Dubai or not Dubai

As is the norm for our annual excursion to World Cup week in Dubai, we all meet up at the Oliver Tambo international airport for our trip north across the African continent. We nearly had a hiccup for kickoffs when Owen Leibrandt arrived late. Apparently their had been a power cut at the Parktown mall and his wife, Beryl, had been stuck on the escalator for three hours, a tempting situation that nearly enticed him to abandon her and head for the dunes ‘solo mio’.

Mr. George had assembled another intriguing bunch to join the regulars which included perennials Marsh and Karen, Gary Westwater (epicurean of note – read his new book ‘Exotic Indulgences of the Middle East’), Bonski Beat with his freshly hitched wife, Sarah Doktorinthehouse, and the Egyptian cross-dressing jockey, Mytil Amboud (more ‘camp’ than ever and sporting a new platinum earring). New racing faces to join us included Bruce and Jo Gardener, Ronnie and Bev Napier, (Sandton’s most dapper couple), Tasso Christifouros (the former middle weight boxing champion of Athens and now with all the weight around his middle, and alias a younger Demi Roussos), Michael (equally rotund) and Sharon Azzie, Llewellyn Werner (a sprightly if somewhat dozy septuagenarian), and, of course, the irrepressible David Greet from Winning Form. There were many others and I will endeavor to touch on them later.
David Greet is wearing his customary Winning Form top as he orders another Johnnie Walker Black and adjusts his codpiece. He is mouthing off about his girlfriend, and after this article, soon to be ex-girlfriend no doubt. He states emphatically that she always complains after sex and during, if she can catch her breath or if there is time. He has decided that he most definitely wants to end it with her, largely due to the fact that if her IQ were any lower she would trip over it. She once asked David to take her overseas to get some bargains because they were knocking down the Berlin Mall. Francois leans over and tells him not to get his hopes up because most of the talent in the Emirates is fat, bearded and always virgin. The male ones are just as bad. After this impromptu rendition, Francois duly orders another scotch and we never hear from him again. Someone heard that he had taken up a position as houseboy in the old section of Bur Dubai.
Once in flight, David Greet decides to come forward to our business class seats just as they start serving dinner. Just as the trolleys are maneuvered down the middle of the aisle, the Captain puts on the safety belt signs forcing the stewardess in charge to ‘plonk’ David down in the middle of two raucous ‘skaaps’. By the time the turbulence subsides, David has missed his supper, consumed two bottles of Chablis and has learnt a new way to skin a lifeless Kudu using a rusty, Victorinox army-issue penknife while inebriated from his newly acquired Phalabora hunting mates. He was very nearly cajoled into catching their connecting flight out of Dubai on a chartered 1960’s DC3 to southern Mali to hunt almost extinct sub-species of Giant Sable with a select group of senior elders from the Tuareg tribe.
We arrive just after midnight and the airport is as busy as Basil Marcus at the yearling sales. Jessie Naidoo is sent from the customs desk to have his eyes tested, partly because he is looking fondly at an aged and stooped Pakistani woman in the other queue and partly because he nearly walked into an Arabic departure sign for Jerusalem. I ventured that maybe the alcohol on the plane had something to do with the bleary eyes but he assures me that he is quite allergic to alcohol. He suddenly breaks out in handcuffs. He is eventually frog-marched down to a holding cell for sexual deviants. Only some fast-talking from Mr. George, the Greek Sphenisciformes, ensures that he gets on the bus with us without being deported to the dried-up wetlands of southwest Sudan.
Back at our customary Hotel, we make our way up to the Somerset Bar for nightcaps. Nothing seems to have changed, and I catch up with Hennie Petersen, a sports presenter from yesteryear. He tells me that he is still involved writing a column for the skaaps old Moths Club in Hout Bay. His accent remains a mixture of Dutch Reformed Church and pigeon English with a sprinkling of Hottentot. He makes Rusty Van Dreuten sound like Prince Charles. At three o’clock the bar is closed, much to the chagrin of Bruce Gardener, and most of us traipse off reluctantly to our beds.
The next morning, Mr. George takes most of the gang off to the stable to visit Satish Seemar’s stable. David Greet is so dehydrated he has taken to licking the dew off passing cacti. It is undoubtedly one of the most pristine and elaborate racing yards in the world. Satish walks around carrying himself with a sense of entitlement not witnessed since the days of the Mughal dynasty and the construction of the Taj Mahal under Shah Juhan’s orders, even though his carnival successes are as frequent as a lunar eclipse sighting during a sandstorm. In fact, looking at the liberal use of marble throughout the various sheds and offices of his establishment, there could well be some long lost ancestry between Satish and the old, venerable Mughal Shah.
