Now don't be alarmed, there is no need for panic but maybe don't tell my mum. Yesterday when Ari and I were returning from my birthday dinner, yes you read correctly, he made it back for my birthday! And I got flowers. So much for premature posting, I would have given anything short of his first born to have him back and hooray he came back :) Anyway back to the incident...

Lately, there has been more "activity" than usual in Bahrain and in and around our neck of the woods also. You occasionally hear what they call sound grenades, although they're nothing more than a distant pop in the background. Even harder to notice when you have the television going. And then there's the black smoke on the horizon somewhere, we had even driven past a few smouldering piles of ash, the remnants of tyres on fire mostly...

So last night as we were driving back, we came to section of the road which was blocked by three overturned dumpsters accompanied by three guys in balaclavas, one with a jerry can that I assume was filled with petrol. They weren't armed or anything, just looked as though they were setting up to light a fire on the road. At this stage the fire wasn't lit yet and amazingly they were waving cars through the side of the road which was not obscured by rubbish. Basically, Ari just drove around and did the little steering wheel wave that you do to road workers when you're let through. And! Two out of the three waved back! It was just bizarre.

It really just felt like bored adolescents with nothing better to do than to vandalise, be destructive and disruptive. Reading this back it does sound a lot scarier than what we experienced. Although for the most part I wasn't really terrified. I did ask Ari if he was scared and he did express some concern, I suppose it was because I had Ari to protect me that the situation did not incite the fear in me that it should have. Not to worry though, we are not complacent about our security, if anything more vigilant than ever!