It is a curious thing.

When one changes the social and physical environment that surrounds oneself, changes in behaviour can follow. But not necessarily the big stuff, such as suddenly learning a new language, how to trampoline or ‘poodle fettling’ with unwilling poodles. I have no desire to immerse myself in the intracacies of Arabic, rigourous bouncing up and down while risking testicular damage or going anywhere near a dog. Rather, the smaller things can change almost without conscious awareness. Sitting on the terrace overlooking the swimming pool in the lunchtime sunshine here in Bahrain, I am aware of just one change. There are no doubt others, but one will do for now.

I have wrenched myself from the cold dark North where the snow falls and the temperature drops faster than a blind, one armed juggler drops his balls. The comfort and routines of home are no longer available and this means there is opportunity for change. It must be the disconnection from familiarity, and the restraints of more wiser voices of family and friends, that allows us to drift slowly downstream into the tiny eddies of miscreance. Being on foreign soil is somewhat exotic, be that the palm fringed swimming pool of a five star hotel, the tea shops of the local Souk or finding oneself walking around lost, blinking at the early morning sunshine, at a roundabout at six am after a nights clubbing in Ibiza. Exotica can have strange effects upon one’s judgements about the proper course of action. Mix exotic locations with alcohol and you have the perfect recipe for moral degeneracy if not outright moral outrage. Ah, I remember Cyprus in 1977.

Anyway.

I have noticed that when on holiday in a warmer climate, that I tend to take up smoking.

I was once in Paris, actually sitting at a cafe table on the fabled Left Bank where the ghosts of Simone de Beauvoir, philosopher and feminist, and Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher and roué, could be felt. Simone and Jean-Paul used to take their morning coffees and cigarettes in the spring sunshine when they would discuss existential issues and the price of cabbage over a pain au chocolate before retiring to the cool of their room in the afternoon to indulge in a little light mutual exchange of titillation à la mode.

I imagine a small silver ashtray with a few lipstick stained Gitanes or Gauloises stubs scattered within, or a half finished cigarette floating its blue vapour into the afternoon air balancing on its side. The association between French cigarettes and the chic glamorous world of the Boulevard St Germaine is particularly strong, for what reason Je ne sais quoi. Perhaps black and white films from both Hollywood and France have indelibly marked my psyche. The beautiful actresses (they were actresses back then, not actors) smoked like the 19th century Manchester skyline – think of the iconic Audrey Hepburn or Lauren Bacall. They’d no more be seen without a cigarette than they’d stick a feather up their arse and do the chicken dance.

There was nothing chic or glamorous about cycling down that very Boulevard with broken spokes on a back wheel. The wheel had threatened to disintegrate underneath me with every wobbly turn. I guess falling face first into a dog shit and litter strewn Parisian gutter would have disqualified me for ever from claiming any degree of panache in any endeavours thereafter. Nonetheless, France and cigarettes remain ‘cool’ and will be so forever associated.

Yet, I am not in France. So why the lapse into what is generally regarding as a filthy habit?

I’m not here to impress anyone, there is no one to impress, and with a face like mine that is a tall order in any case. I don’t have to look cool or chic at all. I can’t use the excuse of having been out on the Bonneville, which is of course another James Dean like trigger.

Is it doing me harm? At my age? It’s a bit late to start thinking about healthy living. The damage is already done by years of quaffing ale and stuffing pasties. My arteries resemble the London sewers clogged with fat bergs that only industrial strength sink blockers and a bulldozer can shift. I calculate that before the health risks of 2 fags a day, when on foreign soil, start hitting me… I’ll be about 85. I’ll be beyond caring and probably be looking for any manner of unhealthy habits to add to the occasional puff on a coffin nail. I might take up skydiving, crack cocaine and watching EastEnders. I might even start putting sugar in my tea and poking bull terriers’ arseholes with a hot poker designed for the very purpose. I’ll cross the road without looking, not bother with clean underwear in case I get run over, and eat cheese three weeks after its best before date. I’ll not look before I leap, and I’ll tread where angels fear to. I’ll argue with big fat dockers in pubs, I’ll tell them their wives are ugly and are only surpassed in ugliness by themselves. I’ll suggest their mothers slept with HMS Ark Royal. I’ll buy another motorcycle and do 60 in a 30 zone with out wearing a helmet and honk my horn at policemen while giving them the one fingered salute. I’ll step on cracks in the pavement and not wash behind my ears. I’ll tell the big bad wolf to fuck off. I’ll order full fat with everything and ensure my chips are smothered in hot chilli sauce, and not bother to put the loo roll in the fridge in readiness for the next morning. I’m going to have ‘Reckless’ tattooed on my forehead and a scorpion on my willy. I’ll say rude words to the vicar and set light to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s cassock. I’ll draw cartoons of the prophet and publish them with my name address and email.

