Drinking – or rather, not drinking

Having lived a fairly normal life of a 20-something man, i used to spend a lot of my free time in the pub, and, it must be said, it was a source of a great deal of good times, good friends and great memories, and of course the inevitable lack of memory.

Living in a country now therefore, where drinking is strictly forbidden did leave rather a gap in my life for a while. Now whilst i say it is strictly forbidden, the human spirit (or rather love for spirits) is indomitable, so it does exist in both home-brew and black market forms.

Now home-brew beer, at least in the case in point, involves putting yeast and sugar solution into a vat of non-alcoholic lager, and leaving it to ferment for a few weeks…now the process of refining this varies, but generally it’s best when siphoned into bottles, left for another week or two, and then a third time. Finally you end up with (reasonably) clear, flat and ridiculously strong lager. To turn this into something palatable (and i use the term loosely) this then has to be mixed with more alcohol free beer. The resulting ‘beverage’ varies enormously in strength and taste, but in the absence of any alternative, it serves a purpose.

There is also a home-brewed spirit called ‘sid’ now i don’t know if that’s the right spelling, or indeed why it’s gained such a moniker, but it’s a clear spirit made from i know not what and distilled to the point where spillages could cause irreparable damage to most anything it touches. Nobody of course warned me of this the first time i had a try, and it seems i was fortunate to only lose the use of the left side of my body, and not my sight. It is truly abhorrent, but merely proves what lengths we will go to for a drink.

Tragically though, as i write this on a Tuesday night, i do so looking forward to tomorrow night, where i will be partaking of more of the same! Strange how my memory of Thursday mornings seems to disappear so quickly…

Driving

Once again i made it home through the death-defying act of driving in Riyadh, which almost defies description, but i will do my best to outline the basics for you:

1. Mirrors and Indicators are entirely optional

2. Lane markings are, at best, for guidance only

3. Driving in the dark is best employed with lights off, this way when you approach someone at 90 mph and flash your lights, they really will take notice

4. If there are too many people in front of you at traffic lights, no problem, simply mount the pavement, or the unused filter lane and pull to the front and take your place firmly in the middle of the junction where you can’t see the traffic lights change and wait for the horn-blasts to confirm you should now pull away

Now this is just a small set of some of the challenges of driving around Riyadh, the real joy of all this is the speed at which these manoeuvres are undertaken; now we have all been in jostling traffic, but generally this is at less than 10 mph, not at 60…but therein lies the genius of it – everyone expects everyone else to drive the same way, so you don’t have to try and be careful, you simply have to forget everything you’ve ever learned about a vehicular discipline…and be prepared for evasion at any time.

Saudi is a country of massive contrast in wealth terms – the uber-rich sheikhs are well recognised throughout the world, but the underclass, and the expatriate communities from the subcontinent make the wealth of these people even more striking. Seeing $200,000 cars is reasonably commonplace, but not nearly so commonplace as $200 cars; I have never seen so many 20 year old Datsuns and Toyotas, many of which seem to actually be held together with sheer will, and clearly the will of some of the drivers leaves a little to be desired. In addition to the small Japanese saloons, there are also a large number of old American SUVs (made of steel and the size of a studio apartment), which mean that the vast majority of road-users have a lot less to lose in terms of damage to their car than i do.

There is a driving test here i am led to believe, but finding evidence of it on the road is a rather difficult undertaking, especially when you consider that under local law, the eldest male in the family is allowed to drive, so if the father is unable to drive for any reason, the eldest son is allowed to do so, even if he is only barely capable of seeing over the wheel. Seeing a 12 year old behind the wheel of an American SUV nearly twice his age does little to bolster your confidence on the road.

For all this, driving does have a massive charm here, and provided you’re prepared to be frustrated, scared and horrified in equal measure, getting around is very effective, largely because the local authorities’ approach to accidents or road debris is simply to let vehicles go past; roads do not get closed for 5 hours because someone has chosen to redecorate the central reservation, for that  reason, coupled with the very liberating feeling of driving with your eyes closed, i applaud it.

British Heatwave

The UK is about to be gripped by a dreadful and searing heatwave i am being reliably (and repeatedly) informed by Sky News, temperatures are going to soar to 34 degrees centigrade (that’s over 90 in old money). It is also expected to raise the ‘heatwave alert level’ to level 3 – yet another means by which to measure how the UK authorities feel the populous are entirely incapable of understanding simple principles without having a comparative measure, terror levels, pandemic levels, flood watch levels and now heat wave levels.

Context i think is important here; it’s no secret it’s warm in the middle east, very warm; today for example the temperature touched 50 degrees (in Fahrenheit that’s ‘lots’) and there is no heatwave threat level here, just a general understanding that if your sandal melts to the pavement, perhaps you should be indoors, and if you don’t drink any water, you’re going to die. It’s not difficult is it?

Don’t get me wrong, the prevalence of air conditioning here is the only thing that makes living in heat like this bearable, but the number of cars on the road which were build in years when air conditioning came in the form of a wind-down windows (yes, where you turn a handle and the window goes up or down, imagine that) means that it must still be possible to survive in conditions like this without it.

As i write this, it’s 7.30 at night, and it’s been dark for an hour…the temperature? 43 degrees…wonder what heatwave threat level that would be.