Doha on my mind

Funny how the mind works. It was hot and sunny when I set off for my run this morning. On the way back, sweat dripping off my forehead, my MP3 player ran out of podcasts and flipped on to John Martyn's album "Grace and Danger". Suddenly I was back in Doha where I first heard it in April 2009. He recorded the album in 1980 as a way of dealing with the break up of his marriage. It was so raw that Island Records didn't want to release it. It was the album I should have listened to when my marriage broke up in 1989.

I had decided to walk from Sue's apartment to the "Oasis" leisure club in the height of the midday sun. I took my MP3 player and selected "Grace and Danger", which I had just downloaded, to keep me company. I was well covered up, but even so I could feel the odd patch of exposed skin stinging with the intensity of the sun's rays. During my hour or so out on the streets I was the only person I saw actually walking. By the time I reached the "Oasis" I was in a kind of trance induced by the heat and John Martyn's music. "When the hurt in your heart has gone ... I'll still be your friend ... right to the end of the river and further still ...this hurt it will never end."

The "Oasis" is the pool and leisure centre of a now demolished hotel. To reach it you had to crunch your way across a building site full of rubble and twisted steel reinforcing bars. The reception area had a 1970s post-colonial feel, all potted palms and dusty models of Arab dhows. I cooled off in the pool with a handful of locals and ex-pat workers as the big birds of Qatar Airways roared skywards above us from the adjacent airport, making one's stomach tingle with the growl of their engines.

I often return in my mind to that particular, hot and dusty day. For some reason I can't quite pin down it was a kind of bliss.