Nostalgia ain't what it used to was

When I were a lad all this were fields / forest / sand dunes / open ocean (delete as applicable). Doesn’t everyone above a Certain Age remember going out riding bikes all day, building dens on waste ground, and nobody ever needed to phone their parents? Most parents didn’t have a telephone anyway, nor a telly.

And we all lived in t’shoe-box in t’middle o’t’road…etc. Hark! The strains of Sousa.

And what of the kids today? They spend all their time sndg txt msjs 2 thr frnds, or on those interwebs. Hours and hours on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or World of Warcraft. And when they’re not chatting on line to that 13-year-old girls-school athletics champion (who’s actually 47 and called Clive), it’s out with the Wii or the PlayStation.

Is it possible that this ‘deplorable’ state of affairs is a direct consequence of over-protective upbringing?

The kids of today aren’t allowed to go and kick a ball around in the street for fear of being run down by a motorist. They can’t go and play in the park either: “No Ball Games”, “Keep Off The Grass”. And anyway, how to get to the park? Ride bikes? What, on the road? Of course not. Some adult will have to helicopter the children to and from the park, and keep a close eye on them. It’s far too dangerous to leave youngsters to their own devices. A lot of playground equipment was torn down in the late seventies after it was deemed unsafe. Adieu to the witch’s hat; farewell to the giant Wicksteed cast-iron slide with a wooden cage at the top and the slippery surface polishable with a Mother’s Pride wrapper. Nowadays everybody knows that playgrounds and parks are hunting grounds for predatory paedophiles.

So what do we find? An entire generation of children who aren’t allowed out unsupervised and whose only connections with the outside world are the telephone and internet. That’s healthy and character-building, I’m sure, as well as waistline-building. Video games also corrupt the yoof, don’t they? Clearly if some adolescent spends all of his on-line time dressed up as a minotaur* and duffing up the Undead Lord of Khazi-Lid, he will surely re-enact these violent fantasies when he goes out and gets a Real Life.

Banished outside, with no money and not allowed to play footie or go bike riding, teenagers congregate beneath the only available shelter. And then get ASBOs for loitering at bus stops.

“But my teenage son/daughter/other is permitted to come and go as he/she/it pleases.” Really? How many youngsters nowadays are allowed out without a mobile phone? And without strict instructions that it is to be switched on at all times, and to phone home regularly? Not very many, I reckon. Far from being an emancipation contraption, the mobile phone is actually an apron-string.

Being able to communicate with friends across the planet, to be able to interact with those friends in real time (instead of the ritual annual exchange of Christmas cards in which everyone says that they really ought to stay more in touch and then don’t) is probably a good thing. It must surely be an improvement over the criticism levelled a few years ago at my generation: that we wasted our childhood sat inertly in front of the magic idiot-box.

* In World of Warcraft they’re called Tauren, and my understanding, as a non-WoW player, is that they’re Good Guys.

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Sleepers, awake!

I’ve only been doing a little bit of gentle commuting plus one business day-trip to Khor Fakkan, and the bike’s already in for its first service. This will include all those little niggling odds and ends that have come to light since collecting the machine on 29 January. The first problem manifested as I rode away from the shop. The handling was very peculiar. I got home and discovered 19psi in the tyres rather than the correct 42psi. I have since bought a foot-pump and pressure gauge for home use. A second issue is that the magic tyre-pressure-monitoring system, an arrangement whereby the pressures are transmitted wirelessly to an on-board computer display, doesn’t work. Frankly, I think the TPMS is an unnecessary gimmick. It will, I am assured, be fixed under warranty.

I quickly discovered that although riding at night and early in the morning is freezing cold - Man is not designed to be whizzed unprotected through the air five times faster than he can run, and neither is Goat - riding when the sun is near its zenith gets all hot and sweaty even in February. As I will not ride without protective gear, I’ve found a lighter-duty jacket that is essentially a fishing net with some padding for spine, elbows and shoulders. My Kevlar-lined “Draggin’ Jeans” are excellent, but I’ll acquire some knee pads in due course.

