Jaunting Along

There are some things in life that, in retrospect, you are glad you have experienced – once. Though possibly not at the time. Such an experience happened a few weeks ago, when we found ourselves camped, Saudi style, close to the airport and just off the highway. Having grown accustomed somewhat to the noise of airplanes departing, the incessant hum of the traffic and the highway lights blazing along two of our four horizons, we fell asleep, only to be woken in the wee hours of the night by young Saudi men going dune-riding in the dark, packed ten to fifteen in an open-backed truck. Our tents, full of seven sleeping children, were close to a road the young Saudis could have used, but didn’t, preferring, instead to traverse the desert, back and forth, in search of some excitement in their otherwise mundane lives. I suppose there is only so much coffee that you can drink in large, sprawling malls. After that you have to do something with all the caffeine in your system, so you may as w...

On many occasions, the very ordinary practical details of life have taken it upon themselves to elude me, none more so than when I am stressed.  At such times, I become extraordinarily liable to vacantly gazing into space, which propensity is greatly encouraged by the fact that, since our marriage, Fem handles it all.  Why fight what is superior in the management of the day-to-day?  Large-scale, national logistical research operations I have no problem with, it's the tiny decisions related to packing a suitcase that can really stress me out.    So there I was, packed up and bundled off towards the general area of Africa, more specifically in the direction of a plane to get me there, shell-shocked by the rapidity of dad's decline.  Having put the fire of Allah under the Saudi's bums after Sylvia's phone call, Fem had managed, literally, to get me onto the next plane out.  He gave me one last hug in my wrinkled abayah, sent me through the...

Lesley Temple Jess Kure   This is a story written by my mother, Lesley Kure, of her grandfather, Rex Gerald Camp, and Ma Talbot, who lived in Ixopo village, and the Cow. Ma Talbot baked and cooked divinely, and whenever anybody had to wait in the village for a vehicle to be repaired etc. they would visit Ma for tea and the best of home baked.  She listened avidly to all the local gossip, and as Nils said about his friend's mother - the story went in her ears this big ___, and came out her mouth _________________that big.  One could see her green eyes gleaming, and her mind embroidering the facts even as she listened.  As she was likely to have at least three visitors in a day, the stories grew and grew. We were such an innocent group, all the funny stories had to come from the eccentricities of our elders and their forebears. Ma’s interpretation of someone who was in angry turmoil was that, "He's as mad as a bee in a tar barrel." She would only knit wh...

This post is from an email I sent in August 2001 - it describes a young boy to whom I taught Art on a compound in Saudi Arabia. It is written after I had briefly returned home when my dad was dying, upon my return to the 'Kingdom' after his death, where I was teaching art to both adults and children. Action shots from the swing were the order of the day at Al Yamamas, Saudi Arabia

Persian carpet, Saudi Arabia It is always the personalities that are the most interesting in any place, but the most treacherous to write about. Both in terms of getting it wrong, and, in the event that they may one day discover your perhaps less-than-flattering description of them, also in terms of getting it right. Fem often shakes his head in bewilderment when I describe people to him; I ask him why, and he says, “But she is your friend ,” as if that meant I must cut off my sense of discernment at the root. Of course, at this stage I could quote Jane Austen's Mr Bennett, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?” except that, of course, I am entirely without foible myself. But, truth to be told, I like my friends most because of their foibles rather than otherwise, they are more interesting, if necessarily more complex and complicated.  But before we can even get to characters, there is the context. The first few times I...