Published at 12:13, Tuesday, 27 January 2009

David Beck From Brigham, Cockermouth, to Dubai

David Beck, Dubai

David Beck From Brigham, Cockermouth, to Dubai

Dubai is now home for David Beck, originally from Brigham, near Cockermouth.
It was his parents who first bought him a subscription to Cumbria Life for a Christmas present.
“They’ve kept renewing it over the years because it’s my taste of home,” he says. “I note all the good art, food and entertainment and try it out when I’m back.”
David first left Cumbria when he went to Staffordshire to do a degree in computing. A decade later the opportunity to leave all the “rain, tax and traffic” arose. He stepped off a plane in Dubai and was faced with a landscape that contrasted with everything he was used to.
“It was incredibly different, incredibly overwhelming,” he recalls. “In Dubai the land is flat and dusty, and the weather is consistently hot and humid.
“There was no mountain backdrop, no ferns, no clean air, no greenery and no smell of sheep dung, only camel poo, hot sand and construction dust.”
David brings his six-year-old daughter Kathryn back to Cumbria every year. Their last trip was for three weeks in August, when “it rained every day but we loved it”.
“Rarely seeing rain and being surrounded by 40C heat every day meant we weren’t prepared to miss out.
“We zip up our jackets, pull on our walking boots and spend the day going ‘wow, rain’.”
This Christmas, David and Kathryn will be at a local beach club with friends, basking on the beach before having a seven- course lunch.
David says: “Christmas in a hot country is a little different though: you do have carol singers but they’re not dressed in coats and scarves and the only white stuff we see is the cream on our mince pies.
“New Year is big all over Dubai though. Every hotel has fireworks and great New Year’s Eve celebrations.
“The locals go out on the street and rev the cars up with their brakes on the front wheels, burning the rubber off the rear wheels and the crowds get immersed in blue smoke – very different, but probably just as expensive as fireworks.”
David is currently searching for a holiday home in the Ambleside area, which will mean “more encounters with friendly Cumbrian people, more fresh, clean air and natural light and, best of all, more Cumberland sausage”: “In a Muslim country there isn’t much pork so I crave it terribly. Whenever I’m back we have to have a hearty breakfast filled with bacon and sausage.”
He also misses Jennings beer. “It’s nice because every time I come back there seems to be a new Cumberland ale. Nothing like coming back to a warm English beer.”
To try to keep his homeland in mind, David always keeps an image of the Lakes on his computer screen and over the years he’s encountered plenty of admirers of
the area. “Then I feel lucky to know such a beautiful place and look forward to my next trip back.”

Published by http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk