For with what Judgement ye Judge

 For with what Judgement ye Judge

You could be anywhere.

You could be in the Ramada hotel, possibly in downtown Doha.

Msheireb. Somewhere like that; it’s hard to be sure when heat smelts seas mid-May. Anybody might be hard pressed to see exactly where, through all that dripping sweat.

It fogs the spectacles, you know. Tints them with blushed rose.

There’s a veranda, that much is certain and benches. Benches sitting in judgement on other benches. Push through the glass doors from the main bar and you’ll find them. Those condemned to drip don’t judge; best to leave that to others, and just observe.

Filipina staff buzz in and out on this hot night, looping tables like those flat biting flies, in a decaying orbit, placing glasses of coolant in front of dripping masses who silently barbecue there.

Of course, there is air conditioning, but that’s rather frowned upon these days, isn’t it? In the same way that using external heaters has passed from fashion, you tend not to bother.  After all, with so much cancelled these days; you only know so much of what was is not or cannot be and might not even have existed here.

For instance, you’d better not snap or snort at that diminutive she/her, sporting a bob of blonde hair, possessed of bones so sharp they could cut, a tight red top pressing against B cups at best and sat behind one of these benches thinking about none of this.

She has a tumbler of fiery crimson liquid she occasionally glowers at, raises and swishes against shards of melted ice that completely fail to cool the drink sufficiently to her liking.

But she’s old, drinking a bitter Campari and soda and I think I know her. Such lemons for lips.

Well, maybe not old as such, it’s just that her face is so creased from a lifetime of constant frowning that it has come to resemble that loose-fitting corner of your fitted sheet who grips and grips the small of your back and brings too much wakeful frettings in the small hours.

Hell. A loose fitting fitted sheet.

If pressed, she would not admit that she resented the Filipina. They were as small as she, but their dark eyes sparkled with optimism, like onyx framed by perfectly coiffed dark cuts. And full bodies that pressed naughty shapes against sheer white virginal coveralls and pinafores in far too shapely a way.

If they knew how alluring they were, they were not giving any away.

Always smiling, always gracious. No, she certainly did not resent them. Not one bit.

She snapped something in that general direction a quick response and alongside her table. “Yes, madame?”

“Get me another one of these.” Her accent was particularly British, just a slight nasal twang, that was course corrected during the sentence so there was no upwards inflection. By no means was she the sort that inflected upwards, downwards and in any which way at all.

That accent cut like glass and slashed the burning air. It hung like ice then melted, dripping to the floor in condescension.

“Yes, madame.”

And she, the bobbing angel, departed smirking, winging her way through the glass doors to the bar, bouncing more than was strictly necessary, whilst our lady did not notice, or feel in the slightest bit envious as she watched countless other pairs of eyes following her passage.

Madame lit a cigarette, enjoying the unpleasant taste of burnt upon her tongue, scanning the veranda.

Then, she refocused her attention on the folder in front of her. It was a little askance on the table, so she repositioned it to a perfect perpendicular, coughed, resettled some rather grim looking pinch-framed, black-rimmed spectacles on her nose and opened the plastic cover.

The title page was in a bold font. ‘British Standards Inspection open brackets Ofsted, close brackets’. Doha International School. Ain Khaled. There was almost a sneer on her face. Just a trace, perhaps, but by now the drink had arrived.

And, in any case, one of those lupine pairs of eyes had detached itself from an adjacent table and was standing beside her, looking in, almost apologetically. “I heard your accent.”

“You got no right coming to my table,” snapped our lady, affecting to be absorbed in her flimsy. “This is my table. Nobody has any right at this table but me.”

“I heard your accent. I thought I could just come and sit.”

“As long as you won’t go away and leave me alone, you may as well sit down,” she replied, grimly, but maybe secretly pleased, because, you know, she’s a stranger in a strange land, and burning. We’ve all been there, and if we haven’t, we surely will.

Maybe there is more than just one actor here, for, with a flourish, doffs he his tricorn. Well, she didn’t see that coming, had to suppress a smile. “And just who the devil are you, anyway?” quoth she, shifting back 300 years, but hold hard. Time slips in such a hotel as this.

“Why, none other than Cap’n Ross Poldark,” he grins all pearly whites, like Peter Pan. And he sits opposite her, placing his headwear beside him on her table to his left, and a small beer to his right, in a glass much colder than it ever had any right to be.

For her part, she has replaced the cynical bleak mask that briefly slipped, determined to be hard work. For that is what she is, hard work. “Captain Poldark?” she replied, biting the consonants.