By midmorning, the group arrived back at the Hotel to meet the Mauritian contingent led by former jockey, Danny McCreedy. One of the party has Chinese ancestry and goes by the name of Rick Mai Reechies. He is ready to party and soon all the Mauritians are in the bar having a few drinks to prepare themselves for the dune Safari. Mr. George takes all the newcomers out to the dunes not realizing that a storm is brewing on the hills of Doha a few hours drive to the northeast. After the first few dunes, some of the girls dispatch their lunch all over the sumptuous leather interiors of the vehicles forcing the agitated drivers to take all the woozy ones to the oasis for a respite and clean-up. But as they were about to leave the oasis, the hailstorm struck forcing the vans to pull over. Surprisingly for this part of the world, the hail battered Dubai for a couple of hours where they tell me you have more chance of Des Agnes (sic!) buying a round than a hailstorm.
The next morning I pop up to the pool for an early dip but find Jo Gardener sampling a new blend of chardonnay from Albania, and she has clearly beaten me to it. I reluctantly join her and quaff a beer from Lichtenstein. Tasso and Mytil Abboud soon join us. Tasso is a gregarious man who loves his beloved Greece, and one cannot fail to acknowledge his fervour. Lynn Hampson, who incidentally went to school in Joburg with Tasso and Mike Azzie much to her chagrin, soon joins us. Lynn works with Gold circle in Cape Town and, despite this, is a wonderfully upbeat woman. Tasso takes me to task about the state of our industry - as if I am to blame. He has had a couple of infamous run-ins with certain sections of the industry and bemoans the fact that many probes are conspicuously and most obviously swept under the proverbial carpet. He gets sage nods of approval from all those sitting around him with the exception of Mytil who has nodded off counting piles of cash deposits from his Lloyds checking account and was, by now, prancing through never-never land dressed as the Cash King. Tasso believes that if we can expose the corrupt component, the crowds may well flock back. All well and good but perhaps we should tackle the shrouded responsibilities of the governing bodies.
It would be a gross understatement to describe Tasso as a most generous man. He duly orders another round. You cannot but like this pompous, ostentatious, brash, pretentious, gaudy, capricious, extravagant and over the top singing Greek. He makes Liberace look demure and his double, Demi Roussos, look slim. I doubt anyone noticed me abscond with the slumbering Mytil’s beer. Mike Azzie and Theunis Gericke have ordered an afternoon massage at the hotel Spa and take a couple of bottles of Rohipnol with them in case something less than cooperative takes their fancy. Tasso, not wanting to miss out, decides that he just has to join them and duly books a time slot. He prefers chloroform and diligently slips a bottle into his gym bag. However, he seems to lose a bit of his transient inquisitiveness when he hears there is no ‘happy ending’ guarantee in Dubai coupled with the threat of jail if you push the point, and dejectedly he proceeds to order another round.
We have arranged to meet many of the South Africans who are domiciled in Dubai at the Scarletts Bar in downtown Dubai. The duo of K B and Kim Shezi are there to meet us with most of the rest of the Lilliputian basketball players in tow. The ever engaging and beguiling Paul Devlin and his infinitely better half, Heather, are there with Trevor and Jo Brown. Marsh has commandeered a table near the entrance to have a meal (or two) before he joins us at the bar. Paul Devlin said that he finished a Jilly Cooper novel out in the desert last month. He had run out of toilet paper after a gastric attack of biblical proportions. Most of Mike de Kock’s team are present including Steve, Ming (from his own dynasty), Amanda and some short guy, who, once I had spoken to him, I realized had pushed more doors with ‘Pull’ on them than just about anyone I had ever met. Two other very nice lads were Mick from Ireland (where else?) and Benjy (son of Dee Bruss). Benjy is a ringer for Prince William (a plus, I agree) and Mytil Amboud stuck close to him hoping to pick up the leavings, or at least a few tips at polo. With Mytil, it was a case of Veni, Vidi, Velcro……….I came, I saw, I stuck around. I have always said that Velcro is a rip off. Shezi was in fine form and as captivating as ever telling us about his rides in various arenas. He really has an anthromorphic passion for the horses though and spends hours out at the stable. I’m sure it must have affected his golf handicap at some point during the Dubai Racing Carnival.
