6 March 2014

We have arrived in Doha, Qatar, as a resting stop on a testing flight to Tanzania. Of course, it was not without incident and further evidence of a peculiar brand of helplessness foisted on us by my dear late mother, and until now most patently displayed by my brother Tony whose stumbles and fumbles are legendary. Standing in the security queue at Melbourne airport I realised that I would need to produce the laptop that I knew to be snugly secured in my backpack. It was not there, but it had been when I had to do the same thing at Canberra Security.

the sense of panic seemed to infect the neighbours in the queue who we’re getting a bit restless at being held up by repeated and fruitless searches of the ever-smaller backpack pockets. It simply was not there. We made a quick call to Jen’s cousin John who had taken us to the airport to see if he could follow up.

we realised that by packing the laptop in a pillowcase of all things, we had not been aware enough of where it was. Plus I got chatting to the security guard and then had to chase after Jen.

John was brilliant, and has already secured our laptop, even promising to post it to us. But given our itinerary, I can see that it would never catch up with us. Pity.

the flight was long. So very long. And not that comfy. The guy in front went to a full recline as we took off so that made tv viewing a bit tight.

Doha is a city in transition, obviously preparing for the World Cup of Soccer in 2022. It is a construction zone, but at the same time quite neat, and no graffiti.

Jen and I went for a walk down to the Museum of Islamic Art park which is a beautiful setting on the seaside and looking over to the new and fabulously creative towers of New Doha.

There was a beautiful little bay with some old sea craft forefronting the city, and searching for a better shot, I picked my way delicately over some large and uneven boulders at the water’s edge. One of the problems of multifocals is, in my case, a lack of sense of depth, and I felt myself losing all sense of balance. I fell backwards, desperately trying to select rocks to steady the retreat, but unfortunately fell, in Jenny’s words, with the grace of a hippo’s belly flop.

My primary aim was to save the camera, which I did, but took some skin. There was no real damage except to my pride. Miraculously, I landed in position for a perfect camera shot. But even this turned out to be worthless as I had forgotten to change the film speed and the shot, and a few others, were hopelessly overexposed.

Well, that is the day thus far. We are about to go on a desert safari, which has Jenny nervously reaching for the Kwells at the thought of a “dune-bash!”

We will report on this experience later.

Well I hope you have read this far. We will keep you posted on more of the Exciting and Unpredictable Adventures of Bill and Jenny.