The beautiful game

The evenings are becoming much cooler now as we head toward winter providing the perfect excuse for a game or two of football on the beach.

There was a great moment when some tourists in bikinis passed some Omanis in full garb; you could almost sense the thoughts that each group were thinking as they eye-balled each other with undisguised suspicion. Despite being relatively liberal toward Western culture, it's still considered a no-no for ex-pats to expose the flesh above the elbow and below the knee (and all the usual bits that no culture exposes!). Some tourists, whether in disagreement or ignorance (the latter I'd wager), don't tend to comply with this an awful lot but the Omanis are pretty relaxed about it to a degree around the tourist hotspots.

Away from these hotspots and it's a different story. Larissa and I used to go running along the beach (wearing jogging bottoms and t-shirts) and if I got a little ahead, 95% of all cars that passed her when I was out of sight would slow right down, beep their horns and spout some rubbish in Arabic. They of course would never dream of behaving like this towards an Omani woman. Even just the two of us going for a sunset stroll holding hands would generate much excitement and horn beeping.

You should hear the noise when we wind them up by having a little kiss ;)

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We're just back from seeing 'Quantum of Solace', which was, for want of a better word, crap.