» Food sex

Wafer thin
Many moons ago, long before the lovely Mrs Spimf happened along I had another young lady on the go, and blimey did she go. Up to all sorts (no this isn’t about liquorice) I’ve never really understood the food sex thing, the aerosol cream can and the mimsy were never destined to be happy bedfellows and I find it disconcerting to have a saveloy in the room during coitus. Similarly the alfresco thing escapes me: if I want a Cornetto I can do so without the slightest of hint lasciviousness and if I fancy some sexual intercourse then I find soft furnishings compliment the act quite satisfactorily.

Nevertheless young and keen to experiment I agreed to kill two birds with one cone. A picnic rug and (sensibly) a cool box were sourced along with some of Wall’s best selling chilled confectionary (Chocolate & Hazelnut naturally). We found a spot in the moonlight in some (slightly creepy) local woodland.

Despite my apprehensions my young hormones were unperturbed at the prospect of calorific copulation. I won’t dwell on the frippery, I’m not an erotic writer, I'll leave that to Mr Spankey et al. To be honest I was somewhat unsure what to do, clearly I was aware some degree of smearing and quite possibly insertion was required. My first attempt at ice cream carnal capers was to insert the Cornetto into my eager young partner’s rather splendid mimsy – pointy end first mind, she wasn’t a slag. This quickly left me bereft of ideas and things were melting fast. Ah! cunnilingus I thought – hurrah! In our comfy mossy spot under the creepy tree I crouched down and set to work, lapping alternately at clitoris and cream based confectionary with vigor – buoyed by my newly found decadence I decided to see if I could push some of the chopped nuts up her slippery balloon knot with my tongue, shifting down I set to work. This quickly proved ill advised, my adventurous young filly was suddenly possessed by a fit off giggles which served to force the Cornetto back out and on to my forehead and push melted ice cream into my eyes. As I recoiled the Cornetto remained stuck to my temple at a somewhat rakish angle – more giggles. I’ve never looked good wearing a hat. Humiliation was setting in quickly.

Happily my filthy little friend realised this and reached into the cool box and grabbed another Cornetto whilst deftly plucking the spent one from my forehead, tossing it in the air with impressive abandon. My fumblings were quickly forgotten as she tugged at my trousers. I can safely say the first time an ice cream cone is applied to the end of ones throbbing member is a moment never forgotten. With a wicked glint in her eye she knelt down, pushed the ice cream further down my hot shaft then suddenly lunged and bit down hard on the end of the cone! As soon as my pulse returned to mere humming bird levels I began to enjoy this impromptu porno picnic.

All too soon nearly all the ice cream had been eagerly sucked and devoured and my own churns were stirring, as my little minx delivered one last suck something terrible happened – as I flung my head back in ecstasy – the discarded cunnilingus cone felt out of the branches above where it had been lobbed with lusty abandon – smack in my bloody eye. This caused me to thrust forward, pushing the bell-end Cornetto halfway down the poor girls throat, I’ll never forget the horrible choking noise echoing through the woodland; like a lone goose honking at sunset, in fact I realised the whole situation was fast becoming my own willy honker and the chocolate hat tree.
(Fri 7th Aug 2009, 1:10, More)

» Neighbours

Blue Rinse Dragons Part II
This will make more sense if you can be bothered with this Blue Rinse Dragons Part I

The wispy apparition of the Lingerie Lady of the Line obviously represented a sort of lace trimmed gauntlet to the old bats. Stalls had been set out, battle lines drawn. This first became evident when they started to mow further and further into my lawn. The old buggers were quite literally cutting my grass. They always conspired together, frantically rushing around the garden in tartan slippers, always at dusk - one mowing, one cable bashing. I’m not a petty man; well I am actually so clearly this was going escalate.

The flats had a white slatted fence about 6 feet high at the division point of the properties, but this barely extended onto the back lawn – 20 feet at most. Whereas the lawn stretched a good 50 or more feet further off into the distance. To make matters worse my side was an end terrace so I had another large garden area and parking for 3 cars at the side of my place. They had no such luxury, so this was probably an issue of hot contention for them too, even though neither of them had cars.

The wonky line that veered further into my lawn, now twice a week during the height of summer, was getting on my tits. Then plastic bottles filled with water started appearing everywhere. I had to ask – to which I was informed with the sort of confident air in such matters that only David Attenborough should have access to…

‘The bottles keep YOUR cats out of our garden’
‘Eh?’
‘Their reflection, it scares them off’
‘Does it really? How ingenious!’

