This dispatch from Sydney appeared as part of a Roads and Kingdoms US election night special

The boys on the Sports desk shout STAND BY STAND BY every time there’s a CNN projection countdown. Every time there’s a Trump win, someone shouts SEE I TOLD YOU.

Part of my job today is to work out if the Russians are going to bomb Syria when they think the world isn’t looking, but I can’t think.

There are 34 television screens in my sightline. The one closest is showing a live shot of the Empire State, Hillary and Donald’s faces painted on in lights, above a giant, bold-red Arial 270. It feels a little Hunger Games, a little Black Mirror, a little 1984.

It’s been a strange day. Where the harbour meets the sea, by the lighthouse where I live, the sky is bulbous, the air cramped. Even the flies are more restive than usual.

There’s been a recent invasion of unidentifiable small flying bugs coating windowsills and ceilings and wall moldings. I watch a haze roll out into the Pacific. Haha, we’ve been joking, it’s the end of the world.

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A Father's Day essay for VISI

When I was small, my father would throw coins into the pool.

He would toss them in the deep end, my eyes squeezed shut, facing the washing line, twisted eucalyptus. The pavement hot with Australian sun, cement darkening with impatient drips.

“Okay, Princess. Now!”

Sometimes, there would be a thwoop and I would turn to find a cold can resting on the cement bottom, lopsidedly lolling amid my bounty: black grass jelly in sugary water, bought as a treat from the Asian supermarket near the university.

The jelly always stuck in the can. The aluminium edge scratched my tongue.

There was sunshine and laughter and salt drying on my skin, happy itches.

Dad lost his right arm in his teens, and hated swimming in public. This was our time; a private memory.

He wasn’t often there - there was a legal practice to run in Malaysia - but when he was, there was muffled cigarette smoke in the little wood-panelled granny flat he built in the backyard, rules to follow.

Adolescence, as it does, grew tortured, his absences into elongated shadows, half-noticed.

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An essay for taste magazine

There’s a wall in the sea in the Somosomo Straits.

60 metres long, 45 deep, it glows an UV white-blue in the filtered sunlight; fish disco amid the luminescent coral.

The plantation gardener sits in the croaking dinghy, line between his thumb and index finger. When we clamber up with empty air tanks, there are two fish in the boat: an enormous barramundi for the village, a short fat albacore for us.

At the plantation, the water around the dock is oily with salty and sweet meetings. The rocks are black. The coconut trees grow of out of buffalo grass.

Jon shimmies down the trunk with bounty in hand, chucks it against a rock so the wood hairs sprout from sides.

The rich white is scraped with raspy metal, squeezed by big hands. Clear tuna eyes stare as red flesh is sliced into cubes. Chilli turns into juicy red dust under the blade of an enormous cleaver. Everything ends in a wooden bowl, with the juice of two hard, green limes.

Two fat ladies hold me down and comb knots of out of my hair with coconut oil. By the time they’re finished, the kokoda is on the table: tuna cubes seared grey with sharp citric acid, now swirled with the fresh coconut milk. Fiji in a bowl, accompanied with whispering kerosene lamps and Jon’s ballads on acoustic guitar.

Lime is beginnings and tropical trysts: holidays, the tang of sea wind and street food sweat. Squeezed over halved baby papayas in bare-legged garden breakfasts. Red Chinese New Year packets dangling from potted kalamansis. Condensation rolling down glasses where the sugar syrup sits at the bottom, and the limau kasturi pulp swims.

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A special feature for the Sunday Times Home Weekly

I’ve written about many homes, but never my own.

Having your own home photographed - even by your partner - is a peculiarly intimate experience. It forces you to see your space through outsiders’ eyes: your life laid bare through your possessions; your story told through pots and books and bedlinen; pieces of your history hidden in an embroidered cushion, a basket.

I’ve lived my life across three continents, and amid my years of wandering, longed for a place all of my own. People told me I was mad, that I’d never be home, but they were wrong.

It is a space as defined by my absence as my presence.

My balcony herb garden died for want of water; in its place, a jungle of succulents.

In the wardrobe, a stack of ikat sarongs from Mogadishu lies beneath metres of Vlisco, from a visit to Congo’s restive northeast, during a break in the fighting. On the walls, scattered donated images of Nelson Mandela from various graphic designers, and a trio of 2010 World Cup art prints: a nod to long months spent next to a television camera.

In the kitchen, the hand-painted Vietnamese bowls carried back miraculously unbroken from Hanoi’s countryside, where they make ceramic rhino-horn grinding saucers.

It is a space filled with collected moments of solace and communion, found in art galleries, or on solitary wanderings through secondhand shops, or beaches: a delicate Marco Cianfanelli laser cutting of a human heart, a coatrack fashioned from Wild Coast driftwood, an Art Deco drinks cabinet.

Atop my desk - a glass-topped railway engineer’s teak workbench, purchased from his brother - there are two jars, filled with dozens of identical shells collected from the same Senegalese beach. On the left, shades of charcoal and black, on the right, mustard and marigold: a reminder it is possible to find order in chaos.

