Dunestock

We are having such a lovely time with visitors staying at the moment. Right now, Shirley, my cousin, and Frostie her husband are staying with us. They leave tomorrow just as our Garrick arrives to live with us and work here for two months before going back to uni in Auckland. Other cousins Charles and Kristen arrived early this morning and will stay until Thursday. Ian and I and the cuzzies will all meet in the UK at the end of this week for a special wedding - Shirley's daughter Carlie is getting married in Tunbridge Wells. So we are going around the souq, sightseeing, hitting the malls and generally trying to show everybody a good time. It's such fun and we feel so blessed to be able to see people we love, even though we live so far away now.

Yesterday was the long-awaited yearly event "Dunestock" - a music festival out in the desert at - where else - the singing dunes where local musicians strut their stuff in a fund-raiser for Doha Players, the local theatre company. We arranged to meet our lovely group of friends there, and an advance party of blokes went out to set up gazebos, place carpet on the sand, place chairs and tables and generally have a prime spot looking ready to party in style for the more gorgeous half of the group when we arrived three hours later at 2pm.

It should have been a clue to us when we couldn't see very far in front of us driving out there - a sandstorm had started and it looks like dusty fog if you look out of a window. If you are in the midst of it, it feels like you are being sandblasted in a very warm and gritty hurricane. However, full of optimism we pressed on, past the cars that were leaving the festival, on through the more hardy partygoers to our site.

We made a valiant attempt. We drank arabic coffee that Leyla brought along, climbed the singing dunes, caught up with just about everyone we knew, watched Leo and Robbie and Robbie's friend Shamus making their way around in their rainbow wigs, bought the teeshirt and generally prepared ourselves to have a good time. But then it started to unravel. One of the gazebos blew in and caught Leyla on the back of her head. Sand blew in our eyes. Grit filled our ears and mouth. The chairs blew over. We beat a strategic retreat to Jenny and Rob's house who let the disreputable, sand-encrusted crowd spread our picnic food on their pristine table and socialise the evening away in their lovely house, where the only hot air was the sound of the guys telling each other lies as fast as they could.

When Frostie quietly let it be known that he was short of breath and his voice was 4 octaves lower than normal, we said our farewells and whisked him off to Doha Clinic to see a doctor. He was given a nebuliser and slowly came right. Apparently going out in a sandstorm is the worst thing you can do if you have asthma. Apparently the clinic had hordes of people coming through with breathing problems yesterday.