You have seen Gladiator right? The Russell Crow film? Of course you have. Russell is a wronged man fighting the fight but one constant thing keeps pulling him through is this flashback of him being reunited with his wife and kid. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s what i will be in two weeks. I’m kind of freaking out. It’s all falling onto place.

My wife is 34 weeks pregnant and I am shitting it. Every time I am in communication with her I think she is going to tell me her waters have broken and I will miss the birth. Every morning I wake up in a cold sweat relieved no texts or missed calls have occurred during the night. It’s hell but it’s a hell that is drawing closer and closer to an end. I am here and she is there and all the months of planning and planning and planning and heartache are ending. The tearful drive home from Bahrain airport in July as I waved my son and wife goodbye with only a long tunnel of isolation, loneliness and work insecurity seems eons away. Here we are. October. Purgatory is drawing to a conclusion. The plan has been months in the making but it’s going, by fate and design, to plan. I have been posted back to the desert.

Back to the project I came here to work on and it’s heaven.I have my own car, my own office and most importantly I am away from the grind of that hellish office up in town. The best part of it is that we desert people are a kind of Autocracy. This means we can figure things out away from the peering eyes of HR and management and run the work the way we like to the clients happiness and that’s what we do. The other good part is that I am 99% sure I have managed to get 2 full months in Bangkok thanks to work program and national holidays in Bahrain. It’s worked out amazingly well. So, for once, job is going well. That’s the first time I have been able to say this with any degree of certainty in about 3 years. I now need to make sure that my wife does not give birth between now and November which is when I plan to fly out. For once in our lives we have a period of time to look forward to with security and joy after the summer of slog that one cannot help feeling there must be a twist in the tail. Some Benny Blanco from the Bronx motherfucker as I am about to board the plan back home to Bangkok. Will, for once, catch a break? Will we get this precious time together and again, never be separated or are we destined to live this hellish life? Will I be there to see my son born? Will we make it throug the next few weeks with a job ready for the new year? Like a spaceship coming back down to earth with a burning up through the atmospheric layer and I just hope my craft can hold it together for the splashdown in the sea any second now…

14 days.