Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

'Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.    I miss you like hell'  (Edna St Vincent Millay) I know I know, unusually sentimental for a slummy mummy, but life without DH is proving to be well,  lifeless . There is something most unnatural about two people who, having spent the past 17 years together, suddenly finding themselves living on separate continents, particularly when they actually like each other. Aside from the daily visceral agony of simply missing him, the idea that we are living our lives separately -- only coming together for brief phone calls and online chats, more like friends or siblings than husband and wife -- leaves me feeling extremely vulnerable, much in the way of a young mother who unexpectedly finds herself out and alone for an afternoon, without the bulwark of a buggy in front of her. In short, I am without my anchor...

There is an article in this months ‘She’ magazine describing the expat lifestyle in Dubai.  It serves up the usual profusion of adjectives such as ‘luxurious’, ‘opulent’ and ‘lavish’ to describe the lives of those of us living in the UAE.   Gold vending machine Abu Dhabi As I type, I’m sitting in my lavish, diamond-encrusted study, on a platinum chair imported from Brunei, typing on my gold-plated keyboard.  And while we’re in the realm of fantasy, the plumbing in my luxurious villa on the beach actually works, the kitchen sink in my designer kitchen doesn’t leak onto all the products underneath it and it’s possible to lock my back door.    While undoubtedly Dubai is the poster-child for all that is glitzy, expensive and just plain gauche; the champagne brunches, glittering malls and luxurious villas certainly do exist here-  this is not the lifestyle that I or any of my friends experience. In fact, Christmas day was the first time w...