Back in London after a week in the Gulf, I've been thinking about the female dress codes in the region. It's not good enough to say “that's the local culture, we must respect it at all costs”. By that logic, we'd also have to respect hanging gay teenagers from cranes and stoning adulteresses to death. Plus, we'd have to condone eating your tea in the middle of the night in Spain, and the wearing of white bolero jackets by elderly roués in Italy and all the pointless bilingual road signs in Wales, my favourite of which is Golf Club with Clwb Golff written underneath.

Qatar, where I was staying, is quite relaxed about covering up, unlike the draconian Saudi Arabia and (the slightly less draconian) Iran. Many Qatari women wear the full rig, but many do not. The rules for the large numbers of Filipino and Western women are informal and elastic. By the pool on the compound where my hosts live, bikinis are acceptable. They wouldn't go topless, but then topless has gone out of fashion the world over, has it not? Twenty years ago it was all the rage. Now, although in most respects our culture is more breast-obsessed than ever, topless sunbathing is in decline. If I'd known, I'd have hung around on more beaches in the Eighties.

I digress. Away from recognised Western enclaves, in the souk in downtown Doha for instance, or at the mall, the codes become at once stricter and yet also fuzzier. Shoulders are a no-no. Indeed, judging by what they cannot permit themselves to see, Qatari blokes are pretty excited by shoulders. They must also get hot and bothered about knees.

Ankles, however (and surely ankles are on balance more erotic than knees?), can be stark naked and nobody is fussed. And unlike most of the rest of the Islamic world, Qataris seem unmoved by female hair. They can also cope with arms. Although when an arm becomes a shoulder is a matter for scholarly debate.

As for the more traditional female secondary sexual characteristics, clearly they've got to be covered at all times, as indeed they must be in the West, except large chunks of Amsterdam. And yet the covering must not fit too tightly. All in all, a complicated business. The punishment for trangression, incidentally, is a vicious hiss as the offender walks past. Those taking umbrage, I am told, are almost invariably old women.

Male order

We assume these dress codes are ordained by Islam, but the Koran doesn't actually have much to say on the subject, and what it does say is open to a liberal interpretation. I suspect demography is as much to blame. The ratio of men to women in Qatar, as it is throughout much of the Gulf, owing to the large number of single male migrant workers, is two to one.

Given such odds, it makes sound competitive sense for the indigent men to try to keep the indigent women under wraps. I wonder if the large number of single men in the industrialising towns of Victorian England, their womenfolk still in the countryside, explains the similar views (all that draping piano legs in doilies) held by our own forebears.

Pitta out

Tricky business, being a houseguest in an (ostensibly) dry country like Qatar, where they X-ray your luggage on arrival in search of booze, porn and pork. The traditional gift (I don't mean a string of sausages or a year's supply of Knave or Fiesta, I was thinking more of a few bottles of duty free) is thus ruled out.

Instead, our hosts, expatriate for three years, requested (and received) the following supplies from the old country: Yorkshire tea; Mojo, Good Housekeeping, Mizz, Top of the Pops and Shout magazines; any or all product related to Angelina Ballerina (a dancing mouse popular with five-year-old girls); Refreshers; silicone baking sheets and, lastly, (coals to Newcastle indeed) pitta bread. Apparently, the local product doesn't slice open as easily as Western brands.

In the bag

Thinking about weird rules and regulations, I was debating which one, however eccentric, is most universally and obligingly observed in Britain. The answer came to me on the plane: it has to be the Law of Baggy. Many people will bend the rules given the chance, but in my experience the Law of Baggy is inviolable, and it isn't even a proper law, merely a playground convention carried over into adult life.

We had four seats allocated on the flight, two by two. My wife and daughter both bagsied (baggy or bagsy or indeed bags? Discuss) the two window seats.

Naturally my son and I were disappointed, but it did not occur to me, nor did it to him, to challenge occupancy of the favoured seats once the Law of Baggy had been invoked. There, I suppose, is one local custom you'd be extremely hard pressed to explain to an outsider.

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