I’ll tweak the nose of death and twist the nipples of insanity.

Smoking?

Who cares. I like it. I’m smoking about 2 a day with a cold beer in the evening. I may stop when I get to Jeddah.

February.

Hot, Dry and Dusty.

My throat feels like the underside of a Bedouins’ leather sandal after a hard day’s trek trudging through the desert gravel gathering dates, locusts and the severed heads of infidels. I have not been gathering dates or anything like it. Instead, I have been in meetings via the horror that is the Microsoft teams software. The hotel room is big enough to have a desk to work at while the sunshine outside shafts its rays through the window. This evening, the sun is beginning to go down throwing a reddish orange light into the room.

That is the signal for a beer.

I have just met the team of doctors who are all based in Jeddah, to discuss…well, let’s just say it is something to do with the delivery of care to patients. The meeting went on for an hour. And, as the saying goes, that is an hour I will never get back. It is not that they were unpleasant, far from it. They were the very model of civility and welcomed me to ‘the family’. However, it has to be noted that the team dynamics is a bit…well, just ‘forming’ rather than ‘performing’. They all spoke good English. Most of them spoke it impeccably. Denzil Penberthy and ‘Boy’ Trevaskis (who is 80 if he is a day) would not understand a ‘bleddy word they said’. To be fair nor did I.

Individual words made sense. Yet, it was, to paraphrase Eric Morecambe, that they were ‘not necessarily in the right order’. This meant that the collective sense was completely lost. I have got more understanding from listening to the loved up ravings of clubbers high on acid and ambition. Luckily I was joined (virtually or digitally…? No let’s stick with virtually, because being ‘digitally joined’ has rather unpleasant connotations) by my colleague from the US. I emailed him afterwards to ask what this ‘shit show of a car crash meeting’ was all about. He confirmed that indeed it was a show displaying the proportions of shit that would put an elephant suffering from dysentery to shame. So, not just me then. He commented that there was a bit of ‘positioning’ going on, i.e. someone was trying to be top dog but no one knew who or why.

This is going to be fun. I will soon be in Jeddah, inshallah, to join them. Am I concerned? Am I booking a flight home? At this daily pay rate you have to be kidding me. This is their show, I am merely here to offer advice when asked. They are in charge, but I will have to intervene if I think they are being a bunch of (insert suitable noun here). The thing is this. They are very competent clinicians. very skilled indeed. But I have learned over the years that just because you can take an appendix out, diagnose the pox or stick unpleasant objects into the dark recesses of the human body where no such things have the right to be, you are not necessarily skilled in the necessary competencies of actually running the show. This goes for all professionals. Jesus may have been a cracking carpenter but I bet he could not have sorted out the logistics, or the quality evaluation metrics, of the supply of suitable materials for the making of crosses. If it was left to Jesus I bet no one would have been crucified because he would have knocked out one beautifully crafted crucifix out of mahogany once a year. He knew nothing about how the fuck it was to get to Calgary. It took the genius of Roman organisation to bang up a thousand Jews a year. Do you think Hitler would have got anywhere without the logistical and organisation skills of Adolph Eichmann? Of course not. He would have been a bar room brawler stuck in Munich without the speccy moustachioed git Eichmann. And that is a matter of historical fact. Just ask Hannah Arendt. Napoleon was not undone by military genius on the battlefield but by a monumental error of logistical miscalculation in the snows of Russia.