“If you like,” he grinned, “Actually, I’m pretty much anything you want, Maureen. What are we up to?” And he took the flimsy folder from her, skimming it, like a flick book, his eyes scanning, narrowing, zooming.

Maureen snatched it off him.

“Childish,” he responded, taking it back, resuming and finishing, then chucking it back on the table, before helping himself to one of her cigarettes. He flicked the lighter, inhaled and then coughed. “Actually, I gave that up,” he recalled, throwing it to the floor, grinding it to ash under his heel. “Some years ago. At least I think I did. We used to smoke, didn’t we?”

Well, she was having none of that, thank you very much. “What a bastard waste. Just who are you? Those are my confidential papers, my fucking cigarettes…” Maureen spluttered, incensed and incendiary.

“Whomever you do so want. In any case, you’re not in the playground now, Missee. You did just that with your homework. It might have spared the boy a beating or two. You were little, but fierce. Do you think it leaves you? That?”

“Piss off.”

“You want? It’s double dealing really, if you think about it. You get it at school; later at home, the beating is doubled. Parents, you know?” He smiled, impishly and rose.

But cigarettes were dirt cheap, and despite the fact she was in a painted corner, she relented. “Sorry, I’m in a bad mood. I think it’s the heat. I went inside but it’s just as bad there. And also, I told my team to come, but they’re not here.”

“Team? Like Lakers at Nuggets?”

Maureen did not understand. “How did you know my name?”

“It’s written on your ankle bracelet, Michaela.”

“Is it?” replied Maureen, before realizing she had no such bracelet.

“No, I stole that from a James Bond book.” And he tapped the folder that he’d wrestled from her moments earlier.

“Ah.”

Poldark grinned. “I read a lot,” he apologized, “In my job, you have to.” He frowned. “I’m a bugger for the deets. What team?” And he sipped some beer, enjoying the cold liquid. He observed her quizzically, and not sweating in the slightest. “You could tell me in bed. Do you like talking? In bed? Afterwards?”

“In bed?” Maureen’s voice was beginning to splutter again. This was certainly a most peculiar conversation and not what she’d expected when she’d stepped off the plane.

Plane? Surely, there was a plane. Yes. There must have been.

“You’re a woman. I’m a Captain. We both have needs…unless, well, you know, your jam and cream is spread the other way round. I mean, look, is it Devon or Cornwall you’re after? Some prefer cream on top. Me? I’m more what you might call a jam first kind of fellow. Blackberry.”

“Why did you call me Michaela?”

“You look like one. You’re looking like one who used to look.”

Maureen’s forehead contracted in mental effort, trying to grasp something that floated away from her like moths on mist.

“Don’t do that with your face. It resembles a kilt.”

She scowled. “I hate this place. Hate it.” she hissed, with sudden venom, and looked as though she might strike. “The people. When they’re not fawning all over you in the hope you’ll leave a tip, they’re sneering behind your back. I can feel it.”

“You want to be back in England?”

“And why in hell not? Why not? You know, what? They send me here to award British values to a school in a place like this, full of hateful people, of backward beliefs, of every creed and colour under the sun…and I won’t do it. I won’t do it.”

“Just how much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough,” snapped Maureen.

“We both are a long way from Cornwall. That’s for sure. I don’t know that we can ever go back.” He replaced his tricorn, held out his hand and led her through those doors, up, up and away.

And of course she followed.

 

 

“Let’s go and get them.”

Maureen and her team had arrived promptly at what appeared to be school gates on that first day, despite sporting a hangover and rumpled skirt, to be met by the gracious owner.

She was wearing a traditional abaya and hijab, dark sunglasses, darker smile…and then slipped them to the Aussie Principal who subsequently took them through the ranks and thus to a conference room bestrewn with a rather sumptuous breakfast…and more pretreated paperwork than they could possibly read during that very short stay.

“A smokescreen,” she’d hissed, “oh, I’ve seen it before, we won’t even bother with this lot.”

Her handpicked team, rather on the young side, but ambitious, you’d suppose, nodded in accord. “But it’s paper, not smoke,” one of them pointed out.

“Shut up, Tompkins,” she’d replied.

And he’d nodded into his phone, set to mirror.

At least, that’s what she thought happened. It was difficult to be certain, upon recounting it later.

