How I dislike this time of year! After twenty-five years I suppose I should have got used to the oppressive mid-summer heat but I can’t. I just get grumpy and bloody minded and my poor family has to suffer. My grumpiness is at its worst when I’m driving – normally with my dear wife Arabella.
It is an accepted fact that Spain now has the greatest roads in Europe for the amount of traffic they carry – not only the motorways but also their normal single-carriageway country roads. Why is it then that the Spanish either choose to drive along these country roads at the speed of an uncooperative donkey or like certifiable lunatics at 200k per hour? And why is it that I, when stuck behind the donkey man, have to grin and bear it while a queue of certifiable lunatics tear past at 200k just as we’re all approaching a blind corner - which is obviously also the only time you can see there is no oncoming traffic? And why, if the various ayuntamientos in the area are so intent on introducing roundabouts to replace their old traffic lights, can’t they have a national campaign to teach our Spanish friends how to bloody use them!
On the Political Front
Never mind, let’s change the subject.
At last the ghastly Blair, who’s been starring as British Prime Minister for the last ten years, has moved on.
My granddaughter Jessica who, when she’s over, monopolises our television set for half an hour every evening between eight-thirty and nine, says he must feel a bit like the actors who played a couple of characters called Martin and Sonia for a similar stint in the BBC soap opera ‘Eastenders’. I’m sure like them he’ll be feeling those tinges of sadness that go with having to take off the familiar mask behind which he’s been able to hide for so long. He’ll be sad too that his own name, like all actors who leave a long-running soap, will be quickly forgotten – and, if he’s not careful, all that will be left is a half-page advertisement in the actors’ magazine ‘Spotlight’, with only one sad credit to put beneath the photo of him as a younger man.
As I mentioned a few months ago, his theatrical agent, who was predicting a lucrative future for him in costume drama, was praying he’d make a gracious exit a couple of years back as he was confident at that time that he could have slotted him in as Pope - or Secretary General of the United Nations.
As it is, fresh from being turned down for Barry Scott’s summer replacement in the Sillit Bang advertisement – because he couldn’t put enough weight into the line “Bang – and the dirt is gone!” – George Bush is now packing him off to the Middle East with a suitcase loaded with ‘Torah true’ black hats, black suits and skull caps to please the Israelis - and for the good old Hamas and Hezbollah wallahs, a selection of bushy false moustaches, some virgin-white shifts and the full ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ headgear.
Let’s hope he gives some tour de force performances while he’s there because one thing is for sure - if he’s recognised as the same guy who’s been flitting around the Middle East as the British Prime Minister his chances of surviving assassination by either side are very slim indeed. But wouldn’t it be ironic if their shared mistrust of him were to be the first big step in bringing our Jewish and Arab friends closer together!
Meanwhile back in Westminster, the new incumbent, who’s acting talent, thank God, is limited to his well-known goldfish impression, has certainly not selected his Ministers for their good looks. Like Tony, he’s determined not to be a wall-flower in his own cabinet and his choice of quite a few ex-“Ugliest Baby Competition” winners along with traditional pig-scarers like Hazel Blears and Ruth Kelly shows that he is likely to be doing most of the talking himself. But undoubtedly his greatest triumph is the appointment of a Count Dracula look-alike as Foreign Secretary – and as Foreign Secretaries go, you couldn’t get a much more foreign-looking Foreign Secretary than David Miliband. The presence of David along with his brother Ed as Minister for Culture and Sport adds just that touch of Transylvanian magic which was so successful when Maggie Thatcher first brought Michael Howard into her cabinet in the mid-eighties.
Back here in Mierda del Mar, our new German mayor Fritz Fahrtsmann of the newly formed, mainly British, Mierda Nueva party has had as little success in this new job as he did as Captain of the Mierda Golf Club. At his first meeting in charge of the ayuntamiento – which was held in front of a crowded public gallery – Fritz’s very limited knowledge of the Spanish language (and the ayuntamiento interpreter’s even more limited knowledge of German and English) led to countless unintentionally funny misunderstandings. The situation was not improved by a leading British member of the MDP, an ex-undertaker from Solihull called Sidney Marples whose “I want to register our party’s huge embarrassment at this situation” was translated into Spanish by the same interpreter as “The Mierda Nueva Party would like in this situation to announce that it is hugely pregnant” – at which the public gallery exploded into the sort of laughter they traditionally reserve for repeats of ‘The Benny Hill Show’ which have never lost their popularity over here.
I have had one or two very insulting, illiterate and probably drunk people complaining to me by email about my contention last month that the reason many Brits had problems with the Deeds to their houses in Mierda del Mar was because they were blind drunk when they turned up at the Notary’s office to sign their Escrituras. It seems my comments were more accurate than even I had dared to imagine. By their words, as well as their deeds, ye shall know them.
And as this month’s footnote, may I wish long life to Tony’s latest knight Sir Salman Rushdie! Lord Levy told my chum Tarquin, that though it was worth a few quid to Labour Party funds, it has all backfired a bit because of the enormous extra cost for the new security which has had to be deployed.
