Where do I start describing life in Riyadh? For starters, I was separated from Gill mid-week since we were not married at the time (which means she is not welcome in the country) so this made it depressing, plus travelling back and forward from Dubai every weekend was a chore, plus there's F-all to do in Riyadh compared to most other global cities (no bars obviously, but no cinemas which really is confusing), and to round it off, it was meister hot in the summer reaching temperatures of up to 50 degrees celcius.

As a working place, I didn't mind it. Riyadh has got a nice casual pace of working life and nobody gets overly stressed about anything. The educated Saudis are as friendy a bunch as any, and we had some good laughs.

Life in the compound was an adventure ... expat city with a big wall around us. Unfortunately for me, I was there at the point of the compound bombings which made going to sleep at night a kind of Russian Roulette. We received more and more protection until they finally decided to put machine gun nests at each corner ... comforting?!?

Every now and again, we'd venture out to one of the expat parties, or in one case on the Hash House Harriers meet in the desert. The pictures below tell most of the story.