This is it the weekend is over and a week on my own as a “Gulf Widow” to come. There are plenty of these in Bahrain, expats who prefer the lifestyle here to living in a compund in Saudi. The wife and kids live and go to school here whilst hubby works over the border in one of the Saudi cities nearby returning home on a Wednesday evening for the weekend.

I can’t complain as most weeks Kevin is home for 3 or 4 evenings with occasional overnight stays in Kuwait, Dubai or elsewhere in the region. This week however he is working at regional HQ in Dubai all week so I have to occupy myself until Thursday evening. Dropped him off at dawn at the airport. Drove back home past hordes of locals out jogging or walking in the “cool” of the morning round the shore at Hidd. It was already more than 30 degrees and so humid my glasses steamed up as the car door was opened!

Plenty to do though – usual housework stuff like the laundry plus we are off to celebrate the passing of summer with Oktober Fest at the Gulf Hotel on Thursday evening so I need a Dirndl. Pattern ideas are relatively easy to come by on the web but suitable fabric may be harder… we’ll see. Need some cotton preferably in a pastel shade either plain or with a small sparse spriggy print for the skirt.

Must also try to track down a missing pillow case and get the dishwasher fixed. The former probably went AWOL when hubby laundered the bedding in my absence over the summer; we use the downstairs machines for this as the washer drier in the apartment is full with a couple of pairs of trousers and a handful of undies, so will interrogate the staff.

The dishwasher basically doesn’t and ends the cycle with an “E3” error which the book of instructions says is failure to reach temperature. In the past few days we’ve had several visits from building maintenance but no one has actually been near the machine as they’ve not got the parts and or the dishwasher repair man.