I don’t get bored easily, in fact, I’ve been known to suggest that only boring people get bored (a bit of an arrogant suggestion to be honest, implying that I’m too interesting to suffer from boredom). However, I will never say that again after Monday night!
Watching women’s football, train spotting, being stuck in traffic on the M25 armed with only a cassette player and Cliff Richard’s greatest hits – all riveting compared to the drivel we were forced to endure at the prince’s “palace”. We sat in the corner of a giant, non-descript, room, without the food and drink that had been promised to us, and to make things worse it was freezing cold, unusual for this time of year and this part of the world. We then proceeded to watch and feign interest for four and a half hours whilst the prince and an endless line of his subjects discussed, about as unenthusiastically as humanly possible, in Arabic, something I didn’t understand a word of. All the teachers that don’t live on the compound lasted about two hours before they sneaked out. The rest of us weren’t so fortunate; we arrived before 8pm and didn’t call it a night until half past 12. I shouldn’t really say ‘we’, considering half an hour before the end, Nick, Mikail and I made a break for freedom with one of Nick’s students. He dropped us home, leaving the event half an hour before it finished, and even took us to a restaurant on the way back and bought us dinner (a Saudi custom). It was a silver lining to an evening that was dry, even by Saudi standards.
Never mind, if you work less than 3 hours a day you can’t complain too much if you have to do something like this once in a while. It’s the start of the swimming pool volley ball season this weekend, so I’m told, and there’s talk of taking quad bikes into the desert. To quote an old Arabian proverb – “what doesn’t bore you to death, makes you a stronger more patient infidel” (I just made that up).
From Jouf with love, Ben x
microsoft paint - the poor man's photoshop
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