A huge advantage of commuting by motorcycle rather than by car is being able to stick the bike where a car cannot go. Straight to the front of the traffic light queue, for example. However, unlike those little couriers’ bikes that can apparently fit between two sheets of paper, the Connie is forty-two inches wide at the mirrors, so any gap between stationary vehicles has to be huge. (There’s a facetious remark here involving ‘stationery’ and the aforementioned ‘two sheets of paper’. Must…resist…). Arriving at the office, parking is a lot easier than with a car. I have found a space beneath a building: one that’s too small for a car and is beyond the guano range of all but the most imaginative pigeons.

Another advantage is 47 miles per imperial gallon AND 0-100kph in about three seconds. The bike will allegedly accelerate eventually to a licence-erasing 240kph, although mine is unlikely ever to go anywhere near there. Compared with driving the car, speeds in the 80kph to 120kph range feel astonishingly rapid. It must be the wind. For the time being, the hero blobs on the footrests remain pristine and unsullied. Despite my preference for bendy roads, I’m still out of practice and therefore continue to take corners like a total gurl. Being overtaken by White Van Man on a cloverleaf loop is nothing short of embarrassing.

What of the disadvantages? One obvious one is the total inability to go off road. Gravel tracks are possible, but I absolutely detest riding a motorcycle on a slippery surface. I took the car to work on Sunday because of the rain. I note with alarm the number of oil spills on curves. Does someone go out late at night with a watering can full of diesel?

The main problem is, as anticipated, other motorists. My invisibility is astonishing. Minibuses emerge from side roads and launch into roundabouts. Mind you, they do this in front of everyone. Cars drift from lane to lane into the space occupied by a motorbike. But they do this to other cars too. On single carriageways it’s apparently OK to overtake even if there’s a 350kg projectile incoming at a relative 200kph with 110 watts of unswitchoffable halogen headlights blazing.

What I need is a loud twin-tone horn to alert the Acolytes of Μορφευς. The factory-supplied mouse fart is inconsequential, inaudible and inadequate.

I’m open to suggestions on the next issue. Throughout my motorcycle training all those years ago I was taught that, when riding in a lane of traffic, to position the bike to one side or the other, preferably the outside. This enables the guy in front to see the bike in his driver’s mirror, offers the biker additional forward visibility, and also provides an escape route if the vehicle in front unexpectedly stops for some reason. Never, I was taught, ride directly behind the middle of the vehicle because there’s no escape route and, in the case of a van, truck or bus, the bike is totally invisible from the front. “If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you”, as the bumper sticker says. Guess what happens here. Ride to one side, and some clown behind invariably tries to squeeze past the bike. Next time someone tries to push me into a flowerbed, there might be an incident involving a motorcycle boot and a door panel.

The proper place for a big bike isn’t fighting through heavy traffic. It’s enjoying the freedom of the open road. How apposite then, that the Kawasaki agent glories in the name ‘Liberty’.

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A box of rocks

The Goatmobile generally only gets abused off-road as a hobby. When trips along wadis are connected with work, I’ll rent a Land Cruiser.

So a little while back that is exactly what I did. Unfortunately, whilst casing one particular joint – a wadi clearly in need of huge embankments, cuttings and a load of asphalt – I heard a horrendous metal-versus-stone graunching sound from beneath. I had hooked one of the cheap (I use the term metaphorically only; they’re actually hugely expensive), thin, alumininium side-steps on a boulder and bent it. Whoops. The side-steps are sometimes called ‘rock-sliders’ for reasons that, if this evidence is to be believed, are unclear.

Back in the metropolis of Khor Fakkan, I telephoned my office administratium and explained that woe had befallen me.

“All right Mr Goat, what woe has befallen you?”

I explained. In the Real World, such a minor incident would result in having to explain oneself to Mr Hertz van Rental who would probably then refuse to refund part or all of the insurance excess. That would be too easy. Everyone knows that It’s Tough In The Gulf, hence the need for some frustraneous rigmarole.

“No problem, Mr Goat. You have to get a police report that we can give to the car rental company, and Robert will be your mother’s brother.”

And that is why I spent the next three hours in Khor Fakkan police station.

My opening gambit was that I’d bent the side-step (Exhibit A) and could I please have a police report?

“OK. Come tomorrow.”

“Sorry, but the car has to go back to the rental company tonight,” I explained. “It’s on a one day hire only, and anyway I can’t afford to take a day off work specifically to travel all the way to the east coast.”

