Of late I've been a little quiet, but no mind to that, I've got some time I can spend here safe in the knowledge that everything is prepared and safely dealt with ahead of being relocated temporarily to the other side of Europe - the side I was born on.

I sit waiting until it's time to go and hop on the transport bus across to the airport. Nothing fantastically exciting in that, but the nerves have steadily built throughout a busy day. Have I got everything done I need to do in the office, do my charges know what's expected of them, have I got my tickets, why won't it let me do the on-line check-in (AM had no problem), is everything packed, have I remembered everything AM asked me to bring with me, is the fridge cleared of perishables. It's these things that play on an already hyperactive mind - for once...

It's done though and now I wait, 40 minutes till I have to depart and park up outside the compound supermarket where the bus collects. Waiting inspires the idle mind to wander seemingly directionless.

Directionless is how I feel anyway. It's been an odd year all round...

• Career progression - FAIL
• Health matters - FAIL
• Band - FAIL
• Golf - FAIL, FAIL and thrice FAIL
• Photography?

...not quite fail, but I think the status quo has been maintained. I know what I'm doing, when I do it, but there are distinct overtones of aimless here too.

You'd think it couldn't all be bad and you'd be right, as there are some ups to show for the year

• AM and I visited Hong Kong which was great fun
• I got my Canon 5D MkII and a bunch of 'L' series lenses
• I'm now the tech admin for The Photo Beat
• I completed my 10 years in KSA, which equates to a significant financial enhancement when I finally choose to depart this place
• I can now pay the mortgage off should I wish to do so
• The garden over here finally got planted up
• Last but by no means least, AM got her degree under her belt

On balance, I guess you'd say things evened themselves out across the year. No real reasons to complain as far as I can see, yet it's not sitting comfortably with me at the moment. I know what the problem is, I feel the need for a change of scenery, not geographically or emotionally you understand, but more on the work front. It feels too easy despite the many bear traps and 'IT!' Lets be honest here, I'm absolutely bored shitless of it all...

I'll be back for more next year though, in the meantime, I'd better go get that bus.

Today is a good day. Not specifically for me you understand, but I am happy to bask a little in the reflected glory on this one. I may have mentioned somewhere that AM has been studying through the OU for the last 6 years. This morning I took an unexpected phone call from her - she's in the UK at the moment, whilst I'm here. The call was to let me know that the course result for her final module had been released and she had passed (as I thought she would). Not only did she pass the module though, she also got a 'Distinction' in her end of course assessment. I got the impression she'd surprised herself more with that than passing the module itself, or the important bit - she can now put LLB(Hon) after her name, she's passed her law degree!

It's been a long hard slog for her wading through many days and evenings of work, long distance, with at times rather scant support from her tutors. It's hard enough doing OU study in the UK when at least you can attend the tutorial sessions, or call the tutors at sensible cost, but doing it this way takes some doing - I know, I've been there, and on my last attempt managed to blow it rather.

Suffice to say that I'm immensely proud of what's she's done and love her to bits for it. Whilst she's not yet decided what she wants to do with it, or whether she'd like to take it further, I'm sure she has at last proved to herself and others exactly how capable she is - I always knew that of course. I'm hoping she'll find this a useful springboard to doing whatever she wants, as it's no less than she deserves.

VPH*

* Very Proud Husband

As you drive around Riyadh these days, it's hard not to notice that something big is going on - big vertically, big horizontally and big volumetrically. It's everywhere seemingly. Wherever a spare corner of land is to be had (there are plenty), you'll find a gantry crane or two, sometimes a dozen, sometimes hundreds festooning the skyline for miles. Off the back of the oil price of recent years, the Saudi's have had some serious wonga to hand and they have gone on an enormous spending spree, blowing vast sums on poured concrete in all directions.

In the main though, this hasn't gone on the frivolous and fanciful - not these guys - it's going on some significant infrastructure. The main roads hereabouts are being dug up, underpasses fitted neatly below the existing, traffic diverted down streets clearly never intended for it. At rush hour (most of the day), chaos ensues and minor collisions are common place, major ones a regular event.