At the hotel the following morning, I have arranged to meet with Tubs Riddell and his mate, Tony Galvin. I notice them at the far side of the bar where Tony is reclined across the seat with half a pint of Guinness perched in front of him. I have seen better car crash survivors at the Indian Knackerless 500. The svelte and sylphlike Tubs had taken him on an extended tour of the more enticing nightspots within Bur Dubai. The drinking event ultimately stretched out longer than Peter Miller’s customary monologue after a maiden winner in Kimberley (a racecourse, not a woman). And the two die-hards duly sank the entire GNP of Burkina Faso in the process. Tony looks like death warmed up and the way he is looking at Tubs he is either thinking, ‘I would lend him a lot of money never to see him again’, or, conversely, could be contemplating a switch to the other side.
In walks Ken Truter to order some lunch. My fellow Spurs’ supporter is in good voice and soon joins the boys for a few beers as Tony Galvin lapses into a sleep deprived, alcohol induced coma. Jo Gardener slinks into the bar and orders her customary quaff while waiting for Bruce, who is doing a bit of business with the locals. What exactly could be anyone’s guess but could include various forms of dilators. Looking like a spruced up Pavarotti after his shiatsu hydro massage, Tasso trundles in telling all and sundry that they have booked a stretch Limo to take them to supper later that night. The gold chain around his neck could keep the QE2 safely moored against the quay in most tropical monsoons. Did I mention ostentatious and pretentious? Owen Leibrandt sneaks in for his pre-dinner pint with the eloquent Hennie Petersen in tow and spewing his unique rhetoric of the English language. Beryl has heard about a cutting edge shop on the outskirts of Sharjah where she has not shopped before and has raced off post -haste in a new Lexus Taxi with tinted windows and an Omar Sharif look-alike at the wheel wiping beads of sweat off his bushy eyebrows. She was never seen again, although there are strong rumours that she is living in a Bedouin tent just outside Doha and in complete happiness, I might add. Owen enjoys these reprieves and has a good chinwag with most of the group oblivious to the fact that he is now a bachelor. David Greet sits down next to me and regales me about his situation with his second wife. He had been thinking about doing a runner. Fortunately, his local padre had stepped in to point out the ramifications of a divorce that would almost certainly follow from any such contemplated desertion. It would quite definitely put a sizeable dent in the generous donation David had assigned to his local evangelist church, St Stithians of the Never Late Latter Day Saints, for the new 1,000-seat choir hall. Admittedly, the donation had been coerced from poor David after he had been seen in a compromising situation after choir practice one Easter morning that had brought new meaning to the term ‘Ascension’.
To be continued.

Part 2

It is still drizzling – no joke - when the gang eventually meet downstairs for the trip out to the Nad Al Sheba racecourse for the annual ‘Breakfast with the Stars’. We are delayed because Gary Westwater is late. His excuse is that he was indulging in a bit of light reading, perusing a book on anti-gravity and he just couldn’t put it down. The roads out to the track have pools of water lying about waiting for the sun to frazzle them to steam. There is a paucity of drains in Dubai mostly because you never get flash floods, or put another way, flash floods in Dubai are as common as women drivers in Saudi Arabia.

Once again the breakfast is well attended supported by hoards of people getting together to touch base with old friends and meet new ones. David Greet walks by with his eggs benedict and joins the old codger, Llewellyn Werner. The Australian juggler who is using Bruce Gardiner as a prop for his act, good choice, is entertaining most of the South African contingent. He is leaning heavily on Bruce’s crown of dubious origins, making him resemble Armichand Rajbansi with his ‘syrup’ out of place after being slapped by a Klippies soaked AWB Skaap. The ‘Tiger’ had stood up defiantly to the inebriated skaap until his famous toupee was unceremoniously sent south along with his career in the ANC. Frankie Dettori makes his way through the throng signing autographs with his usual casual aplomb. He is so popular and talented that he is hailed more often than a London Cab driver in winter. Shezi, looking relaxed, saunters through and has a chat with his South African friends. I ask him if it will be soft going akin to his wife undressing on a romantic evening but he assures me that everything will be normal on the big night. An American friend of mine, who shall remains nameless, walks past hand in hand with a very large woman, a case of romancing the ‘seventeen stone’. Mr. George tells us that the venue for the soirée in the desert has been changed due to the passing monsoon. The uncustomary downpour has destroyed a large portion of the electrical set up including the massive flat-screen TV sets that now look down on us smoldering like Darth Vader after a mission in Galactica. The new venue has been set downtown at the Trade Centre, a venue with the capacity to accommodate five thousand people. The only other place to have as many people through its doors was the now defunct Cyclone Club, a popular gym in its hay day I have been told.
