CHEMICAL WEAPONS

THE CHINESE-OWNED MEGASTORES that proliferate throughout many countries in Europe have, it must be said, many advantages: their opening hours allow one to purchase necessities one has forgotten at all times of the day and week. And thus it was that I recently found myself in one of these establishments in the picturesque town of Sintra, in Portugal, a place with a tiny population but with six of these shops.

 

THE PURPOSE OF MY VISIT was to purchase yet another umbrella to help me deal with the remarkably English climate of this part of the country, but my eye was taken by a range of after shaves and EDTs (as "eau de toilette" has now become known), including the one pictured above, which is now the subject of some fascination for me.

 

THIS PRODUCT, "OBAMA", is, or rather was, a part of the range of EDTs produced by the company going by the name of "Shirley May", and which has a website visitable by those who wish to confirm my statements here. If one looks at the back of the box, one may see that Obama (and presumably the other products in the range) was made in the United Arab Emirates and is for distribution in the Ukraine and Moldova. The blurb on the back is mainly in Cyrillic characters, thus being rather mysterious.

 

THE ISSUE OF THE TRAGIC EVENTS in the Ukraine at the moment brought my attention back to this EDT, upon which I detected a certain symmetry between the fate of this Obama and world events in general. Obama has been removed from the Shirley May range, although other products, such as "Just Black", "Black Market", "Army Fight" and "Hero" are still for sale today. (Strangely, one of the EDTs is called "Blog", although I could not find it when I returned to the same shop two days ago.)

 

IN REAL LIFE, OF COURSE, the world is waiting for action on the part of Europe and the USA in order to stimulate the obstreperous Vladimir "Ras" Putin into action both over the Ukraine in general and over the shameful events taking place around the crash site of Malaysia Airlines MH17, but, David Cameron apart, no one seems to care.

 

AS FOR OBAMA ITSELF, my good lady wife has informed me that in her opinion it is extremely well packaged both on the box and the bottle inside, which looks extremely bold and strong on the dressing table. However, she tells me, after an initially forceful aroma it loses almost all of its promised effect very quickly indeed; so much so that if I spray it on in the morning after breakfast, one would swear that after no time at all there was nothing there.

SUMMER SURVEILLANCE FUN

AS SUMMER HOLIDAYS approach, many people will be aware of the new rules to prevent them all being blown to pieces mid-air as they jolly off to "enjoy" a short period of drinking too much and being burnt to a frazzle in a southern European seaside town in which construction has not yet been completed and plumbing has not yet been commenced.

 

THE DECISION BY THE UK AND THE USA to inspect passengers beyond the already absurd procedures carried out at most airports will only serve to annoy serious travellers who need to use the air as they go about their legitimate business; yet for most summer holidaymakers, the majority of whom find it amusing to have to remove their flip-flops and see a body search as just a little more "slap and tickle" in the holiday spirit, it is all part of the lager- and babycham-fuelled kiss-me-quick excitement of a couple of weeks away from the drizzle.

 

INSPECTING MOBILE PHONES and "electronic goods" to see whether they work is one more step towards the nightmare (but expectable) scenario of us one day having to board an airplane completely naked except for our credit card and passport, faced with the dilemma of how to use them to cover our private parts. For the moment this measure will be a source of worry as I ponder over the two computers, DVD player, tablet, two MP players and four mobile phones usually carried on board among other devices between my wife and me.

 

MY WIFE AND I, however, wonder why the searching has not yet been extended to the most obvious devices, known to anyone who is a keen James Bond viewer: surely digital wristwatches are the most common form of detonator for bombs, so why does no one check to see if they are showing the correct time? And fountain pens, in Bond movies at least, can easily be turned into guns, or can be used to stab pilots in the jugular vein, so why are they allowed?

 

(I WAS STOPPED over a fountain pen on one occasion, but that was at Liverpool John Lennon airport, where the security lady was not sure what a fountain pen was. "Ooh, it's one of them fancy ones," was her reaction when I explained the purpose of my Mont Blanc.)

 

YET ALL OF THIS MUST be set against the reality of airport security. On the 22nd of June this year American citizen William Joseph Richardson was allowed onto a flight from Phoenix Arizona to London carrying a Glock handgun in his carry-on luggage. The bag was screened by security services but the weapon was not detected. Nor was his criminal record.

 

OR THE "SURVEILLANCE FAILURE" at Marseille Airport last week during a training routine in which 100 grams of explosives were hidden in the cargo area of the airport for sniffer dogs to find. The dogs were unable to locate anything and then the gendarmes apparently forgot where they had hidden the block of explosive material. Thus it is "lost", either remaining in the airport or unwittingly in someone's freight.

 

ONE SHOULD NOT BE CONCERNED, however, as airport officials have stated that the explosive material is "harmless without a detonating device". So we have no need to worry.

 

(My photo shows a French policeman checking for bombs inside a glove.)