“Why did you move the car? You should call the police when and where the accident occurred.”

I explained that the incident had happened way up some wadi in the mountains. There was no phone signal. Instead, I’d come straight to the police station.

“We must see the stone that did the damage.” (Exhibit B)

“What?! There are millions of stones up there!” I protested. “How am I supposed to remember exactly which one it was?”

The officer didn’t have an answer to this. He eventually suggested that we just go and identify the culprit by picking some random, suspicious-looking rock. One that looked shifty and villainous would be favourite. Clearly he was advocating that I should deliberately tell lies to a police officer.

I called his bluff: “Come on then. My car or yours?”

And then, noting the fading light of dusk, I had a brainwave. “Come to think of it, if I’m only going to accuse a random rock, we don’t actually need to go into the back of beyond to go and look at it, do we? I can point out where the car got bent from the comfort of this office. Look at this map. (Exhibit C). It happened here, just on this bend.”

“You are a very silly Goat. In fact, here is your police report, just to be rid of you and your foolishness.”

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Nempnett Thrubwell

One of the side-effects of middle-aged spread is traditionally mid-life crisis. Personally I don’t believe a word of it. The desire to own a motorcycle is far more deep-rooted than that.

“A motorbike? In Dubai? Are you insane?”

Maybe. The climate mitigates against motorcycles for half the year, and the local driving style for all of it. I’ve been looking at 21st century protective gear rather than the oh-so-last-millennium effective but heavy traditional leathers.

I’ve found a jacket with armour for shoulders, elbows and spine, and so many ventilation holes that it resembles a cheese grater. The trousers are lined with Kevlar. Boots and gloves are traditional and mostly leather. The whole front of the full-face helmet swings up to keep me cool at the traffic lights. The helmet is also peppered with ventilation holes to keep my brain cool. I own a waterproof overall too, but as it’s unlikely I’ll ever ride the bike in the rain (q.v.), that is only going to be used on winter boat dives.

As for the driving style, twenty years of riding in the UK taught me that bikes are completely invisible to other road users. I believe the fundamental difference here is that this level of inattentiveness is extended to all road users. It would be unfair to restrict it only to motorbikes.

Another thing is conspicuity. The new beast is a monster, weighing in at the thick end of 280kg excluding a great lardy Goat on board. It has Presence. It also cranks out an unfeasible quantity of Pferdestärke and loads and loads of torques, so there’s plenty of squirt.

I’m not new to this motorcycling thing. Having ridden bikes regularly since my 16th birthday up until 1996 I reckon I gained a fair whack of experience. Of course, I’m out of practice now, so I’ll certainly be taking it very, very carefully. Big bikes are hugely expensive to drop.

As for the bike itself, it’s a Kawasaki Concours. At least, that’s what they call it in the States and mainland Europe. The monicker in the UAE and indeed the UK is ‘GTR’. The original 1000GTR came out in 1985, I bought a used one in 1989, and I rode it regularly - and occasionally all over Europe. The model remained in production with only teeny changes, until at last in 2006 Kawasaki ceased production of the 1000GTR. The replacement, introduced in 2007, is the 1400GTR. Fourteen hundred? Gordon H. Bennett! In the words of the man who introduces American Chopper on the Discovery channel: “Biggah! Fattah! Chunkiah!”

So why Kawasaki? Well, a big comfy bike with shaft drive and hard luggage is what I want. I’ve had various Kawasakis since 1984. I considered a Honda Pan European ST1300 (as ridden by the local Traffic Police), and I even saw a herd/clutch/gang of ST1300s in Al Futtaim’s Dubai showroom. Alas, the sales manager failed to send me any details or follow up my enquiry as we had discussed. Compare this with Liberty in both Sharjah and Dubai, where I was greeted as a long-lost friend by enthusiastic and helpful staff. I mentioned the ‘H’ word to the General Manager and 12% immediately dropped off the asking price of the Kawasaki, and a whole host of free (not actually ‘free’, but included in the price) accessories were added to the package.

Sorry Honda; you lose.

Various of my motorbiking buddies have congratulated me on my choice of brand. I hope to have made the right decision. My usual response to the question of why I didn’t choose a Harley Davidson is that there is already a Fat Boy resident in the Crumbling Villa.

