastic was designed in California and ....anyone ..made in China. It cost maybe £1 to manufacture and cost the writer £25. A fool and his money .

Modern retail is like the movie the Wizard of Oz .The Wizard is advertisers with expensively cultivated brands. Working away behind the curtain are low paid employees in factories with dormitories and canteens. These vast factories have suicide nets in case the employees get despondent.

Before I left the gleaming spires I got a CD called Pale Green Ghosts. It is a critically acclaimed tale of heartbreak and loss. Though affecting and heartfelt it suffers from the same solipsism that affects a lot of art.

I haven't listened to it enough to figure out the Pale Green Ghosts that haunt the singer . I do know that Bluewater and shopping centres like it have ghosts. And we are not frightened by them.