I said this while casually observing over her shoulder my tortoiseshell moggie Chloe. She was lying on her back in a distinctly louche manner lazily prodding one of the plastic bottles. I had also at one stage witnessed one of the old trouts propping up a few house bricks against the fence at the far end of the garden. On further enquiry I was informed (incredulously as though I was an utter cretin):

‘It keeps cats out – cats are too lazy to climb fences’

But it was the lawn thing that really pissed on my pizza. So one Saturday morning, courtesy of HSS Hire, the sort of ubermower that Wembley groundskeepers have pictures of, have taped inside their lockers, arrived on a trailer. One very noisy hour later the lawn was like a fucking pinstripe Savile Row suit specified in lurid green.

I knew however the wine from this sweet victory would soon run dry. So the following weekend they were in for another little surprise.

If you ever need to put up a fence really fucking fast - then I suggest you check out these guys. www.metpost.co.uk/

When the bloke arrived from B&Q to deliver my order I got him to leave the posts, 16 pound sledgehammer, fence panels, clips and other related paraphernalia stacked up ominously in the back garden. Then I went for a pint.

By the time I came back they were out in the deckchairs perched on the vehemently disputed border, knitting - knitting long polymer strands of pure black clicking hatred. An empty crisp packet blew across the garden like tumbleweed. A lone crow mocked the scene from its gallery on the rooftops. I stubbed my cigarette onto the lawn, dead on the borderline. Grinding it in with my foot I squinted into the sunlight, and snarled...

‘Can't hang around ladies, things to do’

Whang – the first metal post spike pierced the lawn and plunged into the soft black loam like a javelin through a badly coordinated Olympic official. It was like pushing candles into a birthday cake. A few taps on the wooden post with the sledgehammer, couple of clips here and there, and low! The first birch lap, pressure-treated panel was up. At 6 foot it was considerably taller than me, and these old biddies were struggling to hit 5 foot in two pairs of support hose. And there it was, a magnificent all seeing Pagan monolith draping its cold malevolent shadow deep into their chintzy territory.

They went absolutely, vein-popping, batshit mental. Literally running in and out of their flats, shouting insults from upper windows.

‘You can’t do that, this is private property’ one shrieked.
‘Yes it is, and this half is mine' I smiled sweetly.
‘You don’t own it; I’m phoning Mrs Cantremeberhername (my landlady).’
‘No need, I have in writing from her that she approves of the fence, would you care to see?'.
‘You need planning permission’
‘I don’t’
‘You do’
‘I don’t – it is classed a temporary structure, and as it is less than 7 feet in height therefore I don’t need permission from anyone except the landowner – which I have’
‘It’s on the wrong boundary’
‘Not according to this copy of the deeds (flip, flap, unfold) – care to see? In fact I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but that part of the end of the garden is also actually mine – right up to the back fence’

She was fucking apoplectic by this point – the bit at the bottom of the garden was her favourite spot for deckchair surveillance – it actually looked into my living room.

Then her son arrived.

‘Tell him Malcolm, TELL HIM’

I explained the situation to the clearly long suffering bloke. He apologised and gave me his number in case I needed it. Then smiled weakly as he tried to assure her it was not a police matter and I was not deliberately destroying the value of her property. So I continued to put the line of fence panels up at an impressive rate. The mad old witch now had to be physically held back by her son. Then the other old bint who had been quieter up till now suddenly opened her upper window and screamed…

‘You’re not even married it’s disgusting’
‘Why don’t we elope?' I suggested. 'Blue hair really does it for me?'

As the last panel went up I stood back and took stock. Just as I was about to pop another beer I heard a clattering from the mad old bats garden shed. Then perched on ancient stepladders, craning and wobbling awkwardly around the last panel, I saw a frazzled mop of blue hair attached to an alarmingly purple face glaring round the fence – so far down the garden I struggled at first to see which poisonous harridan was there screeching the now immortal line...

‘I can still SEE you you know! I can still SEE….’

I can only assume at that point the ramifications of a person of advancing years clambering onto an antique ladder suddenly became distinctly apparent to the old bitch.

