Please for­give me for the long absence since my last Mews News mis­sive, but ground­hog day (per­ma­nently Tues­day in my case) has caused a block­age on my cre­ative juices!  47 days work with­out a week­end off, work­ing 12 hour days has taken its toll on my abil­ity to remem­ber any inter­est­ing things that occur out […]

Well, it’s hap­pened again!  Indeed, I can­not believe that I’m writ­ing this, but I once again find myself in Iraq — at Christ­mas — in a very sim­i­lar Inter­net cabin to the one I was writ­ing in this time last year!  In Sep­tem­ber I was posted and joined my new unit in Ger­many — 3rd […]

Since I deployed to Iraq at the end of Octo­ber last year, 6 months and 3 weeks ago, the time has van­ished!  I have now fin­ished my tour of Op TELIC 9!  Hope­fully, God will­ing, I shall be sip­ping on a cold beer in North York­shire by the mid­dle of next week.  0

Less than 4 weeks to go!!!!  I can’t believe it’s almost the end.  I’ve now moved to Basra Air Sta­tion (AKA the COB) — which is far more civilised than Shaibah Logis­tics Base, with Burger King, Pizza Hut and Sub­way facil­i­ties, lots more Inter­net ter­mi­nals, shops, etc.!   0

After­noon all!    A quick update as time is very short.  The weather here is bizarre.  One moment it’s glo­ri­ous sun­shine, bloody hot (40 degrees Cel­sius and climb­ing), clear blue skies and sud­denly, a frac­tion of a moment later the sky dis­ap­pears to be replaced by a dust cloud that lit­er­ally cov­ers the sun, with […]

The most extra­or­di­nary thing hap­pened a few days ago.  I was mind­ing my own busi­ness, strolling along in Shaibah Logis­tics Base, when I came across some Bangladeshi char­ac­ters look­ing rather dis­traught. 0

I am delighted to say that it has been almost 18 weeks since I left that green and pleas­ant land that is Eng­land, and have approx­i­mately 10 weeks to go until I return!  This is mar­vel­lous news indeed — for me any­way!  The days are pass­ing remark­ably quickly at the mo, but the weeks are […]

I have shock­ing news for you all!  The Mr Whippy machine has bro­ken. It is a tragic state of affairs.  I had been intro­duced to Mr Whippy at the start of the tour and a strange love affair began.  The cooks (bless ‘em) would only put Mr Whippy on tap ever other day, alter­nat­ing between […]

  Please excuse this long period of absence since the last Mews News, but it has been increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to get on to the Inter­net this last month.  When I have man­aged to get on, it takes approx­i­mately 4mins to load up my email account and about 1 min to down­load each email — broadband […]

 I am absolutely shocked by how quickly Christ­mas has come upon us this year!  I’ve just had one of those “I can’t believe it’s in a few days time” moments!  Owing to the fact that there aren’t many Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions around my camp, time appears to have stood still, caus­ing one to soon for­get that […]