The Raving

Six years in the State of Qatar made me richer; made me fatter;
Killed my student overdraft and bought a Nissan from some guy.
Just as I got comfortable came some unexpected trouble:
Made redundant. At the double, found a new job in Dubai.
Said to Qatar, “That’s goodbye”
Sold my stuff. Away did fly.

Then the global downturn floored us. Thus I got my marching orders.
Off I went to Abu Dhabi in a tiny rental car
Where it seems they were desiring those ambitious; those aspiring
Engineers, and they were hiring. It was close, but no cigar,
And so I said my au revoir
And found myself back in Qatar.

Now here comes a huge bombshell: I’d walked into the Job From Hell.
There really wasn’t anything that I could do to fix the mess.
Yet my slippy-shouldered boss who didn’t really give a toss
Or care who he could double-cross, he drowned me under piles of stress.
My valedictory address
Might well have been an SOS.

Thus I left, and I was banned , such are the rules of that fair land.
I had to wait two years, and then agreed to six months’ self-torment.
My brain had clearly gone haywire. I went from frying pan to fire
Because, alas, it did transpire that nobody would give consent
To anything I could present.
Hence my insanity descent.

“Six months,” they said, and two years on I can escape. Yes’ I’ll be gone.
I tried, but I’m not good enough to cope with this benighted place.
My shackles struck, and my release must surely offer me some peace:
The stress and grief at least will cease; I’m really not a waste of space.
And I’m not leaving in disgrace,
But entering the marketplace.

]}:-{>

Horse Ballet

I really do know very little about horses, beyond them all having a leg at each corner, a hoof on the end of each leg, and they're generally big enough to ride. Not that I've ridden one in probably 25 years, and that was for an hour of light-duty pony trekking in which the animal knew the routine and did precisely what it wanted. This was to do the same old circuit of the bridleways around Queen Elizabeth Country Park near Petersfield in Hampshire.

Anyway, fast-forward to Doha in 2016, and my friends Nix and Pegz suggested that I might like to go along to an international horse tournament over at Al Shaqab. As Beloved Wife was in Doha that weekend, we agreed to meet at the venue.

In the traditional way, we arrived at Gate 8 as signposted, to be told that the parking was full, and to go to Gate 9. There, another officious Bottom Inspector declared that we'd have to drive halfway to bluddy Shahhaniya and get the shuttle bus back. So I parked outside on the street. The same jobsworth declared that we weren't allowed to enter the car park on foot from Gate 9; I drove back to Gate 8, entered on foot, and we made our way to the entrance halfway between Gates 8 and 9.

No, I don't understand it either.














Having met up with Nix and Pegz, we sat and watched some horses going over jumps, and I took photos. As I said, I'm completely Jon Snow about how to do it, but I do get that instructing the animal to get its stride exactly right in order to clear 1.6m hurdles takes a lot of skill. And to stay aboard whilst doing so: that also helps. At least the rules are fairly easy:

Fastest wins, assuming nothing gets knocked over and nobody falls off.  If nobody gets a clear round, fastest still wins with minimum faults. And these are world-class performers, so falling off is probably extremely unlikely.

We'd arrived for a final jump-off against the clock, and when that was over we went to the indoor arena to watch the horse ballet.

Dressage, as it is more properly known, is more difficult to understand than jumping. There are stopwatches turning, there are judges in several different locations, and there's a loud music track that keeps changing.

The horse dances. Not in a 'bouncing around on its hind legs' way like the Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, but a lot of hoof-pointing, high strides, and a whole lot of other stuff that must have names. See Jon Snow for more details.

I noted double reins, and a lot of very, very subtle moves from each rider. Nix assures me that the tiniest movement allows the rider to tell the horse what is required. The performances obviously were the result of months or years of training and practice. I couldn't do most of it, and I've only actually  got one pair of hooves.

 ]}:-{>

D*ckhead Day

In a fight between a Patrol and a Sunny
 there can be only one victor.

One is perhaps given to wonder if there’s been a rash of New Year’s resolutions to drive extra badly this year.

First, we note that Qatar Police have introduced some new ‘no messing around’ rules, including a QAR1000 fine for undertaking and penalty points for speeding. You collect 15 of these and get a bicycle. Therefore undertaking is definitely a huge no-no.

I encountered the first d*ckhead at about 0615. On a two-lane dual carriageway with a 120km/h speed limit and no other traffic around, he was bumbling along in the left-hand lane at 80km/h. As coming up behind him and flashing headlights counts as aggressive and offensive driving I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t whiz past on the inside. After about ten minutes, the driver of the pick-up finished his Facebook post, glanced in his mirror and at last moved over to let me past. Then he moved back into the left lane.

Now, normal procedure when waiting to turn left on a local road, I thought, is to wait in the middle of the road with the left signal flashing, wait for a gap in the oncoming traffic, and then make the turn. Apparently not. At about 0635 I had to stand on my brakes when a rickety Yaris suddenly turned left at full speed right in front of me. Just as well I was doing only the 40km/h speed limit and there was nobody behind me. Indicators? What are those?

Now 0930, and I was on my way up Al Shamal Road to a meeting. This expressway is four lanes in each direction and has a 120km/h speed limit. In the usual way the right-hand lane was empty because only inferior drivers lacking in the trouser department drive there. The second lane was full of water tankers and labourers’ buses. Lane 3 had a variety of cars and pickups generally trundling along at 110 to 120km/h, and there was me in my Nissan Sunny. Small Nissans receive zero respect from those magnificent men in their ginormous SUVs, and generally speaking I use the left-hand lane to overtake, getting the hell out of it as soon as is safely possible.

Enter the Chevrolet Avalanche, a humungous pickup with a 5.3 litre V8 engine and a nut holding the wheel. I was in the middle of an overtake and right up at the speed limit (which is rigidly enforced by cameras every few hundred metres) when I saw him, but he came up so fast I could neither accelerate nor slow down before being tailgated at about six inches. Flash Flash Flash. Hitting the gas under these circumstances is futile in a Sunny. The Avalanche swung into Lane 3, spotted the car I was overtaking, and hit his anchors. Then he was back, undertaking me before I had chance to move out of his way, cutting in front of me so that I have no idea how the vehicles didn’t hit. Then, as anticipated, I was treated to a brake test.