I moved out 18 years ago. Fence is still there though.
(Mon 5th Oct 2009, 0:56, More)

» Neighbours

Blue Rinse Dragons Part I
When I left college moving back in with my folks just didn’t seem like the thing to do, but back then Mrs Spimf and I didn't feel ready to move in together, even though we practically lived together. So I found a flat to rent close to where she lived. It was a nice area with four in block post-war council houses with generous gardens. Most had been bought by the tenants and as a result were well maintained by the owners; quiet, leafy suburbia.

The flat in question was leased to me by a nice couple who had bought it for their elderly mother hoping to make a killing on it when she died, granny it would seem helped them by apparently smoking herself to death but left them with a slight problem – they couldn’t sell the place so soon after buying it due to some loophole in the ‘buy your council flat’ scheme. Old puffin’ grandma had ensured the interiors were yellower than northern social club toilet. The décor was horrendous too. Lurid swirly carpets – and I do mean carpets plural, as I discovered when I decided to sand the floors – I lifted three carpets all on top of each other in the hall, you could fucking limbo under the gap between door and floor. But my reluctant new landlords kindly said if I wanted to strip out all the granny crap and redecorate they would pay for it – splendid!

The only blot on the horizon was the two chintzy, blue rinsed old dragons that lived next door. They had been there for decades so their normality must have been shattered by the death of their neighbour who had lived there for donkeys years. I was sensitive to this and was as friendly and courteous as could be, but it wasn’t long before the barbed remarks began. One day I was in the back garden stripping 40 years worth of layered paint and nicotine off the doors - I had taken them off the hinges and removed the nasty plywood panels people were so keen on in the 50’s. Obviously this would meet with firm disapproval. So no real surprise when from the corner of my eye I caught a garish splash of floral polyester. They had a habit of appearing stealthily like some incontinent ninja brigade. They were standing silently, side by side, like a horribly shrivelled version of the twins form The Shining. A few pleasantries were exchanged – then it came…

“So you don’t work do you?”
“Well no, I’ve just finished an honours degree and I am looking for a job in my field but there is a pretty major recession on”

This was back in the early 90’s, it might not be the global crisis we're in now but the UK was seriously fucked back then, nevertheless I was immediately assigned as ‘workshy’.

But I continued to be cheery, cleared the overgrown gardens, lifted the hallucinogenic carpets, sanded the floors and decorated the place from top to bottom - whilst also applying for jobs, you know - workshy. During which time they closely monitored my EVERY move. If I went into the back garden they would immediately appear, set up deckchairs, plonk themselves down and knit with sustained and intense fury – never once taking their little beady eyes off me. It started raining lightly one day so they simply moved the deckchairs into their shed – left the door open and continued the surveillance!

If I went out they were there at the window. Even if I returned in the dead of night with marshmallows strapped to my feet, in an instant they were at the curtains, like crumpled little lavender fuelled rockets. Eventually I found a job. So they quickly turned their attentions to my relationship with my girlfriend.

“So you’re not married ARE YOU?” they chimed in unison with their powdery bunched-up little faces.

The curtain twitching would go into a frenzy anytime my girlfriend arrived. It was a warm summer so I’d often have the barbecue on the go of an evening. But as soon as I lit the damn thing the same routine would begin: they would make a huge deal out of slamming all their windows shut then rush out to take in their washing tutting and muttering. I should point out the washing that was about 40 feet away down their side of the garden and well up wind from my tiny barbeque.

At this point they were still pretending to be civil towards us but it was simply a ploy to pump us for more information. We went away for the weekend once and when we returned there they were to ‘greet’ us.

“Oh hello” (little matching saccharine smiles) “been away have we?”
“Yes nice weekend in a wee hotel up north” (more scrunched up faces)
“Did you leave in a hurry?”
“Eh?”
“In a hurry - on Friday? It’s just we noticed you didn’t do your dishes”

The nosey old bats had been in my bloody back garden peering through my kitchen window!

“We don’t see much of her (my girlfriend) during the week do we”

My girlfriend worked away a lot during the week but in this I spotted an opportunity for mischief…

“Yes well she spends the weekends with me but during the week she lives with her husband… and the kids, nice bloke. Black fella”

Eyes like fucking saucers!

Then one day they made some comment about hanging out laundry. From what I could gather they had certain days for washing and somehow expected me to adhere to this bizarre ritual. This and the constant prying about my girlfriend gave me an idea.

