Valentine Birthday

Valentines Day is a remarkably big deal here. It seems to bring out the romantic side of the locals. There's lots of roses and hearts everywhere. I bought Ian his pressie (A helium heart balloon that said "I Love You " on one side and "I'm Crazy About You!" on the other). And a voucher from Virgin Megastore, fount of all good books and music. And a card, contents classified. He bought me two dozen red roses....beautiful.


Our friends Oussama and Leila threw a valentines day bash for a few couples. Bring a plate they said, came and have a few fun games, find out how much your spouse really knows about you, that kind of evening. As Nanna was here, we seized the opportunity to go off and have fun. However the randomness that is such a feature of Ian's and my life together reared its head. We turned up, full of anticipation, with a plate of savouries; of course twenty minutes late with me berating Ian on the way. To our surprise, there were no other cars there and Leila and Sam appeared to be getting into their car to go out for the evening. When they spied us Sam immediately said "Sorry, I'm so sorry", while Leila shouted "Tomorrow! It's tomorrow night!" Why Sam apologised I'm really not sure, it should have been us apologising. So off we went back home with our tail between our legs and our plate of savouries and had a feast with Nanna.

The next night we set off again, with a new plate of savouries, ready to tell the story of how we arrived 23 hours early the night before. There was a wondrous crowd there and some new people we hadn't met before. As always over here, there were people from all corners; Canada, Lebanon, USA, South Africa, Germany, Uzbekistan, the Ukraine. There were all kinds of games - dancing, a blindfolded obstacle course where your partner had to tell you where to go, balloon popping, general knowledge. Ian and I won the prize for how well we knew each other, but they reckoned that we had an advantage because we have only been married for a year; they were all having to remember 20 years or more back.

Lina, Sam and Leila's maid who is from Indonesia, was unobtrusively around. She has left a child and husband behind in Indonesia. Despite earning a pittance by our standards, she will be able to buy property when she goes home in two years time. Lina does the housework and some childcare for Sam and Leila - they have a little three-year old daughter.

In the end the evening turned into a great old hooley with lots of dancing. But not any old dancing. Leila is a fantastic arabic dancer, so she put on her music and taught all the women a few belly dancing moves, and also some dances where you move around together in a circle - kind of like arabic linedancing, if you can imagine that. Then, not to be outdone, the men got up and learned how to do arabic dancing too. So we danced separately, as they do in this part of the world, men with men, women with women. In the end the only one left standing was Alain, a Lebanese guy, who was energetically shaking his tail feather long after we had all collapsed. "This is such FUN", he shouted to us all, his teeth flashing, "I feel like going to a nightie club!"

"Good-bye", we said finally to our hosts. We'd had such fun.

"Happy birthday", said Lina solemnly to everyone as they left.