Desert storms

There’s a lot of weather we’ve been having. No-one has yet said “Global Warming”: in fact, the local meteorological office has been at great lengths to tell us that there’s no such thing as typical weather for this part of the world, so it can’t possibly be due to Global Warming.

We’ve had several spectacular electric storms, with lightening rolling in from the Gulf, and several days of quite heavy rain. Of course, being British and having seen the weather forecast, I’ve been carrying my folding umbrella with me: the other evening I was the only lunatic striding purposefully home through a quite heavy downpour. Naturally, being a modern grid city intended for the automobile, there isn’t much protection from the wind so, whilst my head and upper torso were quite dry, the rest of me got soaked. I like to think I gave some small amusement to the security guards at LuLu as I dropped in for some shopping on the way. The girl at the checkout was nice enough to ask whether it had stopped raining.

People attending the recent outdoor Coldplay concert at the Emirates Palace got unexpectedly wet. I couldn’t possibly comment. Of course, in the UK there would have been people making small fortunes from selling umbrellas, plastic sheets, rain capes and the like. The Almighty must prefer classical music, as it stayed dry for Andrea Bocelli on the preceding evening.

The trouble with rain is that we’re not really feared up for it: at work the storm water drains were so blocked up with sand and cigarette butts that there were several small floods outside the site Mosque; on at least one occasion when the waters rose fast enough to carry off the sandals of the faithful, dutifully left outside during prayers. On another occasion some bright spark decided to send a man in a digger to see if he could push the waters out of the way; to give the lad his due he tried for quite some time before they concluded it wouldn’t work.

At home, when the rain blows the wrong way it proves that the workmen didn’t bother to seal the gaps between the window frames and the wall: water comes in under the balcony door. Tiles floors really do have some advantages.

Rain is sufficiently unusual for the standards of driving, already eccentric to say the least, to become deeply frightening: the sounds drifting through the open window sound like the audio track to Deathrace V: the Desert Storm. It’s enough to make one yearn for some soft refreshing raindrops.