The following day I waited till they toddled off to wherever the public hanging was that day. Then I hung my washing out, sat in the garden, lit the barbecue, opened a beer and waited for their return. I even took my shirt off for good measure. It was at this point I really wished I had some tattoos. Soon enough I heard their respective front doors slam, counted to 5 and turned around - sure enough there they were peering out their windows. Clearly they couldn’t get a close enough look from there so out came the deckchairs.

They sat in complete silence staring at the spectacle of my laundry billowing in the summer breeze. Next to my usual array of jeans and shirts I had hung some of my girlfriends laundry items. With considerable skill I had carefully pegged one of her laciest prettiest bras to the line. Then below the bra (with some clever use of pegs) hung a matching suspender belt which in turn supported a tiny wispy little pair of panties and of course a pair of sheer lacy topped black stockings that waved lazily in the breeze, like a very thin lady running in slow motion.

“Hello ladies, lovely day!” I waved cheerily.

If they could have pursed their little faces up anymore they’d have turned them inside out. Vicious old bats.

Blue Rinse Dragons Part II
(Thu 1st Oct 2009, 14:13, More)

» Expensive Weekends

Mrs Spimf can’t do drugs...
not at all, she’s tried coke a few times and it always went like this...

"Want some of this coke baby?"

"No I cant, I cant, I really cant"

"Sure?"

"Well maybe just a wee bit"

Snnnnnnnnnnnnnnort!

FFW 6 hours... and we have a raging Hoover nosed maniac with one eye going to the shops and the other one coming back with the change - demanding more sex, coke,porn,sex,coke,porn - you get the picture. She even got so off her face on a bottle of poppers at T in the Park she had to be carried a good mile or so back to the bloody tent. But that's just the preamble...

A good few years back we went to a really nice hotel in a wee fishing village in Scotland - Portpatrick to be precise. With some time to kill before dinner, lolling around in our room, I decide to roll a joint.

"Want to try some hash babes"

"No I can't smoke"

"You can eat it though"

"Hmmm? Ok - not much though!"

A small piece of hash the size of a pea is consumed then we took the dogs for a walk along the beach. Drugs? No effect. An hour later there we are in the rather posh hotel bar, Mrs Spimf in a LBD looking leggy, demure and pretty damn hot.

"Would you like a drink before dinner darling”?

"Yes, sherry please"

Now I don’t know what sort of fucked up constitution my Mrs has but it would seem a tiny speck of cannabis can lie dormant in her tumblyboos until one small sherry is sloshed down there, then it begins...

Giggling - fair enough
Talking Pish - fair enough
Sudden loss of short term memory resulting is said pish being repeated on loop - fair enough
Attempt to get off bar stool and go to the loo resulting in KO style collapse in the middle of the room - erm no.

To make matters even better she had landed smack on the floor at the owner’s feet who was chatting with her daughter. Soon revived and seemingly now ok (ish) while rubbing a slight bump on her head, Mrs Spimf (brilliantly) explains to the hotel owner she might have had an adverse reaction to some prescription medicine. Owner promptly offers to call a doctor; she even offered to act as a witness in the lawsuit she had conjured from nowhere that was going to 'ruin' the 'idiot' doctor that would prescribe such powerful drugs without proper warning. Suddenly Mrs Spimf is fine and dandy again so we decide to proceed with dinner. She's now hungry - celle surprise! A sip of wine and a nibble at her starter and she’s off again. Talking pish, swaying about, stuck on a Groundhog Day loop - the lot!

Tits.

Quietly, I ask the waiter if he could sent the rest of the food up to the room and try to make as dignified an exit as one can with Ken Fucking Dodd in a cocktail dress waving and belming to a room full of bemused diners. So there we are back in the room - immediately Mrs Spimf strips naked. No idea why, the only thing I was intending eating at that point was my bloody steak, which was supposedly on its way up.

Knock knock - "room service"

"Come in" coos my idiot bloody wife, naked as a Tory MP in a boys dormitory.

The poor bloke trundles in with a splendid tray of delights, complete with comedy silver dome things on them. Give him his due he barely batted an eyelid as I hastily tried to cover my mad as a bat butt naked wife. He left with a smirk and large tip. After ten minutes of watching my wife struggling to use cutlery (she seemed to be knitting an imaginary scarf from invisible wool) I suggested at that point she might well be better in bed. So in she pops.

