Some hae meat and canna eat...

And some wad eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
And sae the Lord be thankit

As anyone who has been on One UP holiday should be able to tell you, that is the Selkirk Grace by Mr Robert Burns, and the grace always offer when Katey is called from the kitchen to pray!

Last Saturday saw the British Women’s Association of Karachi’s Burns Supper, generously host by the British Deputy High Commissioner at his residence. Given that the DHC is currently Hamish Daniels and of true Scots blood, it was only right that he acted as Chieftain of the supper, complete with kilt. This was actually one of his last functions as he and Heather leave Karachi this Friday to begin their retirement in Heather’s homeland of Australia. They will be sorely missed as those who have been here throughout their tenure agree they are two of the best incumbents of the post we have ever had.

The supper was superbly organized and held outside in the gardens of the residence. A huge Scots Blue shamiana (Urdu for Marque, but without sides) had been erected and the table dressed in white table cloths, with the starched linen napkins folded to look like shirts with either a tartan bow tie or sash to decorate. The water bottles were also sporting tam o’shanters and kilts! The whole effect was fantastic, my only regret was that I only realized I didn’t have my camera when I walked in!

The evening was set to start at 8pm sharp, and unfortunately my 5 months in Karachi have taught be nothing! I duly arrived at few minutes before only to find that I was one of only five people who had turned up on time!! By 9pm the vast majority of the 250 or so guests had arrived and after a short attempt at starting some Scottish Country Dancing, which floundered after the Gay Gordon’s and the Cumberland Reel, the feast began with the arrival of the Chieftain and the piping in of the Haggis, the Address to the Haggis and then the Toast, Dinner was served.

At this point we benefited from the fact that the General Manager of the Avari Hotel, Karachi, is also a Scot. So the menu was delicious and include many Scottish delicacies including

Tweed Kettle
Prawn salad
Cullen Skink tart
Orkney Scallops
Arbroath Smokie

Chicken Howtowdie
Fillet of Beef Balmoral
Oatmeal dressed Tay Salmon
Scotch Collops with apples and spices
North Sea Scampi
Haggis
Auld Beekie Stovies

Scotch Trifle
Toffee Apple Tart
Blairgowrie cheesecake
Atholl Brose ice crem pudding

Gaelic coffee and shortbread fingers

All this available on a buffet to which you could help yourself and return!! I thoroughly enjoyed myself though I will say I did skip the sweet trolley as I was full of Haggis!

The dinner was followed by reading and recitations, with carriages at 1am. I actually sneaked out at about 11pm as I’m just not as young as I used to be and I needed my bed!!

Sunday dawned bright and very, very cold! I can safely say that Sunday was the coldest I have been since I left the UK. I came home from church via French Bakery armed with croissants and proceeded to eat brunch wrapped in my duvet!

Thankfully, today it would appear that winter is over and I even had to put the AC on in the classroom today, I love this country...

Its never to late to learn a new skill...

The new skill I have learnt is how to assist in the evacuation of 400 people from a school after a threatening phone call has been received!

At 8.30am on Monday our receptionist took a phone call making a non specific threat to the school. The SMT got together and had to decide what to do. We decide that we had no choice but to take it seriously and so we called the police and set the admin staff on the task of ringing parents to come and collect their offspring. Thankfully, all the staff and students took the whole thing in their stride and remained completely calm. The police arrived and checked over the school and nothing was found. They suspect that it was a crank call, but are investigating.

During all of this we became aware that the story had made the television news, however, the story they were telling was, that a bomb had gone off at the B.O.S. !! Aren’t the media wonderful! The media’s ability for creative writing was shown again Tuesday morning when the Karachi Times came out. There were about 12 column inches of which about 11.5 inches were incorrect!! In fact the got the name of our staff right and nothing else!

It was a bit worrying at the time and I was grateful when we had finally cleared everyone without incident, but it doesn’t make me want to leave. Yes it’s a new experience for me but there are many schools in the UK that have suffered the same thing.

The up side was that I got an unexpected half day of school so I could continue my Boston Legal marathon. So as they say, every cloud has a silver lining…

It's a staying in weekend...