The roads are in a way, just small beer. The big stuff at the moment comes in the buildings that are climbing skywards at an alarming rate. If you don't pass through an area for a couple of months, the chances are that on your return, you'll not recognise it. Here though, we're not talking individual buildings but entire complexes. All of the existing universities are expanding and there's an entirely new one going up next to the airport. For scale, the latter quite takes the biscuit. This is the blurb I found on 'The Princess Nora Bint AbdulRahman University for Women'

The project calls for construction of a new university for women. The university is expected to cover 8 millions square metres and located on King Khalid International Airport Road at north of Riyadh. The total built up area is around 3 millions square metres. The university will include administration buildings, 13 faculties, a 700-bed student hospital, laboratories, research centres, and residential area that include accommodation for students and staff. The capacity of university is around 26,000 students.

Source: Construction Week Online

Now I've no idea of the experience of most, but that's a quite staggering project. By all accounts, this will be the largest women's university in the world. Amongst the expats, it's already known as the virgin mega-store! This link to Google Maps gives some idea of the scale of the development, which is around 3 miles long and over 2 wide. That image is now 6 months old and I can assure you there's rather more on the ground than when that was taken.

Alongside this though, the Imam University is growing, as is the King Saud University. There is also the King Abdullah Financial District going up not far away - the aim here being to set up the largest financial centre in the Middle East and I've seen one comment to suggest that they've taken their inspiration from Canary Wharf.

You'd think looking at all this, that this was quite a widespread activity, but it's not. Everything I've mentioned can be seen from the route AM and I travel to go to the supermarket. Now admittedly, our chosen supermarket is a half hour drive into town, but they are all on a 10 mile stretch on the North-West of the city. I have no idea what's going on anywhere else in the city, but a drive to pick up the groceries couldn't possibly be any more impressive anywhere else in the world... or could it?

Just for the hell of it, I called into the Med Centre on the way to work this morning. Today's excuse being that AM wanted some stuff collecting and I thought I may as well get my usual repeat ahead of the trip to the UK for (Ugh!) Christmas. No problem you'd think, except that it looked suspiciously like they were waiting for me...

Medical type person: "Ah, I'm glad you called in, I need to speak to you"

Me: "Have the results have come back then?"

MTP: "Yes, and we're not happy about this figure here"

He points at a circled figure two hours into my OGTT

MTP: "Normally at this point we'd expect to see your blood sugar levels coming down rather further than they have"

He calls the Doctor over who's sat at the back of the office shuffling paper

Doctor: "Well we've looked at this and there's no doubt that this confirms the diagnosis of diabetes, so you won't need to do an OGTT again"

I think they call that last bit a crumb of comfort. Bugger! Not what I had in mind, it seems that the body is disintegrating still further. The almost religious attempt at starvation last week before the test didn't help much then.

Doc: "Do you consume a lot of soft drinks and sugary foodstuff?"

Me: "No. I've known for a while that 'full fat' softies make me feel odd"

Doc: "Well it's not like you're overweight or have any of the other high risk contributing factors [he means I don't smoke], so given these readings, I'm not going to wait another three months to assess whether your blood sugar levels can be bought under control just by changing your diet. I'll start you on the tablets straight away."

Oh good, more fucking tablets!

Doc: "MTP, would you get a couple of packs of unpronouncible patented diabetes remedy? Now, I'd like you to start these with your largest meal of the day. They can have some side effects when you start them, nausia, light headedness, that sort of thing..."

Sounds just perfect, the very thing almost

Doc: "So start with one a day for a few days, then gradually build up to three a day. They help promote the production of insulin. As we get older, we all start to lose the ability to control our own sugar levels"

Thanks for the reminder. MTP returns with two large boxes.

Me: "Can I get my repeat too?"

Doc: "What do you have?"

I reel off the usual array

Doc: Ah well, we don't really like giving that one to people over 40 unless they've had this medical procedure done.

He mentions something involving a camera...

Doc: "I'll get a referral made up. There are much better things to take than those ones anyway"

That will be more tablets then will it? I suspect it might.

10 minutes later, I'm out of there, with a letter, a copy of my OGTT result and a bag containing five different types of drug counted out in hundreds. What a way to start the week! It's a good job nothing is going wrong any further down, they'd have me on the little blue pills in a heartbeat.