Thank. Fuck! Peace at last. Just as I finish my steak the convulsions start. Yes fucking convulsions.

Su-fucking-perb.

So there she is: Portpatrick's answer to Jon Belushi writhing around in bed like Linda Blair's epileptic understudy. After some 'discussion' Mrs Spimf decides it is in fact...

"Nothing to do with the drugs - it must have been when I hit my head"

She then panics - decides she has a 'brain clot' from her tumble earlier (I had a few choice words on that one). Nevertheless Mrs Spimf demands a doctor be summoned.

"Head injuries must be investigated!"

So there I am - no choice. I called the owner and asked if she could discreetly request a local doctor give us a quick call just to reassure my idiot wife she is not destined to spend the remainder of her days communicating with one eyebrow. Ten minutes later an ambulance with full blues and twos rocks up.

Fuck.

All too soon the paramedics enter the room, along with the bloody owner and her daughter as well for good measure. After I managed to tactfully ask them to get the fuck out I had a quite word with the paramedic.

"Don’t think its the bump to the head mate" (looks around conspiratorially) "she's actually eaten a little bit of cannabis"

Paramedic looks confused,

"How much"

"Erm maybe enough for two fairly miserly joints"

Paramedic scratches head.

"What’s she doing eating it - your supposed to smoke it, at least that's what I do (winks), having said that if she's had a bump to the head we should maybe take her in for observation"

Tits.

So they go to lift the pale and shaking Mrs Spimf out of bed

"Wait!"

"She’s naked"

"Oh right, fine where are her clothes"

I gather up the frilly black undies, stockings heels and LBD and realise the chances of getting her dressed without more drama were, to even the most optimistic observer, bugger all.

"Fuck it, wrap her up in the duvet, I’ll take the clothes with me"

And so they did. Then popped her on a little chair with wheels affair and lifted her up....

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" cries my lunatic wife - "I'M SCARED OF HEIGHTS!!!!"

"Erm your only about 6 inches off the floor love"

"OH? ...Well it felt a lot higher"

*faceplams*

So we process through the hotel lobby - the entire staff and guests it would seem had now lined up to see the drama unfolding with 'my lovely wife' now back on a high waving like a mong on a day trip to a window factory.

Kill me now, please God - end this now.

So we sat in the ambulance - it was at least 40 minutes to the nearest A&E. Mrs Spimf cracking jokes all the way. Me sitting there with a face like thunder. They treated Mrs Spimf and I like we had been up all night smearing methadone on a baby, they grilled me on what she had 'actually taken' then eventually they let us home at around 3 am. So on top of the cost of the fancy hotel, meal and a ruined LBD, the taxi back to the hotel cost nearly 50 quid - about 15 years ago.

I don't allow my wife drugs anymore. Muppet.
(Thu 13th May 2010, 13:33, More)

» The Boss

'Ominous' Integrated Creative Consultancy
Not quite sure if it’s the boss or the owner but the term psycho is to say at the very least apt. Around March last year I was approached and offered a job with a creative agency, a friend I had worked with in another nuthouse recommended me. I met with the MD – one of the most corpulent land mammals I have ever circumnavigated. I noted that his fingers had grown so fat around his wedding ring that only a fire crew could possibly remove it. I also met with the owner of the ‘international group of companies’ a tall pale worried looking man with beady eyes and an odd inverted smile, a sort Beaker from the Muppets crossed with Vlad the Impaler but with a distinctly more malicious slant. When my wife asked after the interview, I described his demeanour as that of an aristocratic vampire. I had my doubts about the whole thing.

Never the less they looked at my folio, loved my work and apparently raved about me the following day to my mate. All seemed well. Our next meeting was when they offered me the job of Creative Director, not in the UK but Dubai with a nice tax-free salary and relocation package. A thrilling development you might think. At that point I had never set foot outside of Europe never mind far-flung, exotic Arabia. So they offered to fly us over for a look around and time some to make up our minds. When we arrived they put us up in an impressive 5 star serviced apartment, whisked us around all the supposed glitz of Dubai – it’s hard not to see things as nothing more than a haphazard building site on a steroidal scale. But the beach club and the spacious apartments and all the other shiny things they dangled in front of us sadly had us mesmerised. We were whirled round for a week and shown all the good bits I guess. We’re not greedy people my wife and I, we have a modest wee home in Scotland, I had a little sports car that I loved and we had a VW Golf for sensible purposes like moving our little boy around to and from the nursery he loved and doing the shopping. To be fair we have never been good with money – I’ve always been paid reasonably well but we had no savings or pension and were fast approaching 40. Dubai seemed like a chance to enjoy a warmer clime and maybe squirrel a bit away. Seemed like fun too… what’s to lose we thought.