The next tailgater (d*ckhead number four in three hours if anyone’s keeping score) was about five kilometres further up the same road. This one was piloting a shiny new Nissan Patrol. He didn’t even bother slowing down, choosing instead to overtake me on the left-hand breakdown lane. Alas, the hard shoulder is narrow, a Nissan Patrol is wide, and I couldn’t move over because of the stream of slower cars to my right when the driver ran out of talent.

After stopping he leapt from his car and demanded first in Arabic and then is good English why I’d rammed him and not moved over. When I said “Overtaking. Hard shoulder forbidden” he got all bent outta shape in the manner of varous pieces of Nissan hardware.

Enter my passengers. Both eyewitnesses, and both Arabic native speakers. The Patrol pilot very quickly decided that it was his fault, and in due course we ended up at the police station. There were discussions in Arabic, and I was given my copy of the police report, also entirely in Arabic. I got one of my colleagues to tell me exactly what it said. I’m not daft.

At this juncture I learned that the Patrol was covered only by third-party insurance. Not only was the owner going to be hours and hours late for his meeting, but he was due to incur a massive amount of expense. Driving on the hard shoulder is a serious offence.

And so to the car rental office to replace my Sunny.

“This police report says it’s your fault,” I was told. “Says here.”

“It most certainly does not. You imagine I can’t read Arabic? It actually says here…” and I proceeded to parrot what my colleague had told me.

“No, no, Mr Mohammed. You are to blame. It says so on the form.”

“It does indeed say that Mr Mohammed is to blame. But do I look like Mr Mohammed, with a Nissan Patrol? Or is it more likely that I’m the other party; one Mr G. Goat, driving a rental Sunny hired to him by your own good selves?”

Clearly an attempt to extort my insurance deductible, their pathetic attempt at subterfuge was exposed. “Now apologise!”

I decided to return to Cloud City and hide from society for the rest of the day. I have just been disturbed by Room Service. Someone ordered a Turkish coffee and gave my room number instead of theirs.

]}:-{>

Like a Rocket

Another motorcycle post.

The Goat is still suffering from Parked Motorcycle Syndrome. He gets to ride his Kawasaki once in a blue moon, assuming sufficient time in Dubai to install the battery, pump up the tyres, dust off the machine, and then pull out the battery a day later. He’s going to have to replace the tyres sometime soon simply because they’ve been cooking in the heat, not having the rubber worn away at high speed.

Some luminary once noted that “If you really want to, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

And here is a selection of the Goat’s excuses.

First, it is the Goat's personal experience that importing a motor vehicle into Qatar is a stressful and expensive experience. Shipping the machine was impossible anyway because it was, and indeed is, more than five years old. And this time last year the Goat didn’t have a Qatar Residence Permit and was thus forbidden by law from driving anything other than a rental car. So any move towards riding a motorbike in Qatar were completely stymied pending a Residence Permit.

Much to the Goat’s surprise, he got his RP in January 2015. At this point, the project was scheduled to finish in April; perhaps May or June… What would be the point of buying a bike in Qatar only to have to sell or export it in four or five months? It did look a bit self-indulgent, to say the least.

And then summer happened. The May or June finish didn’t, but by now it was for practical purposes too hot to ride anyway. Why would a Goat buy a motorbike that he had almost no opportunity to ride?

So the Goat finds himself in October. It is déjà vu all over again, with the only difference being this time the Goat has his Residence Permit at the start of the Middle-East biking season. Furthermore, there’s an 18-month old 3000km Triumph Rocket III Roadster for sale at 75% of the price of a new one. The Goat even knows and used to ride with its former owner, who traded it for a new Limited Edition version of the same model. But when will this job end? Current estimates suggest the end of December, but if the rate of receiving design approvals continues as it has done for the past year, the Goat will be in Qatar until the end of Time.

What to do? The machine is affordable, and because there are few ‘interesting’ roads in Qatar the case for a sportsbike is weak. The size of the country also rather contraindicates the need for a tourer. But a cruiser? Arguably more practical, at least for a given value of ‘practical’ that involves a motorbike with a 2300cc engine. And when the Goat’s job finally fizzles out, if it did so when this putative motorbike was still a valuable piece of engineering, would he sell it or export it? Standby for massive money loss because nobody would want to buy it, or a repeat of the grief of the export process followed by owning a surfeit of large motorbikes.

The Goat is tempted, nevertheless. More money than sense, obviously.

]}:-{>

Is this what living apartment?

Hircine high-rise

The Goat was recently reading all about pensioners who want to live in the Holiday Inn rather than a retirement home. One of Nanny Goat's elderly friends voiced the same opinion, noting that a hotel doesn’t constantly smell of boiled cabbage, the service is better, and residents don’t get treated like senile old fools.

Check out Snopes regarding permanent cruising. It seems that this might be a viable option provided that you don't mind living in a 10 sq.m space.

But it seems to work for some. What about the Goat? Not to retire, rather to try to justify the Goat’s current existence.

Home, or at least its closest approximation, is the Crumbling Villa in Dubai. It’s about 220sq.m of 20-year-old concrete and blockwork, and apart from a couple of new aircons a year or two ago to replace some of the antediluvian units, it receives almost zero maintenance from the landlord, who fails to pick up his phone, ignores fax messages, and has no functional email. But it is an actual house.

Last time the Goat was in Doha, working for crazy people, he rented a newly built two-bed apartment. The plan was to live there for a year, and then move into a proper residence when Beloved Wife joined him. In the traditional way, the Goat had to pay a deposit plus a full year’s rent up front, he paid a deposit with the telecoms company for his internet, and had to lash out for additional kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom equipment to make the place civilised enough actually to live in. The place was allegedly fully furnished, but of course with the cheapest and nastiest furniture that Najma Souq could provide.

After a year, the Goat left Doha. There was the traditional struggle to recover deposits from the landlord and the telecoms company, perhaps in the hope that the Goat would close his bank account and leave, and be unable to cash the cheques.

Now the Goat lives in Cloud City, on the top floor of a hotel. It’s a one-bed suite, and has usual hotel facilities such as cable TV, internet, 24-hour maintenance service, and someone comes in to dust and to change the towels and bed linen twice a week. Another bonus is that the rent is due monthly, and the security deposit is tiny and not a full month’s rent. But the place is also tiny; not as small as Beloved Wife’s apartment when she lived in Japan, but hardly anywhere (apart from t’shoebox in t’middle o’t’road) actually is.

Anyway, seeking to find some justification in living away in such a tiny concrete box, and to see if the pensioners living in the Holiday Inn had a point, the Goat got his spreadsheet out and did some sums.