All the paperwork is now in order, and I’m picking the machine up after work on Thursday. Anyone out and about on 29th January in Dubai in the afternoon might like to consider Murphy’s Law and carry an umbrella.

Meanwhile, Beloved Wife has been exceptionally supportive after recovering from her initial shock. She absolutely refuses to ride pillion. The deal appears to be that if I’m allowed a motorbike, then in due course I’m not permitted to object when she buys a hot-air balloon.

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The Goat is landed

The Goat’s silence on the blogosphere of late has been caused by a week’s vacation in Cyprus. What, Cyprus again? Well yes, actually. Beloved Wife and I visited in August and then again in October. This time was to experience winter and, with any luck, to select an appropriate plot of land for our dream home.

Following the dubious delights of the fleapit hotels that I picked last time and the time before, I suggested that Beloved Wife might like to try her hand at on-line hotels. We have therefore ended up in a ‘four-star’ establishment on the west coast. Breakfast is both vast and excellent, apart from the fried zucchini that look exactly like mushrooms until they’re no longer under monochrome heating lamps. It’s a huge improvement over two bread rolls and a limp piece of Spam. Actually, the hotel would still have been prohibitively expensive, were it not for a 40% discount for booking seven low-season nights. The indoor pool, sauna and steam room are also marvellous. I haven’t dared to try the torture chamber fitness machines. Winter is very much low season. The “Tomb of the Kings” Road has turned into the “Tomb” of the King’s Road.

I took Beloved Wife for a Teppenyaki meal for her birthday. Apart from the food being filling, fresh and fabulous, we had the full cutlery-juggling show from our chef. We also nearly lost eyebrows to the flames. Apart from that evening, we’ve mostly eaten at the local chippy. I like steak and kidney pie, and Beloved Wife likes pork chops by the square foot.

We’ve also been shopping for stuff that’s either Not Coming In Dubai or else is ridiculously overpriced. Lace tablecloths and motorcycle gear, since you ask. More on the latter in a later post.

Several land agents have given us guided tours around the island to view miscellaneous pieces of real estate for sale. A curious thing is that almost all of those parcels of land that we were shown were around 25% to 30% higher in price than our stated budget. I wonder which particular part of: “This is the maximum that we can afford” is so difficult to understand? Ah, the allure of 25% to 30% extra commission. Of course. There seems to be a general failure to realise that 25% to 30% of buggerall isn’t very much.

We managed to whittle down three visits’ worth of sites from over twenty to merely two. All of the others were rejected on the grounds of horrible or non-existent access tracks, the plot being flat but on a 45-degree slope, the ground being ghastly clay, the asking price being prohibitively above our budget, the plot being 30 miles up a bendy road into the sticks, and in some cases all of the above. Mind you, the roads to and from Salamiou are a scratcher’s paradise...

Of the remaining two sites, one turned out to be half the advertised size. The agent’s subterfuge was easily exposed by a Goat wielding a scale rule. We put in a low bid of around 70% of the asking price for the other one. With a global recession in progress and the Pound Sterling competing with Zimbabwe for worthlessness, our offer was accepted.

Having secured the land - inshallah - and instructed a lawyer, it’s time to save furiously in order to stick a highly insulated, solar powered, recycled grey-water, organic-tofu-knitting house on it.

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Alchemy

The Grumpy Goat doesn’t normally do requests. However, an impassioned plea from one ‘Shishkabob’ for a take on what one might euphemistically describe as the economic downturn has inspired this ill-informed piece.

Loads of traditional alchemists have over the centuries wasted an appalling amount of time, effort and money trying to transmute metals. In their ultimately futile attempts to get something for nothing, all the medieval alchemists achieved - apart from inventing a science that would become chemistry - was to turn gold into less gold. Meanwhile, the manufacturers of crucibles and esoteric glassware made a packet. The Philosopher’s Stone was supposedly able to turn base material into gold: it certainly worked for J. K. Rowling.

I am indebted to those luminaries of the financial services industry who seem to be a modern parallel to those medieval alchemists. Taking my gold, they promise returns that will outstrip bank interest and insist that this is the only way to beat inflation. If the bank’s paying 4% and inflation is 5%, the result is Mr Micawber’s ‘misery.’

