Dubai

It may well be regarded as an international pleasure ground boasting some of the world's finest hotels, shopping malls and sporting facilities but Dubai is (charmingly) essentially an arab capital city, honouring arab traditions and the Muslim religion. I've only been here for a day and a half, but I've seen the museum, more shopping malls than I've ever encountered in my life, and a few hundred cranes. I've visited the "pork room" in the local supermarket, and been amazed by the range and inventiveness of alcohol-free mocktails on offer in restaurants and cafes. And by the same token I've seen the locals driving their Hummers and quietly wondered what it would be like to have that sort of wealth, to wear a dishdasha robe and to have five burkha-clad wives to myself.

Look more closely at the picture above. It shows the base of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai which opens later in the year. It will boast 160 habitable floors and has already been topped out at 818 metres high. The man-made lake in the foreground boasts the world's tallest fountains, and to the right is a tiny part of the 1,200-store Dubai Mall - the world's largest shopping mall.

I laughed when told that local airlines allowed passengers in first class to take their falcons with them in the cabin, but I checked and it is true. Indeed Etihad Airways allows two falcons per passenger in first and business Class, whilst economy passengers are limited to one bird each.

The Muslim "call to prayer" resonates through the loudspeaker system of the shopping complexes, and the Rumbling Nappa very nearly disgraced himself when apparent signs for the gentleman's loo in the Dubai Mall very nearly landed him in the men only prayer room.

It will be interesting to see what adventures "day three" will produce.

Village Fete

There's an article in today's paper about the demise of the village fete. Organisers now have to complete up to 15 different licence applications, legal agreements, forms and certificates, and insurance companies require 20 pages of detailed risk assessment. Police and fire authorities, first aid centres, and local authority restrictions have turned the administrative side into an absolute minefield - resulting in the loss of many famous annual fairs and fetes.

Thank goodness that there are still some people around who are prepared to tolerate all this stuff and who succeed in putting on a decent event every year. Yesterday's Rowlands Castle Fair (outside our front door) was a terrific success. By midday the Rumbling Nappa was on his second jug of Pimms, had failed to win on the bottle stall, had declined the two enormous bouncy castles, had greeted "Eric the Orphan Sheep" with a "How Do You Do", and had agreed on the purchase of a cake. Steel bands and Irish Country Dancing enlivened the occasion along with maybe fifty or more side stalls.

The grand daughter in attendance tried out the roundabouts, Mrs Rumbling Nappa paid great attention to the horticultural exhibits, and during the afternoon the Rumbling Nappa was able to slip back indoors to watch the British and Irish Lions play how they should always have played.

By nightfall the event had transformed itself into a noisy Mamma Mia party. All good stuff.

"Boo!" to the local authority questioned by my newspaper about the forms to be completed - "To give you all the information you need would take absolutely ages. Unless you issue a formal Freedom of Information request, we won't be able to give all of it, because it really is that much information".

Air Rage

The wise and sensible daughter will have none of my moaning. If another passenger on our charter flight to Cyprus suffers from a severe nut allergy then it is fine by her for the eating of peanuts to be banned for all 250 passengers.

The Rumbling Nappa thinks otherwise. Monarch Airlines he reckons should have placed the unfortunate passenger inside a sealed plastic bubble until the plane landed at Paphos. The eating of peanuts on airplanes is a basic human right – specially on charter flights.

What if I suffered from leprosy? Would Monarch have given me a couple of rows to myself and forbidden passengers to go to the loo in case they touched me? Bah, I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, and just a bit unchristian. The daughter is right, I should loosen up.

Needless to add that as soon as we had boarded the return flight to Gatwick a week later than the inevitable announcement came from the cabin crew, “As we have a passenger on board who suffers from a severe nut allergy...”.

Ya...hoooo

I'm still not quite sure about Twenty20 cricket. Like most spectator sports it's great fun if you are winning, but over the next few days England must face the first and second favourites (South Africa and India) consecutively and that will probably be the end of it for the flag of St George. But you never know, miracles have happened, we did win the war, Gordon Brown is still Prime Minister.

Twenty20 cricket is a bit different. Test matches tend not to have dancers whirling about every time a boundary is hit, nor do they have their own Facebook pages. As someone who used to boast marketing skills I'm rather out of my depth with the sophisticed sponsorship marketing which comes complete with "jingle" promotion (that's the cry of "Ya...hooooo" that rings out for every change of batsman or bowler), the use of the scoreboard as a near-perpetual advertising medium, the carefully angled type that creates a 3-D effect out of the slogans imprinted on the hallowed turf.