First he looked at the raw costs of rent, internet, cable, municipality taxes, furniture and kitchen tools (amortised over an arbitrary five-year period) for each of the three residences listed above. Then he compared each by floor area. Finally, he thought up features such as 24-hour service; on-site gym and pool; walking distance to restaurants, work, and supermarket; the existence of a ‘yarden’ for a private outdoor space; that sort of thing. He evaluated these to provide relative perceived values and a weighted score for each. Adding these weighted scores for the features of each residence, and comparing them with the cost of each reveals:-

• The best value is Cloud City. Those pensioners are correct.
• The best value including floor area is the Crumbling Villa.
• The worst value of all is the two-bed place: expensive, small, and no features beyond basic shelter.

It’s well, then, that the Goat is essentially camping; living out of a suitcase in Cloud City until he can leave. The place would be completely untenable if he had all his tools and electronics (and motorbike, cat, dive kit, books, DVDs...) in Doha. And it’s far too small for two, except for the occasional weekend when Beloved Wife is extremely welcome to visit.

]}:-{>

Manic Monday

Six o’clock already.

Sign of the times

I was just in the middle of a dream…

That’s how my day starts. I roll out of bed, stumble to the bathroom for 3S, and then head to the kitchenette for wheaties. Then I get dressed for work, remembering to brush my teeth before tying my tie.

I live on the top floor of a tower block, so I take the lift about 37 floors to ground, emerge from the building, cross the road, and head up six floors to my office.

Six forty-five, and I start to drive my desk, my computer, and push paper around. This is the frustrating bit. Everything I write is in some way inadequate, unacceptable, incomplete, or just plain wrong. It all gets submitted to the Circumlocution Office, where teams of incompetents find ingenious ways to pick fault. If possible, and it’s always very possible indeed, the required document changes are in direct contradiction to requirements of other Departments in the said Circumlocution Office. After three weeks, my submittal will be back on my desk for rewriting. Again.

Now, because it's impossible to build anything without client consent, and client consent is patently Not Coming In Doha, MamSir, the lack of construction progress rapidly becomes my fault, as it is only I who write these reports.

He works from nine to five, and then…

By around 6pm I have generally had enough, so I head down six floors, cross the road, and ascend 37 floors to my tiny, expensive concrete cube in the sky. I get changed, cook a meal, wash up, and stare at a screen until about 9pm. Then bed.

I repeat this six times a week.

And that’s my life. It is destroying me.

]}:-{>

I've got your number

OFFS. It fits, but those two black pads
are supposed to support a short plate.

I may have been visited by the OCD fairy.

No, I am not OCD. Neither am I CDO. It is not a disorder to want stuff ordered and tidy. How would you find the book you wanted in the British Library if all the books were piled in one dishevelled heap labelled ‘Miscellaneous”? 

Checking you’ve turned the tap off 36 times, and then having to go home from the airport because you’re still convinced you left it running? That’s a disorder.

I don’t know why it bugs me so much, but what is wrong with the people who put number plates on vehicles in this region? Having just lashed out maybe hundreds of thousands of riyals on a new car, I’d want the plates to be on straight, and not sticking out in an unsightly manner. Clearly I’m in a minority of one; everyone else just blithely drives around with wonky and ill-fitting plates and doesn’t give a shit. 

There are two basic shapes for car registration plates: long and thin, and short and fat.

Cars come with plate-shaped spaces. Most have some kind of space or hanger, or bolt holes on the front, and pretty much all of them have a special space on the back, complete with lights. Again, long and thin, or else short and fat. 

Doesn't the shape of the bumper give you a clue?

So why do they stick a long thin plate in a space that’s clearly designed for a short fat one? I had a friend who protested that his Land Rover’s long thin plate had to be tucked under the spare wheel, and could he have a short fat plate please? No he couldn’t. He got a ticket later from the same police force that issued the plate, for failing to display it clearly. 

I protested when my Terios was provided with a short fat plate in a long thin space. The plate stuck out below the bumper and kept catching on the sand and getting bent. I was told that they’d run out of one type of blank. Unlikely. I was also told that you can’t have one of each. Lies.

And what is this pop-riveting thing? What’s wrong with using bolts in the threaded holes provided? What’s wrong with using a frame that the plate clips into? No, my new pride and joy has to have holes drilled in it to mount the plate on the piss. They can’t even get it on straight.

Maybe the pop-rivets are to prevent tampering. Clearly nobody has ever in the history of metal fasteners drilled out a pop rivet. And riveting tools are only available to the licensing authority, and not to any old Joe shopping in a hardware store.

]}:-{>

PMS

It’s about this time of year that Facebook is peppered with pictures of motorcycles parked in garages and prevented from going outside by snow and ice. Parked Motorcycle Syndrome. I fully sympathise, but spare a thought for a Goat who can’t ride his own bike when the weather is perfect, because it’s 400km away.

Yes, it’s motorcycle season in Arabia: that glorious period between October and April when dry weather is almost guaranteed, and daytime temperatures are in the twenties Celsius. So why am I not riding?

Because Qatar.

Having landed a job last September, only now in February am I about to obtain my iqama – Residence Permit – without which it’s impossible to have a cheque account, purchase liquor or pork, or own a motor vehicle. I’ve been driving a rented car because there’s no functional public transportation system in Doha. I do look forward to the Metro, but this currently consists of several large holes in the ground where roads used to be and temporary traffic barriers to redirect traffic around the holes. The Karwa taxi service is a semi-functional lottery, whereby it’s easy to get a taxi from a shopping mall, but you’ll wait until the heat-death of the universe before you can hail a taxi in the industrial area.

I was last on two wheels in October, since when I have removed the bike’s battery and the machine languishes in chains in Dubai. A sad situation indeed.

Once I have my Qatar residence, options become available, at least in theory.

• Obtain a Saudi transit visa, fly back to Dubai, and ride the bike overland to Qatar. Previous attempts to do this sort of thing have ended because I wasn’t resident in both the UAE and Qatar. The fatuous rule about not being allowed to import a vehicle that’s more than five years old will not apply because it isn’t an import. The bike would still be registered in Dubai. In principle this must be possible; I see vehicles in Qatar that are registered in Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and KSA. I don’t see why I can’t drive from Dubai to Doha in the same way as I can drive to Muscat (without a Sultanate of Oman residence), but this is ‘unbossible’ for the Saudi authorities to comprehend, it seems. Or else it’s my careless choice of passport.