As you'd expect, AM is not happy about all of this. It seems that every time she flies out of the Magic Kingdom (like she will this evening), I end up finding out something 'interesting' about myself, like this. It would be fair to say, that I don't choose the timing, but I know what she means.

'Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it', or at least that's the way the song goes. I wonder when the next health turd is going to get lobbed in my general direction? Funny thing is, I don't remember standing near any fans...

Yet again, I find myself writing with less than an hour of the day left, with the minutes clocking down towards the point where actually I've not succeeded in completing a post for the day. You'd think that someone whose normal finishing time in the office is 16:00 and with a villa not 5 minutes from that office, might manage to come up with an assortment of words before midnight on a reasonably reliable basis. This is never quite how it pans out though...

1. I don't always get out of the office until later than intended - today was around 16:45
2. I spend some time talking to AM about our respective days
3. I catch up with the personal email
4. I'll sit on the sofa with AM and, as happened this evening, we both doze off for a good half hour or so, arms wrapped around each other
5. then tea has to be made, though I'd be lying if I said I do much of it, though I am capable of it, as AM often reminds me
6. whilst tea is being prepared, I'm trying to do a test install of a piece of open source software on my LAMP server
7. we eat, whilst watching Sky Sports News
8. I'll do a drink
9. Inevitably I'll end up watching CSI with AM, though it seems the most ridiculously signposted stuff imaginable
10. It's now 21:00 and I make my escape
11. I'm back at the PC doing the same install on the new webspace for the forum I'm doing some tech admin stuff for - it works
12. Now I'm doing an FTP download from the old webspace...
13. ...and then uploading the file into the new space
14. AM heads off to bed
15. A tap on the study window tells me I have a visitor - he wants to drop something off with me before he flies back to the UK, and we chat about work for half an hour
16. It's now 23:00 and I've not written, I've not been for a walk, I've not explained to the forum owner what I've been up to

Finally I start this post and I've not a clue what my topic should be - did nothing of note happen today? I'm sure it must have, but it all passed me by in a blur of near frantic effort somewhere along the line. I know, I'll do a list, lists are always a safe bet...

...of a kind

You know what it's like when you've been struggling with one of those intractable problems that goes on for weeks and then in a flash of inspiration (provided by someone else) you suddenly crack it? The joy, the elation, the butterflies in the stomach moment? Yes you know what I mean. Well I had one of those this evening.

The details are unimportant right now, but suffice to say that something I thought was going to drag out until early next year has suddenly, and almost overnight, be tackled. This makes me feel surprisingly good if a touch edgy right now. The good bit lasted right up until I tried to protect what I'd done, at which point it all seemed to go slightly screwy. Not to worry on that score though, I think I know how to fix things tomorrow.

I would like to say a massive 'Thanks!' to MySQLDumper though. Thanks, whoever you are...

As a consequence of expecting the OGTT to come back beyond where it should be, calorific intake in these parts has taken something of a shift. No more the occasional chocolate (OK, slightly more than occasional), white rice has morphed into the brown variety, Weetabix has been altered to Bran Flakes. To be fair, much of this was in anticipation of the 12-14 hours fasting needed before the OGTT and wanting to give the clinic the best shot of getting a good reading as possible. This largely because I know when I did my blood tests before my company medical, I slipped up the evening before and ate something later than I should and also drank something other than water then as well. Am I hoping too much that the OGTT will actually say I'm still below the diabetes threshold, because I fasted properly this time. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but you never know. I'm not suffering from chocoholic withdrawal symptoms at all, oh no, not me...

I went for the OGTT this morning which gave me the opportunity to finish reading Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American'. I'd not really considered too much about the pre-Vietnam War aspects of that country, though I knew the French had some involvement there as a colonial power, so this book gave me some insight into that part of history, albeit through the lens of a piece of fiction in the form of a novel. It's a fine book and well worth a read if you've not already.

I didn't read the introduction by Zadie Smith until I'd read the novel cover to cover, but I was struck by this snippet and wondered for a parallel in my life here in the Middle East and how that has impacted on AM.

The simultaneous we desire we all possess for both the liberty of our lovers and their submission to our will...