The beer on my table right now might have been manufactured by master brewers in the low countries of Europe. They no doubt know the difference between the yeast to make beer with, and the yeast found in genital fungal infections, but it took a logistical magician to get it from Belgium to Bahrain.

A familiar screech from above draws my eye upwards. There, flitting overhead, are the familiar scythe like shapes of the swift, black against the pale blue cloudless sky. They chase flying insects at their ease high up in the warm rising air.  They are low enough to hear as they dance between the tops of the nearby glass and steel edifices. I suspect the insects don’t know what hits them. One moment, you are sniffing out flowers to gather nectar, or you may have spotted a particularly interesting dog carcass dumped in skip behind a back street restaurant, then without warning you are engulfed in a micro second and engage with oblivion. The snap of the swifts’ beak removes your consciousness from your corporal form, assuming insects have any consciousness. I have seen more swifts this afternoon than I did in the whole of the summer in Cornwall. 

An unfamiliar call disturbs my ear, a bird I have never heard. Several of them are foraging on the ground for food. They are not pigeons but are behaving in the same manner. Strutting and pecking at the ground at invisible, to my eye, specks of nourishment. They turn out to be pretty doves but not the collared dove of the UK. I’m tempted to brush the bread crumbs from my plate to assist their day and perpetual hunt for food. They fly to and from the ground to the pool side palm trees with utter confidence in what must be a perceived lack of predators. There are no cats that I’ve seen and the birds of prey are off gliding in the far distance. 

A solitary white gull drifts with the hot breeze across the King Faisal Highway that slices its way through Bahrain. It separates the hotel from the sea which is only a few hundred metres away. Although mostly hidden by the skyscrapers of the financial district on the opposite side of the highway, I can still see a patch of ocean from my window. This multi lane highway is busy all day and all night. It just never stops. The gull chooses a car, one with an open top, and deposits the detritus from its lunch of dead crab upon the head of hapless car occupants below. I’d like to think it sees the pumped up silicon enhanced artificial cleavage of a vanity obsessed social media influencer, and with a careful aim and a fair wind, shits in her tits.

Why I hope for that is between me and my psychotherapist.

The city is rising from the desert at a pace that is almost visible. The modernity that surrounds me belies its ancient location in the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese came here a few hundred years ago and built a huge castle fortress out of the sand coloured rock. It still stands. Now globalised modernity has taken over and engulfed it. There are more towers than I can count. As dusk falls, the pink light in the dimming blue sky provides a backdrop to a display of flashing lights of the soon to be silhouetted buildings. The effect is akin to a display of modest strings of fairy lights across the skyline. It is hypnotic. It is atmospheric. Solid red lights high up on masts, blinking white lights, 4 green traffic lights a kilometre away, are in an instant, joined by the orange of the Highway lights snaking around the edge of the bay. Its a scene you have seen in every film and TV programme you have ever watched, except for Coronation Street and East Enders. The only atmosphere there is the chill in the air at the Queen Vic or Rover’s when a lead character is caught shagging (again) by their long suffering partner.

The old medieval souk is but a stone’s throw from the hotel. It is a small quarter, interestingly in a grid pattern given its age. They seem to have dispensed with giving the streets names, instead one wanders down ‘Lane 390’, although I really do suspect there are not another 389 lanes in this district. I could be wrong. The buildings are a car width apart only. When they were built, the only traffic would have been a few donkeys, a small camel and lines of slaves chained at hand and foot slowly being led to the waiting ships for sale in Phoenecia, Rome or Carthage. The souk divides itself into small sectors of distinct groups of shops. There is a district for Gold, one for fashion, one for mobile phones and one for hardware. There is a spice district. There is an easy way to find it. You will know when you are near because the perfumed scents of cinnamon, cardamom and cumin drift in nose assaulting whiffs. Rose wood, bergamot, chakra lotus and cloves infuse the air. Sacks of a whole variety of spices and incense are stacked outside each shop window. Garlands of chillies, red and green, vie with garlic as decor.  It makes you want to scoop up handfuls and rush back to a kitchen to embark on a few hours prepping some exotic food, while sipping a G and T. No need to stock your own spices when they are this handy, fresh and plentiful. Grab onions, peppers, tomatoes, butternut squash – add nuts or raisins or both, pick fruit of your choice, fresh apples will do. Heaven. 

