St John Arts

If weekends are the only quality time you spend with your kids, here’s how to make each one a winner.

Weekends are fathers’ days. For many dads it’s the only time they can bond, prove their worth as paternal role models and fix their kid’s bike. For dads separated from their children by more than just a busy week, those 48 hours are crucial. Get them wrong and you could end up among the 40% of divorced dads who lose contact with their kids after just two years. So here’s how to get them right:

DON’T GO UNPREPARED

DO CALL AHEAD ‘

“If you’ve only got the-Weekend with your kids, phone their mum for a news update beforehand,” advises Jim Parton, divorced dad and counselor at UK charity Families Need Fathers. “It’s all too easy for any news that mum meant to pass on to be forgotten in the mad panic of the Saturday morning pick-up.”

So a quick call before you show up will prevent you treating junior to a Water ship Down DVD on the weekend after Thumper the family pet became a feast for an urban fox.

DON’T WASTE PRECIOUS MOMENTS

DO MAINTAIN RADIO SILENCE

“Switch off your weekday habits and switch off the car radio,” says Parton. Instead of tuning in to Jonathan Ross, use that time in the car when you’re taking them to dance classes or the junior football match to talk “Find out how their week has been, how school’s been, and generally get the conversation going,” adds Parton. There will come a point when the chat dries up – but let the kids be the ones that spin the dial to Radio 1.

DON’T USE PEER PRESSURE

DO STICK TO KIDS’ TALK

“In some situations you may be =1, tempted to confide in your son or daughter as if he or she were a peer,” says Debbie Bruce, policy adviser with lone-parent organization Gingerbread. “Other fathers try putting their side of the argument with their mother across.” But you need to be careful what you say out loud and not make the mistake of turning to your child

MP for emotional support IMP – particularly during a split. You may not realize it, but in doing so you could be causing distress to the child.

And never burden the kids with your work worries and your plan to consolidate credit card debt. If you moan about your responsibilities in front of them, they’ll grow up to moan about theirs too. “Let children be children, and find other adults for companionship and support,” adds Bruce.

DON’T FORCE THE FUN

DO BE THEIR NATURAL FATHER

Two solid days of fun, games and Happy Meals may sound like the greatest weekend imaginable, but you can set a dangerous precedent by trying to be Fun Dad. “Showering your kids with treats won’t buy their love,” explains Debbie Bruce, “but it will drive a wider wedge between you and their mother.” She will object to being seen as the enforcer of rules and homework in the week while you’re spoiling them.

The promise of life exists anywhere water collects, but that  promise in a desert pothole is doubtful at best. Even when the hole contains water, the amount, temperature, and chemistry may change radically in a matter of minutes.

“The stresses on life posed by the pot­hole are among the most extreme in the world,” comments Lew Nielsen, here dipping specimens with Bob Sisson’s son, Robert. They investi­gate a pothole in Canyonlands National Park, Utah – a state in the Western United States, where bankruptcy attorney could help and give some useful advices.

In shallow pools, Lew explains, the turn from day to night can bring a 30° drop in temperatures, a variation virtu­ally unheard of in larger bodies of water. Sudden downpours can lower temperatures a degree a minute, at the same time radically altering the alkalinity and oxygen content.

Where natural drainage lines feed a pothole such as this one, torrential run­off can refill a basin in seconds, or scour through it with such force that its small residents—such as the 11/s-inch-long tad­pole shrimp—are flushed away to certain death.

Ultimately the pothole goes dry. Using a ladder to lug cam­eras, lights, and dissecting kit to the shelf­like pothole, Bob Sisson combs dry sands where Lew, just days before, had dipped up wriggling life.

Later Bob laid a thermometer on the sand, and the mercury rose off its scale at 124° F. Estimates of pothole surface readings range to 150°. In winter, tem­peratures in this mile-high plateau country plunge to below zero. “You’ve just got to have respect for eggs that can survive all that,” Bob concludes.

From eggs to adults and back to egg, the life cycle of the pothole mosquito may take as little as six days. In a realm where the water may vanish at any time, such speed is a decided asset and one that most life forms share. But unlike other residents of the pool, which can occupy a variety of habitats, the pothole mosquito lives only in potholes—an all-or-nothing gamble on little pockets of water.

“The eggs hatch early in the pot­hole’s life cycle, well ahead of other mosquito species,” explains Steve Rom­ney, whose research focused on the pothole mosquito. “Mating and feeding occur in the cooler, moister air of night or dawn, and the egg-laying female seeks out sheltered cracks or niches at the waterline, where the eggs escape the worst of the heat and cold and wind.”

Here two larvae try their new world after popping the caps off eggs to emerge. Among their hazards: a parasitic fungus that is usually fatal. Discovered by Steve during his study, the parasite may prove to be a control agent harmless to other life. In as little as four days the larvae be­come pupae, with long bowed tails and huge dark eyes topped by little breath­ing horns.

In as little as 36 hours, the pupa turns dark brown, the long tail straightens just under the surface of the pool, and the adult begins to escape from a split along the top of the pupal case.