Still, sitting around that table on that morning, her handpicked youngsters looked vague; indistinct, like smoke impressions of real people. She had to press upon them her mission, her modus operandi, certain they’d know no better. And yet they kept slipping from view, to reappear somewhere else.

If she asked them to put phones away, they’d glance at them under the table. Or slip them out of pockets every ten minutes. One of those.

“Didn’t they pay for our visit?” asked Tompkins, determined to be awkward, it seemed.

“That’s scarcely the point. It’s our job to find the narrative and pull at the threads,” snapped Maureen, unraveling a little and mopping her head in an effort to erase the hot sweats of the night before.

“I’m not sure. Aren’t we all about celebrating success and encouraging talent?”

“We certainly are not. Didn’t you attend any of the training, Tompkins?”

“Not really. It was mostly online. I get distracted.”

Maureen rolled her eyes. “Find the threads and pull them. Look under the bed for what’s hidden there. We’re here to do a job. Don’t you recall decimating coasting coastal schools? You’ve go teeth, use them. Tear them all to pieces.”

“Yeah, I know, but this is a school, not a prison,” whined Tompkins, unable to drop it.

Maureen, however, grabbed a sheaf of printed lesson observation forms and started to stalk the bleaches.

The school was spacious, well maintained and nicely open plan. The classrooms formed an outer and inner crescent and left a luxurious space in-between for students to break out, assemble, participate in group activities or drama.

Maureen instinctively disapproved, comparing it in her head with the tumble down establishments she was more familiar with back home. “Ostentatious,” she hissed, “playground of the rich,” before nearly tumbling a group of Year 8 girls spread all over the floor creating art. She barely apologized and sneered at the canvas depicting whatever dreams came from heads like these.

She spotted one of her young suited striplings heading towards her; mission in motion, and called out. “Where have you been?”

“On the boys’ side.”

“What? There’s a boys’ side? They segregate them?”

“Yeah. It’s over there – you take the bridge,” he responded.

Scowling, Maureen licked her pencil like a policeman from an Enid Blyton novel and scribbled something down in her notes. “Scarcely British,” she could have muttered.

Stairs descended from an upper level to one beneath, layered like a cake, from where she could hear the mostly happy sounds of primary school children. At the bottom of the stairs, a stage had been set up. Some teenagers were rehearsing a musical play in English. Maureen hadn’t the faintest idea what it was.

She clattered down the steps and sat watching at the bottom a while, pencil poised like a mosquito’s sting quivering above flesh. Eventually the bass player, a tall gangling Pakistani youth, put down his instrument and sauntered over with an enquiring look. “Can we help you?”

“I’m an inspector,” Maureen replied with a brusque tone, “what are you doing here?” snipping off ‘on earth’ before it came out.

The boy shrugged. “Midsummer Night’s – The Musical”. And he strolled back to the stage, to resume playing.

“Don’t you care?” she shouted at his back, somehow peeved by his nonchalance.

Plucking a string or two, the boy replied, “what about?”

“I’m an inspector. From England. I’m judging your school.”

“Not really. What’s so good about that? More important I play this line right.” And he continued practising, making mistakes, practising. “England, eh? I don’t judge.”

Her head was swimming, as she struggled to focus, for the boy seemed liquid, rolling before her – a trick of the limelight.  As the stage swum in front of her and she thought she might be drowning, a rope thrown voice pulled her free.

“Over here.”

That voice had a familiar quality about it and snapped Maureen back into focus. She cut to a classroom, where, perhaps to her surprise, Captain Ross Poldark was conducting a class of Year 8 girls as though they were an orchestra. “You,” she barked, and then flushed red, and not just because what might have taken place between those sheets last night, but, much worse, what she might have admitted to him about the mission in the throes of confessional passions.

For the life of her, it was nothing but a blur.

Alcohol, that pickpocket of judgement, that thief of brains. Who had written that? Again, she could not remember.

Maureen whipped out her clipboard and paperwork, clutching both like a lifebelt. Mister Ross grinned and shook his head. “Same old Demelza,” he laughed, then frowned, a cloud scudding across his face. “Odd this, isn’t it?”

Still flushing, Maureen found a seat at the back of the classroom.

Her face, despite its reddened palette set itself into an iron mask. Inside, her thoughts were whirling like a buzz saw. She could barely focus on a laminated sheet of Teaching Standards that was placed next to the form and the pen trembled slightly between her fingers.

Scanning for faults, she noticed immediately that all desks were pushed back against the four walls of the classroom. Students were facing the walls and not each other; could not even see the whiteboard – well some of them could, but it was a good start and her black marks scorched the paper with a satisfying hiss.

