At Doha Airport...

Friday 23rd November: It's a quarter to nine in the morning and my flight is due to board in about fifteen minutes. I'm sitting in an observation lounge looking out at the runway (pics to follow) and watching the Qatar Airways planes take off.

I'm off to Dubai and then there's a bit of a wait for the flight to London. Can't wait to get home.

View from an observation lounge

Got up early, packed things up and left the Doha Best Western behind. Not a bad hotel. Met an offshore engineer in the taxi (he was sitting there when I jumped into the front seat). The engineer was from Streatham (what a small world) but he hails from Yorkshire and studied engineering in Swansea. He's married to a gynaecologist and has applied for a job in Perth, Australia. He's been in Qatar for about a fortnight.

We chatted about Qatar hosting the World Cup in 2022 and how the city needed much more infrastructure. There are no trams, no trains, the place is, in effect, a building site and you have to travel everywhere by taxi, which is fine, but the driving here is crazy – they can afford flash cars and they drive them very fast and very dangerously.

Anyway, the World Cup. How are they going to manage it? The 'dry' nature of the country might prove problematical (for England fans) and while there's a lot of hotels here, gettting from them to the footy stadium will be a problem unless they've got plans for a bus network and possibly trains too.

Who knows? I better go as I've got a plane to catch. Might blog again in Dubai.