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Have you noticed there's no sign of a drink whenever Bin Liner
and the Afghan Cavemen put on a show? I was watching CNN the
other night and there was this film of them all wearing watches on their right
wrists. Apparently this is a sign to watching Muslims
who can figure out that they belong to a special sect to do with wearing your
watch on the right wrist. It was also something to do with the way the turbans
finish up in a straight bit that comes over your left shoulder. This
expert was going on about these clues and the messages the Tallymen were sending
out and for a moment I thought I had been drinking. It
was the sort of gobbledegook that used to come through the ether when I'd had
a few. You hear about every third sentence. This man was
being paid to waffle on like this about these crazy clues and all I was wondering
was why they needed watches in the desert anyway. Everyone
was stoned in Vietnam, but there's not even a cup of mint tea for the Americans
in Afghanistan because all they ever do is fly over the place and drop a few food
parcels and fewer ghetto blasters with a card saying: "Sorry, you guys,"
before they fly home to Missouri. Oops! I feel a bit like
Kate Adie now in case I've given out a secret. Did I say Missouri? I did. I said
it because that's what I've just read in the pornographer's newspaper, the Daily
Express. Did Kate tell the world that Tony Blair was on the flight arriving in
Islamabad at 14:10 and cause a security alert like no other? I
would have thought it was dangerous that, saying where the Stealth Bomber himself,
Tony Blair was going to be, because he could be rushing off to be World President
any day as soon as he's sorted the Congo. Just as dangerous
as saying where the American planes are parked at night, but not when darling
Kate is broadcasting flight arrival times. You only know whether anything on the
Nine O'Clock News is serious by seeing Kate Adie looming up. In
the drinking days, she and I were fellow judges at the Bramley Apple Pie of the
Year Competition. It was not long after she'd been bravely shot in some war zone
and become a celebrity reporter. That's when I experienced my own little version
of a Holy War. I had interviewed her mother and my story
made the front page of the Daily Mirror. "How is she?" I asked.
"MY mother," she thundered, has NEVER been interviewed."
"But I interviewed her," I said, tamely,
and I remember I had to look upwards because she's very, very tall and omniscient.
I've just checked that in the dictionary in case it didn't
mean what I thought it did and it says it means you are a know-all, like God,
which is about right. "You did not,"
she said and stormed off and right out of the Bramley village hall before we had
presented the prize to Mrs Tyldesley, of Old Manor Farm, Great Tiddington. Unlike
many of the competitors, she had not decorated her pie with twiddly bits of pastry
like flowers and leaves, which should be reserved for pies of the savoury variety.
At least the Brits are operating from submarines under
the Arabian Sea, which means you can't see where they are. Kate should go down
there. But I bet you I could find where the Missouri base
is where these multi-billion super planes park every other day (they're on their
way there or back the rest of the time) and I haven't got a beard as wide as my
fist. Wars were never outed by newspapers like this. There
were things called "D" Notices that the government issued to editors
who agreed not to print what they were not told. Half a century later, I still
don't know what the "D" stands for. Mind you,
I don't think reporters are what they were. They don't
drink anymore (like the Tallymen) and I bet most of them have never been to Ibiza,
unless it was to rubbish the place.
Sinclair
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