Outside

People outside the villa lead very busy lives.  There are builders across the road.  They arrive very early on a bus in their sky blue builders uniforms and they build away all morning until it gets too hot.  Then they sit down in a shady spot for the rest of the day and wait for the bus to pick them up again.  They are building a large villa for an Emirati family.  I do hope that I will get to meet the family one day.  All the houses have high walls around them, so it is very difficult to see who lives where.  

The other day there was a great commotion outside the house.  When I looked out,  a large digger  had come to clear up all the old palm leaves that had been left by the dustbin.  There was one man to drive the digger and one more to direct.  We have got a patch of sand to the side of our villa.  The next villa along has been painted a beautiful pink.  I love pink.  These photos were taken from the roof.  You can just see the city skyscrapers in the distance.  The red crane on the very right is on the site of a brand new mosque which is also being built.  It is Ramadan at the moment and the Arabs have put up a huge marquee to act as a makeshift mosque at the end of our road.  Every evening after sunset the place gets packed with cars belonging to people going to the mosque.  There is a men's entrance and a ladies entrance.  Not many ladies go to the mosque, so their area is much smaller; but we did see three last night!  You are never more than 500m from a mosque in Dubai, so I am not sure why they have to drive there.  

We have a stunningly beautiful communal pool and terrace .  There are bananas and dates growing on the trees and flowers which I shall identify at some point.