• Do exactly the same thing as described above, but do it with my Terios. Here is the sensible ‘head’ option, as it would save close to QAR4000 a month on car rental, I’d have a 4x4, and when time comes to demobilise and go back to Dubai I could fling all my stuff in the back of the car and drive it. The fundamental disadvantage of this option is that it doesn’t solve my PMS.

• Buy a bike. Continue to rent a car, but be self-indulgent in the Department of Large Motorbike. Here is the ‘heart’ option that would cost a fortune. I’d lose my shirt when demobilising from Qatar and selling this putative bike, or I could export it to UAE which would entail expense and heartache (as it did last time, in 2012) and I’d end up with a surfeit of motorcycles.

The bike season will go phut in mid April. Hardy souls such as I usually continue to ride during the summer months, but pleasure rides tend to be nocturnal. In other words, there seems little point in going to the time, effort, and expense of getting a motorbike into or in Qatar for the extremely limited chance I’ll have to ride it. In practice, what seems most likely, and certainly most sensibly, is that I don’t get to ride a motorbike of any flavour except on occasional weekends visiting Beloved Wife in Dubai.

The option of selling my Kawasaki and looking into buying a bike once I know where I’m going to be long term doesn’t make economic sense given my current knowledge of where I’ll be after April. Or after August. Or at the end of 2015... I fundamentally don’t know how long I’m going to be in Qatar, and have even less of a clue as to where I’ll end up next. As the bike is over eight years old it’d almost certainly produce less than AED20k, and a new replacement is now the thick end of AED80k. All for a bike that to me is in perfect order and ready to ride. A used Kawasaki 1400GTR? In the UAE? I think I already own it.

What to do? I work six days a week most weeks except when I’m visiting Dubai, so there’s precious little time to get on a bike anyway. Last time I lived in Doha I used the traffic as an excuse to commute by motorcycle. This time I choose to live literally over the road from the office so the bike would get used only for social events and road trips across a country smaller than Connecticut. I guess that I can simply have motorcycle fantasies until my work in Qatar is done, try not to go insane, and hope that my next job won’t leave me in a semi-permanent state of ‘so near and yet so far.’

]}:-{>

Coz I Luv Qatar

I'm not an idle slob;
I went and got a job.
I live in Doha.
Because the rent's so cruel
My flat is minuscule
In central Doha.

And I have to rent a car
Else I can't explore Qatar.

Meanwhile my motorbike,
For reasons I don't like,
Can't come to Doha:
It's more than five years old
And that is why, I'm told,
It's banned from Doha.

For my car, things are the same:
Arbitrary rules to blame.

Of course, Beloved Wife
Continues with her life
Outside of Doha.
She's got the cat to pet
And at weekends, she'll jet
Across to Doha.

Visit friends; maybe explore
Mesaieed, Dukhan, Al Khor.

Because no-one will say
How long my current stay
Will be in Doha,
I work twelve hours a day
And then rehearse a play.
Busy in Doha!

Burn the candle at both ends;
And suck up what Karma sends.

Music: Noddy Holder & Jim Lea
Lyrics: Grumpy Goat

]}:-{>

Déjà vu all over again

When I resigned and left Qatar in 2012, the arseh- crazy people I worked for said that they'd provide an NOC: a letter confirming no objection to my changing sponsorship to work for someone else in Qatar. As this promise eventually turned into a statement to the effect that "We told you we wouldn't give you an NOC," I was banned from working in Qatar for two years.

Welcome to 2014, and here I am back again. I'm working for a different firm and in a senior position, so hopefully I'm in a position to avoid a repeat of the previous unpleasantness.

The rest of the situation is eerily familiar:-

• Beloved Wife can't join me for a year because of the enormously long lead times for teachers;

• I have a motor vehicle (two actually) in Dubai that can't be imported to Qatar because of an arbitrary rule that says you can't import anything that's more than five years old;

• I'm living in a furnished apartment, probably for a year.

However, this time there are some significant differences:-

• My apartment is within walking distance of work, so the nightmare commute across Doha is neatly avoided;

• The said apartment is a hotel apartment, so someone comes in and cleans it twice a week, bed linen and towels are provided, and all utilities including internet are included;

• I have several very old friends in town so I'll not be BillyGoat NoMates;

• I don't have a boss who stands in the middle of the cube farm and screams about how everyone is incompetent.

Being a hotel, the place has a 50m pool, gym, Kwik-e-Mart, numerous restaurants, and also 24-hour room service. Now my complaints have been answered the fridge actually makes ice, there's a proper cooker instead of an electric camping stove, and the washing machine works. I think I shall avail myself of the on-site laundry to get my ironing done by professionals who are better at it than I. As I'm right at the top of the building I even have a view. It would be better without another tower in front of me, but how much time does one spend looking out of the window?

I rented the cheapest 4x4 I could find because a Nissan Sunny won't get to the Inland Sea loaded with dive kit, and I'm investigating devious but legal methods of getting my motor vehicles from the UAE to Qatar. The Kawasaki dealer reckons that I can import my motorbike (again) because the fatuous five-year rule only applies to cars, and it isn't a car. However, when I tried that suggestion at the traffic police I got the same sort of look that sprouting antennae might have achieved. I could perhaps drive around on Dubai plates but, despite there being prima facie evidence that this is possible (vehicles with non-Qatar plates in Doha), my previous attempts to get this to happen have stopped with some wag at the Saudi consulate telling me that this is "imbossible."

Meanwhile I'm entertaining the prospect of buying another motorbike, but until I get my Residence Permit this is also imbossible.

I guess I'll have to go back to Dubai every couple of weeks and get by motorcycle fix in the UAE. The roads are better there, actually. In the mountains there are actual bends.

]}:-{>

Mailstrom

The Goat was mildly surprised when, over sixteen years ago, he arrived in the middle east and was told about the Post Office Box. The essential detail was that there were no door-to-door mail deliveries in Doha, and all incoming mail had to be addressed to a PO box. In keeping with tradition, the Goat adopted his employer’s PO box as his own mailing address. This was highly convenient, because the Goat’s employer had a driver whose duties included taking outgoing mail to Doha’s central post office and collecting all incoming mail. A change of employer and country in 2002 led to a change of address, and new PO boxes in Dubai and later Sharjah were easy to arrange.

