I HAPPENED TO BE READING MY SECONDARY SCHOOL REPORTS earlier today, and, to my surprise, now nearly forty years later, I discovered that, after Mathematics, which was by far my best subject at school, I consistently received marks of over 90% in Geography, this despite the teacher being unable to stimulate a prostitute’s interest in a wad of fifty-pound notes.
DESPITE SUCH EARLY PROWESS, I must say that I had never heard of the city of Urumqi before, and, frankly, neither had you. And so the news that thousands of Han Chinese have been roaming the streets of Urumqi, according to The Times, including “ men and women of all ages, girls in high heels and young men in smart white shirts”, with “billiard cues, iron bars and even machetes as they surged towards the main city bazaar” was a tad surprising.
HAVING NOW SEEN URUMQI ON A MAP, I am even further amazed to discover that they play billiards there. On the other hand, even though I trust anyone who writes for The Times implicitly, I would like to know how a journalist watching from the fourth floor balcony of a hotel can distinguish between a billiard cue, a pool cue and a snooker cue. No doubt someone will send me this information in due course.
MICHAEL JACKSON’S FUNERAL is obviously to blame for this turn of events in a province of China which seems not to have been up to anything over the last few hundred dynasties, but where a little bit of repression and aggression can go unnoticed while we all watch haggard Diana Ross, decrepit “Little” Stevie Wonder, clapped-out Lionel Richie and bloated Mariah Carey sing their tributes to the “greatest entertainer who ever lived.”
DESPITE SUCH EARLY PROWESS, I must say that I had never heard of the city of Urumqi before, and, frankly, neither had you. And so the news that thousands of Han Chinese have been roaming the streets of Urumqi, according to The Times, including “ men and women of all ages, girls in high heels and young men in smart white shirts”, with “billiard cues, iron bars and even machetes as they surged towards the main city bazaar” was a tad surprising.
HAVING NOW SEEN URUMQI ON A MAP, I am even further amazed to discover that they play billiards there. On the other hand, even though I trust anyone who writes for The Times implicitly, I would like to know how a journalist watching from the fourth floor balcony of a hotel can distinguish between a billiard cue, a pool cue and a snooker cue. No doubt someone will send me this information in due course.
MICHAEL JACKSON’S FUNERAL is obviously to blame for this turn of events in a province of China which seems not to have been up to anything over the last few hundred dynasties, but where a little bit of repression and aggression can go unnoticed while we all watch haggard Diana Ross, decrepit “Little” Stevie Wonder, clapped-out Lionel Richie and bloated Mariah Carey sing their tributes to the “greatest entertainer who ever lived.”
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