Zadie Smith, 2004

There is no doubt that AM would not be in this country were it not for me. It is not a place you'd necessarily select as your home, less still as a woman in a society that places so many restrictions (real and imagined) on their behaviour. There is though a freedom that comes from the financial considerations involved in working here and it is these that attracted me here and have kept me in this golden cage for so long. Whilst here, AM has been able to complete her law degree through the OU, thereby providing 'liberty for my lover', but in remaining here for so long, am I also 'controlling' her with the carrot of stability and security. I don't know for sure, but perhaps I ought to find out.

For want of anything else to write about tonight, I thought I'd dip into the guitar collection and see if there weren't a few points of interest to share with you. Here then is my Yamaha SA2200, a quite stunning 6-string semi-acoustic I picked up a few years back.

Sometime back in 2000, not long after I came out to Saudi, I decided I need to bring a guitar with me to see if I couldn't improve my playing (a lot). At the time the only thing I had was another Yamaha, an MSG Standard. So I duly packed it up in its hard case and trundled myself off to the airport to come back here to Riyadh - I had a lot to learn I think about travelling with an instrument. It should come as no surprise then, that when I collected the guitar from the carousel, not all was well. I could see that the case was damaged, one of those little metal feet they put on cases was punched clean through the case, and I could also see that one of the catches was undone. An on the spot inspection confirmed my worst fears that the case had been dropped. What was worse, was that the MSG was now resting in the case with its headstock snapped off - all looked very terminal. To cut a long story short though, BA held its hands up to having responsibility for their lack of care and one £200 repair bill later, Sounds Great Music near Manchester did a sterling job of repairing it for me. It travels no longer.

Stuck once more for a guitar, I was left with a long stretch in Saudi until I could get home again and pick up something else. Fortune smiled on me and up popped an alpine white Gibson Les Paul Studio on one of the many notice boards - not a bad guitar at all in the circumstances. One short negotiation later and it was mine. It didn't take me long to realise that all was not entirely right with it though. Sharp fret ends protruding out from the edges of the fretboard told a rather unpleasant story. This guitar had not survived the ravages of the Arabian climate well and the lack of humidity had taken its toll, with the wood shrinking and so leaving the frets ends standing proud. At the time, I neither had the tools nor experience to sort it out, so I gradually grew to dislike it intensely - it just wasn't nice to play. But time passed and other acquisitions meant I could quietly forget about it.

So we get to around 5 years ago and in a speculative moment, I thought it might be worth bringing it back to the UK and seeing what it might be worth in part-exchange for something else. I'd had my eye on something in a local shop and thought the LP might well get me a good proportion of the way there, so back to the UK it came with me. A deal was struck and I found myself the rather pleased as punch owner of the the SA2200 you can see here.

The soundness of the deal was confirmed to me a few months later when I called into the shop again, only to see the LP hanging on the wall in a rather sorry looking state. Back in a country with moisture content in the atmosphere, the wood of the Gibson had started to absorb the humidity around it and expanded as wood does. It had the most amazing crackle glaze effect across the whole of the front of the body and did not look good.

The SA2200 is still with me, though at a distance. It plays wonderfully well and is a joy to hear. Only a couple of weeks till I'm back home again and I can give it another go.

This evening has been occupied with much head-scratching and consternation. I was short a post for the day. Not wanting to disappoint any small corner of Blogsville that is following what is going on here, I turned to Google for ideas. This I may say was a bad move.

Whatever else you do when searching for blog post inspiration, don't go searching for "blog post inspiration", you'll regret it. Too much bad stuff about how you can use Twitter to improve your social networking profile, or trading posts with other bloggers (nice idea potentially, but it's not happening before midnight). So bad idea then. Despairing then that I was going to come up empty, I looked round me and spotted a free magazine about living and working in the UAE, not that I have any plans in that area, but it can't hurt to browse a little. A couple of pages in and an advert for deep sea fishing leapt out at me; I have no plans in this area either. It did though remind me of a couple of features I saw in the stuff they leave in hotel rooms whilst we were in Bahrain last weekend. The features in question were about this:

The WHY58

Now I've never been a fan of boats per se, but this one has me smitten to my core. I cannot hope to see one in the flesh, much less set foot on one and the notion that I could afford much more than a few ship nails on such a thing is the stuff comedy is made of - "One day Rodders, we'll be millionaires". This is pure fantasy stuff for a landlubber such as myself. AM and I once went on one of those mini-cruise things to Norway. As nice as Norway was for what little we saw of it, the cruise itself was a horrid experience. I can get seasick on a mill pond, and though I avoided that indignity, there's no getting away from the fact that we were sleeping below the water line on a RoRo ferry.

