Month: February 2022

First pick-up this morning was another young racing driver. I’ve been so busy just getting from A to B that I’ve barely noticed that there have been some really interesting human beings in my car. People that young who are already racing at this level… Remarkable single-mindedness. I’m looking forward to catching the fruits of their labour on this steep sandy track through the dunes and between the sea-carved mesas of the desert at Neom on Saturday.

I’ve also had some extraordinarily wealthy people in my crappy little Hyundai Sonata. That’s a set I know well, the ridiculously wealthy. They’re usually delightful. It’s the ones a couple of tiers below them that you’ve got to watch out for. There have been good people from all over the Middle East, flying in to support this unusual event. Hospitality are working overnight to construct a unique tent complex with Saudi features and unusual shapes stretched over steel. It already looks incredible and its going to be another feat on this site. These calm softly spoken men and women with their hi-vis jackets have inevitably swarmed a huge unique complex of tents and banners and flags and walkways and solar panels and cables and hydrogen batteries since I arrived here. Then there are medical tents and prayer tents and testing tents and loos and wadis. The command tent. The media tent. The huge catering tent, full now of cakes and air conditioning and tasty food and wireless internet. The imposingly named “command centre”. In the desert.

An enterprising stray dog found its way onto the site this evening. That’ll be making mischief somewhere tonight no doubt. We had a camel incursion a while ago. There are factors that are not controllable. But there is so much that is thought about. So many people contributing so much thought and planning, so that a small number of tough young women and men can go fast in electric machines for a day.

I’m not doing my early pick-up today. Much of my work is done, so I went to talk to the guy who runs hospitality. I told him I’ve got a pretty good handle on serving high status people in tents after all the Royal Ascot weeks I worked as floor or kitchen manager in fine dining. He smiled. “I won’t need help, but feel free to come tomorrow and see how it looks when its finished.” My workload is easing down despite my attempts to load it up again. I think the next few days will be a useful meditation for me – my undiagnosed ADHD means I really don’t like not doing things. If nothing explodes in my department then I’m going to just have to take in the sights and sounds and not find myself feeling crappy just because I can’t find a way to make myself immediately and visibly useful.

It’s half seven in the evening. I’m done until 1am and I’m not sleepy so I’ve found a steakhouse that doesn’t check the broken Saudi contact tracing app. I thought I’d treat myself to a full moon steak. The driver’s lost bag from yesterday got through today after all that stress. The best explanation I got was that security in Dubai couldn’t compute that most of a woman’s bag was taken up with a crash helmet, and so they suspected foul play and held back the bag to search it thoroughly. The guy at Tabuk was a bit of a sleaze as well. Her had it in his cupboard and he started by pretending he didn’t know it was there, before asking loads of weird pointed leading questions about Jordan. I hope he didn’t fuck up the crash helmet banging it about looking for booze or bombs or wherever, as helmets are extraordinarily expensive at this level, and they’re useless when bashed.

Ha and I just ordered my steak expecting a nice dinner and a load of last minute pick-ups came in. My phone is still buzzing with them. Oh what a surprise… Here I am in the slow restaurant with the soft piano music and a non-alcoholic mojito, sampling the local borek and the T-Bone and I’m probably gonna have to shove it all into my fat face and jump back into my whip to sling a load of marshals around this low rise young tatty desert border town.

Time passes. It’s half twelve. I’m sitting parked next to Dunkin’ Donuts in the Tabuk airport lot. There’s one Dunkin’ in the parking lot and another in the terminal. Donuts are big business here in Saudi. The very first outlet I saw in Riyadh was a Dunkin’. As a point of comparison, I find this place weirdly reminds me of Utah. Impolite Utah without such a good selection of root beer. They are all prudish and believe something fervently and don’t drink booze and are addicted to sugar and they live in a desert full of red dust. The thing they believe out here is a touch more credible than the stuff that Joseph Smith pulled out of his great big hat, but in Zion they are much nicer to you and they don’t try to kill you when you get behind the wheel of a vehicle.

I’ll be back into the airport to get 3 more people and then 3 hours sleep once more. This place having no booze? I can cope with that. If it was caffeine free as well I think I’d have booked myself a flight to Italy by now.

