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In 2018 I wrote a small piece about an airport arrival in Dubai. When work a career finishes and in my case, retirement loomed I left the UAE. It was a wonderful few years to live in Duabi after the quiet backwater of Bahrain and it was just before the expansion of Dubai that today…

Cross Roads Prologue: I am fascinated by the minutiae of what I have collected over the years, and more importantly kept. I always maintained a diary and the entries form the backbone of these recollections. In 1978 it was Standard Chartered Bank red leather diary, a sign of importance to me though it would have…

The window in the bedroom overlooked the town of Varenna and when the mist lifted off the lake she could see Menaggio and from there she would take the train to Dongo. This is where the war had ended and she wanted to see the fascists hanging, they who had taken away her youth, her…

It is early morning in Dubai. The compound where I live is quite and still, curtains closed, overnight dust gathering by unpolished faux-marble front steps and the dull hum of air conditioning units makes for the backdrop of noise to come. Underneath their matt white and rusty casings, puddles of condensed water provide tiny lagoons…

  Dusk always comes early in Manama being closer to the equator than other countries. We expatriates who live in the villas by Adliya in the restaurant area draw down our blinds at six and offer ourselves large measures of Indian manufactured gin called London Bridge and whiskey named after that famous and well known…

Between the trees, we weave a path to the field; bracken brown and sodden. It is dead of night and the busy moles whisper under our feet. The moon, like a soldier with a lantern, keeps the midnight watch And small creatures who own the darkened land worry along their way. On the far ridge,…

Untipped. I drew a soldier from the foil and tapped the crinkled end, Compacting the tobacco dark and rich as Flander’s soil And slip the smells back in the box. A match sparks against rough jeans and with cupped hands I nurture the flame to life. The red bulb, once safe explodes And with each…

This weekend my father is ninety, yes ninety. What happened since in those years is a history of the world in a short space of time. 1932 was a difficult year. In the States, Roosevelt defeated Hoover by an landslide against the depression as a background. In Germany Hitler lost to Paul von Hindenburg in…

This year the heat is brutal, and in May was close to 35 degrees. We are fortunate to be allowed to drink water, sit in the shade and escape home when feeling tired. And in a corner of this churchyard stand four Commonwealth War Graves. It was a reminder as to how they could not…