Brummagem or Bust

What were you doing twenty four years ago today? It was 1996.

My family and I were about to drive out of our compound, Al Faisalia, and Riyadh for the last time. Dad had been in Saudi since 1979, and the rest of us joined him in the early ‘90s. Momma, Emily, Richard and I were there for 6 years or so with a brief interlude after being evacuated from the Gulf War.

I loved Saudi Arabia. I still miss living there to this day. I actually burst into tears last year when it was announced that tourist visas were happening. David and I started pricing up a trip so that I could go home, if only for two weeks. I miss the smell of the desert and I have done ever since we left. I have never felt settled in Britain because the first 7 years of my life were spent on planes, on holiday, in the desert, in Cyprus, at the Red Sea, or travelling through the Middle East and Europe. Britain is where I was born. We are all Brummies born and bred, just with a bit of Arab mixed in.

So 24 years ago today, we packed up the car, roof rack and trailer, and left the compound, left Riyadh, and headed towards the Red Sea coast. Momma P kept diaries of the journey home and I have since typed it all up. I have also mapped the journey on Google Maps. The diaries are getting so fragile now so I try not to handle them very much. We still have bazillions of photos that have never been sorted properly and I’ve been intending to do this for literal years. Somewhere there's even retro 90s video recorder footage of us at Petra. 

Sometimes when I think that my life is going nowhere, I have no concrete plans, and that I should have everything figured out, I just think of my Momma. She was 37 when she had me, and 45 when we left Saudi. I’d hazard a guess and say it was her biggest adventure and leap of faith after first agreeing to go to Saudi in the first place. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t (in my eyes) achieved much or done anything exciting in my life as the big adventure could happen in the next decade, I just have to wait and see.

For the 20^th anniversary of leaving Riyadh I started a Tumblr blog with auto-posts of daily diary entries and interspersed them with photos. This blog was deleted a few years ago as a photo of me as a 7yr old with no top on got flagged for breaching nudity rules, so I just deleted the whole thing. I would love to get the diaries published as a proper book, even if it’s only relevant to our direct family and the few friends we are still in touch with from the compound.

I would absolutely love the chance to go back to Saudi and experience it now. It will have changed so much, and of course I would now have to cover up as I am a woman. When I lived there I didn’t have to cover as I was a child, and could run around topless (and sometimes shorts-less too). Looking at Google Maps of Riyadh, the sprawl is just astounding. When we lived there, our compound was on the very edge of the city boundary, and the compound next door was a building site. The road to our gate was a dirt track, and we used to go out the gate by our house (where the water tankers came in) and race our go karts in the desert.

I could waffle all day about this, but I’d end up bursting into happy tears like I did in the middle of Bilston Market last year. The simple thought that one day I might be able to go back just made be bawl like a baby in public! So I thought I’d just share some pictures of this day 24 years ago, plus some others of life in Saudi. Maybe one day I’ll get the actual book done with more photos and memories from the trip home. Maybe.

Also, yes we do still have the car & trailer.

Socks and sandals!

Those tans!

Picnics, Saudi style

Back in the day when I could actually roller skate 

Pretty sure we still have that cool bag.

I absolutely terribly MISS the desert storms!! I have never witnessed anything like them. They were INCREDIBLE.

Me, desert queen, friend of all wildlife, always eating.

Poppa flying a kite in the desert

Razzin' the go karts around the desert between the compounds

Momma P reppin' Cadbury World like a true Brummie

A Hot Day at Plot 31

No matter what is happening I am still in lockdown mode, trying to escape the madness. I am limiting trips outside to shopping and allotmenting. My Twitter muted words list is growing day by day – I just wish I could do the same in the real world. I had a day at the allotment to give David some quiet and space, but also to shift a load of plants from the garden.

Momma P and I (mostly Momma P) have sorted the two dalek compost bins at her house and bagged up the homemade compost to use on the allotment. It was awful. Turns out eggshells, ginger, avocado, potato skins, and the compost caddy bin bags really do not rot down very well in domestic compost. We also found lots of stuff that Poppa has obviously put in – cat food sachets, mostly.

We used this compost to fill the new raised beds on Plot 31 to bulk them out. The plan is to cover this with cardboard and then put down a top later of fresh peat free compost into which I will plant things.

A couple of weeks ago Momma P and I visited our local M&S food hall because there was no queue and it was so successful it has now become my favourite place for grocery shopping. It was on one of these trips that we found New Horizon peat free compost for sale! I have used this a lot on the allotment and I really like it, but it is hard to find it for a decent price and harder to find anywhere that will deliver it. Usually we drive in convoy to a local shop and I put four bags in my car and four in mommas.

SO! On this lovely hot day, I packed the car up and dropped everything off at the allotment before nipping back to M&S for compost. I got five bags and have used it to top dress two of the new beds, and also in the holes that I dug for the tomatoes, courgettes, and loofah. I then put whatever was left in the sweet pea bed just to use it up. I am going to go back next week to get more compost to finish off the other two beds, and these ones will then be ready for planting. Which is quite a good job really, as I now have 10 more bloomin’ courgette plants to find space for!!

I have been quite excited this week to discover that a little bird I saw about a month ago but dismissed, is actually what I thought it was. I have a GOLDCREST visiting my bird feeding station!! An actual goldcrest. Britain’s smallest bird, smaller than a wren. It has taken a fancy to the fat balls, and it doesn’t mind me getting close to watch and take photos. I now recognise the call it makes and spend a lot of time smiling and watching. So cute. So tiny.