…

And I’m awake again and at the airport!!! Boiiiiiing. Those final three had a weird drive because I decided not to top up the caffeine knowing I would have precious sleep straight after. I basically drove them winding down. Lost the ticket to the car park… Thankfully they like me in the booth.

I’ve never been so happy to see a Starbucks. I’ve never been happy to see a Starbucks.

Morning! Here we go again!

When I think back to waking up this morning it honestly feels like a week ago.

I had slept a little over two hours in my second and final burst of nap. My alarm wrenched me from a benign dream involving a hippopotamus. Still mostly asleep I put my clothes on and drove to my first airport pick-up at 6.20. I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. I think I sleepdrove them through the streets of Tabuk. 7am I was more awake and it was a pair of Spaniards. The idiots at baggage handling in Riyadh had lost one of their bags. This is standard. This happens all the time. Nothing to see here. Still, he was pissed off and it made it memorable.

I went home but sleepy time couldn’t happen as this was my only window for a self-tape that was too long for the part. My brain absorbed the words though. I’m a sponge at the moment, because I’m active. The new phone made me look good. I had to record myself though and cue it off camera. Tech… Got it good enough and drove into the desert and back.

It was the 16.15 pick-up where it really blew up. She’s a driver. She has been in the air for fucking AGES. She’s got a rental car so she doesn’t need shuttling. I’m literally just a Joe in a suit making sure nothing explodes. My job is to make her feel welcome. She doesn’t come through the gate.

They’ve lost her luggage too. Of all the people. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. But here I am, stuck on land side, suited up as a welcoming committee, and she’s messaging me, panicky, from flight side.

This is small airport. You can push your way through security with a bit of insistence. I get myself flight side when it has been way too long for me waiting and wondering. I find her sitting in a little sweaty office, where an orc with a moustache and hat presides over his fat desk. I take in the situation very quickly. I’ve never met her before but it is painted broad. She is upset and so so tired. He is smug and leering, explaining something that is obvious to him in a tone that immediately puts my back up. He’s exploiting a rare moment of vulnerability. I immediately switch on my alpha and take control of this horrible room and take his things and write numbers on his papers and get him to say back the thing to me repeatedly until we are all completely sure that that is the procedure and he is going to send that email isn’t he and yes of course he’s very sorry but let’s just get this solved shall we and by the time the driver and I are out of there he’s had a right earful and he’s clutching my mobile phone number. I don’t like people who start with that behaviour. It usually makes people look small and mean like the entire cabinet. But … I can do it with the best of them and it works when its right.

The car rental guy is on Saudi time as well. They drive like roadrunner but they do bureaucracy like Elmer Fudd. She signs all the documents and she is still shaken but she’s a driver so she gets us to the hotel. I’m with her still as I’m not going to let the hotel throw up one of their periodical games of “the company have used all of their allocated rooms”. Then I leave, but my car is still parked at the airport. It’s a 45 minute walk. “Get insured on my car. Then you can go and get yours!” “That’s how tired you are. Then I’d have two cars at the airport. I wish I could drive two cars simultaneously. But it’s ok. I’ll walk. It’ll give me some downtime.”

I grab a shrimp sandwich. I cut time by running across a five lane road while munching it. Then I hit a huge patch of wasteland just as the sun is setting. Dead dry mud cracking and crunching underfoot. When did it last rain here? The bleached bones of mammals lie where they fell, inviting touch – I have seen more dry and clean spines this week than ever before in my life. They fit together so nicely. And each vertebra is an interesting gamepiece. You can see how we ended up with things like jigsaws and dice.

I walk North across it. To my left, high in the sky already, the big face of the waxing moon, almost full in Leo now. Fight night. To my right, the sun dips orange below the shredded buildings and trees of this strange and broken town. The call to prayer starts to sound all around. The devout are pulled to their ritual. We all contemplate the infinite as another day ends. Seven fighter jets roar up from the airport. I push on, walking in places I am definitely not supposed to walk. This is not a pedestrian city. There is no walkway into the airport. I walk through the car gate. I get my car back and almost immediately a call from the other side of the world.