It's worth taking a good look round the WHY site, the levels of luxury the 58 offers quite beggar belief. Ignore the fact that from above it looks like a whopping great teak topped Dairylea cheese triangle, it just just sucks you in with one 'oooh!' after another. Tell me you couldn't just drop into cocktails on that sun-deck, or wake in a morning, throw back the curtains and just gaze over the waters. You know you could, we all could. Hell some of you I might even invite along - you may need to dress up a bit though, just to fit into the general theme of refined opulence.

The only problem I can think of at the moment though is where I'm going to park it. I'd be lying if I tried to convince anyone that this pied a l'eau is small. As much rain as we've had in Riyadh over the last day or two, I'm just not sure I'm going to find a berth. That assumes of course I could get it over the compound's hydraulic road blockers. Looks like I may just have to dream a little longer...

Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers...

...in That Quiet Earth

Yesterday:

I made the phone call to arrange for the OGTT yesterday. It's a while since I had the last done so I couldn't remember the exact process other than it involved fasting, drinking some syrupy crap and sitting around for a few hours whilst being punctured regularly with a hypodermic. Nothing too challenging, just something that killed a few hours of time I could never get back - I didn't even have a book with me last time...

"Hello, I'd like to make an appointment to get an OGTT done please"

"Which Doctor?"

"I don't think I need to see a Doctor, it's just a lab test"

"No, you need to see a Doctor first..."

"OK, when can I get it done"

"Today, or tomorrow morning... 09:00 or 10:00?"

"Oh OK then, better make it 10:00 tomorrow then"

That means my weekend lie in is out the window. It's Thursday here now which means it's 'virtual' Saturday. The clinic is a 45 minute drive away, but that should be OK, Saudi's don't really do early on a weekend, they're very much late night people as a rule of thumb - almost nocturnal at times. Still, it won't take too long to just see the Doc and get a time for the OGTT which will be the predictable result. After that, AM and I can get to the mall, grab a coffee and I can perhaps look for my Mum's 70th birthday present.

This Morning:

So we're up and out of the house by 09:00, mobile if a little sleepy - I've not really been doing the early night thing recently, which means I've been subsisting on around 5 hours a night on work days, catching up big time on the weekends. The OGTT has just cut into catch up time. We're out though, me behind the wheel of the Durango, AM in the passenger seat, iPod in the FM dock playing away randomly as always. The last week or so has finally seen November weather catch up with us, so the predicted rains have come upon us and the temperature no longer gets above 15C. This morning it's grey overhead and in the distance, towards the city centre where we're headed, it looks greyer still. Inevitably within 5 minutes of leaving the safety of the compound, the windscreen is beginning to spot up - oh goody, this is going to be fun. Wet weather driving is not to be recommended in these parts. During the summer months, the roads become slick with a layer of rubber and an assorted range of flammable liquids that never shifts because there's nothing to wash it away. By the time November comes, it's been baked hard and ground into an already polished tarmac surface. Throw water on it and you may as well be setting up an ice rink, one that's been allowed to soften slightly so that the surface melts and can flatten itself out before re-freezing.

We head further into it and the rain begins to come down heavier, nothing torrential, but enough that mean the wipers need to go on, lowest intermittent setting to start but as the distance towards the centre shrinks, the frequency of the blades moving in front of me increases inversely. By the time we're half way there, we're on a new section of road surface and the car is becoming distinctly nervous in it's disposition on the road; anti-lock cutting in at the slightest provocation, the occasional shimmy on acceleration. Carefully does it now. The roads are quiet though and as we get a little further on, it seems that we've passed under the cloud and things are getting easier. The rain eases off, the wipers go off, but the road is still damp in places. Nearly there. In the end we reach the clinic none the worse for it and what's more we're there in 35 minutes and parking is a doddle for a change.

Inside all is calm, we follow a Saudi girl to the lifts, she works here - white medical jacket on but still wearing a black headscarf and veil. She presses the button to go up, hears the ding of the lift arriving, but seems unsure which door to head for...