Further along, a bullet casing, collected from a miners' riot, sits next to a glass Goddess of Mercy.

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This dispatch from hanoi appeared as part of a Roads and Kingdoms around-the-world Christmas special

The tinny notes of “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” faintly waft down Phố Hàng Mã, joining the cacophony of motorbike horns, rattle of engines and shouts of haggling shoppers. It drifts past your ears with all the force of a musical card—the sort that plays when you open it, with unfinished phrases of music that lodge themselves in your subconscious, so you hum them without thinking and slowly go mad.

just like the ones I used to know

The old quarter with its streets of traders: one product per stretch of cramped road. Silk, leather, birds in delicate cages, scarves, shoes, carpets, on-trend puffer jackets, plastic buckets, seafood barbecue, car parts, Christmas decorations heaped over the paper props of ancestral sacrifice.

It’s December, so Hàng Mã is lined with bushels of tinsel—the cheapest sort—in varying garish metallic colours and levels of bushiness. The metal display grids resemble the furry coat of a children’s cartoon monster.

Within weeks, the bags of fake snow and head-bobbing Santas will be replaced with paper lanterns, crimson banners embossed with gold script, wishing passers by a Happy Tet.

where the treetops glisten

Fleets of angels swaddled in glittering nets of polyester. Bare fluorescent bulbs hanging from grimy striped awnings. Garlands of plastic gold bells. A troop of eerily smiling Styrofoam snowmen staring blankly into exhaust pipes. Polyester poinsettias. Ice blue glitter covered snowflakes. Rows of Santa hats with twisted white braids. Candy coloured rows of baubles in plastic tupperware.

and children listen

Even the traffic slows here in Hàng Mã.

Hau, in pale lemon skinny jeans and cocked eyebrows, surveys the hysteria astride his Suzuki.

“No. I don’t have a Christmas tree. And we mostly don’t believe in Jesus. But, well, you know, us Vietnamese, any excuse to party.”

An impish grin.

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This dispatch from Johannesburg appeared as part of Roads & Kingdoms' election night special.

In the living room
Soft furnishings:
Masai blankets, burnt orange floor cushions, South African and USA flags leaning on the grate.
On the wall: Laminated electoral college map, USA electoral vote calendar, Mandela portrait clock, half-blank A4 pages with red and blue scrawl “[?]/538”, acrylic sunflowers on
canvas. NATE SILVER IS EVERYWHERE
On the television: CNN election coverage live, Volume: 39 [out of 100]
On the couch: 4 people, all clutching drinks, none looking at the television.
Spotted: 1 x I [heart] NY t-shirt on Variety’s Africa correspondent, 1 x newly-shaved ex-boyfriend, 1 x Obama ’08 baseball cap.
Overheard:
– “Wait. Did I miss the Johnny Walker?”
– “Oh, are those exit poll results? Did you know this pizza is gluten-free?”
– “No, she’s not coming. She says this isn’t a babysitter kind of election.”
- “I had to wear gumboots in Kugelo last year. They were all sitting there in the rain, keeping tally. It was a kind of, victory of humanity.”

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This piece appeared on Roads and Kingdoms

The Prime Minister comes to dinner, in the Polana’s newly refurbished ballroom. We eat tiny, sweet, local oysters and posh chicken zambezi under 22 chandeliers, and stare at the evening-wear of Maputo’s mayor, an ensemble seemingly made of fuschia upholstery. In front of the backlit palm trees, widescreen television screens depict scantily-clad blonde women frolicking on beaches and sipping cocktails, while swordfish made out of beads hang surprised over fat lily centrepieces.

Few seem to notice the acoustic guitar player, eyes closed, running his fingers over his strings, creating his own passionate personal blend of Mozambican marrabenta, fused with a dozen other provincial musical influences.

They should notice him. His name is Jose Mucavele, and the last time I heard him play, it was dark, we were on the sidelines of a trainline going nowhere fast, drinking a locally brewed love potion out of a gourd. This time, it’s a little less atmospheric.

There isn’t enough time in Maputo.

Not enough time to drink tepid gin and tonics during the witching hour at the little roadside shipping containers-turned-barracas in Museo. Nor time to watch the fishermen slop in with their catch at dusk at the barra de pescadores on the little dirt road north of town. Nor time to wander through dusty streets perusing the delapidation of some of the world’s finest Pancho Guedes Art Deco masterpieces.

Instead, we retreat to a deserted Club Naval, next to a dimly-lit lap pool on the Indian Ocean, and sit, drinking dark, sweet and malty Laurentina Preta beer on a night with no moon.

It’s an unusual Maputo. The town feels moody, full of Wednesday evening ghosts—a gregarious gogo dancer turned in early.

Sitting next to a rickety stage, the reggae night band is on a break. They make their evening comeback with an acoustic version of “Blue Suede Shoes”. I have a brief flashback to my father’s amateur karaoke competition glory. A friendly Mozambican in bermudas and bling belt buckle insists he wants to help me feel at home. He raises his eyebrows suggestively.

The night is chilly. The air has lost some of its salt on its way up from the harbour.

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