Nobody else can do it. I have to buy the things that have been lost by the driver. It might be a few days before the bag comes back. Meantime the driver needs clothes.

I’ve never bought an outfit for a woman before. Thank God for Lou. She talked me through the pitfalls. I try and get practical stuff here. I’m erring on the side of active-wear.

There are no women’s knickers in H&M here though. I am told to go to the big store in the mall where the security guard won’t let me in. Bloody prudes. Men’s pants aplenty but the women have to go to the big city. Thankfully Next is nearby, and not so buttoned up. I get it all. I drop it off at her hotel. I wish I could have bluffed that a woman had done the shopping and not me. That’s essentially how it worked anyway as I took full advantage of Lou’s incredible grasp of fabrics and styles and kept on sending photos and getting guidance.

Then it was yo-yoing up and down to the airport and dear God it’s just turning 1am, I slept 4 hours total last night in two short bursts. I’m gonna close my eyes and vanish. A mostly solitary day with a burst of social behaviour in the middle. And I was very very happy. Focused, active, needed – and not forced to make small-talk. A good place. I dunno what I got so weirded out about yesterday.

It’s a funny old thing, social insecurity…

I’m in an unfamiliar place, and sure – I’m working hard but I’m mostly surrounded by teams of people who arrived here with an existing dynamic, and who already really understand the job. Then I come in with my big hands and my oafish smile saying dumb things on purpose and being mildly annoying and mildly comical and trying to work as hard as I can but not always in the right direction. Sometimes people just don’t have room. I feel a bit outside, and as a result I am watching myself and as a result I feel even more clumsy and even more out of the loop.

For the first time in a while my work pattern allowed me to be up in the desert as night fell, and I waited with some of the people I’m living around, just for the companionship, even though I was mostly ignored. But … I’ve gone home now, feeling a little sad and a little tight around the chest.

Lots of little turnings of shoulders to close me off, lots of little ignorings of my attempts to join conversations. One very clear and hard shut down of an attempted contribution. I’m aware I’m the bottom of the pile here in terms of established social dynamic. I normally operate fine there as a happy wildcard who genuinely doesn’t give a fuck about your pretend hierarchy. But, you know, it’s Valentine’s Day where we think about our connection to others. And they’ve all gone in one car to try and see some of the sights of Tabuk. And I’ve gone home. I kind of wanted to feel like I was part of a friendship group here but I really don’t feel like they “get” me at all.

I understand. I’m feeling clumsy enough that I might have refused an invite to walk around the city at night with them anyway. And there’s nothing personal in the cold shoulder. It’s just an ease thing. I have a lifelong inability to do smalltalk. When I try to I come across like it’s a talking fish. But I’m missing the ease of established friendships. I’m so slow to make friends and I’m slow to trust. I’m missing you lot…

They’ve organised a sweepstake and I’m not included, which isn’t a deliberate slight either but it added to the outsider thing. It’s a group that has existed for a while and been to some amazing places together and worked hard there and they’re doing a thing they’ve done before. I get it. I get it. I get it. I feel sad.

Anyway, I spoke to Lou about all this. She helped me take the feelings out, look at them and put them back in a different order. It’s not so bad. “I’m perfectly happy on my own to be honest. I spend loads of time on my own.” “Then why does it bother you?” … … “I like this work. I want things to go well across the board so I can do more of it ” “There you go then.”

Then the phone went and told me I have to pick somebody up at 1am. It’s half nine. I have another pick-up at 6. Shit. Emergency cat nap. Who has time for insecurity?! I’m a solitary workmachine.

And here I am at 1.15 waiting for another plane after two hours shuteye and I remember that when it comes down to it, I’m in sodding Tabuk! (And I have to somehow send a self tape by the end of the day without anyone I’m friendly enough with to be able to honestly get them to do it with me. Here.)

There’s a camel incursion onto the road on the way out of Tabuk today. I’m driving with one of the interpreters. I get him to take a load of photos through the window.

We have been helping somebody get through COVID screening to make sure they can compete in the race. The interpreter is from Riyadh, so he isn’t entirely accustomed to the desert either. But he knows a lot more about it than I do. And Saudi Arabia in general.

