Waiting for Gordo, in Arabian Weather

September has been incredibly hot and humid so far, with the sea as still as I have ever seen it - so no cooling breeze, just heat and humidity.  A friend was out on a fishing boat and said he has never known the sea so still. Thankfully, on Sunday lunchtime a breeze started up, and it is still with us. We did have one brief cloudburst. And it is certainly cooler today.

But it has been like being back in our desert town, and is bringing back some memories - see Col's photo of desert flowers above.  

Clearly I used to be able to cope with the heat. I can't now.  Summer in Arabia is no joke, yet in the early years, I used to walk back from my job - we worked from 7 a.m. till 12:30 - in the noonday sun, along with all the other mad dogs and Englishmen.  It was quite a long walk, across a big stretch of shade-less desert out to the little courtyards most of us Brits lived in.  Or, more grammatically, in which most of us Brits lived.

Here is another review, this time of my eco-thriller  Waiting for Gordo- all part of revving up for M.A.B.L.E. - the Fantastic book Launch in October:

The location in Waiting for Gordo by Sue Knight is an exotic corner of the world we live in today. The story takes place on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. Written with a light touch, it will make you smile, but then make you shiver at the sinister undertones. Also, what a great name for a book! Apparently, it was originally destined to be called Small Island, but Andrea Levy got there first.

https://medium.com/feedium/reflecting-an-uncomfortable-reality-eco-thrillers-99813c4988a5

It has become oddly timely given the concerns about global warming and strange weather. - and the disasters that is causing.  It was written over several years on a couple of small islands in the very low-lying and very beautiful Maldives.  I used to sit under a palm tree in the bar, in the morning, having waved the Shoal off on its boat, with a glass of whatever the current fresh fruit juice was - often pineapple.  And I so much wanted to capture two things: the paradise-like beauty of the islands, but also the way that what ought to be a paradise is not. Earthwide, the serpent is still in the garden - still running the garden - and still deceiving so many of us.

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him - Revelation 12:9

But not for much longer.  And that is the good news of the Kingdom of God - the new and perfect heavenly government, that will soon be ruling over the earth. Under its loving rulership the whole earth will become the paradise of peace it was always meant to be.  And we will wake up to no more horrors on the news. There will be nothing then to make us afraid or even worried.