Fridays

Last week, a colleague invited me to a dinner party he was having that Friday evening to mark moving into his new flat. Not too remarkable, unless you remember me as a one-time troglodyte and misanthrope. No, what was truly surprising was that I turned down the invite – and not because there were beer-battered ribs on the menu – rather, the girls were getting together for a dinner party of their own at someone's house!

With the newspaper a six-day operation, Friday is everyone’s one guaranteed day off, and for most of us, the sole opportunity to make use of the homes that we have waited so long for, furnished so thoughtfully [thanks to Ikea] and are paying exorbitant sums for. So the Friday house gathering has become something of a phenomenon, not to mention a bit of a clash of dates. This Friday, a posse of us from building 57 are heading to a friend's apartment five minutes walk away to celebrate their little girl's 1st birthday.

The day before, the couple, Kiwis, dashed about buying wine and beer for the party. Yes, you can buy alcohol here, but not on Fridays and only in designated shops where the windows are blacked out and there is no indication that anything morally corrupt is happening inside. A bit like sex shops in the UK.

Friday is an odd day. It’s the official holy day, when absolutely nothing is open, so it’s a bit like Sundays in the UK before consumerism became the new religion. But then it’s the first day of the weekend, so it’s also a Saturday in my western-mind. To complicate things further, I often start work on a Saturday so that by the time Monday rolls around, I'm half way though my working week.

You could think that a day of forced rest after a week of work is a good thing – and when I say forced rest, I mean it – banks, post offices, government offices, shops, launderettes, everything is closed, at least until 4pm. But when most of us have just the one day off, and would rather be getting some chores done, it can be frustrating.

Mornings are eerily quite. The local supermarket in the mall – usually full of Pakistani men buying huge sacks of rice and bags full of dozens of onions, and Emirati women in their all-covering abayas and face veils - is for once, blissfully empty. In contrast, the western-style supermarket downtown is packed with women in spaghetti strap tops and men in shorts paying ridiculous prices for imported tomatoes, while at the coffee shop upstairs, there's a queue of people waiting to get in and tuck into bagels and scrambled eggs.

At 1pm, the streets begin to fill, of men on their way home from the mosque. As I write this looking out of my window, I see dozens strolling, hand in hand, all dressed in pale pastel salwar kameez [long shirt and loose baggy trousers], with their muslim scull caps perched on tight black hair; some carry prayer rugs. They stop to greet friends, neighbours, shake hands, kiss, and go on their way. At the more upmarket mosques in the residential areas, it's mostly Emiratis - pulling up in their squeeky clean SUVs and Hummers, Mercedes and flash sports cars, dressed in a crisply starched white dishdash, gutra (headdress) and sandals. The latest addition to the man's Emirati dress appears to be a tiny black wire that snakes out from their ear and dangles down their front - bluetooth.

Later, they will take their wives [note the plural] and their children and descend on the mall, or the park in cooler days.

So, while the mall can be a delight in the early hours of Friday - if all you want to do is grab a starbucks and catch a film, when you are most likely to be the only person in the cinema. Anytime after 4pm is chaos.

And that is just the time I will be making my way over to my friends' home for a little bit of indulging of my own. The only question is this: on this holy day - should we feel morally wrong for imbibing? It's a question that could drive you to drink.