So long, headscarf – well in the office at least. After a week of seeing me tugging and pulling and twisting and shoving escaping tendrils of hair back inside its confines, one of my Afghan colleagues said, “Cassie, why do you wear a headscarf when it’s obviously so uncomfortable?”. Well , yes … good question. Erm, don’t I need to? I asked. No, he said, not in the office. So for now, I wear it loosely around my neck in case, just in case.

I really don’t understand the headscarf or Afghanistan’s attitude towards it and women. What is the point of wearing it so loose, as many women seem to do, that it barely covers their hair and leaves face and neck showing? Aren’t these all sensual parts of the body that we are supposed to cover up?

I ask an Afghan woman I meet at the juice bar in the gym I have recently joined but have not had time to actually exercise in yet. How is it I ask, that you can be here, among Afghan and foreign men, with no headscarf and dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants? Oh, my family is not so conservative, she replies.

She was born in Bulgaria and her father worked in the Afghan foreign ministry so that they were “out of the country a lot”, she says. Of course she wears one when outside, but why is that different than in here at the gym among sweating strangers? This woman, who speaks fantastic English – and whose number I now have in my mobile - is working for the UNDP to reform Afghanistan’s bloated and inefficient ministries. She’s 25.

The gym is part of what’s called the Kabul Health Club and Spa. The gym has a couple of treadmills and some cross trainers and weights and a juice bar. At its busiest, there are about eight people in the room – not fantastically busy. It is better than joining the hash house harriers as they run through the city on a Friday with a phalanx of armed soldiers.

The health club’s run by an Afghan guy who spent three years in Dubai and 30 in London. He misses the dampness of England he says … people say some odd things here.

Last weekend during a trip to Chicken Street - where there are no chickens and barely a street – I was taken up three flights of rotting stairs, past piles of dismembered antiques and the plain-clothed security detail of the head of USAID and into really what can only be described as bliss.

There were tables made out of old carved wooden doors, lamps made out of brass water jugs, chairs covered with afghan carpets, wardrobes and cupboards carved in intricate designs and a lampshade made out of the same green raw silk as the Afghan president’s hat.

The owner of the shop saw me pick up a brass lamp. “Brass is very good for you,” he said. I perked up, something healthy? …really? …in Afghanistan?

“If you drink water from a brass jug, it will help to cure arthritis.” We later nipped across the road – leaping over clogged up sewers and piles of blasted rubble and dodging the persistent beggar boys with their demands for a dollar – and into another shop where I was told by the owner that bargaining was not allowed on the first visit and who then proceeded to raise the price every time I tried to knock it down.

You can get most things here though. There’s a supermarket round the corner from the house called Finest, and one called Spinneys. As long as there is ryvita and red wine, I can live anywhere.

So socially, things are looking up. I moved into my house, and as you’ve seen from the photos, it’s lovely. There are five of us; a motley crew of internationals all doing good work of a sort. We have three guards, a cook and a cleaner and the occasional gardener who is digging herb and other vegetable gardens for us. We even have a wine faerie – although perhaps he might take offence at that.

Workwise. Well, let’s say it’s a bit of a challenge right now. I failed miserably in my two weeks of silence but have managed to convince everyone that I can do what-ever task they give me – so I am now involved in phoning all our international subscribers to find out what they think; devising training plans for the English language editors; mentoring one reporter a day on their story; starting work on a style guide and getting new lamps for the office.

So that should hopefully keep me busy for the next few weeks.