THE TIMBUK TWO

THERE ARE THOSE WHO OPINE that we should make our presence felt on the international front as the statesmen standing up for righteousness and general do-gooding that needs to be done on the world stage, even if this means getting involved in what has been termed as "Britain's Vietnam" in the North of Africa.

 

THE VIETNAM REFERENCE is not without a less than innocent and careless whisper when it is stated by the American press, given that what they mean by "Vietnam" is something that was ballsed up by the French and then the Americans had to come in and try to help them out. And even so had to deal with snarling and spitting arrogance from the French who had hitherto "ruled" the colony and run it into the ground.

 

SOMETHING SIMILAR SEEMS to be on the cards in relation to the French ex-colonies in North Africa. Not a single one of these territories seems to have been settled sensibly. The French "forces" (I am being a little generous) were either forced out, hurried out, shot at or -- more usually -- bribed to leave their colonies in the fifties and sixties.

 

BUT NOW DAVID "DAVE" CAMERON has decided to step in to help someone, without really making clear whom. This was announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Then arose Sir Peter Tapsell, the longest-standing member of the House and someone with a belief that we can learn from the past.

 

AS HE STATED: "As my right honourable friend sets off on his pacific mission to Algeria, will he, with his great historical knowledge, bear in mind that when Louis Philippe sent his eldest son on a mission to Algeria in the 1840s it took a century, massive casualties, the overthrow of the Third Republic and the genius of General de Gaulle to get the French army out of the Algerian desert!"

 

NONE OF THIS SUGGESTS, of course, that the United Kingdom may end up mopping up the shit left behind by the French. Heaven forbid. But perhaps one might watch, as they say, this space.

CHARLES THE OBLIVIOUS

THE RECENT "VISIT" OF PRINCE CHARLES and his concubine Camilla to the London Underground Metropolitan Railway only confirms how out of touch these people are. Charles had no idea what an "Oyster" was as he slipped it into the slot allowing him to go down into the underground. Many people throughout the shires will also not be familiar with the term, but in London it means "your bus and metro pass."

 

IT APPEARS FROM THE FOOTAGE taken by our good media representatives that our king-in-waiting was not too sure of what to do with his oyster when he went down. One wonders whether people more intelligent than I might wish to come up with jokes about this last sentence. Far be it from me to do so.

 

OF COURSE, IN MANY COUNTRIES one would be happy to see a constitutional monarchy showing its benign and benevolent side towards the "common folk" as Camilla once described us. But it might have been nicer if she had shown up as a full-time paid-up concubine with her full-time paid-up husband to have a drink in one of the most run-down pubs in Toxteth in Liverpool. Or even if Charles could have had more than a sip of his half-pint of Guinness when he had the chance.

THE DESERT SONG (VERSION TWO)

IN A REVIVAL of a great musical which once thrilled hundreds of thousands of theatre-goers and conscripted soldiers of Spain, France and Italy as they jollied their tenor and alto soprano voices into the Sahara in order to liberate and civilize the peoples of the Rif, of Morocco, of the Protectorate of Tetouan and of the Kingdom of Libya, we now have a new version, with new stars on the stage, in a hit that will, as they sometimes say, “run and run”. Just watch.

 

RAUNCHY LEON “LION OF THE DESERT” PANETTA, the ageing yet feisty ex-head of the CIA and United States Defense Secretary, as well as milksop, confused, pasty-faced loon Philip Hammond, the British Secretary of State for Defence, are as I write holding a joint press conference outlining how they will “knuckle down” and “sort out” the Al Qaeda bands of “rebels” who are trying to turn the North of Africa into what they call a “safe haven” for terrorists.

 

THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN, rather sensibly, have never really bothered too much with the Maghreb region of Africa, as they both realized that the shifting sands of both time and place mean that the type of colonialism that both countries favoured was never going to cut the ice in an area where people wandered about on camels with masks over their faces, indulged in buggery and could make a date last three days. This was never going to be the market for British goods or American proselytism.

 

YET THE FRENCH AND SPANISH, perhaps without such practical approaches in their minds, saw fit to try to colonise most of the Sahara. The result of all this, as could only be expected, was a series of long and bloody wars between Spain and Morocco and between France and Algeria. Italy managed to keep out of harm’s way mainly by simply abandoning Abyssinia when a couple of the locals started to show their tooth.

 

NOW, HOWEVER, THINGS HAVE GONE PEAR SHAPED and these useless ex-colonial powers have had to call in the big boys due to the heavy-handed and ham-fisted actions of the Mali and Algerian “authorities”. I am not sure that I think that involving British and/or American troops in the minefield of Maghreb politics is a good idea – and Panetta and Cameron are on my side. But we surely cannot have unwashed, flea-bitten rascals holding our enterprises to ransom, can we? So we must not give in to the French.