When you’re driving in the city you often have to bypass these huge great big compounds that are fenced off with militaristic insignia. High and threatening looking fences. I ask him about them. “Tabuk is near the border of Jordan and Egypt and Israel. Almost all of the armaments in Saudi are stored here. The weapons and the bombs.” We live in a target. “When Neom comes, they will be distributed across the country.” Neom. See previous blogs. The utopian dream of the Crown Prince. The place we are working. It’s a beautiful idea of a collaboration. Egypt has provided some land. Will Israel and Jordan also get stuck in, to make this futuristic desert utopia? Or is it a pipe dream?

The roadcamels are chased by a number of frustrated Bedouin herdsmen with sticks. Right now their way of life is still ancient at heart. A boy begins to run ahead of the herd, down the road, and the camels chase him. I have a feeling he’s doing a pied Piper routine that is tried and tested. He’s not running away from the camels. He’s getting them interested in chasing him so they move where he wants them to and not where they want to – which tends to be towards the nearest chewable shrub.

I try to learn from the interpreter a little bit more about the ways of this place. He teaches me plenty. He shows me how to spot a fake traffic camera – they are just silver boxes with stickers that look like lenses. He also puts my mind at rest that you CAN turn right at a stop sign like you can in America. I’ve been doing it because I felt it was the thing, but I’ve been quietly worrying that I’ll end up with fines worth more than I’m paid to be here. All in all another long drive with interesting companions. And then a bit of hanging out in the desert.

Now I’m back at my clinical hotel room, and I bought a cheap mobile phone tripod which is now set up in the living room. Another self tape, this one with a long-ass monologue from a character I’m not auditioning for. The director thinks he wants to see if we can act. The director really wants to see if we have loads of free time. I don’t. I’m gonna have to read it. Hopefully I’ll find time tomorrow. It would be lovely to get back to blighty into a spot of filming. Much as I’m thoroughly enjoying myself out here in the summer, there’s that old dragon I’ve been chasing just waiting back on familiar soil.

In the meantime, things are hotting up. The drivers are arriving now. The course is getting hot. I got shown around one of the electric vehicles today. They are remarkable. And they are gonna go like the clappers – these weird beautiful scuffed up off-road monsters. You’ll get photos of them before long. Right now I’m just too charmed by the camels…

With something of a sleep deficit I found myself once more on the desert road to Neom. “Dead dog,” observed my passenger. “Ugh. Still there is it?” I watched the street cleaner dispose of the cat the other day with a special tool that had a wire loop. He picked it up by the head and carried it at arm’s length to a skip. This poor hound died too far from the city to receive such hallowed rites.

Moments after we see the poor dead dog, we see on the other side of the carriage way – sitting up straight by the side of the road – another dog. This one is alive and alert. “I think it’s waiting for its friend,” I say. We both just carry on though. We can’t cross the carriageway and my passenger has to get to work.

Time ticks by. Some hours later I’m on the other side coming back, this time with a rally driver for a passenger. We have had some car time already and she is a comfortable and thoughtful conversationalist. We’ve covered a lot of idealogical ground when we see the dog again. This time it is lying, sprawled, not looking at all well, exactly where it had been hours ago. Without needing to question I know this passenger isn’t going to start saying “What are you doing, no, stop, it might have rabies” as I pull into the verge. She’s a rally driver. Her natural instinct is not going to be fear. “I’ve got an empty coffee cup. We can fill it with water. And crush up some of these biscuits,” I say. She starts sorting the water before my seatbelt is off. She’s all over this plan.

We both approach the dog under the desert sun making the stupid noises humans make to try and teach creatures we aren’t intending to kill them this time. Occasionally drivers honk us as they shoot past – ineloquent noise with no meaning but itself as honking can only ever be. Encouragement? Criticism? Nah, just noise.