So we discussed things, got excited and I quit my job and moved out leaving my wife to tart up our wee house with a view to selling it and getting a place in Dubai – not in the hope of making a killing on the property market but partly because we wanted to put down some roots there and more so because the rents are just crazy – 30 grand a year for a modest two bedroom apartment.

After a few weeks in my new job it became clear they had an entirely ruthless if not heartless employment policy “one in one out” they would sneer at management meetings. It turned out my predecessor had been lured in, moved his family from the USA sold his house and set about his new job. For three months it was his new job. Then they sacked him, gave him one week’s pay and basically told him to get lost, this was a week or so before I arrived, I had no idea at that point it was to make way for me I thought he was just a member of staff that was not performing and knew little about it. For the first six months I was busy, doing well, winning pitches and whipping my small department into shape. I loved the sunshine, the heat and all the strange and exotic people. But the stories of hiring and dumping people continued – get another job you might say. Not that easy in Dubai, aside from complicated visa issues I looked more closely at my contract. It seemed I would have to pay back all flights freight and allowances if I left before the first year. Allowances made up nearly a third of my total pay. This is a hangover from when companies were expected to house expats – then the market went stupid so the law was simply changed so that an inadequate amount of money could be offered as an ‘allowance’ to rent a place… neat and tidy, but then things are always made neat and tidy for employers in Dubai – they even manipulate public holidays to fall on weekends. Oh and if you take a couple of weeks off the weekends come out of your holiday allowance too… yeah, I know!

Back home my wife was struggling with builders and a spectacularly effete man who claimed to be both married (to a woman who looked suspiciously old enough to be his mother) and a 'professional interior designer' but in reality was simply the worlds least handyman, cack-handed painter and bodge it decorator and raving closet queen in my humble opinion. The items supposed to be shrouded from paint seemed to have more Apple White on them than the walls. Holes were burned in carpets – half my tools went missing or were spattered with paint or simply broken. After months of being apart for the first time in almost 20 years together my wife and I realised we were not going to sell the place. The market had crashed – this at the time seemed like a massive setback. In hindsight it is the BEST thing that ever happened to us.

Just prior to Christmas there were murmurs at a management meeting that things were not going well. The attitude was ‘fuck it if we have to get rid of some of them we will’. I was asked to draw up a list of whom I could afford to lose from my small tight knit team who I had grown to love, and whom after recent developments and their support help and encouragement, I have realised respected me greatly. Naturally this 'list' was upsetting, I didn’t want to lose anyone. We weren’t actually losing money - we had just stopped making it. The owner is loaded but miserable, every penny is a prisoner - he doesn't do cars or yachts or anything it would seem but worry about the thought of losing a few quid when he has millions. A joyless, charmless man. So I went to my boss and said “listen mate, you're just about to have my wife and child move out of our home, send all our possessions over here and rent our place out – should I be really doing this?” I was confidently assured that we needed a ‘core management team’ to run the business and not to worry at all. So I went home for Christmas, then packed everything up and came back to Dubai with my family on the in January. About a week or so later I was told not to get a flat as I was up for redundancy. They tried to cut my salary and when I refused so they whacked the rent up in the company flat to about 2k a month (which was of course illegal). The company flat is an impersonal badly furnished halfway house intended to give new recruits a chance to find their feet. In the end I was there ten miserable months.

So one day they dumped around a third of the workforce, just like that, having them sign papers on the spot while they were still shell shocked – papers that signed all their rights away. They knew one bloke had just borrowed the money to pay an entire years rent - not uncommon in Dubai. They noted he 'might be a bit pissed off'. I now know what 'callous' means

It soon became apparent Dubai is a miserable place to live. We’re simply not meant to be there – it’s a desert maintained by armies of Indian slaves to provide a thin veneer of greenery at catastrophic cost to the environment. The tax-free thing in Dubai is a smoke and mirrors piece of chicanery, a lie – everything costs a fortune. The produce in the supermarkets is generally awful and you need a licence to buy a bottle of wine from a few special shops that look like a 70’s illegal bookies from the outside. Buying pork is a laugh too - they have special back shop areas that have signs 'pork - no Muslims' you'd think they would remember that aspect of their faith - "well bugger me (actually that’s out also) if I haven’t blundered in and bought a sausage". You’ll also pay 3 times the going rate in the UK for your plonk then there is 30% municipality tax. There are stealth taxes on many things. In truth costs an utter fortune to live there. Everything requires some sort of permit and they all cost money – lots of it. It became evident that even on a decent ‘tax- free’ salary my wife was going to have to work. This was not the plan – she does not keep very well and is often in a lot of pain from which she rarely complains.