 

(My picture shows international terrorist, the much feared Moktar Hollande El-Moktar, allegedly responsible for the latest crisis)

I AM A TEACHER, YOU ARE A WHORE

EVERY COUNTRY HAS TO MAKE SPECIAL PREPARATIONS for major international events such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup. I was very impressed by the Chinese authorities before the games in Beijing 2008, when every taxi driver and hotel employee was given free English language lessons to help them deal with the vast numbers of tourists flooding to the city.

 

AND IT IS A SIGN OF THE STEPS that Brazil has taken over recent years that they are planning a similar campaign to help tourism and local trade. Every single one of the 4,000 prostitutes in Belo Horizonte, one of the cities which will host games for the 2014 Soccer World Cup is being offered free English language classes by the local authorities. I am quoting Prostitute Association President Cida Vieira: "It will be important for the girls who will be able to use English to let their clients know what they are charging and learn about what turns them on."

 

OF COURSE, ONE COULD EASILY see this as discrimination, given that no similar service is being offered to drug dealers and kidnappers, although I imagine that the programme could be extended by the time we get to the Olympics in 2016.

 

AS A LANGUAGE TEACHER myself, I tend to wonder about the content of the classes. If these ladies are total beginners, then I imagine the language schools will adopt the so-called Direct Method – the “I am a teacher, you are a student, this is a table, that is a chair” approach. The variants are endless.

JANUARY

JANUARY LOOKS FORWARD AND BACK, and is the month of change for so many. January the 7th is the day of the year when most affairs begin and most adultery is committed. January the 2nd is my birthday and is a day on which I have always been fortunate enough not to have worked. Most of these January seconds have been bright, clear days when I could sit down and think about the year that had just ended and the year to come. But I never really did much of that.

 

JANUARY THE EIGHTH is the birthday of David Bowie and of Elvis Presley, who is now dead, and will thus not be celebrating the event. History tells me that he is a man who changed the world, but he was a little too early for me to feel his influence.

 

ANOTHER DEAD “ROCKER” is John Lennon. His death may have been more of a shock to the world than that of Elvis. Lennon did not die fat, puffy-faced, old and ugly. But what he said about Elvis Presley’s death has always stayed in my mind. “What do you think about Elvis Presley’s death, Mr Lennon”, asked some American TV reporter. “I thought he died when he joined the army,” was Lennon’s response.

 

AND WE ALL DIE WHEN we join the army. We all die when we want to kill someone or something else. If the spirit of John Lennon existed then no one would join the army, no one would pick up guns and no one would kill another human being just because we were told to do so. But that is just not going to happen, is it? Certainly not in Britain and the USA.

2012: A YEAR IN WORDS

 

FOR MANY PEOPLE TODAY the year of 2012 was probably one to forget, although in my opinion many of these good folk will be looking back in a few years’ time and wishing they were back in what they will then see as ‘the good old days’, given the financial disaster that is surely to come. This is because it is patently evident from the discourse being used by our politicians that the south of Europe and the Republic of Ireland are about to go down the toilet permanently and a good deal of the north will follow a few flushes later, after vain attempts to “rescue” the weaker countries. Very few of my readers will know what happens when one tries to pull a turd out of a toilet; even without this experience, I feel free to state that the result will be a handful of shit.

 

NEVERTHELESS, THE YEAR NOW ENDED has been one of extraordinary triumph and happiness for a great number of people, and I feel it is somewhat in my duty to provide a brief summary of all that has been splendid.

 

IN THE FIELD OF SPORT the year was exceptional. Britain won the Olympics, the Tour de France bicycle race, and England won the soccer World Cup in the sense that the Spanish team included players who play in London. Unfortunately, England and Britain have a habit of teaching foreigners how to play the sports we invent and then we are very quickly thrashed by whomever these foreigners happen to be: Australians at cricket, the entire planet at football, Americans at golf, the Swiss at tennis, the Irish at snooker and the Canadians at curling, so it is always nice to see a touch of success.

 

IN THE VAST AREA OF ENTERTAINMENT, once again Britain proved that there is no match for the TV we produce. Downton Abbey was the hit of the year, although Sir James “Jimmy” Savile with his programme “Jim’ll Fix It” gave it a run for its money.

 

IN THE ECONOMY, we still have the pound, and thanks to the gains made by U£IP and its courageous leader Nigel Farage, we should be able to finally get out of this European mess some time in the near future.

 

THERE WERE LOW POINTS OF COURSE, as there always must be. Two of these low points were Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge’s breasts. The size of which suggest that the future king or queen of the United Kingdom of England and Scotland and Northern Ireland will be getting their milk out of a bottle. Which is a shame.

 

NEVERTHELESS, THE LOWEST POINT OF A MIXED year has to be the ludicrous decision by the Scandinavian Nobel authorities to award the Peace Prize to the European Union. This has to be some form of joke, given that riots have been taking place on the streets of Athens, Rome, Naples, Madrid, Lisbon and Paris more or less constantly since March 2012. If this is the peace that the EU brings us all, then requiescat in pace. Please.