From my hotel window I have a view of the sea in the background. Away to the left, west, is the posh suburb of Gargaresh. To the right, the inelegant pride of Tripoli, Borj al Fatah tower. In front of me, occupying the middle ground, inconsiderately blocking a lot of my view of the Mediterranean, there are a gaggle of apartment blocks, some of which are clearly under construction, though none of them see quite finished. In the foreground there’s Omar Mukhtar Street, and between the road and the tower blocks, a funfair, which always seems very underused.

Mind you, the weather wouldn’t endear one to the idea of a trip to the fair. It’s difficult to imagine now that this is the same country as I spent last summer in, when it was often too hot to leave the vicinity of air-conditioning, even at night sometimes. It’s now usually cold, windy, cloudy and raining. The students tell us that this is not a typical winter, it’s colder than usual. We think we get a lot of weather in Blighty, but jammed between the sea and the sahara, I see quite a bit.

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