Sat 25th - It’s Amost, Almost There!

(Photos - The Qatar Flag made up of flares, the Pearl Fishing Boats, The 'Caravans Of Asia' at the end of their section, my liquor permit (such a crap photo!) & my first bounty for the Stoop)

Come out onto the Stoop for brekkie– doubles nicely as a kitchen table! – and see Al up the street, in his boxers and t-shirt and of course, he had the hat on! He, um, well, he passed some wind – quite loudly as I heard it a few doors down – and he hadn’t seen me, so I let go with a “Christ!” and he laughed so hard that he spilt most of his coffee!

I’d had my paperwork go through for my Liquor Licence so I decided to go and get it all done. The perfect thing to do when hungover! You have to go to the only place in Doha, called The Qatar Distribution Company, where you can buy take away booze. You’re not even allowed in the Security controlled gate unless you have the licence or the paperwork as I did. Get in and was ushered to this tiny little office where you sit, with a little man for about 20mins. I didn’t really say a word – handed over my 1,000 riyal as a deposit – and walked out there with a licence to purchase 3,500 riyal of booze a month! It’s a shame you don’t get to keep the licence as it’s pretty funny but it’s not worth $250 to keep! Picked up a few days worth of supplies – 7 slabs and bought myself a bottle of Bailey’s & a bottle of Drambuie and walked out with 1,200 shaved off my monthly allowance!

That may sound like a lot of booze, well it is I guess, but there’s upwards of 15 people on the Stoop each night & everyone chips in with cash. It’s all very blackmarket and completely illegal! The booze you purchase is supposed to be solely for your own use, not given and especially not sold onto others…! We do! But we are safe in our Compound. Were we to sell to a muslim, very different story!

We had a full rehearsal this evening with an audience of around 10,000, so about ¼ full. They didn’t get to se everything – some because stuff isn’t finished but also because you don’t want to give away all your secrets in one hit! It went pretty well, they were oohhhh-ing and ahhhhh-ing in all the right spots. We also got to see sections that we hadn’t seen happen in real time – like when 3,000 volunteer performers are all given flares and when lit, from above, they make the flag of Qatar! We’d seen them line up and go thru the paces but not the actual effect and it looked great. The silly part was that they even rehearsed the entrance of the athletes – even though they weren’t there! The audience still cheered when certain countries were announced. Iraq got quite a holler, as did Palestine, Jordan, India & Pakistan.

The flying stuff looked great. There’s a section where 12 boats are flown in over the Seekers boat and from each boat, 2 divers a la Nicky Webster, dive out and go pearl diving! The diving stuff is stuff that you’ve seen before but the boats look cool as they come flying in. We also got to see sections of City Of The Future that we hadn’t seen. Overall it was good to see it with fresh eyes and the noise of an audience was also refreshing.

As we had audience, it was also crunch time for Kev & I to get off the Arch as they were going to fire off a few pyro’s. We got down with decent time to spare – we’d been rehearsing it for a few days but as we never knew when the pyro’s were actually due to fire, we had no idea if we were actually safe or not – even though we were checking in by radio! This meant that we were able to get onto the Field Of Play for the Hero Horse section. We don’t get to see the flame enter and do it’s lap as that’s when we’re descending. The Prince was riding the horse tonight and it was one of those situations where they’ve rehearsed this small section SO many times and slowly added lights, followspots, sound and even had as many people as possible stand on the Field and yell at the horse to slowly get it used to the environment. The one thing they forgot – actually using a flame…! Chaos! The Prince isn’t the best rider, even though he’s the President of The Qatar Equestrian Something Arather! It’s a personal pride ting for the Emir to have his son light the Cauldron but the Cowboys have their doubts.

Anyway, the Prince is a bit wobbly as he’s only riding one hand as the other has the flame. Because he’s trying to keep his balance, he lets the flame droop down near the horses head! Nope, horse don’t like that and starts jumping around! Torch then gets swung around near the horses bum, nope, don’t like that either! At this point, it’s pretty clear that the horse ain’t going up the ramp. The horse charged towards the area where Kev & I were standing & I had visions of an Indiana Jones style leap, a punch to the Prince and then take the damn flame up to the Cauldron (even though they weren’t going to reveal it)! Didn’t quite happen that way as the horse started to calm down and the Prince regained control. Bit of a let down and the almost immediate gossip was that it would have to be one of the Cowboys who would have to do the ride on the night!

Overall, the show looks tacky, there’s naff bits, there’s silly bits but it’s pretty cool. Looking forward to the actual event and then maybe even seeing some sport. There’s a few sports that we have no idea what they are! Might try pot luck or even go and see some football! We’ll see.