I have spent this weekend under self imposed house arrest. This is because this weekend has been the Shi’a festival of Ashourah. This is when the Shi’as remember the death of Ali, who was the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson. The Shi’as remember this by processions and beating themselves. Which would be fine but the Sunnis don’t quite see things the same way, and therefore, there can sometimes be violent outbursts. Add to this that others may take advantage of the large crowds, we have been advised to stay indoors and so I have done that. This means that alongside my marking and preparation, I have also been enjoying a Boston Legal marathon and various films starting Dame Judi Dench!

This week has also seen back with Prof Ambreen, my dentist. She has advised me that not only have I broken a tooth, but also the tooth next but one was cracked. Given that the tooth between is also crowned, I am now the proud owner of three temporary crowns and am waiting for a call to go back and have my bridge fitted!

This week has also been a good one at work. I really feel that I have had a very productive week. I have put various systems in place which I believe will be good for the school, and I am ready to present some new ideas to the Heads of Department when we meet tomorrow.

Rehearsals are still underway for ‘An Inspector Calls’ and I am starting to worry somewhat as the cast still don’t know their lines and we only have 7 weeks to go before we open!! We also have to get the stage ready which shouldn’t be to difficult, apart from the fact that estimates from workmen are even less reliable than they are in the UK. So when Tanveer Carpenter says that it will only take a week, no one can quite believe it! After all he told us the Sports Hall floor would be ready by the end of September and it still not ready… well maybe one day In’shallah...

It has turned decidedly chilly…

I do feel I was got here under false pretences!! I was assured that the weather here was either ‘hot, or very hot’. This is just not true. This last week it has been really cold here, I mean it’s dropped to about 9 or 10 degrees Celsius! I don’t call that hot. True compared to the UK at the moment it’s probably a lot warmer than you are getting, but still it means that I have had to break out the sweaters!! I have also had to put another duvet on the bed it’s so cold.

Thankfully, my bags have turned up, unfortunately the ‘house elves’ at teh airport, hadn’t done my laundry so that all had to be done over the weekend.

I have also, struggled a little getting my body clock back into sync. Egypt is only 3 hours behind Pakistan but for the first time I have really struggled with jet lag. Thankfully I had Monday and Tuesday to get over it and by the time I got back to school on Wednesday, I was more or less back to normal (well as normal as I get!).

I am also once more under the gentle ministrations of Professor Ambreen and her wonderful team. For those only just joining the story, Prof Ambren is my dentist. On Thursday afternoon I bit down on to something hard and broken one of my teeth. So off I went to see Prof Ambreen and one her wonderful ladies started work on my tooth, I am now waiting to go back on Wednesday to continue working on another crown. If we carry on like this I will have ‘the world’s first bionic mouth’, which won’t be much use to me, as you know dear reader, I never use my mouth much…

All is safely gathered, well nearly all...

Well here I am back safely in my apartment in Karachi. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of my luggage! For the first time in my 25 years of international travel I have lost my luggage. This wasn’t a complete surprise as I was only on the ground for about 15 minutes at Abu Dhabi. The connection was only 60 minutes on paper and we left Cairo about 25 minutes late. So when I finally arrived in Abu Dhabi, I was only on the ground long enough to hear the call to say that my flight to Karachi was boarding and so it was straight onto the next plane. I was assured by the cabin crew that if I had made the flight then my luggage would!! Her faith was unfounded! I have yet to hear from the airline but I am hopeful that my bags will turn up on tonight’s flight.

Things here in Karachi are fine and they seem very quiet. Those who were here during the troubles say it was a bit grim as they weren’t able to go out for a few days but thankfully everything is calm at the moment...

And so the end is near...

I am currently sat in Sharm el Shiekh airport making use of their free wireless internet, via Thomas' laptop. Technology never ceases to amaze me, especially when it works!

We are heading back to Cairo tonight and then I head back to Karachi tomorrow. It has been good to spend the last couple of days with Thomas. I may have mentioned this before, but he is a wonderful person, of whom I am inordinately proud, and very thankful to have in my life. We have done very little apart from laze by the pool, swim in the sea and talk and as B.T. used to tell us 'It's good to talk'!

We have also started to make plans for my school trip to Egypt which is in about 10 weeks, Thomas is going to join us for some of it and the best part for me is that we arrive on the 14th March which is Thomas' 21st birthday, isn't God good! He will probably be with us for the Cairo leg and then go back to Alex for his exams and then meet us back in Cairo so that he can fly back with us to Karachi and then stay with me for at least 10 days.