Is it any wonder the Elizabethans decided to go on a world plundering mission? In 1600 the Englishman’s diet was turnip, dock leaves and bits of pig that had fallen off the animal just before it died. Potatoes and tobacco had to be imported and the pig was only available at Easter in the towns. Peasants had to make do with a few grains of barley or oats and suck on straw for taste. Their only solace was the beer and cider. Then, some swashbuckling Captain would arrive home from this part of the world with sacks of brightly coloured spices which would lighten up their grey green worlds. Party time! And the only colour around for miles, and it would have been fireworks on your plate. Peasants only otherwise experienced colour in rainbows not in their food, clothes or houses. They only words for colours they had were ‘Black, Not quite so Black, Not Black at all and ‘The Other One’. 

Imagine tasting cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves for the first time after a lifetime chewing four day old, festering, dung encrusted, dried salted ear of pig? 

Even the birds like spices here. The gulls adore a bit of variety and will gobble up left over food no matter if red tikka coloured or not. The evidence can be found in the little turmeric coloured splodge of guano nestling as if it is a third nipple, upon the cleavage of the unfortunate sports car passenger on the King Faisal Highway.

The sky is a clear azure blue. The breeze is a mild caress of warm, not hot, air. In England this would be a belter of a very pleasant summer day. Not one of your heatwave days, just one of the days when you start thinking of a chilled glass of white wine, or a cold beer with a trickle of water forming on the outside, and cucumber sandwiches watching the village cricket from the comfort of your deckchair. If you are a cricket fan, you would have Radio 4 test match special quietly on the radio while you listen to the occasional cry for an LBW and the gentle ‘chock’ of willow on leather. A gentle applause would ripple across the meadows while swallows danced low above the grass. You might even hear ‘well played sir’, this being an English village cricket green rather than the Kop at Anfield. Ladies would float about in summer frocks and wide brimmed hats, children (if allowed) would be quietly playing with their screens oblivious to the tableau opening up before them as they pour their precious lives into Tik Tok, Instagram or some such. This being the quintessential summer scene in the shires, we would be spared the sight of the insanity of self imposed selfie pouty madness some people indulge in, to up their online profile.

But this is not England. This is not cricket. This is Bahrain. This is the hotel’s sun lounge at lunch time. But the warmth is English.

Five palm trees, festooned with tight spirals of fairy lights around their trunks, stand in a row in their solitary planters, overlooking the pool as if on guard. The diamond rippled pool shines and beckons. There are heaters dotted about the place, the type that pipes gas into a clear tube at night so that you get a pillar of flame to not only warm, but to provide that extra ambience. At dinner last night the waitress asked if I would like it lit. I explained that as I am English it was already plenty warm enough. At that, a smile of recognition creased her face as if to provide a bit of sympathy towards those that live in the cold, dark, wet north. On the way to the airport yesterday, the taxi driver says he sees rain about once or twice per year. 

I am ‘imprisoned’ in the hotel until the Covid test result comes through. I will have to endure these conditions for another 2 weeks, unless the rules change again. The result will be sent to me via the App that Bahrain insists I have to have downloaded and should be with me by today. Except it wasn’t. This was due to the finger trouble engaged in by the chap at the airport who inputted the wrong mobile phone number and date of birth. Apparently I was born in 1985 just before my son Jacob was born. Don’t ask about how I got the result in the end, except to say one needs to engage in lateral thinking and prayer. 

So, lunch is a shrimp caesar salad and glass of crisp chilled Sauvignon Blanc. The menu looks very cheap for a 5 star hotel until I realise that the exchange rate between the Bahraini Dinar and Pound is about 2:1 in the Dinar’s favour.