When these allegedly high-yield, tax-free, low-risk investments all go pear-shaped, those same alchemists say that such a downturn was unprecedented and completely unpredictable. My own funds, managed by paid professionals in that industry because I’m a complete duffer, have an unerring habit of creeping slowly up during the good times, yet at the merest hint of a downturn they get sucked down like someone who realises where the Titanic is going but can’t find a lifeboat. Sure enough, gold turns into less gold. In recent weeks, scary news of 50% drops will of course require 100% rises just to get back to where they were. I would have been better off ignoring those ‘this is the only way to beat inflation’ pundits and instead spending the last decade piling up cash in old socks under the mattress. I would have been a lot better off sticking my savings in a bank deposit account. The current arrangement has all the disadvantages of a long-term deposit account - no immediate access to the money - without the benefit of fund growth.

As for the sub-prime meltdown, who in his right mind lends money to someone who demonstrably can’t make the repayments? Perhaps the type who realises exactly what he’s mis-sold, takes his big bonus and then does a runner before the borrower defaults and leaves taxpayers to sort out the unholy yet wholly predictable mess. It is unreasonable to expect that property prices will increase for ever to cover the debt. House prices cannot outstrip salaries ad infinitum. Eventually property becomes prohibitively expensive and the real-estate market goes pop experiences a correction.

Clearly the Goat has a PhD in Applied Hindsight.

I do not pretend to understand how the oil price is affected by all these machinations. It is however obvious that fluctuations in oil will have a major effect on the local Middle East hydrocarbon-based economies. I have an article from BusinessWeek, 13 March 2006. In it, there is a discussion to the effect that with oil at around $50 a barrel for the foreseeable future, Gulf states have never had it so good. They’re all flushed with cash and are able to invest at levels never before seen:

‘This year, with oil prices stuck in the $55-to-$65-per-barrel range, perhaps half a trillion dollars will land in OPEC coffers -- more than at any time since the boom of the 1970s and 1980s. The Mideast oil states alone will gather in $320 billion in oil and gas export revenues.’

Yet in January 2009, with oil at around that same $50 a barrel, those same Gulf states have joined the Greek chorus of financial hand-wringing. It’s amazing how quickly everyone forgets that $140 a barrel was a temporary spike, preferring to imagine that this has been the prevailing price since the dawn of Time.

My understanding is that budgets were previously based on anticipated income from flogging oil at say $30 a barrel. And then the 2009 budgets were set assuming an unending rise past $200 ‘to infinity and beyond.’ Hence the curtailing of spending plans once it became apparent that oil revenue would be lower and income wouldn’t keep pace with expenditure.

This is rather like me looking at my regular salary and working out that I can afford to make the payments on a Toyota Camry. Then, after receiving a one-off annual bonus, I extrapolate that as if I’ll get the same bonus every month for ever. So I go and buy a Bugatti Veyron. It all ends in tears, of course. Having reverted to my previous ‘real’ salary, I can barely keep up with the speeding fines let alone the bank repayments.

No-one can actually predict numbers accurately. If I could, there’s no way I’d be fiddling about with stocks, shares, equities, precious metals, real-estate or bank interest. I’d make my million every week by predicting the lottery results.

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Hogmanay

Christmas was a modest, quiet affair at the Crumbling Villa. Just the two of us, with Yours Truly handling the dinner while Beloved Wife discharged her contractual obligations by working until mid afternoon. We opened presents and then ate, before settling down to the traditional post-Christmas bloat in front of the telly. One of the gifts I received was the extremely practical flag - hand embroidered appliqué, no less - for attaching to the Goatmobile when desert driving. Other stuff included a book on how to deal with an architect and a “Teach Yourself Greek” computer program suite. As we’re heading down the self-build route for a house in Cyprus, these will be most welcome. You can tell if the software is effective if blogs start appearing by possibly some variant of Ο Τράγος Γκρινιάρης.

The Goat and his Beloved Wife decided weeks ago that seeing in the New Year would certainly not involve expensive tickets to a noisy bar or nightclub. Notwithstanding the dubious allure of ‘free selected beverages all night’ or a ‘glass of bubbly at midnight’, there are many more satisfactory ways to celebrate the annual December to January rollover.

