Burns' Night in Jimmy's Bar

It takes exactly the right amount of Glenkinchie to trigger a spontaneous but flawed rendering of Holy Willie's Prayer in a corner of a pseudo New Yorkian bar in an international hotel in Doha, to a small select audience of two, one of whom works for 30 seconds occasionally, by releasing a button, while the other writes about it.
In other words, surrealism is alive and well in Qatar. Probably,

By Way of Wintery Summary

Nothing much has happened in my first few days back in Doha. The sewage tanker has not been bought after all, but the hopeful vendor has adopted a new policy of moving it to a different location each morning (never more than 400 yards from the old location) and returning it at night. As it is now as dusty as the rest of its environs and bespattered with the season's first muddy rain, the chances

Forty-Seven-Thousand Girls wanted for Light Duties

I came across an interesting statistic recently, all the more interesting because the source, who will remain nameless, is usually fairly reliable in such matters. We were talking about FIFA 2022 and some of the changes that Qatar will have to make if they are to meet the expectations, not merely of the organisers, management and players, but also of the half-million-or-so fans who are expected

The Latin on British Coins

Paraglider returns to Doha next week. Meanwhile, I wonder how many tourists to Britain ever notice the cryptic messages that surround the Queen's head on our coinage? Apart from the coherent Elizabeth II and the date, our pounds bear the legend DG REG FD. Not very informative. The two pound coins, having more space available, expand this to DEI GRA REG FID DEF, which is better, but still a bit