That explains the misinterpretation at check in. After having been picked up by chauffeur at the airport, well two of the chaps in crisp white uniform and peak caps, I was dropped off at reception. The charge for the airport pick up, I thought was reasonable at 11 dinars. Which, because I had computed that sum into Emirati Dirham and then into pounds, I believed was about £11. The distance was about 3 miles. 

I was asked to pay up front for the room and the sum asked for was 600 dinars. 

“Roger me backwards with a spiky pineapple, thats cheap!”

I inwardly thought. 

“That’s a good deal” is what I actually said and was met with a convoluted explanation about why it was, indeed, such a good deal. This involved the anniversary of the hotel, post covid issues and something about the sale of children found wandering dirty and alone in the local souk being rounded up sold to slave traders from across the border, thus subsidising the lifestyles of the rich westerners of which I am one. In the room, and having a niggly feeling about all of this, I checked the exchange rate. 

Ah, £1200 pounds. And that £4 bottle of Amstel was more like £8, and the short rib steak….!

These are London prices. Tiz a bleddy good job the company are picking up the tab.  Denzil Penberthy and ‘Boy’ Trevaskis (who was eighty if he was a day) wouldn’t stand for it. “Tiddin’t proper, tiddn’t fitty”. 

They’d both pale at the price of the ‘cakey tea’, served at it is without the clotted cream. Or the jam. There’s no scone to be honest either. As for cake, I think the Bahrainis have both had it, and eaten it. 

The clientele sat around the pool are few in number. One overweight, middle aged chap insists in parading around the edge of the pool in his crack showing swimming trunks which are a few inches too tight so that his belly flops over in front. The black hair on his chest is so long it waves over his nipples in the breeze like a horse tosses its mane. In his head he is Cristiano Ronaldo…all ripped abs and arrogance. In reality he is a fat Borat. Thank god he is not in a mankini. 

At a nearby table are three Russians. Two chaps and a woman. All about in their 30’s I’d guess. The chaps have the short side shaven modern haircuts beloved of premier league footballers and lads on the piss in Leeds. The woman is all sunglasses, shocking white teeth and tits. They are dressed just as anyone from the rich western world dresses at lunchtime in the sunshine, i.e. casually in shorts and T shirts. If I had an eye for designer clothes I could tell you what they wore, as I have not you just have to imagine trendy magazine model types. The sort you’d see in big colour posters in menswear shops in Oxford Street.  I assume they are Russian. I did not go and ask in case they got uppity and got their chum Putin to put in an order for another Novichok hit. The give-away was the Russian sounding language they used. In fairness they could have come from London or Prague. 

A curious thing was that every now and then their chatter was interspersed with English words and phrases. It seems English is better for profanity and swearing. “No Shit” was commonly used. However, I did not hear a ‘bum, bugger or bastard’. Perhaps the Russian word for ‘bum’ is a better sounding word, although somehow I doubt it. There is a certain simplistic beauty to words like ‘bum and bugger’ notwithstanding what they actually refer to. They just sound nice. One can go a long way with just those words in English. Said in the correct manner, they can accomplish a lot of linguistic work. But you probably don’t want to hear your surgeon say them during a particularly tricky bit of the operation you are undergoing under a local anaesthetic. They have a bigger cousin, of course, that is ubiquitous around the world. As Mr Billy Connolly reliably informs us, the F word does most of the heavy lifting in conveying meaning from Alice Springs to Aberdeen. If the Russians are using it, I don’t pick it up. Perhaps because they can’t be fucking buggered to bother with it.  