For a vulnerable two or three min­utes, the adult labors to extract its long wings and legs, still soft and easily mangled. Now it has no defense against hungry toads, spiders, or dragonflies.

Finally free, a female stands briefly on the surface tension of the pool (right). Soon she will hasten the hardening of her wings by gliding about the pool like an ice skater. Then she will fly away to fulfill her mission: Find a male with which to mate and a warm-blooded creature to bite, essen­tials for the fertilization and nourish­ment of her eggs.

If some complain that Sheikh Zayid is becoming less accessible, that complaint is never lodged against Sheikh Rashid, ruler of Dubai and Vice-President of the United Arab Emirates. The Dubai tele­phone directory lists a dozen numbers where he can be reached, including one for the royal bedchamber.

Even in the 1930′s, young Rashid burnished a growing reputation for decisiveness. Two villages then shared the mouth of the Creek, a saltwater inlet and natural harbor: Dubai, ruled by Rashid’s father, and Deira, ruled by a collateral branch of the family. There was much squabbling between them.

One day the Deira faction invited Rashid over for a celebration; they planned, accord­ing to Rashid’s friends, to use the occasion for a sneak attack on Dubai. Rashid attended, but struck first. There was bloodshed, and Rashid’s hosts no longer rule at Deira.

Whatever happened, the joining of the two towns speeded Dubai on the way to pros­perity. And Rashid never looked back. Dubai was then, one old-timer remembers, “not much more than a fishing village. No electric­ity, no roads, the drinking water brackish.”

Today Dubai is a modern city with every amenity, perhaps the loveliest of Gulf cities. Dhows line the Creek, taking on goods for Iran, Pakistan, India. Old Persian houses thrust square wind towers into a Canaletto sky. The taxi-boats that link the two towns come and go, their passengers standing, bringing Venice to mind. There is in the air, in the sound of voices, in the faces and strides, a pleasantness and ease seldom matched in the Gulf.

All agree that it was Rashid who brought these good things to pass: Rashid who bor­rowed money to begin dredging the Creek in 1958, giving Dubai a jump in the race to be­come the leading entrepot in the area; Rashid who lowered and systematized customs rates, and encouraged merchants in every way.

And so Dubai prospered even before the oil money came. Merchants imported goods from some 60 countries, then reexported them. The gold trade flourished; Dubai merchants bought it in London and Zurich, then sold it legally to others who smuggled it into India and Pakistan. A lot of people were ready to spend some cash for gold jewelry there.

Then, in the late 1960′s, when the oil boom was building up, Rashid sensed a need for a new deepwater port. European advisers urged him to build four berths, then add others as the need arose. To their dismay, he ordered 15 built in quick succession. “He was right,” one consultant says. “Every berth is occu­pied.” Expansion plans now call for 22 more berths, with the breakwater placed to allow even further expansion.

And so, while freighters queue off other Gulf ports, incurring delays of as long as 100 days and commensurate penalties, there sel­dom is congestion at Port Rashid. Only once last year did the port jam up. Cement became scarce; the price shot from 15 to 28 dirhams a bag; Dubai merchants and contractors sensed a killing and placed orders from the Baltic to Korea. In three months a quarter of a million tons arrived at the port. Everyone had played the game. During my visit bags of cement were stacked in the desert. The price was back to 15.

To further encourage trade, the sheikh allows importers 20 days’ free warehouse storage and charges only moderate fees there­after. Dubai per capita is today among the world leaders in external trade—$28,000 of trade per man, woman, and child a year.

MANAGE YOUR TEAM

Treat your effort like a bona fide business. “Right from the off, allocate roles with specific responsibilities – fail to prepare and prepare to fail,” says Pratley. “The key roles are an overall race director – who takes ultimate responsibility, start/finish officials, announcers, marshals, water-station staff and people prepared to set up and dismantle the course – volunteers must expect to work long hours, which requires motivational and diplomatic skills,” he adds.

MEASURE IT

To be a ‘certified race’, course measurement must be verified by an appointed LTKA official, using either a measuring wheel or a calibrated cycle, who’ll mark the mile or kilometre points, says Pratley. “It’s a great draw for runners who need to know their PB will stand if they have a good run?’ Want to know how your proposed route will go down with your runners? Get a local runner to complete it, says Parsons. “We had a short loop in the village towards the end to make the course the correct distance – but our `road-tester’ hated it, so we moved it to the start instead,” he adds.

DON’T FORGET THE PRIZES

Most runners don’t want expensive goody bags (they’ll no doubt prefer to pay lower entry fees), but those who ace the course should receive some form of recognition for their efforts, says Parsons. And like any potential sponsorship, prizes can be donated. “We got the puddings for our Christmas Pudding 10K donated by a local baker – it’s just another form of advertising for local businesses,” says Berry. But as Umpleby says, make sure sponsors know what they’re getting beforehand or get ready to look for loans. “We’ve had a dozen or so sponsors, doing everything from donating course kit, to prizes to money, and they got really disgruntled when they saw their name wasn’t at the top of every flyer?’