The best answer to why I haven't written anything since August is "I've just been too busy": when the law firm where I was working finalised a merger I found myself doing three jobs - translating, editing and proofreading - for two companies. I worked late most nights before going straight home to bed. It was a stressful autumn, but there were good moments: sipping hot chocolate with Ana on Saturday evenings in the Shokoladnitsa café on vulytsya Chervonoarmiyska; finding a homeless puppy at the entrance to our building one Friday night and taking care of it for a few days; seeing Jamie, a friend who I studied with in Russia, when he came to Kyiv in September, and taking him to the Champions League football match between Dynamo and Arsenal; bumping into Kish, a Ukrainian ... read more

I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination. Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense. The Hungarian word for 'flowers', virag - written on florists' windows across Budapest - sounds like the Russian word for 'enemy', vrag - hence the working title "Flowers From My Enemy". Below is the beginning of a story I wrote about my journey from Hungary to Ukraine: "An hour or so before dusk on a ... read more

I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination. Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense. Below is the beginning of a story I wrote about my journey from Hungary to Ukraine: "An hour or so before dusk on a chilly late summer evening I stepped onto the train at Budapest Nyugati station. As we pulled away from the platform I stayed in the corridor for a while rather than going ... read more

Some pictures that there is no room for in my next diary, or which I missed when writing previous ones, that would otherwise have gone to waste. Some are of a barbecue with friends one Saturday evening - others are from various strolls around the centre of Kyiv, after work or at weekends. As with all of my diaries, click on any photo to enlarge it, and then click on "slideshow" to see them in sequence. Next diary: ... read more

It felt as though I had been away for two months, not two weeks, such had Kyiv changed while I was at home. Rows of chestnut trees had flowered along all of the city's streets and boulevards - their lush green leaves brush against the windowsills of the pink, grey and blue tsarist era buildings, and conceal the bareness of the khrushchevki housing blocks. The smell of freshly cut grass fills the air even in the centre. Summer had arrived. Translations about oil pipelines in Azerbaijan and articles about Ukrainian legislative changes pile up beside me on my desk at work. They are complicated enough to make your head swirl, but there are distractions: the door of the office is always open, which allows not just the warm air to drift in, but also the jazz ... read more