New Year Ballade

Make the best of hogmanay -
it's never easy, but we try.
Should we drink the night away
or count the seconds as they fly
towards the bells that signify
the moment we've been waiting for
when we can raise the age-old cry -
another year, another war.

Send your sons into the fray.
No need to worry. We apply
elastic combat rules that say
only civilians have to die.
Geneva's dead and buried. Why

Season's Greetings, Everyone!

Paraglider is flying out tonight, with a view to getting home, snow permitting and courtesy of First Great Western train service, around noon on Christmas Eve. Season's Greetings to all Paranormal regulars and visitors, and if I don't 'see' you through the coming week, best wishes for a happy, healthy and Paranormal 2010.

Jesus, God and Santa Claus - one man's journey

When I was very young, God had a long white beard and lived in Heaven. Jesus had a shorter reddish-brown beard, long hair and a halo. Jesus and God seemed very nice, but not really in the same league as Santa Claus.

Santa and God could see us, all of us, all the time. They knew if we were being good or bad. Jesus's job was to watch us sleeping and make sure we were OK till the morning. Then, I

Searching for Sofas and More String Theory

Since installing the amazing Feedjit gadget in my sidebar, I've been fascinated at what search strings are leading visitors to the Paranormal. I'm not talking about my regulars (welcome!) who mostly come direct or from the UAE Community, but those random hits, courtesy of Google, in response to search queries. A recent post, Dangerous things, sofas, seems to attract sofa-searchers from the

Aliens land in Doha

Reported sightings near the Corniche of giant brown ants or large sea-crabs (descriptions vary) have been under investigation for some weeks. Perhaps coincidentally, these sightings follow a discredited claim from a Stufital customer to have seen a bright object in the shape of an octopus hovering somewhere over Mushereib. However, this appears to have been the full moon through the bottom of an

On the Breaking of Bonds

What's best about living abroad is the range and change of people we meet. It's a truism that every lost soul at the bar has a story to tell. That applies every bit as much in the local back home as it does in Stufital or Paranormal. The difference is in the stories, which tend to be more extreme, adventurous or simply bizarre among ex-pats. I suppose it's to be expected that people who have

The King is Dead

The King of Fashion and, just along the street, the King of Shoes, are no more. Casualties of the Heart of Doha project, these venerable emporia have gone the way of the dodo, in the path of the slum-hungry bulldozers. A shame, really. No doubt a shop or two will feature in the new Heart, but will they have doors to the street? Will they have brash, friendly names? And most of all, will they

Muntazah, Maya and the Mad Dash Home

In 2002, I celebrated my 50th birthday on the 25th floor of a tower block on Shaikh Zayed Road. It wasn't my party. In fact it was an unlikely annual event to mark Finnish Independence Day and Burns Night (of which it was neither). I remember thinking it was a strange place for a 'Westie Coastie' Scottish kid to have ended up. After all, my brother and I had accepted, 45 years previously, that

Who moved my Cheese?

Now that all the great and good bloggers, journalists, reporters and general pundits have wrung every last drop of spin from Dubai's little local difficulty, the time is right for a considered and serious evaluation from the intellectual wasteland that is the Paranormal Hotel. Anyone who saw it coming must have realised they couldn't do anything about it except talk, so no change there. Anyone