Page 586 - Belgrave Diaries(N)_Neat

Bank in the morning for Bridge, only five of us there. Took James out to a place on the shore in the evening
and let him paddle which he enjoys very much.

Saturday [23 August]

Court. The mail boat arrived just after sunset and as it had a new captain on board it apparently had a lot of
difficulty in finding the anchorage and after turning about for about half an hour finally anchored a long way
out of the harbour. Went out to see the boring in the evening.

Sunday [24 August]

Meeting of the wakf department. Very hot dry day but cool in the evening and very cool last night. A good
meeting, the members for once did not all fight. In the afternoon we went across to Muharrak to see the
wall which we are building along the shore outside the town to keep out the water when it is high tide. In
places it was coming through. It is a very good idea and by doing this a great area of nice building land will be
reclaimed. Muharrak can only spread in one direction as it is surrounded by the sea on three sides. Very
pleasant over there and quite cool. Took Mohamed Khalil with us. We met the Secretary of the Council who
we expected to be at the place. There is a lot of new building going on in Muharrak in spite of the poor year.
Some quite nice houses along the new sea road which corresponds to the "Marina" as de Grenier calls it, in
Manama.

Monday [25 August]

Court. We sat till two oclock though we didnt take a great many cases, one between two shaikhlings about a
garden boundary wasted about an hour of our time. Some of them are very trying when in court. Abdu Ali
brought in all the pearls which one of his boats had brought in since the beginning of the season, each trip in
a bundle, and said that the whole lot were not worth more than 500 rupees and the cost of sending out the
boat was many thousands. They certainly looked a very poor collection, not a single good one among the lot.
Had a case in which the divers in two boats went on strike and compelled the nahudas to go back to shore,
the men said that they were not given enough food and also it was time to come ashore. Cool day and very
cool night. The star Suhail has appeared which is always considered to be the sign of the beginning of the
cool weather. The Shaikh sent for me in the afternoon, it is a tiresome habit that he has when he is in
Manama. When I got there I found him with a very full Meglis, there must have been about forty people
sitting along the sides of the room, mostly very dirty uncouth looking Bedus, he was telling them that in
England there are kangaroos all over the place, wild, and they are as common as rabbits here. He gets a trifle
mixed about the things that he saw in the Zoo and the things that were not in the Zoo. They all seemed very
impressed. His visit to England is his daily topic of conversation to strangers in his Meglis but he gets rather
muddled so that a stranger would imagine that England was a sort of mixture of the Zoo, the moving stairs on
the tube and the Horse show. He sent the people away and talked about gifting some property to his son
Khalifa. He is very funny about that son and doesnt seem to like him, he tried to suggest that I should