Still Adjusting

Had a nice -- but wet -- weekend with the children. We spent most of Saturday visiting family and on Sunday went to London to do some clothes shopping, and got caught in a torrential downpour. Lunch was at The Argyll Arms in Argyll St., just off Oxford St. The food was good and our dripping clothes and damp smell didn't seem to offend the other diners too much. Funnily enough they all seemed to be much drier than we; either the rain was targetting us specifically out of spite, or we're a bit rusty (sorry!) on how to handle this kind of weather. Needless to say the four umbrellas we own (and took to Riyadh with us but never used) are in a container somewhere in the Arabian Gulf.

Still haven't made up my mind how to feel about living back in the UK. Of course it's great to be close to friends and family, but Riyadh was our home for two years and we have friends there too, so we feel a bit in Limbo. Things currently occupying our time are flat-hunting, car-shopping, and generally paying through the nose for things that we're used to getting either for free or cheap. On our first night here we fancied a late snack, so ordered two drinks and a plate of nachos in the hotel bar: £25 !! I could've filled the petrol tank on my Prado three times over for that!

The other thing that feels a bit alien at the moment is my loss of RiyadhCam. When in Saudi I had two mobiles: the Saudi number from the Embassy (RiyadhCam) and my Blackberry (work). Now I have only my UK number, and really need to keep the Blackberry for work, so my Samsung phone that also did such sterling work as RiyadhCam lies switched off, cardless, and unused in the bottom of my bag. This can only be bad for the blog, because without pictures all you've got is my writing, and we can't have that, can we? I enquired about having two SIM cards on the same number but apparently that doesn't support data services, so would break my Blackberry email.

I wonder if I can use the camera on my phone without having a SIM card in it? Ooh that's a possibility. Where's me bag?