@WeAreUAE

The Flag of the UAE (shown as artistically waving) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've sort of been too busy with book posts over the long weekend to tell you, but the lovely people behind the co-curated '@WeAreUAE' Twitter account had a massive brain fit and lapse in judgement and handed the account over to me on late Wednesday night, lock stock and barrel. They even bust out with an Instagram account! It's mine, all mine precioussss, until next Wednesday!

What is @WeAreUAE? The idea is that someone new tweets from the account each week, opening up a kaleidoscope of different viewpoints, experiences and voices from the people who inhabit a given country. One of the world's more famous co-curated national Twitter accounts was @Sweden, which popped into instant notoriety when curator Sonja Abrahamsson used the account to ask a number of questions about what a Jew was. The questions were, as the New Yorker pointed out in its piece on her tenure, not so much anti-Semitic as childlike and born out of genuine curiosity. Nevertheless, she caused a storm that saw @Sweden draw followers like a follower drawing thing. Rather wonderfully, the Swedish Institute, one of the bodies behind the account, pointed out that Sonja was merely exercising the right to free speech that characterised Sweden - and apparently many of the people who arrived, drawn to the controversy, found Sonja actually quite charming and endearingly kooky.

I'm already having great fun with it all - and just in case you're waiting for me to do a Sonja, I'm actually taking the opportunity to celebrate the many things I enjoy and treasure about the country I have called home for the past  19 years.

See you at @WeAreUAE!

Back In Station

Disney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's like a tetanus jab - every time you do it again, it feels worse. It's a sort of disorientation, a mixture of homecoming and going away, of relief at familiarity jumbled together with doubt and loss. What the hell are we doing here (the question we asked each other across a green table cloth in the President Hotel one night some nineteen years ago) and it's good to be back fighting each other against the background of flight-weariness and the strange unreality of leave fading away.

It's hard to talk about being back to reality when you live in Disneyland, but leave is hardly time in the real world. You've got money and time on your hands, everyone's pleased to see you (they haven't seen you for months, so they're naturally excited. If they saw your ugly mug every other weekend it'd be a different story, wouldn't it?) and you can pretty much suit yourself. The long-distant memory of the grey daily grind of life in the UK is forgotten as you have your 'Cider with Rosie' time off. That feeling of homesickness you get landing back in the Emirates is actually a hankering for a distorted vision of home that's even more unreal than Lalaland, The Home Of The Shiny.

We actually went to the real Disneyland, part of a glorious week in Paris and a chance for little niece Ellen to meet Mickey Mouse, which was a moment of pure magic for a wee girl. I didn't tell her his head comes off, she's too young and there's plenty of time for that yet. I can only marvel at the genius of an organisation that can make you queue for forty five minutes to meet a dancer in a mouse suit then gouge you twenty Euro for a photo of the meeting on the way out. Genius of a truly evil order.

We also spent a brilliant (if heart-rendingly expensive) week in Sweden, which is too long a story to tell. If you ever find yourself in Stockholm, stay at The Grand and eat at Fem Sma Hus in Gamla Stan. Don't ask questions, just do it.

They've opened a Carrefour around the corner. It's hot. I've got the manuscript of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller back from Robb The Editor and there's a load of work to be done before it's ready for publication.

I've got a paw on the hamster wheel and a gentle shove confirms that familiar old squeak is still there. Time to hop on again...