Wallflower Dispatches

Leaving Kiev at dawn, the air smelt sweetly. This was the voyage’s last surprise. I had come across this well used phrase in novels, but never inhaled the air that inspired it.
But here in the northwest outskirts of Kiev, the air really did smell sweetly, pure and warm. There were no blossoms in sight and [...]

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Our village is only listed in some of the more specialised guidebooks, those that go into great detail about Provence and the Côte d’Azur.
From a tourist point of view, there is nothing special about our village. It has never won any prizes in categories such as “Plus Beaux Villages de France”, it has no gourmet [...]

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It is hard to remember that we are in the People’s Republic of China, the largest communist country in the world.
There are no obvious signs. To all intends and purposes we might actually be in a rather generously sprawling part of Chinatown in New York or Chicago or London.
Fact is, Shanghai is a business town. [...]

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Writers’ rates being what they are, Shanghai’s most relevant shopping spot is Market 580 in 580 Nanjing Xi Street.
Until June 2006, this market was located outdoors in a park which was a maze of stalls, very dirty and quite confusing. It was also one of the biggest markets in China to offer fake designer goods.
Today [...]

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It is common journalistic and literary practice to focus on a detail to explain the larger picture. Six years ago this was perfectly summed up in Shanghai’s Yu Gardens in the old city, which is dominated by a large flying eave wooden Chinese structure, a live Huang Gongwang painting set in 2004.
The small Starbucks Coffee [...]

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Next week I will be in Shanghai for about nine days. Be ready for some Charming Mountain Goat observations and WD Interviews – jet lag permitting.
Do not expect shiny new photos of the latest Shanghai skyline – more recycled charming shots in black and white have already been sourced and scaled to size.

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Piglet 1 is a tomboy, a “garçon manqué”, a “Mädchen zum Pferdestehlen”. She operates at 150 miles an hour whether she is eating, speaking, thinking, reading, running, playing, or working. She is utterly fearless, super enormous fun, possesses a heart of great kindness, not easily fooled and thoroughly honest. She won’t dish the dirt with [...]

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Amira is Dutch.
It is strange to think that in what she calls “her former life”, she probably was a “Marijke”, perhaps a “Trijntje” or even a “Wilhelmina”. I have a feeling we will never know.
Despite the fact that she looks 52, she has actually led a very long, eventful life and crammed into much into [...]

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February is the time of year when everything turns YELLOW and spring is in the air.
Yesterday it all turned white. Escota who manages the motorways here has announced 40cm of snow.
The roads are closed, life is paralysed, we are asked to use electricity sparingly and not leave the house.
Life isn’t only sunshine on the Côte [...]

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The first love for an object – Nutella-soaked breakfast crackers, Glenn Gould and his variations on Goldberg, before Florence in May, even before the nimble feet of Fred Astaire – the love that came before all others was England, and more specifically: London.
Like all other first adolescent emotional attachments this love was abstract, idealistic, unconditional, [...]

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