The dog rouses and takes a few suspicious totters away from us. We pantomime putting the food down and redouble the stupid noises. It looks at us and those ears are suddenly quizzical. At least it doesn’t have rabies. It is curious but scared. We start to back away like servants before the emperor, gesticulating at the remarkable offering we have made. It watches us until we are all the way back in the car. Then when it knows we aren’t going to try to kidnap it, it begins to totter towards our pathetic gifts. We are watching because we have mirrors and it doesn’t know we are looking at it. The water is the thing. I think it was sitting there because it had run out of ideas and lost its hunting companion. Hopefully it’ll find new patterns. “It’s eating! It’s eating!” I drive off. Places to go. Or sometimes not:

More tomorrow and a proper nights sleep tonight. It’s quarter past nine. I’m done. I’m glad we stopped to do ridiculous things to prolong the existence of that cur. Life is a beautiful thing.

The culture shock is still quite frequent as I drive around this far flung Kingdom. This morning on the way in to work I saw three men in full Bedouin robes riding camels through the desert by the roadside. Having never been in a desert until about a week ago, it still surprises me to be surrounded by sand most of the time, and seeing things that are so ancient still happening. Opening up the Geocaching app out of curiosity as I drove home I saw that there are some petroglyphs in a cave off the road to Tabuk that are perhaps 12000 years old. You need a 4×4 or a death wish to drive 5 kilometres into the desert when the sun is going down and you’re tired. I am just happy to know they are there.

Today it was cold despite the bright sun. Tonight it’ll be freezing. The wind was blowing sharp through our clothes on site, although not hard enough to start deconstructing the place again. We were avoiding the outside where possible though. I tended to work in my car with the door open for air when I was there.

At my feet, constantly seeking in the sand, the distinctive and unusual long legged tok-tok beetles roamed. They shoot out a nasty smell if you mess with them. They look like bad drawings of spiders.

In the air I saw the occasional bird of prey – perhaps carrion birds. Not so many small carrion birds by the road but pickings are good. People whip down them despite the cameras. I saw a dead cat first thing yesterday and a dead dog first thing today. The beetles will get what the kites don’t want and the desert will crumble the rest to dust.

I went to scout a local petrol station. Coming from Tabuk the nearest station is about 60 kilometers from site. I thought it worth seeing if a closer desert station I saw on the map a little deeper into Bedouin territory and away from town was open. 18km down a dusty straight road and it turned out to be a good one, with decent prices, frequented by the local cops who rumble up and down the desert roads all day. Some Google translate and sign language eventually led to them agreeing to accept my visa card so long as I bribed them 20 riyals and walked next door to where there’s wireless internet. I followed the guy and stopped for a moment fascinated by a van full of camels. I took a photograph and was immediately jumped by two small boys in traditional brown robes. They clearly wanted me to pay if I was taking photographs of their father’s camel. I stopped snapping and told the guy to bump it up another 5 for the kids. Free enterprise. Here’s my 5 riyal shot … 5 riyals is about 10p. I like camels. This one has a cute little knitted mask.

The exchange rate is favourable here, from pounds. Dominos charges 29 for two pizzas. That’s about six quid. You can barely get anything for that in the UK. We have habitually been overpaying horribly for our dough.

All the cars here are white or silver, which makes it very easy to forget where you parked. I’m going to go and find my wheels. I’ve got to pick up some guy from the airport in half an hour at 1am, and then another guy at 6. Fun.

This city of Tabuk lies to the west of the vast Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To get to work in the morning it is about an hour’s drive for me, with just twenty minutes in the city. After that the buildings start to tail off until the desert begins in earnest.

First of all we drive across a border. “Toll road,” says Google Maps, but it’s wrong. It’s wrong about a lot around here but no surprises – this afternoon I was driving on a road when it just… ceased to be entirely and I was looking at a mesa and an improvised turning circle.

“Neom,” says the border. A compound word. “Neo” for “New”. “M” from “Mustaqbal” – “future”. Neom: A new future.

We are in this huge “Neom” area that has been allocated for one of the most ambitious projects I have ever heard of. An alleged $500 billion earmarked to build the sustainable automated city that those 1980’s picture books promised us we’d be living in by now. “Would you like your shirt pressed?” says robot Jeeves. “No thank you robot Jeeves, I shall be wearing this fluorescent pvc onesie.” Flying self driving cars. Big tall robot buildings. An artificial moon? Everything powered by renewable energy. A vision of clean sharp newtopia…?