Dubai also has what is basically legalised slavery – all those Indian construction workers toiling in the 45+ heat are conned into selling their land or taking loans to pay for their transit to ‘dream jobs’ in Dubai. As soon as they arrive blinking in sunlight that makes India seem somewhat Scandinavian they are forced to sign new contracts in Arabic and their passports are taken – illegally of course. They are housed in abject sewer ridden squalor; concentration camp would not be too unfair an assessment. It then takes on average 4 years paying back loans to the construction worker supply agencies before they even start to earn money. They get paid a few dollars a day for 12-hour days 6 days a week. It is not uncommon for them to throw themselves in front of cars – if it is your car you face jail and have to pay up to 120K in ‘blood money’ to their family back home in India. Like I say truly medieval laws. If an Emirate driver hits you, and fuck me are they bad drivers – 120 mile an hour undertaking on the hard shoulder, happens every day – however its your fault regardless – basically you are not local so you shouldn’t be there so the fact you are means you caused the accident. Which of course also means jail for you.

Almost everyone in Dubai has a ‘maid’ this is in effect some poor Filipino girl with kids of her own back home she sees for maybe 3 weeks a year if she is lucky. Generally a maid is on call 24 hours a day to look after unruly fat brats. To cook, clean, shop (if they are allowed out alone, which is very unusual). They usually have tiny rooms with a bed and not much else. They are not allowed friends or relationships of any kind and are often have a poor diet and no access to phone or Internet to contact their family. One local looked appalled when she told me her maid had asked to use the computer to mail her family “I mean I give her 1 day off a month and her own shampoo” was her response. Taxi drivers are in the same boat – most work 12-hour shifts 7 days a week to send home money to families they see for a few weeks a year. As a result they are tired and cranky – they drive like nutters as they are paid by mileage not meter time.

So we lived under constant pressure for months with the ever present threat of redundancy, then on one day I was told all was well and to get a place of my own. Shortly afterwards they then moved a well meaning but very loud brash young lad into the flat from the UK. This is illegal in Dubai. You can’t share a flat in Dubai with someone who is not a blood relative – my wife could have been carted off for adultery or I could have been accused of homosexuality – both hugely illegal. The laws in Dubai are from the dark ages. So we were even further encouraged to find a place. We found a lovely little villa, which due to the property crash was now just within our reach. As I didn’t have a chequebook I asked my boss for a company cheque for the deposit and to deduct it from my salary – “no problem mate, we’re here to help”. We were so excited – our own place at last after almost a year of living either apart or in some crappy halfway house. We unpacked all our stuff that had been in storage for months (at no small cost). Aside from our TV, hi-fi, books, DVD’s furniture and all the little personal items you accrue over 20 years we also had all our little boys toys, a small mountain of them, it seemed half of the 80 odd boxes unpacked were marked ‘toys’. He hadn’t seen them for six months. Some were still wrapped as Christmas presents. He was over the moon running around with Woody from Toy Story and it seemed the entire ‘cast’ of Disney Pixar's 'Cars'. For the first time in almost a year we felt like a family together at home again. My wife bumped into the owner in the café downstairs from my office “Hi! How are you, how are you settling” in he beamed.

Two days later I was called into the boardroom “Bad news. We’re laying you off, the company is going in a different direction, we’ll pay for your freight back and your flights and give you a months notice - sign this”

My mouth went dry my throat closed over. I was thought I was going to choke. “But I have just moved into a villa – you know that you helped us! I’ve just got all our stuff out of storage” To say I was gripped with utter panic would be an understatement. I was close to tears but was too flooded with adrenalin, my fingers went numb and I started to shake. They just shrugged. “It’s a business decision, that’s it, you can leave today, we want your phone and laptop now”

I was told the decision had only been made the previous evening. UTTER BULLSHIT. It turned out they had some other person to take my place (as is their way) and that the whole moving the bloke into the flat was to force us out, the help to get our own place made it easier to dump us. You can’t just evict a family from company accommodation easily – not even in Dubai. However employment law is very erratic and staggeringly vague. To be perfectly honest there are no real binding laws – the head bloke wakes up in the morning waves his arm and there you are, a new law. As Tommy would say: “Just like that”.