Mister Ross knew exactly what she was doing…exactly that, she knew it, he knew that she knew it. He could see into her as though she was transparent, worse, he was pouring his thoughts into hers and she felt the nausea of a sea-sickness.

With a snap of fingers, the class of girls flipped their chairs round, facing inwards, an unbroken circle as Mister Ross wrote it up on the board using a thick green marker: ‘mal de mer’.

One of the girls raised a hand. “But that’s French, Mister Ross. This is an English lesson.”

 “But French for what?”

“Sea sickness,” shouted another, eagerly, whom Maureen later found out was called Alma.

 “Quick now,” grinned Mister Ross, “give me some connections. Discuss it in groups. Come on girls, work it out.”

A scraping of chairs was followed by a loud, excited, sometimes heated discussion. Mister Ross sidled over to Maureen. “Good morning, dearest. I hope you’re not too sore. This takes you back, doesn’t it?”

“Where?”

“Think. Think very hard.” Ross smiled sympathetically, and then, with an action that was inappropriate given the context, brushed her cheek gently with the back of his hand. “Can you remember?”

Unsurprisingly, Maureen flinched, bridled and pulled away from his touch. “That was just wrong, Poldark,” she spat venomously. “Any more of that and I’ll report you. I think I will anyway.”

Before he could respond, one of the girls had her hand up. “We’ve got it, Mister,” she announced, excitedly.

Ross looked around. “Go on, then, Alma. Take the class.” He sat down beside Maureen, without apology.

“Well, Mister, sailors in the old days had quarantine. Forty days off the coast of Venice. They thought scurvy was contagious, didn’t they? But it was to do with not enough oranges. So mal de mer is seasickness and that sounds like marmalade. Which is where marmalade gets its name from.”

“Brilliant. Shakespeare would be proud. We should write that down before we forget it.”

Despite herself, Maureen was intrigued. “Is that actually true?”

“I’m not sure. I hope so. It’s a great piece of deduction.” Mister Ross smiled. “But no, I don’t think so. Still, why spoil a good story? Why ruin a dream?”

Maureen scowled. “But it’s not accurate. You’ve got them writing it down as though it was the truth. It’s not factual. You’re uneducating them.”

“If you say so, Chief Inspector. Wasn’t it you, who told me that one, back in Cornwall? And look at them. They’re writing, they’re talking, they’re imagining. That’s an English lesson, if ever I saw one.”

“No it isn’t. Not even close.”

“Why don’t you smile? You never smile, you know that?”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“That much is certain.”

Twenty minutes later, Mister Ross had led them outside the classroom and was at the centre of a circle. “Why? Why did Shylock do it?”

Maureen was watching with narrowed eyes, scribbling furiously, scoring the paper with hard strokes of the pen. She jumped when she heard a voice beside her.

“Should we feel sorry for Shylock, Miss?” Alma continued, gazing into her eyes curiously, “Antonio treated him badly, treated all of them badly, didn’t he? What do you think?”

“Go away child, I’m busy,” replied Maureen, coldly, watching as Alma shivered and withdrew.

If she was frightening the children, she cared less. What actually was this text, anyway? What could be so important about a moneylender who was demanding pounds of flesh? Maureen watched unmoved as some of the children started a cod performance, the words delivered in thick accents. Something about quality of mercy is not strained but drippeth from heaven.

It was a load of bollocks, as far as she was concerned. There was no clear lesson objective. Differentiated outcomes nowhere to be see. Why, he had made it up as he went along. The entire lesson had just come from his head and filled the classroom. Activity without purpose. No, worse than that, inaccurate activity.

But it was precisely as she was thinking that, that a bomb dropped.

She saw Mister Ross answer his phone. He spoke some words, indistinctly. Then he walked over to her, the corners of his mouth pulled downwards. He looked genuinely upset.

Having none of it, Maureen snatched her papers and stood up. Given her intimate knowledge of his methods, she felt entitled to be frank. “I’m giving this excuse for a lesson a rating of ‘inadequate’,” she declared, in triumph.

“I don’t think it matters,” he replied, somberly. “I have been asked to tell you the inspection’s been cancelled.”

“Cancelled? What do you mean? You can’t cancel an inspection,” Maureen blustered, but seeing the truth writ large in the eyes opposite.

“Yes, sorry, old friend. Cancelled by the C E O on the grounds of gross unprofessionalism by you and your team.”

“What?”