"Come on, which lift is it?"

The right one opens and we follow her in to the cramped compartment, doors sliding closed behind us. She turns seeing two Western faces and it dawns on her that we heard her frustration outside. Behind the veil, her eyes are lit up with an embarrassed smile - she knows we heard. As we leave on the second floor, we head for the reception desk, behind which the girl has just walked.

"Yes, can I help you?" she says... smile still firmly fixed in place. She points us round the corner and we head off to my appointment.

I hand my cards and referral over at the next desk. I still don't know that name of the Doctor. It's been repeated at me over half a dozen times now, but I still can't quite get the gist of what's being said to me. Not a problem though, my appointment and name are on the systems, so we go out to the waiting area. As we sit, both AM and I notice the various posters inviting us to get treated in an assortment of manners. Something about getting you stomach reduced in size; we can tell because of the step sequence diagrams provided, not the Arabic script accompanying it. "Better a colonoscopy today, than colon cancer tomorrow" and one on diabetes, but that's too far down to read the details - I'm glad of that one.

Another girl comes out and I'm taken in for height, weight, temperature and blood pressure measurements. Nothing unusual here, so I go and sit down again.

Eventually another member of the admin staff comes out to tell me the Doctor says I don't need to see him, I can just go down to the lab to get the OGTT done. I must looked confused at this, but I'm guessing he sees a lot of referrals like this and he just needs to compare it with my previous notes - I've been there more than once. She offers to take us to the right place, so with notes in hand, she leads the way back down to the lifts.

Back on the ground floor again, we're taken towards the back of the building and she hands the notes over to another receptionist, chatting away in Arabic to him. He invites us to take a seat and we wait again.

After a few minutes typing away at his keyboard, it begins to look with some certainty that he's not just booking me the right appointment so that we can leave and resume the day. I can hear the temperature rise in AM's voice as she becomes a little agitated at being kept waiting for no apparent reason.

"How long does it take to make an appointment?"

It's not altogether clear.

Above the door is another admonition to personal health care - "Old smokers don't get old, they die young..." - this is cheerful stuff I'm reading. You can't accuse the Saudi's of pulling their punches, there's a very matter of fact air about it all.

The receptionist heads out back with a folder in his hands. A minute or two later and I vaguely hear my name being mispronounced - I'm used to it these days and would probably respond to a shout of "Fido" if required. I get up and go towards where another Saudi lady is holding what are clearly my notes, inviting me into a cubicle. As I step inside, I can see the usual accoutrements and paraphernalia of the phlebotomist - they think I'm here for the OGTT now.

She realises there's been some error.

"Have you been fasting?"

"No" I say, "when I rang for an appointment, they said I had to see a Doctor first"

"You can come any time, no need for appointment. How long since your last meal?"

"I had breakfast this morning"

"You need to fast for 12 hours. We do blood test, then after one hour I take blood again, 3 times, you're here for 3 hours. You can come any time"

"What is the earliest time I can come?"

"You can come any time"

"No, when do you open? What is the earliest time I can come?"

"You can come any time from 08:30"

"So you start at 08:30 then?"

"Yes, you can come any time, no need for appointment"

I follow her back to the receptionists desk.

"I'll come on Sunday morning then, I can't do Saturday"

"OK, you can come any time" the mantra continues...

She passes me a piece of paper to bring back with me and we leave. Outside, it's still wet on the ground and we go shopping....

Listen

I got an email about 15 minutes ago. Nothing unusual you'd think in that, especially as it was from a company whose products I'm already something of a repeat customer for. It's a food product in case you're wondering, a food product that is very seasonal and has a wide variety of regional differences - something about the soil and climate and altitude and stuff. Whatever, this means their range is extensive, if identically packed to fit their purpose built appliance. This is niche stuff in their product area, and the customer is expected to buy into the whole lifestyle image that goes with it - very middle class and aspirational you know.

So the new email arrives, black background, pale typography, image centralised and fading into a tastefully lit set containing the new seasonal range; it's Christmas after all. All looks cool and I was forced to hit Twitter instantly and record the moment for posterity. There was one shortfall I noticed instantly though, clearly missing was the link to an artfully directed video of their prominent endorsing celebrity - a Thespian of some note if you like medical drama series. Not quite my bag I'd say, as once you've seen one case of necrotising fasciitis cured, you've seen them all right?

