Countries ending in -an

Girls whose lips don't quite fit their faces. They are just a bit too wide, so they move restlessly around, fidgeting, never still. They are almost cartoonishly erotic. Scarlett Johansson is a good example. Watch her lips shyly trying to find a place to hide.

The last fortnight has been all about Central Asia. First of all I went to see a film called Tulpan, set on the steppes of Kazakhstan, a story about family life in a remote farming community. Sounds boring, but was actually really amazing, very funny and incredibly beautiful. Most of the action took place around the family's yurt, and this tiny dwelling lost in the enormous vista of the plain made for some spectacular images.

Then I went to a party the following night and bumped into an old acquaintance from University (fuck, that seems like a million years ago now) who spent a year in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan. He was telling me how tough it was trying to get anybody there to trust, let alone cooperate with an NGO. After thousands of years of being told what to do by so many occupiers and exploiters, it's little wonder the Kyrgyz are suspicious of outsiders, and they have every right to be. Life there is incredibly hard. The gold teeth you see are actually made of iron, painted to look more attractive, they slowly poison the mouth and smell rotten.

I, not knowing anything about the place, but recklessly assuming it was like its neighbours Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, thought it was just another big flat country with lots of farmers and nothing else. But Mike quickly corrected me, and told me about the cities, the work he;d been doing out there and his plans to go back after completing an MBA so he could offer better advice to other charities and aid agencies. He seemed to have that undeniable (by which I mean implacable) American resolve to do good, and do it seriously, that is quite awe-inspiring but also somehow unsettling. But then I often find people who are well organised and have plans unsettling.

Then I got an invitation from, of all people, Jemima, who has returned from Afghanistan, is pregnant, and is now running a small arts business under the aegis of the Turquoise Mountain foundation. I hadn't even spoken to her in three years, and felt guilty, and obviously keen to see her, so I went along to their charity sale at 22, Portsea place. It was a strange experience all round. The place was a private house, decked floor to ceiling in old paintings and drawings that were collected in the first half of the century by some good old boy from West 2.

Around the house were several little stalls with jewellery, carpets, calligraphy and traditional Afghan jackets and dresses for sale. I managed to speak to Jemima for all of about three minutes and just about get out of her a few details about her experience in Kabul before she had to go off and usher some posh old fruits around the Chapans. I wandered around the upstairs and thought about buying a calligraphed Hafez poem in the shape of a peacock, then thought better of it. It was total nonsense and the translation was probably dire.

I managed to cadge a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine (December the 3rd for Christ's sake) and a bit more chat with Jemima about the exhibitions she'd been curating, and about her soon-to-be baby. Then I started to panic because I thought I couldn't possibly just leave without buying anything, and all the bloody clothes and carpets were hundreds of quids worth. I bought a raffle ticket, not to look like a cheap skate, but that clearly wasn't enough, especially as there were only a few other punters there, and they were clearly not short of a bob or two.

There's a certain type of old English couple who come from a very well bred set. He likes to wear a woollen pullover, usually in a dark blue or fawn, over a slightly crumpled check shirt. And he's always sporting a pair of his favourite cords or possibly moleskines, either in yellow or puce. His hair is long and combed resolutely over (he thinks somewhat rakishly). She wears a trim jacket, with a round neck, silver or grey or possibly cerulean, and a long skirt or trousers. She's always heavily encrusted in jewellery, but only the less glittery, everyday kind and has a small and deadly clutch bag. The desired effect is of a pair of hard-working but smart, well-scrubbed-up farmers. But nothing could be farther from the truth, and when they open their mouths of course the game is up. Not that they really want anyone who knows to mistake them for farmers, only the poor confused bourgeoisie, who invariably are taken in.

I scoured the place for anything to buy, but in the end the only item within my price range was the calligraphic peacock. As I bought it, the voice in my head was saying, quite audibly: 'You do not want this. You do not like it. It's a ridiculous waste of money. You are only buying it to impress Jemima, whom you know, definitively, can never have any sexual interest in you, never did have, and is now beyond unavailable. Stop this madness now, put your credit card away and save your money.' But despite my the faultless logic of my interior monologue, I bought the damn thing anyway. I simply couldn't leave empty-handed. The artist smiled oleaginously at me, I hoped not guessing at my predicament, as I congratulated myself on my purchase in a tone of exaggerated self-confidence.

I left feeling queasy, stupid and alone. I think the whole Turquoise Mountain thing is pretty dodgy, and I can't say I really have a lot of time for its founder, Rory Stewart, and the very idea of restoring the cultural centre of Kabul while IEDs and shells are going off all around and the Talban is re-occupying large swathes of the country seems bizarrely romantic to me at best, at worst perhaps even patronisingly unengaged. So I found the experience pretty bizarre, compounded by the fact that I only went really to see Jemima, after not keeping in touch with her for three years, only to find out she's pregnant, getting married, and in a totally different place from when I ineptly tried to tell her she was beautiful. What was I thinking?

And of course there's the small matter of Obama launching his new strategy for Afghanistan and committing an extra 30,000 troops, and NATO's pledge to send another 7000. MacChrystal's a smart guy, but time isn't on his side, and until the Americans give up their obssession with destroying the poppy crop, they'll never significantly reduce the Takiban's appeal to unemployed farmers. Obama can't afford to admit defeat, so perhaps this is a way of extricating himself anf the country without too much loss of face, but I have to say I'm pretty pessimistic about the long-range prospects for Afghanistan, and for the region. They need a miracle now, to avoid either a return to Warlordism or the resurgence of the beardy-men from Kandahar. Not a pleasant choice.

Arsenal got thumped twice in less than a week by Chelsea and then by Man City. Pretty depressing. The worst of it though was not the losses or the lost points, but the effect it's having o morale in the team. In the second half at Eastlands you could clearly see Fabregas and Arshavin's heads go down, as if they knew the game, and the title, and possibly any prospect of success, was already gone. God I hope Cesc doesn't leave in the summer. If Barca came calling, I couldn't blame him, but that would be a desperate loss to the club. Perhaps even the end of the Wenger era (not because I want him to go - as far as I"m concerned he's got a job for life) but surely the board and fans, not to mention the media, would put him under too much pressure if Fabregas left and this team, too, started to unravel.

It's hard to see how England could possibly have got a more favourable draw in the Group Stage of the World Cup. No disrespect to the other teams: USA, Algeria and Slovenia, but we surely have to be confident of progressing to the second round.

Portman's new film, 'Brothers' premiered in New York a fortnight ago. And it looks like a belter. It's been a little while since she made a film I really wanted to see (apart from going to see her), but this looks intelligent, grown-up and exciting. It took about ten seconds of the trailer to remind me of the complete power she has over me. I watched it four or five times, in a trance. The prospect of anyone else ever touching me like that moved further and further away.