“Yes. It seems that, in no particular order, you’ve frightened the kids, upset the parents by asking if they were paid to give a good review of the school, and one of your number has been asking where the children’s beds are and can he look under them.”

 

“Tell me about ‘coasting coastal schools’.”

“A phrase coined by the British newspapers some years ago, Jacob. A glib soundbite. It amounts to nothing of consequence.”

“Oh, really? Well, why did you give me this cutting?”

“It’s relevant, Jacob.”

“Explain.”

“Some years ago, it was felt by the incumbent government that schools in deprived coastal areas were not serving the needs of students as well as they might. Focused too much on the outdated principle that every child mattered, educating the whole person - instead of results and data.”

“Toast and jam in the morning, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, too much toast in the morning and not enough Dickens.”

“’Oliver Twist’ all over again, Jeremy.”

“Indeed, Jacob. Precisely the point.”

“So what happened?”

“Simple. Some schools took the toast away, shut down the launderettes and made a start with massaging the data. Given a pass for good behaviour.”

“And those who stuck to their guns were decimated? It must have torn whole families apart. Coasting coastal schools, eh? Shall we have her in?”

Maureen had sat outside the head office in an ante chamber for what seemed like an eternity, having dismissed her team at some point in the recent past.

She could not remember how she was here, when she’d arrived or even if she’d left the country.

As she ran through her justification, having an internal conversation, rehearsing answers to questions she could well imagine would be asked, it seemed not to matter. For now, those doors were closed. When they opened, the inquest would begin.

A cancelled inspection. Who had ever heard of such a thing? How would she explain it to her bosses?

Despite the oppressive heat, Maureen shivered, replaying those few hours over and over again in her head. They could not know of the night in the bar and how she’d gone with that insolent Captain to his room, could they? No, she was sure of that and put it from her mind. She would instead focus on the main narrative, the facts, and the incompetence of her team.

That team that she’d hand picked herself – strutting young bucks to a man, fresh from Inspection Training School. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What was it that had made her select them; bring them overseas?

Not one of them had even met her in that bar – they had caused this. She would never forgive them.

Then…a noise and some movement beside her. A familiar looking tricorn was tossed onto the floor. “It is twice blessed. It blesses she who gives and she who takes.”

“What are you doing here? No. Shut up. That’s not right. How did you even get here?”

“I’ve come to help you.”

“You? Help me? I’ve never heard such nonsense. And if you mention what took place in the hotel, I’ll deny it.” She wanted to beg him not to tell, certain that he was going to. But begging was never her business.

No doubt irritated by her hostility, Captain Ross frowned. “Why should that even concern them? In any case, they probably already know. In my experience, they know most things, don’t they?”

Maureen bridled. “I’ve never had my judgement questioned by anybody before, let alone an inspection team.”

“Oh, shut up. Of course you have. More times that you want to remember. We’ve all been here before. You remind me of my brother, Francis. Thought he’d found a missing copper down his mine. Drowned in an underground lake, you know? Clutching nails.”

The door opened outwards from within, ominously. A booming voice offered them into the ring.

As Maureen entered what that familiar office, her eyes had to adjust to the place, because it was somewhat dark in there. She noticed subtle changes, such as a fireplace upon which logs hissed and spat, somewhat incongruous because the sweat was trickling uncomfortably from her armpits and down the small of her back. Her undergarments were sticky.

The fake candelabra, still hanging from the ceiling, seemed to have real candles now but, as ever, it did not shed too much light.

Four or five of her superiors were sitting behind the desk as she approached it. She smiled uncertainly at her immediate boss, a retired Scottish Sherriff called Jacob Smite who’d found a new calling inspecting schools and had made a good fist of it. They had always got on well and it was he who’d assigned her to Arabia.

“Cap’n Poldark,” grunted Smite, “You old vagabond. What brings you here? Had enough of the kipper smuggling game?”

“Oh well, you know me, finger in every fish pie.”

The rest of the panel tittered; it sounded a bit rude. Maureen hadn’t a clue and sat down at the table, which was set up in such a way as to allow for free and frank discussion. The Captain pulled out the chair nearest to her and, outrageously, reached under the table and squeezed her right knee in an encouraging way.

She scowled at him and had every right to scream sex predator or pest. But somehow, she didn’t. Poldark had something about his person that bothered her memory. It had been that way since they had first met and she’d followed him to that room, opened up, and confessed her deeper feelings, muttering into a listening ear all night. He knew everything. Had nodded in a tolerant way and said little in return.

