At the last minute on the early evening of 25 January Christina decided it would be a good idea to have an Australia Day barbie for a handful of friends. Some were still on leave and not yet back in the UAE, but she phoned around and raked up a hand-full of keen participants.
From left, clockwise around the table in our front yard (the back yard was too dusty), are Christina, Serge and Sharon from Canada and their friend Brenda also from Canada, Alison from Scotland, Mutlu, her husband from Turkey, and Jan and Len from Adelaide in Australia.
We had a really nice morning eating pancakes with Canadian maple syrup and Australian Golden Syrup, bacon, eggs, toast, croissants, port, coffee and eventually water.
Although it's winter at Al Ain, you wouldn't know it. The morning was just perfect and everyone seemed to have a good time chatting and enjoying the cuisine. At one stage we had trouble getting the charcoal on the barbecue to fire up, but Mutlu came to the rescue and "fanned" the flames with Christina's hair dryer. And what a wonderful idea that was ... the barbie went like fury.
We hope you had an excellent Australia Day too.
Robin and Christina
PS: We found out that it's India's Republic Day today.
