It's been too long

So I'm sorry I haven't been very good at posting this year. As the calendar flipped the page to March, I figured it would be a good time to get back to the keyboard, meaning there’s a one in four chance of this being published before April. So what have you missed?

Well, the month of January is what Dubai considers winter. This year, it actually got quite cold too. But temperatures as low as 18degC were nothing compared with the rain.

It rained for about four days on the trot, not particularly heavy rain, but incessant. As the drainage system of Dubai seems to be based on the premise that it never rains, ever, this started to cause a few problems. With street run-offs blocked with sand and dead camels, the road slowly and surely started to flood.

Queuing up to drown

This picture shows how deep it was getting on the way out of my estate onto the main road. Lou was feeling nervous driving through these puddles in her big 4x4, so imagine how I felt in a low slung sports hatchback!

I was relatively lucky, having a short distance to drive each day, but it was strange to see where the deepest of puddles would form. Annoyingly, there were two like something out of a Jules Verne novel at either end of my street so each drive in or out of The Greens was a gauntlet run, always fearful of attack from giant squid.

I hope the door stays watertight

Dubai residents were sent into a wild panic by all of this, cars were being driven with their hazard lights on, which made it more tricky to spot the ones that had become flooded and were stuck. In neighbouring Sharjah, where the utilities infrastructure is even worse than the hotch-potch drains in Dubai, cars floated away, drivers were stunned by mystery plunge pools and residents left there flooded homes in boats.

ARGGHHH!!! TOO DEEP!!!!

And then, as quickly as it had started, the rain stopped, the sun came out and we all expected the flooding to abate in record time. Not so. Huge lakes of dirty water defied the physics of evaporation and it took days for the ponds at the end of the street to drain. Once the flood waters had subsided, we were left with huge dunes of sand on the road. Exciting if you'd pull out to overtake a lorry at 120km/h only to find yourself skidding across a desert.

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The following week, Dubai was visited by something potentially more devastating than any storm.

George W. Bush.

As part of his tour of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Countries), he was going to drive into Dubai from Abu Dhabi via cavalcade. Unfortunately, as Mr Bush is not one for sitting in traffic so this would require the closure of Sheik Zayed road, Dubai's main highway. News of the closures spread through word of mouth and facebook and we all started to panic about how long it would take to get in for the morning. Displacing the thousands of cars that use the road each day onto the already crowded smaller, parallel, residential streets would be like pouring glue on the roads. Some were planning on leaving home at around 4.30 am to get in on time.

Then, at the height of the panic, the government had a masterstroke. At 4.30pm on the day before W. was due to effectively disable the transport system, a public holiday was announced.

With what we decided would be christened, "George Bush Day", Dubai decided it would be better for businesses to lose millions of Dirhams in revenue than to hire the war-mongering retard a helicopter instead. So we all stayed home and watched back to back episodes of "Blossom" which is Dubai's alternative to Fern and Phillip.

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I was concerned about what lay in Dubai's future after January. With Flood and George W. both having visited, we had already seen two Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so I was expecting Famine to be next up.

Fortunately, the month of February brought nothing more than a pleasant warming, long weekends spent at the beach and a return to Karaoke form for Lou.

"Charlie Parrots" is a bar at the Oasis Beach Hotel and after we'd spent the day sunning ourselves at their private beach, we popped in for a few drinks to discover that the karaoke competition was back. Offering the overall winner a holiday for two in Copenhagen, the format involved a series of weekly heats where the two best singers would advance to the final at the end of Feb.

Last year's final was our first introduction to the place. We were just popping in to get a drink before heading for a meal at the restaurant upstairs when Lou got up and sang a song. What we didn't realise was that they had run weeks of heats to reach the final that evening but were also opening the competition up to one "wildcard" entrant. Lou won the vote and suddenly we were there for the rest of the night as she and 10 others sang for a panel of judges.

It was taken very seriously by those who had come through the heats, with changes of clothes and dancers being in evidence.

At the end of the night, Lou had got such a massive reaction from the crowd, I figured she was going to come out and win it. Sadly, they decided this might be a bit unfair on those who had been in for sound-checks (seriously) so they hurriedly created a runners up prize, a voucher to replace out lost dinner (valued high enough for us all to have beans on toast).

Anyway, despite being extremely merry by the end of the night, Lou powered through to the finals a couple of weekends ago.

The future of rock & roll

This time, I decided to have a stab at the "wildcard" simply to then sing quite badly and make Lou look better by comparisson. Sadly, I forgot that I have less the voice of an angel and more the voice of an angler. From Glasgow. So it was all down to Lou to get us that trip to Copenhagen. I joined the friends who had turned out to offer their very vocal backing.

Reduced to a supporter

The competition was of a varied standard. There were some great singers although you got the impression that they had a specific song they liked and had sung a million times before. That meant the perfomances were on the whole, pretty good in round one.

At the same time, there were some cringe-worthy displays. One gentleman (who had been in the previous competition too) sang music hall hits in a mediocre fashion like something from "Hi-de-hi". There was also the baffling site of one girl singing "Whip Crack Away" with a real whip. The real challenge to Lou's chances seemed to be in the form of a Croatian gentleman singing an Aerosmith number with an obvious passion for rock.

The competition

Lou was second to last to sing and her first song was the Dusty Springfield classic, "Son of a Preacher Man" This was delivered with gusto and not a small amount of saucy movements. The crowd, now nicely warmed up, went wild for it, and so did the judges.

This lady rocks

With the first round over, it became clear that certain entrants really were one trick pony's and didn't have a second song in there repertoire to call on. Instead they decided to bank on gimmicks to try and win over the crowd. And so we were "treated" to the odd sight of a couple of strippers (neither of which would make much money at Stringfellow's, especially the big fella).

Lou's main rival came back with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", which is only the most famous rock song in the world. He didn't sing it very well, to be honest with you, but he didn't really need to, as all of the audience were up and singing it for him. Proper karaoke.

Lou's return was total rock out mode. I had been slightly worried that the long wait (and we'd been there three and a half hours by the time she sang her final number) coupled with nerves might have been compensated for by the liberal application of wine to the neck region, and the accompanying degradation of her vocal control. So I insisted, in true Colonel Tom style, that she was to drink no wine that evening. She was allowed to drink Corona until it came out her nose mind.

Lou "working it"

Bon Jovi has never sounded so good and the crowd rose as one to salute Lou as the Queen of Karaoke. But had she done enough to usurp the king.

The judges retired to deliberate and we waited nervously. Eventually the verdict was announced as "the closest decision ever" and having "caused some serious debate between the judges" but, sadly, Lou took second place and Rock Rascal. I think she deserved to win, but it has been suggested that I am biased.

So, we missed out on the trip to Copenhagen but the consolation was 3 nights bed and breakfast in the Oasis Beach Tower hotel apartments with views over the palm and full access to the hotel facilities. We're going to take it as a weekend in April and it'll be like a holiday that we can walk to.

More news soon, I promise!

Let me know what you have been up to in the comments box below. 'Lets make this place a two way street people! ;o)