“Well, Maureen, first let me assure you that no one’s being judged here,” began Smite, accusingly. “But, a cancelled inspection? I’ve been – if you’ll pardon the expression – on the game for many a year now, and I’ve never heard of such a thing as this. I mean, come on, we’re Ofsted. Schools don’t cancel us, we cancel them.” He turned to his colleagues for reassurance and they nodded briskly.

Smite smiled, relieved by the affirmation. “Thought so. Well?”

“I did not fiddle my expenses,” said Maureen, clapping her hand to her mouth as those words came out.

“I beg your pardon?” replied Smite, confused. “Why did you say that?”

“I did not have sex with Captain Poldark,” she continued, “and I am not, in any way an intolerant bigot who should never have set foot in the Middle East.”

There was a general coughing and some baffled shaking of heads around that table. Something of a stillness descended upon the assemblage.

Captain Poldark spoke hastily. “I think what she meant to say, your honour, was that she does not sit on fences when it comes to having wrecks. Er…having my shipwrecked…er…frigate, that time I was caught with a kilo of mackerel by the French authorities, you recall?”

“Does not sit on shipwrecked frigates? Oh, I see, well that’s perfectly understandable. Pas de deux as the French would say. Jeremy? Do we have any Ofsted teams in France?”

“No, your honour, they will not let us cross the border, let alone have us anywhere near a school. Accuse us of being illegal immigrants interested only in stirring up trouble and wrecking education.”

“Good for them. Excellent taste, the French.”

“Indeed, your honour.”

“Makes you wonder why they let us bother them in Arabia, really. Still, be that as it may and notwithstanding shipwreck squatting,” continued Smite, “can you tell us what happened, Maureen? It’s a dammed nuisance, really. Means we have to go again, don’t you know?”

“I am not a poorly educated, sexually frustrated old hag who could not control a class of pupils.”

“Come again?”

“I did not, and at no time ever countenanced pushing Ross Poldark under a bus in order to become Head of English.”

Shooting a sidelong glance at Maureen, Ross hissed,“Shut up. The hotel. That must have helped. And the lesson. I spent hours. Thinking that through.”

Jacob Smite was scowling by now. “I see.” His voice rang clearly across the room and he looked at the others assesmbled. “It seems nothing has been learnt at all.” There was a general nodding around the table. “Ladies and gentlemen. Shall we release the tortoise?”

Maureen was confused, but before she could say anything else, Ross clapped a hand over her mouth. It was at this point, his eyes, so brown looked deeply into hers and she began to see. Her mind was starting to clear as though a cool breeze was blowing through it.

When you’re driving, bumper to bumper in the fog across Bodmin Moor - you catch that first glimpse of the sun; the thick weed begins to part, the smoke ascends and those few feet in front of you open up.

Captain Ross nodded. Then he his gaze moved to Smite. “Yes. Release the tortoise.”

Smite reached below the desk and placed a rickety looking cardboard box in front of him. It smelt of mildew and damp barns. “Do they like carrots?” he asked.

Jeremy nodded.

“Well, that’s good news. Has anybody bought a carrot with them today?”

Now there was a general uneasy shuffling around the table. It seemed that nobody had thought to bring the required root. But, after an uncomfortable moment or two, Captain Ross reached into his trousers and tossed one casually in front of Smite. “Forgive me, my mind was elsewhere. Will this do?”

“It will indeed, Captain Ross.” Quickly reaching for the carrot, Smite tipped the box over and, using a metal cheese grater, began to shred the vegetable in front of the box. “Come on, tortoise, come out of your box,” he crooned coaxingly, as the pile of gratings piled higher upon the table. “tortoise, tortoise, tortoise.”

But after about five minutes, it was clear there was nothing stirring. Whatever was within, remained unperturbed.

Jeremy had a glance inside and nodded his confirmation. “The tortoise sleeps.”

“The tortoise sleeps,” repeated Smite, sympathetically. “Does anybody want a bit of carrot to take home?”

“May as well,” replied Captain Ross Poldark, “You want some, Maureen?”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m sorry, Madame?” replied the pert Filipina, bobbing politely. “I did not mean to be rude.”

“Get me another drink.”

You could be anywhere.

You could be in the Ramada hotel, possibly in downtown Doha.

But it’s hard to be sure when heat freezes cast iron and anybody might be hard pressed to see exactly where they were. 

It fogs the spectacles, you know. Tints them in blushed, withering rose.