Not Christmas...

I wish it could be Christmas every day.

That’s what Roy Wood says.

Roy Wood is a bastard.

Bastard

You see, if his wish was to come true, the rest of my life would be spent getting up at 6:45am, getting to work by 8am and going through the processes of writing letters to support casual labour travelling to Jubail, preparing and presenting my payroll returns, starting the 2015 financial forecasting process and compiling invoices.

It wasn’t a bad day, but even Roy Wood would struggle to get an upbeat lyric out of it.

Christmas passed me by this year. I knew that it would. As you would expect from a country that only recognises Islam as a religion and – theoretically – punishes public shows of other faiths, not many people were waving the tinsel or dressing their trees.

And I didn’t miss it.

It’s not that I dislike Christmas. I don’t. But it would feel a little odd in this environment to crave it. On Thursday (as I shall forever know it…) it was a beautiful sunny day, perhaps hitting 24C. To me, it couldn’t have been less Christmassy.

“But sunshine and heat don’t mean you can’t celebrate”, I hear you say.

I know. I’ve seen the pictures and heard friends tell tales of their Christmas celebrations in Australia, South Africa and across the southern hemisphere. I get it, but the difference between those and the environment that I live in is that they will have been prepared and readied to celebrate. In the weeks before they cooked shrimps on the beach, the TV and media would be cranking the celebration up. The economy would ramp up sales. You’d struggle not to see the classic northern European imagery of dressed trees, stars, Santa Claus, supermarket queues and credit card/debt consolidation adverts.

Aside a single tree and tragic gold, plastic bells above a bar in Bahrain, I had none of that.

The closest that retail got to celebrating the season were a couple of shop displays:

The first was a women’s fashion store where all the window display mannequins were surrounded by cotton wool snow, with icy blue stars and glitter.

The second was a banner stand at Seattle Coffee Shop encouraging me to “add some warmth to the season” by purchasing hot chocolate in mugs dressed in little cardigans, topped with whipped cream and flavoured with salted caramel, hazelnut or peppermint. The image on their banner stand was all muted, warm reds, earthy browns with a blurred open fire burning in the distance.

Winter… Not Christmas.

I saw this last Sunday night. It was still 20C…

It’d had been 24+C all day.

But – despite the above - I did make a personal effort to mark the event.

A can of Barr’s Cream Soda purchased at LuLu and a Chicken Tikka Masala for my tea with my colleague, Andy. Two traditional British dishes…

And I took a few minutes out to watch this...

And this...

This...

This...

Keith's Khristmas Krackers Vol 2

And... Finally, this...

I know I am late...

But...

Merry Christmas. You Buggers!

Last time I wrote, you may recall that I was missing London and UK life. The blog appeared to be my version of wearing red sparkly shoes, clicking my heels and saying:

“There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home”.

It was as if I was having Boxing Day UKTV flashbacks.

But, the feeling has passed. As I knew it could and would.

My company has a new starter making his first visit to Saudi. I found myself in the position to be the expert; to be the person to show him the ropes. And this encouraged me to look at all the positives in the ex-pat life and allowed the opportunity to revisit places that I had been ignoring for a few weeks.

Despite Andy bringing me a cold from Scotland that knocked me out for a couple of days, all has been good.

Trawling the Souks in Al Khobar looking at the sports and electronics shops, gently picking his jaw up from the floor and fixing it back in place once he realised how cheap it all is.

Of discovering which side of Glasgow he is from when he refused the green shopping basket I offered, preferring the blue. Touring my beloved LuLu, chuckling at the lay out, collating photos of the "not" booze section. Laughing at the random brands that make it over from the UK.

Demonstrating that you should never order a starter at the same time as a main course in a restaurant because it leads to a slow procession of food in orders that you cannot comprehend…

“Yeah, thanks for all the food. But we got this far without the rice… not sure we can manage all that”

“Oh. Thanks. We’d forgotten the squid dish… nice of you to bring it with the change.”

Yeah. I exaggerate. But not much…

Today, I got chatting to a couple of Filipino guys photographing birds down by the coast. They were visiting from Riyadh. They were telling me how lucky I am to be based in Al Khobar. The coast, a more open/liberal outlook… less desert. Another Indian marketeer I allowed to queue jump in LuLu this afternoon (I’m a nice guy) was celebrating our ability to escape to Bahrain with relative ease.

It all vocalised what I had been thinking over the past couple of weeks. I’m blessed. Lucky. I live in a decent town, with a wonderful winter climate. The people are broadly friendly and open. It feels safe and – whilst it could be cleaner – it is beautiful. With the exception of “Bastard the Cat”, even the strays are good company.

Al Khobar - Where I go to remember and reflect on my luck... Palm Trees. Flamingoes. Gulls. Herons and a bridge to Bahrain on the horizon.

NB – I have met many, many friendly strays while I have been here. Most notably, two cats at my office named Trevor and Gary. “Bastard the Cat” lives on the street outside my apartment. He is so named because of the bite to the left leg incident.

Trevor & Gary. Cats.