The pond has been deweeded. I found a leech which is a good sign, and a territorial hoverfly really doesn’t like it when the honeybees come down to drink. I have seen my first two dragonflies on the allotment – a banded demoiselle, and a broad bodied chaser! No photos as I was too excited. I topped up the pond with around 40L of water as the water level was looking quite low. I do have tadpoles in the pond, as well as snails and plenty of mosquito larvae.

So on the allotment now I have sweetcorn, loofah/luffa, tomatoes, courgette, butternut squash, pumpkin, potatoes, salad crops (radish, spring onion, mizuna, rocket, carrot, corn salad, lettuce), parsnip, peas, sunflowers, and borage. I have also planted gladioli, sweet peas, nasturtium, calendula, and love in a mist. The pond area has had varying wildflower seeds thrown around, so I hope that some of them take. I realised that I haven’t got any beans so I need to get some in soon, and I want more peas as I eat them straight off the plant and they don’t even make it home.

I am very much enjoying having this little space and having the time to just wander around and do bits here and there. It is all coming together and while there is still a lot to do, it is really taking shape and looking like how I visualised it ten years ago when I first got it.

A rogue self seeded nasturtium growing in the path between the new raised beds

Garlic

Salad bed

A honeybee at the pond

My allium is having an allium

Courgette ft feet

 

Week Seven of Furlough

Week Seven. Been a bit of a neither here nor there sorta week. I (again) feel like I haven’t achieved very much but I (again) have done quite a lot.

Homelife

We have been trying new things and for the second and third time in my life, I have eaten stir fry! We used chicken super noodles, and I have discovered that I quite like them. Prawn crackers are taking a bit of getting used to, though.

David bought me two geology map jigsaws so I have started the first this week. I have done the outside, the cross sections, and started putting England together. I think this is the most I have ever used a map.

I have finally started sewing together the granny square blanket! It took me three hours to arrange them all on the bed to get a pattern that I liked and for the most part it worked out. I am now starting to sew them together row by row, and then will sew the rows together. 

I am trying to get over my ‘guilt’ of having baths in the daytime. I am having trouble relaxing and always think I have something else more important to do, so I run a bubble bath and light the candles, and as soon as I get in the bath I think of all the things I have on my mental list.

I put all the houseplants outside to get some sunlight and to give them a real good soaking. I do this every few weeks – or rather, I have been doing so while the weather has been so good. I decided I wanted a couple of plants for the bedroom. Momma told me of a plant man so I went and visited him and came back with two new little trees for the bedroom! I have also moved some other plants from downstairs and now they’re upstairs.

Windowsill Gardening

The yellow courgettes have been moved to the garden, and have now been replaced with green courgettes and butternut squash. These were to replace the ones that got lost in the frost but I suspect we will now be overrun with courgettes. Momma and I never seem to get the balance right!

Garden

The raised planters out the front are looking good. I’ve put the house number on the front bed so that the Dominos delivery man can find us easier – although I suspect we have already become regulars. I have sowed carrot and radish seed in the planter and the first radish are coming up already! I have also put in some anemone corms so I am hoping for lots of flowers out the front this summer.

The first radish seedlings

The bird feeding station has been repurposed as a hanging basket holder. These have been planted up with cupid sweet peas around the side, white strawberries to hang over the side, thyme plants, and lambs ear. I have also put anemone corms in them, and I might wedge a couple of nasturtium seeds in them too. I just need to get some pebbles to top them off.

The peas are growing so well, I am having to tie them in every day to keep them on track to the mesh. I have also put in canes for each of the sunflowers and tied them which was a good job as it has been so very windy. A tree fell over the back which pushed another tree over and onto our neighbours fence so we had an hour or so chopping trees back with a pole saw. It was also an excuse to wear my brand new, neon pink, steel toe capped wellies!

We have had lots of salad from the garden. This week David and I have had a few dinners al fresco in the garden. Yes, we did have Two for Tuesday from Dominos and ate it in our ‘jamas.

I have also been spending money (oops) and have bought some herb plants. The thyme was planted in a hanging basket, and the bay and rosemary are just planted in bigger pots for now. We now have several thyme plants, rosemary, sage, bay, three types of mint, and chives in the garden. I would now like some white and purple lavender or lavendula…

Allotment

I have started building a growing frame for the loofah. They need sturdy growing supports as they are trailing vines, so I now need to get more plastic mesh from Wilkos and then some peat free compost to top up the bed, before then planting the loofah plants. I am also going to plant a few tomatoes in front of them to use the space up.

The pond is needing topping up twice a week as it has been so hot and sunny with hardly any rain. I have sowed loads of mixed wildflower seed around the pond including campion, heartsease, meadow vetchling, cowslip, and dead nettle.

The alliums around the almond tree are looking FAB and I love them. Will defo plant more next winter in different areas of the plot.

The mason bees have now capped off 50 tubes! I have also noticed lots of litter from the tubes with bits of leaf, so I am not sure if the leafcutter bees are emerging, or if the mason bees are removing the leaves so they can use the tubes. I do get leafcutters nesting in the same bee houses so I am expecting to see them soon.

The allotment salad bed is filling up. I have harvested some massive radishes this week and re-sown the space with fresh seed.

Some other pics from the week...

The new allotment beds have been filled with homemade compost from mommas bins. I am going to get some fresh bagged stuff to top them.

I saw this bug buddy on my pond

The blue tits keep coming down for fresh Taffula fluff.

The trough planters are filling out. I have also put anemone corms in these.

Pineapple plant getting big

Great spotted woodpecker on fat balls on my allotment

I put posh numbers on the almond tree bed so people know that Plot 31 is mine.