Further changes in the Goat’s employer forced further amendments to the Goat’s postal address, despite living in the same Crumbling Villa. Eventually the Goat got Beloved Wife to arrange a personal PO box address; something that in retrospect he should have done years previously. Naturally, frequent trips to the post office are necessary, but this is a more reliable source of incoming mail than the vagaries of promises from former employers to forward anything that came from someone accidentally left off the “My New Address” round robin.

Unfortunately, we now live in a less innocent world than that of the 1990s. Barclaycard, for example, now won’t accept anything addressed to a PO box in the middle east. And because doorstep postal deliveries don’t happen, this means that the Goat has to use Nanny Goat’s home address in the UK for Barclaycard correspondence. Apparently it’s for “security reasons,” which might mean that PO box addresses are perceived as only being used by drug barons, money launderers and other ne’er-do-wells who don’t want mail items ending up at their homes.

Please: the situation with regard to postal deliveries in the middle east (and possibly elsewhere) is this:-

• Normal mail does not get delivered door-to-door.
• Everybody has a Post Office Box, and all mail goes there.
• PO boxes are not solely for dodgy dealers.
• Home deliveries are by courier, which is more expensive and needs someone to sign for the goods.

More recently, one of the Goat’s invest managers kicked up a major stink regarding the change of address when the Goat moved back from Doha to Dubai. The change in mailing address was just fine, but the confirmation letter from the Isle of Man was very heavy-handed, threatening that without a proof of residential address, the firm would be unable to manage the Goat’s portfolio. A long email exchange followed, wherein it became apparent that the Goat was seemingly the firm’s only middle-east client, and the absence of door-to-door postal deliveries was clearly a fiction invented by the Goat in order to be awkward. No amount of “The Crumbling Villa is in Beloved Wife’s name, and all bills and bank statements point at the PO box” would be believed. “Your only client in the middle east? Either you’re lying, or everybody else has found a secret work-around that doesn’t involve a post office box.”

Remember, this is simply to establish the Goat’s residence; his correspondence address was already clear and a matter of written record.

Eventually the Goat managed to convince the Isle of Man-With-Tiny-Brain, and all was fine and dandy. For a month. Then the Goat received an email complaining that official investment correspondence addressed to The Crumbling Villa had been returned undelivered. It seems that the obsession with obtaining a residential address (to where it would be impossible to mail anything) had taken precedence over the correspondence address. The Goat had to fill out the Change of Correspondence Address – again – to finally sort out the matter. No naming and shaming, because they did write and apologise about their screw-up.

And now, according to Emirates Post, there is a new “My Home” service that includes doorstep delivery of mail. Dh750 a year for three deliveries a week; Dh1250 for six deliveries a week. That’s subject to the target address being a villa and not an apartment, and further subject to it being located in one of the “selected areas.” The new service does include SMS alerts when registered mail arrives, and a 10% discount on Emirates Post courier service, so it could work for some, even if it doesn’t look like particular good value for the Goat. If the picture on the flyer is to be believed, Emirates Post will stick a mailbox on the outside of the villa and deposit letters from home in it.

Glory hallelujah! Does this mean that, at last, “The Crumbling Villa, Dubai” could become a real address that banks and financial institutions could use without fear of it being a front for money laundering? Of course not: the service consists fundamentally of emptying the PO box periodically and dumping its contents at a target address.

]}:-{>

My Little Smartphone

The Goat has been dragged kicking, butting and bleating into the 21^st century. Having had his LG handset suddenly go wrong and then refuse to behave itself even after being reset, rebooted, and even left overnight with the battery out, it was deemed a DBJ (dustbin job), and the Goat headed off to Carrefour to obtain a basic dual-SIM handset. He was sold one, which he then contrived to lose a week later. Whoever picked it up and immediately removed the SIM cards, the Goat hopes you’re happy with your new toy, you thieving git: a more reasonable person might have phoned ‘Home’ and attempted to return the handset to its rightful owner.

One trip to Dubai and two showings of his Emirates ID Card later, the Goat had replacement SIM cards for both Itisalot and d’oh, and it was time to find a new handset.

On the recent Japan trip, the Goat’s phone hadn’t worked at all, whereas Beloved Wife’s quad-band handset had quite happily connected to phone and internet. So the quest was to obtain a quad-band, dual-SIM device. It transpires that a lot of allegedly quad-band handsets are either 900MHz/1800MHz (which is fine for Europe and the middle east) or 850MHz and 1900MHz (which is what is needed for the USA and Japan). The Goat eventually ended up with the most basic smartphone he could find. It’s a Samsung that comes with a touch screen, GPS, 3G, WiFi, MP3 player and, once the Goat figures out how to use the handset properly, an app to do the ironing and wash the car.

Based on Beloved Wife’s experience with call trees, a real, physical keypad was also a must-have. Fighting the screen during a call in a vain attempt to Pless 1 for Engrish is something without which the Goat can do.

Unfortunately, it has so far been impossible to take some friendly advice and find a screen protector. The Samsung Service Centre staff looked at the Goat as if he’d asked for a lightly-grilled weasel, and none of the shops in Doha’s mobile phone souq had one either. One sales lack-of-assistant was busy sticking a screen protector on another customer’s machine before turning to the Goat and asserting he hadn’t got any. A BlackBerry 9900’s display is almost the same size, but the cutouts for the speaker are in the wrong place. Arse.

Getting more exasperated, the Goat eventually bemoaned this sorry state of affairs in the last shop. The Egyptian American behind the counter grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Welcome to Doha!” He cut down an iPhone screen protector to an approximately correct size and applied it as a temporary measure. Free of charge; he wouldn’t accept any form of payment. So much for a gem of advice offered ten minutes earlier. “You can’t cut it down. It won’t work if you cut it.”

So the Goat’s touch screen is protected for now. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be something more suitable for sale in Dubai. Or America. Or internet mail order. As is apparently traditional, there’s loads of stuff for sale in Doha but little in the way of after-sales service.

]}:-{>

Exeamus omnes

The fact that Residence Permit (RP) holders have to obtain an Exit Permit each and every time they wish to leave the State of Qatar renders the place, essentially, a comfortable open prison. The basic idea of the exit permit is that nobody can leave without someone standing in and agreeing to pay the debts of the resident who's off on his hols, or going to Dubai to see his Beloved Wife for the weekend.

What renders this system ludicrous is that, for an additional fee, a Multiple Exit permit is obtainable at a cost of QAR500 and valid for a year. Putting aside for the moment the new rule that cancelling an existing multiple exit permit now costs an additional QAR500, which wasn't advertised at the time and is certainly not something The Goat signed up for, there seem to have been some additional changes.

