It’s the morning after the ceiling collapse, and I’m now waiting for the landlord’s people to come back and finish fixing the ceiling. The facilities maintenance people at the embassy were pretty upset about this and even demanded that a representative from the Saudi landlord come to see the damage. I would have expected the courtesy of an apology, but all he said was that it was the doing of a previous tenant and not his responsibility...

They have removed all the beams and are going to sand and paint the ceiling, then put a chandelier in. That’s fine, but the thing is, this should never have happened, especially not in housing that we have no choice but to rely on as being safe. What I have found here is that buildings look nice enough on the surface, but the systems don’t work properly, and now it turns out even the construction is faulty. We have had problems with the plumbing (constant), electricity (intermittent), appliances (several had to be replaced), regulation of water temperature (there is none), house painting (it wasn’t), almost total lack of storage (we have to buy our own) – you name it. Yet our house is pleasant to look at and has a nice garden, and we are far luckier than people in really new housing, who have massive sewage and flooding problems, no hope of a wired phone line or Internet for months, are miles from everything and in the middle of nowhere. So I guess there is something to be grateful for!