I think most of you know that I am engaged to GJI Penguin, aka Geraint Isitt, and I’m pretty sure you all know that we live in Saudi Arabia (you should all stop by and read Ger’s series about moving out, his latest installment is here). Although we are engaged, we cannot live together and spending time alone without a chaperone is seriously dangerous business. If caught we face jail time, lashings and deportment – and we’re not talking the Famous Five kind of lashings that involve ginger beer!

We’ve been lucky in that Ger doesn’t live in a company owned compound, you’ll have to keep reading his series to find out why, but in the long run it has worked to our advantage. Keeping us herded like sheep in pens is not just for our own safety. As well as the National Guard at the gate there is always a little man sitting in a booth by the main gates to the compound. His job involves more than just controlling who does and does not enter the site, his job entails making a note of who comes and goes, and how they leave and arrive. For instance, if I were to take the company provided shopping bus to the mall on a Thursday morning he would scribble down McMahon, Apt 651, Shopping Bus. The company likes to know exactly what you are getting up to.

Fair enough really. That in itself can be seen (when I’m feeling generous…) as looking out as much for our own best interests as their own. This is where Ger living in a private apartment building has come in useful though. There is no little man marking down when I come and go from there, no one is telling tales to company bigwigs about the fact that I stay over every weekend. The guys at reception there know me, they know we are engaged, and as the owner of the building is a westerner there is no problem. I have the code to the door to let myself in and that is an end to it. Because of this, we have managed to keep ourselves below the radar and we have been allowed to live our own way privately and discreetly.

Things are going to change soon though. Last week Geraint and I started jumping through the necessary flaming hoops of bureaucratic paperwork that is the process of getting married in Saudi Arabia. We did what is known as posting banns, which in its most basic terms means our names and the intended date of our marriage (which we cannot confirm till all of this is finished…) gets pinned on a bulletin board in the Embassy in Riyadh (where we know no-one) for 21 days to give folk the chance to object.

Our general plan, once all of this is back to us and we have the obligatory letter of no objection, is to just hotfoot it across the causeway to Bahrain, do the deed and then have a good old knees up (if all goes according to plan, and out here you can’t guarantee anything!). That means, that by the beginning of March we could well be married, and I was buggered if the company were going to stop us living out in the open like a normal couple then!

So I did the logical thing, planned ahead. I started the proceedings for applying for new housing last week, fully expecting the whole thing to take months because nothing, I repeat, nothing gets done quickly here. Well, what do you know, it’s only all done and dusted already! The ‘i’s’ are crossed the ‘t’s’ are dotted (or something like that) and we have the keys to our new villa!

We got to choose our own villa on the compound we were given. We lucked out and got the compound where most of our friends are living. We were shown around 5 villas and none of them felt right, they were all just one or two things short of perfect. At the end of a morning’s viewing I thought I’d try my luck for a villa I really wanted, a villa friends of ours had moved out of 6 months ago. More good luck, it was still empty!

So, Ger can move into villa 31 whenever he is ready, I can visit him whenever I want as I am also listed as a resident in the villa. This also means I can stay over if I like, whenever I like. For the sake of appearances, and because it is really not fair for the company to be brought into question should they be seen to be condoning an unmarried couple cohabiting (even for a few weeks), I will continue to live in my apartment in the week so the work driver, and through him my office, are protected. But still, I’m pretty darn excited at the prospect of a normal life with Ger! Who knew that something could actually work out easily and without complication in Saudi Arabia?!