Back to the Mother (F) country

We are leaving Sharjah on the 14th June, so unless I run into any of you in the office, this may well be goodbye.

I am highly appreciative of the willingness of the university to give me the opportunity of teaching for the first time in what is now an even more varied career. I have no idea what will happen back in the Old Country; that will be in the hands of God, my mother, and the luck of the Irish (note the order, as was said of Saddam’s comments concerning what he thought were life’s three afflictions). I am not, by the way, and to the best of my knowledge, Irish.

It has been an up and down experience for both of us out here in the UAE, one that we will, for sure, remember for some years to come. It is also possible that we will be back, although probably not in a long term employment capacity. I shifted my Mid-East focus to the Persian Gulf over 10 years ago, and it’s probably too late to shake off this particular affliction. So that suggests that a return visit to the UAE is more than possible. Whether I will then be serving in a teaching capacity back in the UK or preparing my bid for the Labour leadership in 2014, I cannot predict. Equally likely, I will be a “researcher”, with all the ambiguity and mukhabarat connotation that that implies. My wife, I trust, will return, full force, to painting, and, with the grace of God, will make a mint and I will get to realize a long held ambition: to drive a van from town to town, continent to continent, from art exhibition to art exhibition.

If our current plan works out, we will be on the road from NYC to the west coast sometime between mid-September and mid-November 2009.

This blog will shortly redeploy to the wild east of London. Dire Diary anyone?