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Christmas is watching Jonathan dance. And dance. And dance. Feeling alive again. For the first time in years. I can't wait for 2014.

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There's a reason why the finale of Swan Lake in Black Swan is titled Perfection. And there's a reason why Nina dies at the end of it. It has nothing to do with the end of Nina's story (well, ob...

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It's my last night in Dubai. My flight leaves in nine hours, it's after midnight, my suitcase is packed. I'm exhausted. The last few days have been hellish thanks to a Swiss tribunal chairman w...

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December in Dubai is strange. Two mornings in a row, I woke to such thick fog that I couldn't see the buildings across the empty lot behind my apartment building. The past two days actually had...

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I've spent the past week embroiled in trying to help my mom save a big production she is directing. It's too complicated to go into, but along with all kinds of other disasters, there's been no ...

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That bloody job I did in Brussels when I got back from Nigeria is still giving me troubles. It was single-handedly the most horrible job I have ever done in that every single thing seemed to go ...

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So I'm not going after all... The Indian Embassy in Toronto suddenly decided they could do a visa in a day for the Canadian writer, even though it's unheard of there and supposedly impossible, s...

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Apparently I am going to India after all... The past 24 hours have been a torrent of phone calls and emails and craziness. The company I work in the Middle East for (run by a friend and former ...

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November is my favourite month in England, possibly because it was November when I first moved here 13 years ago and so the icy evenings and swirling mist remind me of the excitement and joy I fe...

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A mad dash (for 1.5 hours) through the streets of Lagos in a lights-flashing, sirens-blaring convoy, bashing all the other cars out of the way to get to the airport in time --- being escorted thr...

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It's my last night in Nigeria. Tomorrow night this time we'll be embroiled in the hell that I have been assured is Lagos airport on a Friday night... I could tell many stories about the drama...

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Talking to the lawyers confirmed that we're not actually allowed off the hotel grounds in Lagos for insurance reasons. Oh, joy. The hotel doesn't exactly have extensive grounds. It has a tiny ...

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Tomorrow we return to work. Thanks to Eid being a public holiday in Nigeria, we now have to work for the eight days out of the next nine and I am very much dreading it. My body barely coped wit...

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I want to go home. This is awful. Mostly because I can't breathe. Because the airconditioner in my room has been broken all night and the hotel keep promising to send repairmen and/or the keys...

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I'm in Lagos. We arrived about 24 hours ago after a difficult flight across the Sahara, and the three hours at the airport were some of the more traumatic hours of my life, from having a panic a...

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Paris ended up not really happening. We caught the Eurostar there, set up our equipment, the job cancelled, we packed up our equipment, went to bed and caught the Eurostar back in the morning. ...

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It is autumn here in London, and looking gorgeous as the leaves are still on the trees, just starting to turn. I fear that when I return in two and a half weeks' time, they'll be mostly gone. I...

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Massive swimming pools beneath the Middle Eastern stars. Lazing beside them in evening desert gales. Defunct 'new' airports submerged in sand, looking like archeological discoveries. The turquoi...

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