I have been away. I used to write these comment columns in the Gulf Daily News every week from 2015 until May 16, 2020 ... when I suddenly ... stopped.
Please understand, however, that I did not take an arbitrary decision to stop writing, rather it was done for me by an erupting aneurysm on my aorta.
The fact that I am still around to this day is solely down to the skill of Dr Rani Al Agha and his team at the King Hamad University Hospital in Muharraq. They saved my life with multiple emergency operations and when I woke up 11 days later my first thoughts were not ‘I’ve missed my deadline’. In some respects I really had missed my deadline.
That was over five years ago and I can tell you that I did not spend all that time recovering. At the time of my illness I was happily retired playing around with small property projects and writing bits and pieces. The illness made me reassess my life and situation and I decided to do more about it. I took myself off to the UK and bought a proper house in Dorset which I got stuck into with the sledgehammer and paintbrush and spent a pleasant 18 months renovating it before selling it on.
During this time I still considered Bahrain my home as my wife still lived and worked here, so I was travelling back and forth every six to eight weeks and racked up a lot of air miles.
Then my daughter, Jemma, called and told me that the house opposite her in Scotland was up for sale and had subsidence. Three years later it no longer has subsidence, I have done a lot of babysitting for my granddaughter and I had had enough of the dismal Scottish weather so I sold that one and, instead of buying into another project, I decided to return to Bahrain and live full time with my wife again.
By the way, during this time in the UK I trained for and obtained a lorry driving licence and I briefly had a job driving big trucks up and down the motorways but this is going to be the subject of another column.
By this time my wife had taken up golf and so after a gap of 20 years I was now officially allowed to thrash about on the golf course. Now I thought this will be a pleasant retirement. No such luck, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to lie around on the sofa during the morning and that I was to go out and find a job. Not a chance, I thought. No one was going to offer an old geezer like me paid employment. However, the first guy I spoke to said: “I have got just the thing for you, come and look after my building.”
Then I bumped into your distinguished editor, Stan, who tells me to get back on the keyboard and stop slouching around.
So here I am again, will try to inform or entertain weekly for the foreseeable future. Wish me luck.
Editor’s note: Check out Jackie’s column every Sunday.
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