Last weekend, The Goat attempted to leave the country with a suitcase full of some of his worldly goods. He used his ID card at the e-gate, and nothing happened. Now the e-gate facility coded on to The Goat's ID card should be valid for three years from August 2011, and it has functioned faultlessly on 23 occasions. The last two had some problems 'with the system' but the reader eventually decided to let The Goat out and back in again.

Last Thursday was a different story. After a total refusal of any e-gate machine to read the card, The Goat was forced to present his passport and lose yet another page to ink. The immigration official advised what the problem was: the exit permit was valid for passport only, and not for e-gate.

The Goat checked with an Emirati friend who had contacts in Qatari officialdom. Perceived wisdom from that source was that The Goat's sponsor had attempted to prevent The Goat from leaving the country and/or had screwed up the paperwork.

After returning to Qatar, The Goat checked with the firm's HR department, where he was told in No Uncertain Terms that any changes caused by HR to his permission to leave the country would have been advised in advance, but no, there were no known changes in Immigration systems.

So which is it? As usual, The Goat merely seeks knowledge of what the rules are, and what has caused a perfectly good e-gate permit suddenly to become a waste of money. And if you, dear reader, have an e-gate card, you might well be interested in learning if you need to do something about ensuring you can escape from Qatar before turning up at the airport.

The poll has now closed and the results are in.

• 86% reckoned that Immigration had changed the rules and not told anyone.
• 14% suggested a new conspiracy theory that the Goat hadn't considered.

]}:-{>

Taxi? Duh, me

The single biggest obstacle to exporting my motor vehicles yesterday wasn’t the paperwork or the payment. It was transport. I had to get both the bike and the car up to Doha’s industrial area and then pick up a rental car and get to work.

As the container terminal opens at 7am, I set off early, arrived, and dumped the bike. Then I looked for transport back to town to collect my car. Obviously there are no taxis patrolling the grotty, potholed streets of the industrial area at 7:30. I walked a kilometre or so past rows of wrecked cars jostling with new and used excavators to the Jeep workshop, and phoned Karwa for an immediate taxi.

After spending 20 minutes being lied to by a recording about how my call was important, I was advised that: “No taxi available until 12:15.”

How useless is that? The only taxi firm in the country, and every car in the entire fleet is booked solid for nearly five hours. The joys of a monopoly service provider. No, I don’t believe it either.

Eventually, one of the myriad illegal, unmarked, private taxis stopped, and I got  rather expensive ride back to town, grabbed my car, and repeated the entire process.

Again, I waited outside the Jeep workshop. This time I was able to flag down an actual official Karwa taxi, with a meter and air conditioning  and everything. The driver confirmed that Karwa’s call centre was next to useless, and he was fed up with being berated by customers for being half an hour late when the call centre had only given him the pickup information two minutes previously.

In the ancient olden days, Doha’s taxi fleet consisted of millions of wobbly-wheeled orange-and-white cars, erratically piloted by Afghani shepherds. They were very cheap and, crucially, in plentiful supply. It was virtually impossible to walk anywhere in Doha without being tooted: obviously any pedestrian is in need of a ride. Qatar’s effort to make the place a little more upmarket resulted in all these mobile traffic offences being removed from the roads and replaced by a fleet of shiny new powder-blue Karwa taxis. The trouble is that the overall budget appears to have remained unchanged. Instead of millions of crappy cars, Doha now has a fleet of about nineteen shiny ones.

I have complained to Karwa about the inadequacy of the taxi fleet and the booking system whose effectiveness varies from erratic to non-existent. It’s basically a waste of oxygen, and the only benificiary is Qtel. The best answer I ever received was that more taxis were coming soon. Not that this would help my need for one tomorrow at some obscure hour of the morning. (So early, in fact, that the sparrows wouldn’t have even finished their sprout masala.)

I have basically given up on taxis. A pre-booked car has never, ever arrived on time. When I attempted to book an 6am trip to the airport I was told that no cars were available before 8am. When I tried to book 48 hours in advance I was told to call back tomorrow. I’m renting a car for my last month in Qatar in preference to attempting to use the dysfunctional abomination masquerading as a public transport system.

And last night when I emerged from City Centre Doha at around midnight I found what has been going wrong. All nineteen Karwa taxis were queued up outside, plus numerous private limousines. Ah, so this is where they all hide. No wonder I can seldom find a taxi at the other side of town.

]}:-{>

'tardy responses

The last thing I probably need at the moment is more stress, yet this is what I've chosen to inflict on myself. It all relates to the demobilisation process.

Long story short: I don't want to sell my bike; I don't want to sell my car. As there is evidently a process for exporting motor vehicles (why else would export plates exist?), I want to export my vehicles from Qatar to the UAE.

International transfer of motor vehicles is always exciting. For some reason, there has to be a massive pile of paperwork. Some of this relates to ensuring that a car manufactured for one market is acceptable for use in a different market. There are certain fundamentals such as where the steering wheel is, and whether the rear indicators are orange or red and combined with the brake lights.

Updating this post on 5th June, inserted below are my latest findings. Look for the italics.

I did this once before, and have learned my lesson. "Hi, Mr DHL. Here's my motorbike and a big wad of cash. Please deliver it to me in Qatar." appears simple enough, but in practice required that I constantly monitored progress and poked DHL at regular intervals to get the process moving again.

This time, I'm going the other way: Qatar to UAE. It occurred to me that if I put the bike on a trailer and towed it to Dubai behind the car, I could move house with a minimum of fuss. It's not as if a 700km drive is any big deal, after all. But between here and there lies the magic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Obviously I have to de-register the car and bike and get them on export plates. These are valid for ten days. Then I need a transit visa so that I'm allowed to enter the KSA, which I'm only allowed to do provided I promise to leave again. No problem.

I suspected that the procedure would be fraught with obstacles, so I started to ask for information. There are many, many people and organisations in Qatar whose job is to arrange import and export, so one might have imagined that someone would know how to do what is fundamentally a very simple process.

"Trailers not permitted." So the money I've spent getting a towbar fitted is a waste. Bugger. I guess I'll not be lashing out thousands of riyals on a bike trailer. In any case, this 'no trailers' thing is surely patent nonsense; I know several rally teams who successfully move cars and bikes between Qatar and the UAE by road, and they use trailers.