Technically the new form of the game is demanding, particularly for the bowlers. Field placing also becomes absolutely critical. Although we all delight in great cow shots soaring into (or over) the spectators, there is still enjoyment to be had from watching Bopara-like run-stealing (one or two from just about every ball apart from those that reach the boundary).

I'm still waiting for a golden over (the single over 'eliminator' used to determine a result in the event of tied scores after the twenty overs), or for an umpire to impose a 5-run penalty for time-wasting. With a restriction that an incoming batsman has to be at the crease and ready to face a ball within ninety seconds of the fall of the previous wicket I'm sure that if I was to play in a Twenty20 match then with my slow, perambulating gait I would be the first incoming batsman ever to be fined penalty five runs for failure to reach the crease in time.

Ryan ten Dustcart and others

Back to Lords for the opening ceremony and first match of the ICC World Twenty20 series - and what a shambles. I was slightly niffed at not being allowed to watch from my usual eyrie atop the Tavern Stand, and had to make the tiresome trek to the top of the Warner Stand (a place which is extremely badly served with gentlemen's loos).

However my guests and I were dutifully in our seats by 4.30 for said opening ceremony and, inevitably, nothing happened. During the next hour no-one had any idea of what was going on until, eventually, a shortened version of the opening ceremony took place consisting (inappropriately for the occasion) of a short speech by a bewildered looking Duke of Kent. Standing behind him with a leering grin was none other than the Max Mosley of English cricket - Giles Clarke - and one wondered if a helicopter might descend from the skies with a reincarnated Sir Alan Stanford.

Oh dear, play eventually got going and Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara got England off to a great start, but then the wheels came off the bus. Subsequent batsmen were not up to the game and the run rate fell away. Ultimately the Hollanders deserved their victory, farcical though the sixth ball of the last over happened to be.

I was cheered up on the Circle Line tube coming away from the match. Someone had placed a very official 'Transport for London' sign on the window opposite my seat. In appropriate TFL style it read:

PEAK HOURS
May necessitate that you
allow another passenger to
sit on your lap.

Splitting the Vote

Well it's time to cast some votes again. If nothing else tomorrow night's local government and MEP election results will make interesting reading. I for one will not vote for the seemingly untrustworthy Mr Cameron, or for the morbid Mr Brown, or for Mr Clegg (wouldn't it be wiser for the Lib Dems to have a decent politician in charge like Vince Cable), or BNP, or any other political grouping.

I'm going to vote for the young blonde who oozes enthusiasm as well as good looks in the local elections (she happens to be Lib Dem), and for the Conservative ticket in the European elections for the sole reason that the splendid Daniel Hannan is named on the ticket. Not only is he a good speaker, but he has a brain on him and his blog encourages people like me to pay attention to today's Guardian leader - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/02/editorial-gordon-brown-labour - which is as good a summary of the present situation at Westminster as one is likely to find.

Maybe the present crisis will bring some good, honest men and women into government who can speak for themselves and for their constituents rather than acting as puppets for their party whips.

My dream is that the current upheaval might result in the end of our ghastly, class-ridden culture of tribal party politics. The clamour from many politicians is for proportional representation and I'll oppose that to the day I die. All proportional representation means is the perpetuation of the 'party' system that has served us so badly over the years.

Please, please can we take advantage of the tide of public opinion to effect real change in the workings of government.

Jackpot

Yipee, we've hit the big time!

Mrs Rumbling Nappa and I shared an investment on the Saturday Tote Scoop 6 where you have to correctly nominate the winners of six televised horse races to win a quarter of a million pounds or more.

Yes - the dark horse from Greece Ialysos battled his way through to win the 2.05 at Haydock at a useful 14-1; then Jamie Spencer rode the 15-8 favourite High Standing to victory in the 2.30 at Goodwood; the aptly named Suzi's Decision obliged at 11-2 in the 2.35 at Haydock; Red Merlin (5-1) did his stuff in the 2.50 at Goodwood; and Caracciola came in at 7-1 twenty minutes later at York.

There were 21-odd tickets still going on the last race, the 3.45 at York, all looking for a share of the £250,000 fund. Only one ticket however named Ishetoo the 12-1 winner - and that was ours. Yes, we were the only winners of the £250,000 prize and there is a chance of picking up an extra £200,000-odd bonus by naming the winner of a single race next Saturday.

There's only one dampener in all this. We purchased the ticket as members of a small syndicate called the Saturday 6 Club which is run by the "Elite" people who sell car number plates and who also own a successful horseracing owners club. We'll have to share our winnings with an estimated 5,582 other syndicate members. Oh well!