Post Tweet, I went back for another look to get the low down gory on it all. I was shocked and stunned I'll tell you at what I saw. Could this be the same brand that had got me hooked a couple of years back? I've even transported their design icon status appliance across borders - no longer do I need to dream of trips back to my native abode for a fix of their elixir like comestible, then cold turkey on 3 or more months in the Middle East to be cured a la Priory [you're never really cured, you're only ever in remission] of my addiction. The cause of my anguish was a flavour mash-up the like of which has not seen since King Alfred landed baking duties on the chore roster.

Now my product is a staple good. Markets rise and fall on news of the annual harvest, so you can assume that 'The Product', if I may call it that, is a well known quantity, not something to lightly toy with a customer's affection over, certainly not mine. One may then wonder what it is they've done that has so shaken my faith in their ability to deliver into their carefully targeted niche. New flavours is what it is they've done, but we are talking about no ordinary flavours here. No they have gone for an especially seasonal slant with their 'new' flavours, redolent of Santa and his merry elves no doubt, just the things to liven up an evening affront the log fire. Here though is where the brand and I part company in our view over the latest incarnation of The Product. I just don't think they mix... well... at all... frankly. AM had the bright idea of some form of dessert based on the combination - I think she's just hit the copious recipe books about the villa, focused on the idea that the combination of flavours could just work - I remain sceptical, if hugely impressed by the unusual display of optimism that is currently bouncing around the kitchen.

For me, I'll pass. Maybe just go with a robust and smooth espresso next time - you may just have a winner on your hands

View Large On Black

Or at least that's what I'm told...

It's now December and I hear tell that some have already completed their Christmas shopping and worse, some have all their presents wrapped. I am not of that ilk I'm afraid, but the time of year has at least dawned on me and I'm beginning to think I ought to take a modicum of interest in meeting expectations. Given where AM and I live for the larger part of our lives, it's perhaps not surprising that Christmas (there, I've said it now) doesn't have quite the same effect on my psyche as it would back in the UK, where the shops, towns and pubs are decorated to the hilt, in an effort to get people to crack their rather strained wallets and purses out - I'm afraid that a supermarket stacked to the rafters with dates doesn't quite cut it in the same way.

The real trick to Christmas is knowing how to satisfy friends and family with a gift, preferably in the simplest manner and shortest time possible - managed that once when a trip up to the Lakes found a fleece for (almost) everyone. You don't want to under do it - a bulk pack of gift vouchers for example - but then again, you find that as people get older, they do become rather more tricky to buy for. Oft times, getting them what they 'really' want would require a Getty style bankroll with a Hefner sized sack to carry it all back in. So what to do then?

The standard approach is to ask "What would you like for Christmas this year?". They inevitably answer much like myself along the lines of "I don't know" - chances are that they don't actually care that much either. In many eyes, I suspect Christmas is something of a chore to be tolerated at best. It gets a little more entertaining where there are small children involved, but I couldn't eat a whole one myself you understand. Where you do get a suggestion, it's likely going to be for that old favourite, a pair of slippers*.

"But you had slippers last year..."

"I know, but they're worn out from being used round the garage"

Now I could be wrong, but that sounds awfully like I'm doing your annual running repairs. It doesn't sound very festive, much less exciting - please tell me that slippers are not exciting - and lastly it's hardly a surprise either.

The other thing you don't want to do is disappoint anyone. They know where I work, they know I'm doing reasonably well salary-wise and more so when so many others are struggling during the recession. I'd not want to appear to be a cheapskate, nor would I want to look too flash or showy - just wouldn't do.

So back to the question of what to buy for an assorted band of children between 2 and 9, and a set of adults from 29 to 97? I'd love to have another 'fleece' type spark of inspiration right about now, but it's not looking likely. Looks like I could be going back to an old standby and popping an orange and a sixpence into a stocking for everyone. I can't get them all an iPod Shuffle - can you see my Grandmother tackling a PC and iTunes to fill it up, much less getting out in her jogging gear to put it to its true purpose? No, me neither...

If anyone has any suggestions, now would be a good time to make yourself known, because I'm clueless, I really am...

* My Dad always has M&S slippers