We decided to go camping. The Yellow Box of Doom and his co-pilot would be joining us, as would various diving buddies, work associates and friends of friends. The guest list, including the ‘probably’ and ‘maybe’ brigades started to become long. At the actual event, it’d dwindled down to four cars: the Goatmobile, the YBOD, Louise with toddler offspring and two friends and, joining us after dark because he had to work until late, Louise’s hubby.

As it turned out, all of Dubai’s New Year celebrations were reported cancelled in the 31st December newspapers. To show solidarity, we’re told. I imagine a lot of very upset people. Not just the punters with their now worthless admission tickets, but the events organisers whose venues would spend all night impersonating an English seaside resort on a wet winter Wednesday. Quite how cancelling all New Year revelling in Dubai serves to benefit Palestine’s stand against the Zionist menace seems unclear...

I’d previously located a spot that would be easy 4x4 access for inexperienced drivers to negotiate in the dark. It was off the E77 near The Tiger Woods sandpit golf course and far enough out of town to avoid light pollution and traffic roar. Co-pilot brought along a couple of packs of Cyalume glow sticks. The idea was that the route to the camp site would be signposted with these to augment the sketch map and directions. In the event, only one vehicle would be arriving late, so I simply drove back to the road and escorted Colin to the camp site.

The Box o’Doom is now proudly adorned with a roof tent. [SMUGMODE] No sand in the bed for that couple, we were repeatedly assured. [/SMUGMODE] I’ve only recently come away from the Desert Challenge, so can unpack and erect my dome tent, pneumatic mattress et al in not very much time at all. This leaves more time for the serious business of Hogmanay: the beverages. Meanwhile Louise’s team struggled with an enormous double dome Pleasure Palace with entry hall, separate majlis and snooker room, which would have blotted out the sun had this not already retreated below the western horizon.

With fire pit dug, tiki torches lit and barbecue poised for sacrifice of meat products, I realised that we were actually closer to the road than I’d previously imagined. We could just see the street lights and could hear the constant low rumble of heavy trucks. Nevertheless, suggestions that we relocate further into the desert were met with howls of derision and anguish.

As the crescent moon and Venus both set, we’d have an excellent view of the canopy of stars. But alas, this was not to be. The stars vanished, as did the street lights. Fog had rolled in making visibility probably twenty metres or less. I’ve had dives with better viz. And it didn't arrive on little cat feet either. This sort of fog stomped in wearing wellies: the damp, cloying, soggy, wet stuff of Charles Dickens or Sherlock Holmes, leaving the cars, tents and camping gear all dripping with water. We huddled closer to the campfire, ate our barbecued food, drank, and chatted until midnight. Alcohol-induced wit, jokes and confessions whiled away the damp couple of hours until midnight.

Immediately after the Witching Hour, despite the crescent moon having set some hours previously, a display of full moons inexplicably occurred. There are positively no photos of that rather debauched spectacle.

My al cheabo tent was more or less waterproof. I suspect the little dampness within may have been condensation. Bearing in mind it was bought yonks ago at an Ace Hardware sale, I still think it represents excellent value. I would not attempt to use the same tent in a UK environment; not even in August. That said, with mattress and feather quilt and pillows, Beloved Wife and I had a comfortable and warm night, only occasionally punctuated by my phone bleating every time a new text message arrived.

What a splendid start to 2009! Bright, sunny and warm. No trace remained of last night’s fog apart from dew on all surfaces. All the happy and/or hungover campers assembled and fired up their gas stoves for a monstrous fry-up predominantly comprising haraaminal washed down with steaming mugs of tea, coffee or chocolate. During breakfast we were visited by an enormous herd of camels, which fascinated the toddler. When you’re two, camels must appear enormous; not that this dissuaded him from chasing them. By the time breakfast was complete the sun had pretty much dried the tents, so these could be struck and packed. We swept the campsite for trash to bag and remove, before making biodegradable tracks back to the highway and splitting up to go home.

To our annoyance it turns out that our broadband internet connection has failed. Surfing, blogging and Amazon will be on Ye Olde Dialle-Uppe until we carry out our New Year Resolution and get Itisalot to restore a decent connection. Hope springs eternal.

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