A new photography festival opened in Tuscany on Saturday, where the prestigious World Press Photo exhibition vies for attention with an innovative project exploring European identity.

There is one area of frequent enquiry that streams my way, where I feel that I am not ideally qualified to comment. Doctors in Afghanistan are at best soothsayers, at worse fraudsters.

All of my friends here come from far-flung places, a broader horizon that dispenses the notion that your own place of birth is best. Each fizzes your blood with unique cultural facets, we are simply part of something bigger.

I think I may have been living in a war zone for too long, and it is taking its toll. Before Christmas I was talking with a friend who had been working in regions of conflict exclusively for 10 years and he described that there are something like 59 symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he exhibited 43 of them.

My name is Martin Middlebrook. The 12 of you who read this regularly know this of course, but by other countries other conventions apply. So depending upon relative status or affection, my moniker here is either Kaakaa Martin, Mr Martin, or Martin Jan.

On my final night in Beirut, we went out to dinner at a restaurant that specialises in Chocolate dishes. If your sole intake of chocolate for three months has been Ferrero Rocher, then you are to endorphins what insomnia is to sleep - utterly deprived.

War pays I can tell you. Kabul is a building site and the construction industry is booming off the back of reconstruction. Now Mr David Cameron of the swept back hair and boyish looks, you're a clever man, just this week you flew over Afghanistan, did you perchance bother to look out of the window? If you had you would have seen how capitalism really works.

To me, Damien Hirst seemed like a typical bloke in the pub who enjoys a pint and loves talking about football and girls. When I was in his office, he was very excited about the castle he had just bought.

So those of you who know and care, which excluding my mum is no telephone directory, will be aware that last week was to 'close' what Gillette are to shaving - a whisker away!

In Afghanistan you get power cuts every day, lots of them. There are times I admit that I do get a little frustrated with the internet going on the blink, particularly when you are in the middle of email sex with someone who is four time zones removed.

Everyone here plays a game of I spy when they are out and about. The idea is that you are trying to work out which of the 200,000 Toyota Corollas in front of you is loaded with fertilizer and ball bearings. It's not quite like the version of the game you played with your parents when stuck on the M6 trying to holiday in the lakes.

In Afghanistan, officially of course, you can't get pork, as officially you can't get a drink, *hiccup* but of course it is available. But here is the rub, you find yourself eating bacon that could have been stripped from a rat, a small, infected rabid rat at that. It bears no resemblance to any bacon I have ever eaten.

Next to my tent in Camp Bastion is the Vigil Ceremony Parade Ground, where those killed in action are remembered. Inscribed on the monument are the names of all the soldiers that have given their lives in Helmand. Carved into stone are these words: "When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today."

We patrolled for six hours, a wearing journey I can assure you, and whilst never blasé, you can also become a little un-attentive after a while. 50 yards behind me a soldier lost his legs a couple of weeks back, 600 yards to my left is a sniper, to the front is a compound with insurgents, we can see them watching us, and the same to our right, a compound chock full of people who rightly or wrongly wish us ill.

I am going to tell you something that you can read, but if you do, you must accept that you have the following choices. You will either have to eat your computer after reading, or face a firing squad, 'ready, shoot, aim'!

In October 2011, I closed down my world in a leafy provincial English town in and headed to Kabul, with the avowed intent to establish myself as an internationally recognised photojournalist. I decided to chronicle the experience of my day-to-day life in my online Kabul Diaries.