With lunch and dinner, however... well, that was another matter entirely. I thought we'd fake it til we make it, pretending not to being poor teachers... after all they didn't know our professions! I could be some relation to some royal family keeping things on the d-low, an eccentric tech. billionaire who liked to keep it 'real' or someone suitably nouveau riche who was adjusting to being ‘new money,’ but that lasted only as long as I saw the drinks and food menu. The average mocktail cost the equivalent of £10 and a cup of something stronger considerably more. The food was about £25 to £30 for nothing too fancy and they didn't accept the Taste Card so we couldn't get 2 meals for the price of 1 we often enjoyed back in Blighty. I mean £22 for a lasagne, sans garlic bread I might add! I've never been so stereotypically east London Asian hood rat in my life but more than once I thought to myself, "For that I could get 3 Kennedy Fried Chicken buckets from opposite Barking Station, or if I'm feeling flash, a whole butterfly chicken, 2 sides, a fino side and a bottomless drink from Nando’s with change to spare."
So being the prudent folks we were, we snuck a few bread rolls ‘for later’ and I went and found the local mini-mart where I got some vittles that would help tide us over… nothing fancy, just the essentials like milk, cheese, crisps, noodles, biscuits etc… and tide us over it did! We were careful where we ate and what prices we paid, only paying for a buffet dinner on one night and ordering a single room service dinner each other night to save moolah but also because the restaurants didn't open until 7pm, our kids bed time when they were shattered after a day at the beach.
However, one afternoon whilst the family was sleeping, I was in the sauna by myself, cleansing my body and soul when I had a kind of epiphany... Why were Jeannie and I sweating the small stuff? We were being so very careful with our money as since we'd been married it had always been an issue, but no more of an issue than it is for most people living in England. As two teachers living and working in east London and then Kent most of our wages went on rent, bills and childcare. We had got into a mentality of frugality, which is no bad thing but it had kind of led to us being super careful all the time and not being able to enjoy the nicer things in life. Even now, when we were on holiday we felt guilty for ordering meals and drinks that would cost us over £50 in total. So, on the final night in Bahrain I bought that £10.60 strawberry mocktail that I’d been eyeing up on the menu but had been ordering the bitter lemon because it cost half as much, and even though it wasn't that tasty, metaphorically it was sweet.
Jeannie and I had a chat on the cabana enjoying our £20+ drinks, watching the night sky as our children watched a sub-par digitally animated cartoon on the projector on a grassy knoll as we decided that we would still be frugal but we needed to chill and not live like mendicant monks, foregoing all pleasures and joys in life.
The next day we had our final buffet brekkie and nabbed two bread rolls for the flight to Dubai ... Hey, I didn't say breaking the habit of a lifetime would be easy!