You have to go through an authorised agent to get a Saudi visa. Mine told me that there was absolutely no problem with towing a trailer. The small matter of the trailer cropped up after I'd spoken to a helpful gentleman in the Saudi embassy consular section about why my transit by motorcycle had been refused. After I'd told the agent his response to me, the agent called me back and advised that when I'd been told, "Motorbike? No problem," what I should have been told was, "Motorbike? Impossible."

"Cannot own a vehicle in UAE unless you have a residence visa." This is more of a poser, but luckily I have a Beloved Wife who can own vehicles, and she's resident in Dubai.

There remains some debate about importing more than one vehicle, but as it's a car and a bike and not two cars, this is - at least today - not a problem.

"Your wife must come to Qatar and bring a letter of No Objection stamped by the Embassy." What a lot of rot. If you don't know, why do you insist on making stuff up?

It seems that in order to transport her vehicles over land, a Power of Attorney letter from Beloved Wife is required. This is obtained from a Qatar court, or a UAE court, or I can do it on the basis of Beloved Wife's written No Objection to her husband handling matters. Which version is true depends on who's spouting it.

"Cannot transfer ownership in Qatar unless both parties have Qatar residence." A more senior Captain over at the Traffic Police said that this was nonsense, and having a copy of the purchaser's passport and visa would be sufficient.

"Cannot drive without permission of the owner." Well I'd better get a letter of permission, then. Duh.

As above. Power of Attorney letter is required - in Arabic - for land transportation. It's not required for transport by sea, because then Saudi isn't involved.

"Cannot enter UAE without visa." Visa on arrival.

"Cannot leave Qatar by road because your exit permit is only valid for leaving by air." Well I guess I'll have to get a 'Leaving Qatar by Road' exit permit.

There is no difference. It's an exit permit. Period.

"Cannot register bike unless you have UAE residence and a motorbike licence." So it'll have to wait until I've got UAE residence then. I can't get that until after my Qatar residence has been cancelled, and I can't cancel Qatar until after dealing with all of the business.

Having asked about a dozen different professionals in the export business and got nearly a score of different answers, here is what I believe to be the definitive list of Things To Do. It is based on getting the same story from senior people in several different offices:-

1. Letter from Beloved Wife confirming permission to driver her motorbike.
2. Copy of Beloved Wife's passport and UAE residence visa.
3. Go to Traffic Police in Doha and get export plates and transit insurance for the bike.
4. Ensure export certificate is in Beloved Wife's name.
5. Go to Doha Port with original sales invoice, original import paperwork that proves that import duty was paid when the bike first entered a Gulf country, Certificate of Origin, export certificate. All vehicles more than two years old are subject to 5% tax based on current assessed value.
6. Obtain Bayat Al Maqasa, a certificate stating that all taxes are paid. But this is a worthless document if the vehicle is more than two years old.

At this point it would be possible to load the bike into a container, on to the back of a truck, or on to a ferry. However...

1. Take export certificate and passport to company Public Relations Officer.
2. Obtain company No Objection to my riding Beloved Wife's bike from Qatar to UAE through KSA. (Essentially this is an Arabic translation of Beloved Wife's letter).
3. Obtain one-use KSA transit visa. No. Motorbike forbidden.
4. Obtain exit permit for overland travel. Cancelled.
5. Load personal effects on to the bike, and travel. Cancelled.

Upon arrival in Dubai, fly back to Qatar and repeat the entire process with the car.

All futile. Can't get Arabic Power of Attorney letter because nobody will say which version is acceptable, and thus overland transport is out of the question. So it looks like Mr Hobson is going to put everything in 20-ft box and float it over to Jebel Ali at phenomenal expense.

Wish me luck.

When all this is over, I'll post the actual procedure in the naive hope that someone else trying to pull the same stunt will be confronted with the same hurdles.

]}:-{>

Make it stop

It has finally come to this. I had a previous rant about work-related issues, and that supposedly should have got things out of my system. But alas, that was not to be.

My job stinks. Without going into details, because I operate a deliberate moratorium  on discussing work-related material, I’m so utterly fed up with it that I’m chucking it all in. I’m exhausted, completely burned out, and I lack the thick, waterproof skin necessary to shrug off all the grief. There are limits to the amount of work-related stress someone can handle, and I long ago passed that limit. Assuming I’m not already there, I’m heading for what used to be called a nervous breakdown.

Something must change. A new job is possible, whereas the jury’s still out on the possibility of a new life. So the job has to change. I can’t stay in Qatar, and even if I could I wouldn’t. The employer might change but the client wouldn’t, and that is another part of the problem. So here is where I raise my white flag and run away and hide.

It will be difficult, of course, not least in either shipping all my stuff back to Dubai or selling it in the early summer when half the population of Doha is leaving to escape the heat. And I have to deal with everything in the correct order so that I don’t lack the relevant piece of officialdom to do any particular task.

]}:-{>

Oh no I didn't!

It’s time to raise the curtain.
It’s time to light to lights..

It’s time to put on make-up
It’s time to dress up right…

The Doha Players’ annual pantomime is over for another year, and the Goat now gets his life back.

The English pantomime, for anyone not familiar with this particular art form, is a comedy musical stage play. The plot is usually based on a well-known traditional story, usually a fairy tale, but the plot invariably heads off on tangents that don’t appear in the Brothers Grimm version. Peppered with local and topical references, the script is also loaded with corny jokes and slapstick. A very important aspect is that the Leading Lady, a matriarchal ‘Dame’ figure, must be played by a bloke. And everyone understands that ‘she’ is a bloke, except for the other characters. A ‘Principal Boy’, on the other hand, is played by a hot babe in tights. Unlike most stage shows, audience participation is actively encouraged. Children of all ages should warn that “He’s behind you!” while the hero is being stalked by a villain. Cheer the good guys; boo the bad.

On reflection, the Goat’s life seems to be irregularly punctuated by pantomime. He arrived in Doha in 1996 and quite by accident ran into a member of the Doha Players in about October. Having found out about the theatre in general and the forthcoming panto in particular, off the Goat trotted, landing a principal role. Other plays followed, including musicals, comedies and dramas and, of course, a traditional pantomime at the end of the year.

Then in 2002, the Goat found himself seconded to Dubai. Here he ran into the Dubai Drama Group and landed a part in a panto. He also met his future beloved Wife. She removed clothing on stage to Patricia The Stripper while he appeared in a selection of foul frocks and garish wigs and make-up.

“Oh no he didn’t!”

“Oh yes he did!”