So after not even ONE week in our new villa after almost a year in their crap flat and half our stuff still in boxes, except of course all our wee boys toys, and all my big boys toys – home cinema system set up, PS3, broadband and cable hooked up all that palaver. There we were having the same movers pack it all up again less than a week later. All 97 itemised boxes.

The following day I went to sign the final severance papers – I knew I was due three months compensation but did not have the money or the time to fight this through the courts. So I simply expected a month’s salary and our flights and freight home. The legal system in Dubai is patchy and disorganised to say the least, there is also a lot of ‘who you know’ going on it can take months to resolve a case and visas run out after 30 days unemployment. We have a friend who is an employment lawyer out there. It work’s like this: when you lose your job the employer is legally required to inform your bank. As soon as that happens they freeze your account and call in all loans credit cards mortgages etc. Pay us the lot right now! If you can’t its simple – you go to straight to jail. Since January 2009 over 4000 cars have been dumped at Dubai airport as a result of this policy

I was told if I wanted my money I would have to surrender our passports so the Visas could be cancelled – ‘should take around 3 days’ I was told. This is not how it is supposed to work. It’s final payment; then Visa cancelled. They gave me a cheque for the cost of the freight and said they would book one-way tickets for my wife and child but I had to stay. They told me that they would also be informing the bank immediately - which would me a major problem for me. Basically they stiffed me on my last months pay and engineered it so that I would have no choice but to run.

We got on a plane the following morning at our own cost – or should I say at our father in laws cost. When we arrived home we checked on the progress of our freight. The bastards had tried to get the cheque back so our goods would not get home. They made all sorts of threats even calling the police. Thankfully the freight company have seen this before and could see what they were up to and calmly told them - 'do what you like we have lawyers' too and cashed the cheque. Because they don't trust each other cheques are as good as cash in the UAE – they have to be, the whole system is so dodgy. But aside from the cost of few grand to return all our wordly possessions to us considering what they owe me - how this benefited them other than sheer malice remains a mystery. After a week of sheer panic and misery we were told the goods were on a boat on their way back to us.

But aside from compensation i am still I am owed a month’s salary - about 6 or 7 grand UK terms. This is a HUGE amount over here that would keep us going for a good while and get us back on our feet. In Dubai we struggled to live off that each month and pay rent. Seriously - it’s that expensive.

So here we are back ‘home’ with a few suitcases, 500 quid, camped out in a tiny room in my father in laws. We’re already at each other’s throats. The chances of me seeing my severance pay are as likely as seeing human decency in Dubai. I’ve emailed the boss and pretty much begged for my cash. It would seem silence means ‘get fucked’.

Aside from the fact I need the money to look after my family I cant get over being burned like this – particularly in such a calculated and cruel manner. I have found out they have done this to around 20 or more people in 3 years - I am good at my job. I have 16 years experience and have produced award-winning work for major brands, chances are you have seen some of it - these guys don’t have a clue so just keep changing staff in the hope it will cover up their hopeless management.

What have I learned from this? Never live in autocracy. Never visit the UAE. At any point you could be in jail. Poppy seed bagel stories may be urban legend, but a woman was jailed then deported merely on the unsubstantiated accusation of adultery by her husband just a few weeks ago. She will never see her 3 young children again. Just because her husband accused her, no evidence just his word and a few concocted emails. Read your contract. Then read it AGAIN.

I have been told the owner of the company actually enjoys sacking people – he gets a kick out of it. Apparently he has a particular tie he wears for such occasions. Given the chance I would cheerfully choke the bastard with it.

Lets say for now the company is called 'Ominous' – if some poor sod searches for their site and stumbles upon my tale then at least it might prevent more lives being ruined.

Even if we could afford to move back into our home we cant – the family that rent it are just about to have a child – I don’t have the heart to evict them.
(Mon 22nd Jun 2009, 16:47, More)