The background noise to our lunch…oh, the ‘music’. Well I say music. It is sound of some sorts. When the rave scene hit the warehouses in the late 80’s, followed by house and trance, what became known generically as dance music spread around the globe. There is a certain use of snare and beat and to those who know, a common dynamic structure ideally suited to being off one’s tits on vodka and ecstasy on the dance floor. Tragically the phenomenal success of the genre has now transmogrified into what the Russians next to me might refer to as ‘shit’. Indeed because that is what it is. At first you don’t notice, as it plays in the background as ‘muzak’. However, each ‘tune’ is very much like the last and of such poor quality that anything like melody and harmony have left the room leaving you with the banality of rhythm without any joy in it. The vocals are an homogenised gloop constructed by a computer; the production is done by pre programmed monkeys to a formula designed by bored tech nerds who are (badly) using music production software such as Ableton in their bedrooms before masturbating themselves into oblivion in their parent’s house. It is tragic. And relentless. It does not stop.

I am going to have to say something.

Bear in mind the clientele here is mostly over 50 and would not know a disco biscuit munching rave if it burst into their bedrooms in a dayglo bikini, waving its collective arms in the air while throwing glow sticks at your cat. 

No one is dancing.  

If I could, I’d throw the speakers into the pool, I don’t care how many Dinar they cost. 

Camborne is easy to get into, there are no roadblocks, especially if you come up from Praze. Redruth on the other hand requires picking your way carefully through the wrecks of burning cars while feral soot encrusted children roam the streets looking for the unwary, the lost and the unwittingly stupid to rob of their pennies. When you do get in, you wish you hadn’t, and when you want to get out you might find you can’t. There are dark and hairy scary things in Redruth. I should know, I’ve dated a few of them. As it happens, cross border traffic through the badlands of Tuckingmill and Pool from one town to the other is minimal. Camborne folk get as far as Tuckingmill and think “bugger that” and turn around, while Redruth folk get as far as Pool to see the market, then think “bugger that” and turn around. Both say to their kids “nothing good ever come out of Camborne/Redruth”.  Even EU membership did not facilitate free movement of goods and people between the two towns. The only mixing that did occur was the contents of Camborne scrotums and the drunkenly willing throats of Redruth maids on a Saturday night at the Twilight Zone. So, division runs rife even when crossing borders might be mutually beneficial.

I am driven to muse on such things as I try to get a visa to go to Bahrain. 

Stay with me….

During the lie infested, brain addled, ignorance infused ‘debate’ running up to the EU referendum, back in what seems like the last century, we all drowned in a morass of obfuscation, stupidity and the vacuity of slogans and words that mean everything and thus nothing. ‘Take back control’ and ‘Sovereignty’ being two of the most egregious examples of sloganeering peddled by Oxbridge elites at the very top of Government. We must remember that these are men, mostly men, who had the privilege of elite education from toddler to teenager. What good did their education do for us? I suspect the content of the education was superfluous. Rather it was the process, the networking, the acquisition of social and cultural capital to add to their mountains of loot their daddies already owned. ‘Like flocks to like’ resulting in nudges, winks, funny handshakes and clandestine phone calls to chums in the City and beyond. No doubt the bewigged judges,  besuited corporate men, the Party man, his wife and his budgie are all interrelated in a miasma of incest and ancestry that makes up what goes for the British Ruling Class. They all had second homes in France or Spain and have enough money not to worry if they will ever visit them again. 

In reality, being ‘In or Out’ was merely a game being played at the highest level, perhaps only serious to those whose accumulated secret wealth which was at risk of being scrutinised by Johnny Foreigner across the channel. They shouldn’t have worried. Jeff Bezos, the now retired CEO of Amazon increased his net wealth by $13 billion during the Covid pandemic, allowing him to fund his fanciful space adventures while billions lack access to safe drinking water. How does he do it? He will need no passport or a visa to get to Mars, which by the way did you know he owns? It’s true, I saw it on Fox News. 

For us mere mortals scuttling around in the dirt waiting for death or a pension which ever comes first, we briefly – in historical terms – enjoyed the freedom of travelling around Europe. We became blasé about how easy it all was. Yes, there were always a few glitches, as over officious border guards, when sniffing a weakness, would hold you up by closely examining your passport while they secretly wished to reach for the box of blue vinyl gloves (examinations, rectal, for the purposes of). You know the sort. Starched uniform, peaked cap pulled over the nose, gun, and a ‘don’t f*ck with me’ attitude learned from being repeatedly beaten about the head with chair leg by a drunk father and slapped with a flannel by a wet tuesday of a mother. 