It will be fantastic to have him with, as there is so much of my life there that I want to show him. I have already started to practice the commentary (out loud) for the trip as I drive around the city and the places we will visit (yes I know it sounds barmy, but it's part of my charm!!). We have said to each other a couple of times this week how fortunate we are to see so much of God's wonderful creation and to be able to share our journeys with each other and of course, dear reader with you!

The news I have received form Karachi is encouraging and it would seem that for the moment the normal service has resumed, which is of course what is normal for Karachi, which is as you know is chaos, but you do have to love it.

One other thing I will share with you, is that you never know who might be reading your blog. On the day of the assassination of Benazir, I received an email from a journalist at the Mail on Sunday asking to contact me. When I explained that I was in fact in Egypt and wouldn't be back in Karachi until the 6th, the communications went no further. So you never know, in the future I might be quoted in the British Press, is the UK ready for this we ask...?

It's just like I remember it...

Thanks to the ministrations of EgyptAir, Thomas and I arrived safe and well in Sharm el Shiekh, yesterday afternoon. The journey was great and at Cairo airport there is a special terminal just to fly to Sharm and Hurghada, which made the whole process very smooth indeed.

I did get into a conversation with an American at the baggage carousel about the situation in Pakistan and I was shocked by how passionate I got about a country that I have lived in for only four months. Thankfully the guy was not typical of his countrymen as he had grown up in Tehran and realised that there is a world that exsists outside of the 'U.S. of A'.

Thomas and I were here just over two years ago, just before I started work in Great Houghton and he started university. Even then he was making an effort to communicate in Arabic, now he is so confident and capable in the language, its a pleasure to watch. I don't have a clue what's going on as I have about 6 words of Arabic.

Today we have had a very lazy day, first by the pool and then on the patio in front of our room. We are staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Resort which is sort of like an Egyptian version of Centre Parcs, which touches of Butlins!! There are even some Red Coats knocking about! It does have some advantages over the other two places though and the main one is the weather. I am certain that I would not be swimming off Skegness beach, though we did manage a couple of dips in the Red Sea today to swim with the fishes! It is just like swimming in an aquarium swimming here, there are thousands of beautiful coloured fish, sometimes just inches away from your face.

After our swimming and reading by the pool we retired to our room to change and then headed for lunch. This was a delicious canelloni and then back to the room to sit on the patio in front of the room.

Here I challenged Thomas to Scrabble, to which he reluctantly agreed. Here there is a history you have to understand, for a long time Thomas invariably beat me at Scrabble and I could only claim the odd victory. However, after 9 months working at The Dearne High in Rotherham and playing Scrabble every day with Steve Smith I have improved enourmously and now I have the upper hand. Though even by my standards today was a bit of a walk over as I won 390 -240! I have to gloat where I can as he is so much better than me at most things, I have savour these little victories. The only other time I usually come out on top is when we go bowling.

We are now in Sharm Old Town about to visit a restuarant we first visited on our last visit, it served us then, with the most excellent fish and we are hoping that they will come up trumps once more...

Seven years on...

It is exactly 7 years since I last stayed in Cairo. I was here over 2000/01 New Year staying with my friend Andrew, who was teaching here at the time. This is the same friend who is responsible for my current life in Karachi ( and also one of my best friends in the world!!).

Thomas and I stayed last night in the Rameses Hilton, which nearly didn't come off. We had booked with an internet site and assumed all was well. When we arrived there was no record of the booking. We then used the hotel internet to try and find out what was going on and were charged LE43, for the privilaege, which is about 4GBP for 15 minutes! Which by any standard is scandelous. We found that eh internet company had be unable to make our booking so we asked at the desk how much aroom would be and he quotes US$310, 150GBP, 50 pounds more than we had booked on line. Thomas set off for an internet cafe and managed to find another site and booked on there for 90, and finally we were shown to our room!

Aftert this we went out to dinner and attempted after that to go for a felucca ride on the Nile, unfortunately there was no wind and so we ended up drinking cocktails at the top of The Grand Hyatt Hotel instead looking out over the river and the city!

We are currently catching up with the world on the internet before going to the airport to fly down to Sharm, for three days by the Red Sea where we intend to eat, drink, swim, read and sleep!! This is a novelty for Thomas, as being a poor student he would normally be taking the 8 hour bus ride, rather than the one hour flight, the difference being about 50GBP in cost. However, dear reader, he is travelling with me! The bus was never and option!