On the Home Front

What would you say to a Thursday morning domestic update? The first day of our weekend always seems a good opportunity to review how Mr. Muscato, Koko, and I have been filling our days and nights, and of late we have been doing far too much.

Last weekend there were houseguests down from Dubai, always great fun of course, but it does mean making an effort. Our dear chums Mr. and Mr. Bear Circuit look on their occasional stops here as interludes in what is otherwise an exhausting-sounding round of travel to festivals from Spain to Hong Kong celebrating the, shall we say, larger physique. We caught them in between excursions, if memory serves, to Cape Town and Mumbai. It's kind of amusing to be thought of as their dull great-aunts, Mr. Muscato and I, as we gawp at their snaps of the most outlandish goings-on. They always call to mind the Divine Miss Midler's comment on S&M - "too many accoutrements, and then no one invites you over because you’re always dragging that shit along with you."

On Friday last we had a Major Office Dinner Party for 20 here at the Villa, followed immediately by a quick business trip to one of the Sultanate's smaller cities and a whole series of meetings, dinners, and other time-fillers for work visitors, not to mention an invite to a really rather glam embassy event (oh, we're Very Social, in our own little way, in these parts).

So we're rather in a state of short-term collapse, exacerbated by spending today - as soon as we get our own accoutrements together - getting ready for our local annual jumble sale. I've been putting things aside for weeks, but today comes the onerous tasking of actually sorting things out, figuring out what we'd like to get for the array of elderly tee-shirts and chipped mugs, and then getting all that nonsense packed into the MuscatoMobile tonight, as the event starts at a most indecent hour.

And how's by you?