Several years later and back in Doha, the Goat re-acquainted himself with the Players and it was déjà-vu all over again. Getting a part and wearing ghastly clothes, that is; not meeting one’s wife. Although she did fly over for the weekend to see her husband, meet the Doha Players, see the show, and even to help out.

With any show, the number of people on stage is minimal compared with the legions of back-stage volunteers. Pantomime typically has a huge cast plus a chorus, so the director relies on wranglers to get people on and off the stage. It really is teamwork, and this is why amateur dramatics appears at the bottom of the Goat’s curriculum vitae. There’s no other evidence of being a team player in the absence of membership of a foopball club.

Thanks must go to the other actors and singers, director, producer, musical director, band, lights and sound, set building, scenery shifting, costume, make-up, stage management and props. Someone kindly cleaned up after the slapstick scene every performance, so muchas gracias there. Also rehearsal and interval refreshments, ticket sales, programme, front-of-house, rehearsal space, performance space, and of course the fee-paying punters who came to the show and made it all worthwhile. Thank you; thank you all.

]}:-{>

Happy Birthday Qatar

When I last lived in Qatar, the annual public holiday was 3rd September: Qatar Independence Day, celebrating becoming an independent sovereign state in 1971. Nowadays that celebration has been replaced by 18th December: Qatar National Day, which celebrates the creation of the State of Qatar in 1878.

So this weekend is a long weekend. Sunday 18th is a public holiday. For the past couple of weeks, maroon and white flags have been appearing all over town, all over buildings, fences and even cars. Even the English fashion for miniature flags on plastic poles cranked into car windows has been adopted, although not with the cross of St George, obviously.

Anticipating craziness, I think I'll be avoiding the town centre and the Corniche. On a drive up to a meeting last Thursday, I noticed public seating, refreshment marquees and public-address systems being erected all along the Corniche. The piles of temporary barriers, inevitably resplendent in the Qatari flag, suggest that the road's going to be closed for the celebrations. There will surely be traffic chaos.

This year there's apparently an edict that cars shall not be decorated. The ruling has been roundly ignored. Yesterday I saw several Land Cruisers and Cayennes covered completely in images of the flag, national emblem, and the royal family. By completely, I don't mean the chassis (probably), but I do include all the windows. One of these vehicles was parked on the roadside near the TV station, and the driver was explaining himself to a police officer.

Imagine a similar thing in the UK: Fervent patriot bedecks his British car in red and white and then gets busted by a uniformed policeman of Sudanese origin because it's impossible to see clearly out of any of the car windows. Outraged letters to the Daily Mail ensue.

There are going to be exuberant celebrations, I'm sure. I hope that everyone has a great time and, in the inevitable motorised celebrations, that nobody gets hurt.

Have fun, everyone!

]}:-{>

TBTB

Oh noes! The Goat is suffering from Blogger's Block. Or, more accurately, currently lacks the time necessary to put in the effort to produce a post. So apologies to those readers who return and learn that the Goat is Too Busy To Blog.

The change in weather has allowed the Goat to commute by motorbike, at least a couple of days a week. His Kawasaki doesn't really enjoy heavy traffic, lane-splitting and getting caught at every red traffic light, and it expresses its displeasure through ghastly fuel consumption. However, being able to get across Doha during the rush hour in about 15 minutes rather than a more customary hour or more is certainly a benefit. And being able to find a parking space in the shade next to the office without being shooed away by Security, and not on the far side of a six-lane highway is another benefit.

It's amost as if someone throws a awitch on or about 15th October and the sticky, humid heat almost instantly disappears. That same person will throw the switch again on or about 15th April, or is it May?

Outside work, a subject definitely beyond the scope of this blog, weekends and evenings are also busy. Regular return trips to Dubai destroy any weekend social life in Doha. Beloved Wife clearly takes precedence. Unfortunately, potential purchasers of the Goatmobile (now reduced to Dh65,000, by the way), fail to turn up at the weekend as they promised, which is vexatious at best.

At least there's no immediate need to sell the Goatmobile, so silly offers in the style of "I'll do you a favour and take it off your hands for Dh30,000" can be and are spurned as one might spurn a rabid dog.

Beloved Wife and Goat have decided what to do for Eid al Adha, but where to go for Christmas and BW's Very Important Birthday in January remain undecided. Flights to America or Antipodea cost around the same - lots - unless somebody is silly pecunious enough to fly Cathay Pacific and pay double the lowest fare.

And that appears to be that. Normal service will be restored once the Goat has time and something to rant about.

]}:-{>

A goat track-riding

That's a typo, of course. It should be 'a go at', and anyway it's not going to happen immediately. If it happens at all, it's contingent on the Goat finding some proper motorcycle leathers to cover his rather unorthodox shape.

There's been something of a development in track days in recent years. Instead of risking life and limb among the rest of the traffic, the potholes, the manhole covers and pedestrians, drivers and riders can now turn up at a proper race circuit and ride or drive as fast as they can/like/dare in the company of other consenting adults, all of whom are doing the same thing in the same direction. Added to this are the wide run-off areas in case of an, erm, excursion, and marshals and medical facilities are on standby in case of a major incident.

Rules are basically simple. Proper gear, a decent machine and the willingness to stick to some simple regulations.

The Goat found out about where bikers meet in Doha on Friday mornings purely by accident on Thursday night. And then, having turned up for breakfast at Starbucks, he learned that there was a track day at Lusail International Circuit that very evening. Bikes from 6pm to 9pm, then cars from 9pm to midnight.

He arrived at Lusail by car just before sunset, and eventually got the details of when, how and how much.

One of the riders pointed out that QR400 (around £70) for three hours on an international-quality racetrack was astonishingly good value, compared with the UK where, apparently, £300 buys three 20-minute sessions. Daytime sessions don't require floodlights and are a mere QR200 for three hours.

Most of the bikes are, of course, race replicas, crotch-rockets, or whatever you call them, so if the Goat ever happens to venture on to the track aboard his sports-tourer he'll be horribly outclassed by everybody. Must remember to remove the hero blobs and panniers, and tape up the mirrors. "The first rule of Italian driving: What's-a behind is not important." 

In the absence of leathers and indeed a motorcycle, the Goat simply satisfied himself last evening with taking photographs under the floodlighting. Any reader who is interested may care to check out the album of 139 pictures of high-speed antics.

The Goat has, incidentally, migrated to Picasa. This is after learning that Flickr ceases to be free once more than 200 images have been uploaded.

]}:-{>