Most of the group has decided to meet up at the pool for lunch and a beer or two. Mytil Abboud and I join Lynn Hampson and catch a taxi out to one of the massive shopping complexes. Lynn is looking to buy a skirt and we traipse in with her for moral support and a neutral opinion. She tells the attendant that she wants a skirt and he asks her how long she would like it. She replied, ‘I was hoping to keep it’. There has to be some blonde roots hidden in her birds’ nest. Mytil and I desert her and set off looking for a bar. We find a bar and pool room downstairs. We conclude it must be a lesbian pool table because it has no balls. We have a beer and go off to get a pair of shoes. I find an inexpensive suede pair that even ‘sans socks’ make my eyes water. Inexpensive, I believe, because the manufacturers have substituted camel’s scrotum hair instead of the usual pigskin used for the suede. They feel softer than a ‘rubenesque backside’ from a Spanish harem. Mytil says they look fine and I try to walk across the store. I look like a newborn antelope on a skidpan as I attempt an imitation of Dean Martin and casually saunter across the floor before collapsing on an imitation camel hide ottoman.
Conveniently, the ever-reliable Mr. George has arranged for the bus to pick us up at our hotel to take us out to the ‘Soiree in the city’. The music is pumping as we sip our drinks on the short trip through the city. On arrival, everyone is shepherded through to the first ballroom for cocktails and I notice one of the gang speaking to a well-dressed man from Baghdad. He is promising to drop him a line when he gets back. I am surprised that they still have addresses in Baghdad – tragically streets must have given way to broad bombed hollows that double as campsites or simply to numbered bunkers below ground. To huge fanfare, we are then sent through various metal detectors. Luckily the plate in Tasso’s head does not set off the alarm – must be manufactured from some composite material. To say that he is recusant is a gross euphemism. He had the plate put in his head when he was the unsuspecting victim of a desperate late tackle in a game for the Hellenic over 35s against the Cypriot Sundowners back in the late ‘60’s. He claimed he would have gone on to score but I think he was referring to a game a decade later when he eventually scored his first league goal, albeit three yards offside.
The room for the function is as massive as you will see anywhere in the world, and only Dubai can put on such a marvelous occasion at such short notice. I have a good chinwag with my mate Mick Channon, who is still revered as a football legend. I spot my mate from Argentina, Diego Lowther, and we discuss infidelity, group sex and other interesting topics of yesteryear, and last week in the case of David Greet. I follow David Greet in to the spotless toilet like a high school sex predator and to our surprise we find another door at the one end of the room. It has ‘Cleaner Room’ emblazoned across it. We decide to try it out and find that it is full of mops and buckets but not necessarily cleaner. When we get back, I notice Bamboo Brown across the room and he is so laid back it looks as though he is part of a recliner. The food is out of the top drawer and if the muffin I was eating had been any fresher it would have asked for a date. It is another great occasion to meet new and old friends and reminisce. Or in the case of David Greet, indulge in yet more serial predation.
At the end of the evening, our bus takes us back to our watering hole at the hotel. The team is on fine form with Marsh and Bruce leading the way as a young Somali woman hovering in the foyer winks in the direction of Hennie Petersen and Llewelyn Werner. She has moved her gaze over to Rick Mai Reechies before the other two could get the quizzed but nevertheless hopeful look off their faces.  I don’t think jumper leads could have assisted Llewellyn who promptly fainted in expectant euphoria and had to have mouth to mouth from a passing Sikh waiter. The cold sores Llewellyn inherited two days later for his efforts had to be treated on a daily basis with some generic oesophageal spray at Bamboo Brown’s stables.
Friday is penciled in as a quiet day to allow some of the group to indulge in a spot of unadulterated consumerism and for us, the enlightened few, an opportunity to simply laze around the pool. This year a decision had been made to arrange a huge lunch at our hotel and the eclectic culinary delights had already been arranged around the foyer as an Indian band played a fusion of Banghra Rock and Barry Manilov as background music. In his haste and unabashed greed, Mytil, with his hiatus hernia, inadvertently mistook a Moroccan dish for an Afghani Hummus and plonked it all over his plate. Yoghurt of sorts camouflaged the underlying chilli. After his second mouthful he was unaware that his left nostril was running like an orange lava flow and he had started to sweat like a paedophile chasing a school bus. He gulped down his cocktail and asked for more water. But he had taken quite a few mouthfuls before he was fully aware of his folly. The ensuing rush of bile into his duodenum would flood the rumen of most camels. After fleeing the dining room quicker than ‘Insane’ Bolt, he just made it to the loo. ‘Insane Bolt’ along with Gary Player and Mike Azzie must have the most appropriate names for sportsmen. I went over to refresh the cocktails only to find the bar unattended and a flurry of activity outside the ‘Gents’ with the bartender in question, who makes Phillip Kahan look handsome, putting on his paramedic gear and frantically drawing up a harpoon of a syringe with some drug normally reserved for buffalo anesthesia. Vaguely puzzled and in the absence of any obvious barman, I decide to make my own cocktail. I sploshed a concoction of ingredients together not realizing that the lemon juice was actually duck’s egg whites. Triumphant, I placed the mix in front of the crowd at our table. After adding some ice and giving the mix a twirl with a cocktail stirrer, I ended up with a stick of what looked like lime green candyfloss to everyone’s amazement and growing delight. It tasted different too and had a kick like a Kalahari ostrich at the beginning of spring. In the background, I notice a drooling Mytil Abboud being stretchered to the lifts. Most of the group are struggling to suck the sludge like blend up their straws. Lynn Hampson pulls a face like Charles Hawtrey passing wind as she finally gets to taste it. Some wag from the far side says that the concoction is thicker than Carl the Truth as he struggles to ingest the foul mixture.
