It is a week of farewells. My columns will no longer appear in The National, though I will continue to write for the paper. This sort of thing is not uncommon in newspapers. Tastes change, other factors come into play. I've enjoyed writing East/West, renamed Expat Life here, and My Word (Mark My Words to you). Since I have already touched on the demise of My Word - the final column appears on Saturday - this is the second of three farewells ...
A little over two years ago, this column made its debut with a whimsical account of the assorted struggles I have faced in the world of credit cards.
From then on, each week without fail, I have maintained a steady flow of words, offering at first my reflections on life in Abu Dhabi and later some snapshots of life beyond Abu Dhabi.
Travel, for pleasure or in the service of this newspaper, has been such a key part of the column's subject matter that it may at times have seemed like a journey.
In my company, you have visited all seven emirates, India and several of the Gulf states easily reached from the UAE. Since my return to Europe, you have heard a lot about France and the UK and, because I took advantage of post-Olympics holiday bargains, China.
The column started out as "Expat Life", but has appeared with other titles including, for the past year, East/West. This proved an appropriate choice given how frequently I have drawn comparisons and contrasts between life and events in the Middle East and in the West.
Along the way, and especially when in France, I have introduced readers to a broad range of people, from the Muslims observing Ramadan in Marseille or troubled by questions of French national identity to the streetwise old lady whose methodical progress as a beggar I followed from a table outside a Left Bank brasserie in Paris.
But all good things, indeed all things good, bad or indifferent, tend to come to an end and that is the case with East/West. Whichever of the three adjectives you consider applies most accurately, this is the last of my weekly columns on these pages.
Many years ago, a posh neighbour told me that, in her family, it was considered a little vulgar to be seen to be writing to the newspapers. I am glad to say that the feedback I have enjoyed from readers has owed nothing to vulgarity even when we have had to agree to differ on some view I have expressed. Indeed, the e-mails and - rather more rarely these days - letters have been a mighty source of encouragement.
I am writing this at my home in the Var département of southern France, an area I love, but my thoughts turn almost daily to the time I spent in the UAE and the people of all nationalities, from Emiratis to fellow expats, I met there.
The opportunity to live in Abu Dhabi came as an unexpected late highlight of a career that now stretches back to two years before Neil Armstrong took man's first steps on the Moon. I will never regret seizing my less momentous opportunity, and subsequently playing a role in the creation of this newspaper six days before the first of these columns appeared.
With luck, we shall meet again in this or other areas of The National, a prospect that persuades me to avoid the finality of adieu and bid farewell on a positive note: au revoir or, better still, à bientôt.
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