Half an hour ago, I was just a hungry man wearing silly glasses and listening to The Very Best Of David Bowie. But now, without so much as rising from the squashy haven of my office chair, I’ve become a slightly less hungry man, still wearing silly glasses and listening to The Very Best Of David Bowie, but also studying the remnants of a chicken tikka sandwich. Better still, in approximately 17 more minutes, I’ll be furnished with a week’s worth of laundry by a friendly man who chooses to call me ‘Mr Dave’.
As it turns out, from clean socks to DVDs of the latest Hollywood blockbusters, you can get pretty much anything delivered to your door in Abu Dhabi, usually at no additional cost. And, as a person who grew up in a quiet London suburb where a bellyful of dodgy fast food meant a good 20-minute walk (you had to catch a bus for the good stuff), it’s rather overwhelming. In my first week in the city, I enjoyed a one-man party involving a Hawaiian pizza, a summer fruits cheesecake, a freshly dry-cleaned pin-stripe suit and a copy of Shutter Island. Just because I could.
Of course, over time, the novelty wears off. Even so, it’s still brilliantly handy being able to run the bulk of my Saturday morning errands without even leaving the sofa. It seems that no matter what I’m after, there’s an obliging gent somewhere in the city who is kept awake at night by the mortifying, unthinkable prospect of me getting off my backside, stretching my legs, travelling to the source of whatever it is I desire and personally acquiring it. It really is a rather marvellous system.
That is, of course, assuming said obliging gent can work out where I live. Which, to his credit, he usually does. And with no formal address system in Abu Dhabi, you have to hand it to the men who zip around the city bearing takeaways, groceries and freshly pressed underwear.
It’s especially remarkable when you consider that providing directions for a delivery is like something out of an archaic text-only adventure game. ‘Opposite the bakers, head past the big tree, then turn into the dark side street and knock on the fifth door along – not the fourth one with the round window, but the fifth one with the peeling paint,’ is my standard instruction. ‘But make sure you’ve got the magic crystal to fend off the fire-breathing dragon,’ I once added, but sadly the joke was lost on my Bangladeshi laundry man, who probably thought I was weird enough when I asked him to iron my Y-fronts.
All this convenience comes at a price, of course. No matter where I go in life, I’ll always expect to be able to pick up the phone and have piping hot food delivered straight into my face. Lord knows how I’ll cope when I eventually return to the UK. Foot-long chicken tikka sandwich with honey mustard sauce? At 1am? Served with a smile and a mistranslated compliment? Not a chance.
David Clack is our good-fer-nothin’ art editor