Phil gets everyone down to the foyer for the annual photo shoot at two o’clock. Bonski has set up the tripod and everybody has put on their finest for a great evening’s racing. Jessie has gone for a pair of shoes that are pointy enough to stun a wildebeest. Tasso has gone for a dark suit from the Les Amas 1978 undertaker’s collection that was on special at Stutterford’s mid-winter sale. You can see that he has spent money on his shoes, as they are as rare as father-in-law jokes. Hennie Petersen has taken cognizance of the Houtbay Moth Club influence and has worn a type of camouflage fatigue last seen near Normandy after Demarcation Day and sporting a tin hat that doubles as a bed pan in cases of emergency. David Greet, who is still suffering from a bout of double vision, gout, dysentery, excessive reflux and amnesia, to name a few of his recurring ailments, has gone for a Gary Player look from the Royal Troon Championship of 1978 including a pair of checkered mohair plus fours. All the girls have outdone themselves and could grace the covers of the popular Afrikaans magazines, Farmer’s Weekly.
The bus ride out is full of expectations with most having a pre-race drink or two. Once we have arrived at the designated seats, everyone gets themselves comfortably ensconced for an evenings racing and a few surreptitious cell phone bets are quickly placed. Expectancy is high as I get down to the Press office to check my race day accreditation. The room is full of journalists and hangers-on from most racing countries including a Punjab journalist representing the Bangladore Racing Hounds Club. Some have been coming for many years and the best thing they could write is a suicide note. Frankie Dettori walks towards the jockey room to light applause. He is the consummate showman and professional. For the next couple of hours, we get results that are worse than Clyde Basel’s school reports at the Latter Day Saints Catholic Immigrants Reformatory – absolutely shocking! All our fancied runners never really get in to their races and we sit around like employees from Lehman Brothers as race after race goes by with little to lift our disbelief and dwindling fortunes. Mytil Abboud, my Egyptian runner for the night, brings me a ‘Queensburgh single’ to lift the mood. You could float a horseshoe in it with the horse still attached and swimming. He tells me to cheer up as losing races is not a crisis; it’s only a national South African crisis. He has a point as most South Africans have come to expect nothing less than victory from the likes of Mike de Kock and Bamboo Brown. I agree and take a big swig of my drink. Big mistake. My bile gland kicks into gear followed by a less than enthusiastic sphincter muscle, and my eyes start watering like a chambermaid’s slicing onions for a medieval feast.
As is the custom these days, on the Sunday we take a boat out to the Persian Gulf for an afternoon and evening of revelry. We are a little late to get out there because one of the crowd when told we were going to a barbeque, got held up lining up for a haircut. We are sorting out our music because the Arabian makeshift DJ knows more about Donner Kebab than Donna Summer. Bonski sorts him out and tosses him overboard into the dark waters. The skipper takes us alongside the seven stars Burl Al Arab Hotel to see it all lit up. What a wonderful sight. The party is in full swing with chain-smoking Neil Bruss celebrating his success of the previous night with gusto and someone else I did not recognise. Sadly, it is always a toned down affair without the incomparable Greg ‘the real slim’ Sadie. I notice the McVeigh boys sneak over to the hubbly bubbly to sample some of the Arab habit. Patrick looks over at his brother pulling a face as if he has tasted a rancid Burundian peasant’s goulash. I notice Shezi over in the corner sloshing a glass of Chenin Blanc down his throat all the while furtively looking to see if Kim has noticed. The only Derby he will see this year is Abu Dhabi.