By 2025 they aim to have a line of this incredible projected city built in this area, starting at the Red Sea and pulling into the desert, a new city – a new state – a new country perhaps? 26,500 square kilometres. Mountains and seas. Renewable energy purifying sea water. Maybe 1 million citizens? An airport, of course. Somewhere to park your flying car. And coral. The coral of The Red Sea bordering Neom has displayed unique resilience in the face of warming seawater. It has developed biological defences that have so far saved vast tracts of it in conditions that would bleach it anywhere else. Can we teach other corals…? Either way, look after it…

The Neom project – they are sponsoring football and other sports to get people to put it on their radar. They are working hard with the PR, as one must in this modern world. This race is all part of awareness raising – because as with so many huge projects, controversy is always on the heels. Gotta keep it spinning the right way. The sustainable angle of the Neom project – and with this desert wind and sun I can see why they thought of it – it aligns with the guys I’m working with here and what they’re doing.

The race is electric. Spec silhouette electric SUVs racing in remote parts of the world. All teams have one male and one female driver. This is racing in the now. They try to raise awareness of climate change as part of their brief. They are doing good and doing races at the same time. Big fast fun events in incredible places with an eye to the environment… The team I’m on the edge of is highly skilled in this sort of thing. They did it in Greenland for crying out loud. I was doing Willows or I could’ve made it out there. I wish I had. As it is I get to be in the sun in February, plugging into something unique and bizarre and interesting for the future of speed. It feels like a continuation of the legacy in some way. One of dad’s obituaries called him “the Godfather of speed”. I’m glad to be in a weird place surrounded by fast things. I feel closer to his memory.

Out there in the desert I found a perfectly round stone underfoot. A reminder of how time shifts everything. This desert was underwater in the late Cretaceous. Until maybe about 60 million years ago the oceans rolled and smoothed this round stone that I stood on. Then it lay there in the sand until just now when I put it in my pocket. There have been ice ages in the life of this stone. There have been times we have been cooked and burnt and poisoned. Our perspective is too shallow to really ever properly understand geological time, planetary time, time that is longer than our miniscule three score years and ten. There are inevitable shifts that our sustained neglect and selfish behaviours are catalysing. I’ve pocketed this sea forged desert stone to help me remember to be less of a selfish tit on a personal level. And to switch the fecking lights off…

Dust storm. It gets everywhere. Everywhere. This will be the last journey of my Camino boots. I’ve clung onto them for ages now. I made a pair of Brashers last a decade, but these boots are pretty much the only footwear I ever put on these days. I can hear them screaming right now. They are caked in dust. Stones are burrowing into all the seals. Add to that they’re getting a bit ripe. They’re not gonna improve. I logged way too many steps on the Fitbit today, trying to redress wind damage.

The gale was up in the desert. My fingers and my face feel tacky with sandblow. Room service gave me a towel yesterday but they took it back this morning when I was at work. I can’t even have a shower. I want a bath and beer. They’re being weird about giving me another towel.. I’m going out for food.

If they would let me in the shops I’d buy a towel. And a bedside lamp. This hotel is shit.

They have a terrible contact tracing app in Saudi that doesn’t work for me, so if they ask to see the app I can’t go into the shop. And they always ask to see the app and often they’re very bolshy if I try to pretend that I think they are saying hello, or any of the other many tactics I have attempted.

I’ll likely have to buy something through the door of some place. I was lucky with the yemeni food yesterday.

—

Pizza without tomato. Damn. Still, it’s edible. And filling. Just boring. I didn’t really know what I was ordering once again.

I’m not thinking very coherently right now. I’m absolutely exhausted. That desert wind…

I have never been happier about the fact that masks are everywhere at the moment. They would probably have been issued at site entrance even before Covid. You can see the sheets of flying sand coming before they engulf you. Putting a mask on makes it a bit less of a “duck and cover” situation, but if the zephyr is shifting you’ll want as little of that sand in contact with your face as possible.

My lips are very chapped and my eyes are sunglasses panda. I look like I’ve been in an oven. I kind of have been. A fan assisted oven full of sand.

I spent way too long trying to stop things from blowing away into the desert. Big bits of cardboard, lumps of polystyrene, surprised elephants, flags, speed limit signs, bin bags, sand bags, cars, horses, me. I’d gather them up and try to secure them or return them or roll them or tie them down. The emergency assembly point flag was never gonna stay up unless I could find some cables and guys and a mallet, but I was too tired to think by the time that started happening. Every time I disposed of a big bit of rubbish another one would blow across from somewhere else and I’d put my foot on it and then something else would jump up and start scudding across site. Most people there have a sort of base. I don’t, apart from my car, and I prefer not to sit in it with the engine running, so I just pounded the ground… On the plus side, a fortnight like that and I’ll lose a stone. And what an absolute joy to be tanned in February. Problem is I sent a self tape just before I flew out. Best get the lotion out and some chapstick. If only they would fucking let me go into a fucking shop. These casting decisions can be arbitrary and I don’t want to look too different from how I looked when I recorded the scene… Hey ho.. It’s not like I have a great deal of choice in a desert dust storm.

At least I got a towel and had a shower.

Bed.

I wake up too early, too early, too early, but actually it’s late. I was never gonna get on site before noon after that late night and jumpy rest.

I eject into my shiny white hyundai and hit the road. The road is hot. The road is lawless. This is what happens when you don’t let women drive! Everybody is just honking and overtaking and pulling out suddenly and stopping. If somebody is in the fast lane and you want to overtake, it’s ok – just make a new lane!! You can fit. It’s fine! It’s totally fine. Just be honk and be lucky yeah?

As I pull onto the 88, the police and military are working together to pull apart a recent messy eight car pileup. Everybody drives around and through it as opportunities arise, joyfully tooting their horns. This is clearly just a normal Tuesday morning here. “Only 8 cars? Just 2 dead people? Great. Less paperwork than usual. Are the cars salvageable?”

This is despite the roads being monitored to a level I’ve never seen before. “We got £6000 worth of traffic fines in one day here once,” I am told. Cameras are everywhere and if you can’t read Arabic numbers you’re guessing the speed limit as often as not – and be sure that the speed of other cars is no benchmark. If they know the camera is there they are still likely to do something ridiculous like accelerate hard at the camera and then slam the brake last minute.

Occasionally there’s a harsh speedbump just hanging out in the middle of a stretch of 120kph road as well. I’m taking it easy as I head out into the desert this first morning. I’m driving with motorbike principles. “You’re invisible and everybody is trying to kill you.” The cameras face the car and they are hard to see. Google maps hasn’t got them marked. Gotta be careful even without the homicidal driving culture.

Still, a long straight glorious desert road. There’s a sign with a picture of a camel and suddenly there’s about twenty wild camels just wandering around near the road. I don’t stop, even though I’ve never seen a wild camel before. I’m smiling about it still as I arrive on site while it’s still morning. Wristband on. Into the unknown.

We are building a racetrack.

The desert is a great big pile of sand. There’s life. Stray dogs. Beetles. Flies. Some birds. And camels of course. But many humans can’t cope with the freedom to just go anywhere. So the most active part of the day today is spent partitioning bits of desert into car parking areas by hauling around great big bits of fencing. A good day for suntan and Fitbit. A bad day for jetlag.

As I drive off site I stop a moment in a roadside parking bay in order to just … catch the sun setting over my first day in the desert.

Then it’s back into the mess of Tabuk traffic.

This evening I wandered by random into a Yemeni restaurant and ordered something with sign language. It turned out to be lamb chops and prawns with rice.

Duolingo Arabic is still trying to teach me the alphabet by phonetically breaking down Western names like “George”. It’s useless. Of all the Duolingo courses I’ve dipped into this is by far the least practical. By now I should be able to say “Hello woman, the boy cat eats the girl’s ball thank you. Drink?@” I can say that in about six European languages now and bits of it are useful. For Arabic I can just about recognise writing that sounds like “duur”. They didn’t even bother telling me it reads from right to left which made it incomprehensible at first. And I have no meaning for “duur”. And I don’t need to write Arabic.

Even reading numbers would have been a more useful starting point. I still can’t properly understand the speed limit. I’ve learnt greetings now and thank you. But I still can’t say eat or drink…