Otherwise, we would sail grandly by the check points, should they exist, on our way to our favourite destinations, be they the vineyards of France, the yachts of the Greek Islands or the whores of Amsterdam. The Italians, Germans and Spanish could even visit Redruth unhindered should they so wish. If you ever heard “Fuck off Pedro” in the Oxford Bar you could be certain that some hapless Spanish tourist had wandered in and asked for a Rioja and Gambas. The point is, Marco, Hans or Jacques could easily have done the same as Pedro…why did we never see them in Camborne ‘spoons’ though? It was not the passports and visa requirements that stopped them. What did?

Brits abroad: No visa, an EHIC and sun cream. You did not even have to learn a language if you did not want to. You can always shout. They’ll understand. If we wanted to work or stay for quite some time, well….we could. The only barriers were the locals’ attitudes to incomers, be they Brits in the Dordogne or Londoners in Cornwall. This attitude ranges from an eyebrow raising mild annoyance, through to voting UKIP and on all the way up to forming a Nationalist party and burning effigies of dusky hued people on crosses on the top of Carn Brea. 

As EU club members, we did not have to spend hours trying to log on to the visa application websites, pay loads of money and then wait as the system crashes forcing you to start all over again as the clock ticks down on the departure time of your flight or ferry. We were not quizzed about which hotel we were staying at nor if we had a return ticket home. Jars of Vaseline had their lids kept on. While abroad. we did not have to pass language or cultural tests, nor did we have to be careful when showing a bit of tit on the beach – applicable only to those who have them – or accidentally dropping the C bomb in front of a religious maniac who might deport you to hell. 

Well, as it happens, travel now gets a bit sticky unless you stay between Helston and Saltash, although it can get a bit risqué south of Culdrose. Now that we no longer enjoy freedom of movement to work and travel, we have the bureaucracies to contend with. 

Take Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. 

“They were never in the EU” the more knowledgeable of you cry. No. But they are foreign just as the EU is becoming foreign (again). 

Since we Brits foolishly invaded Suez back in the 1950’s, the relationship between us and the Arab nations is somewhat mutually suspicious, if oil based and arms selling lucrative. Let’s be honest, the British me included, know all they do about Arab culture from watching Lawrence of Arabia or some dodgy 1950s black and white films featuring a  swarthy gentleman, armed only with a scimitar and a dark black moustache the size of a grizzly bear’s hairy arse. There would be an oasis, a date palm and a frightened looking goat. Oh, and camels smoking themselves high on hookah pipes while belly dancers flaunt their navels in the faces of grape eating tribesmen. That’s it. That’s what we know. Go on, name the current rulers of the UAE. You know Trump, Putin and Xi. But who runs Dubai? Anyhoo….what a lot of this means is that an Englishman in this region is a foreigner. 

A proper foreigner. Not your daffodil or grape picking foreigner over on a gap year. Not a pasty faced foreigner on a foreign beach for two weeks turning his corpulence lobster red

The point was rammed home as I stood up in the plane to disembark and suddenly realised I was the only white face around. I noticed kids looking at me and asking “Daddy, what is that, what is that pale faced poltroon doing here?” 

“Don’t point son, it’s only the progeny of an infidel whore’s past imperial masters who have fallen on hard times”. 

Now, you might think the French thought we were foreign, and they would be right. It goes both ways of course. However, its the degree of foreign that’s different here in the Middle East. 

I’m not talking about eating habits…or clothes…or even entertainment. I sat in an airport ‘restaurant’, which incidentally is exactly the same as thousands in airports across the world; three huge flat screen TVs are showing basketball from the US, football from the premier league and the Italian league Seria A. I’m offered chicken Caesar salad, or burgers, with chips if I want…on tap is Heineken, Murphy’s and Tiger. There are very, very few men dressed as ‘Arabs’ and women in Burqas are no more common than you see at Heathrow. Global brands dominate food, shopping, mobile phones, TV and music. The ‘radio’ in this restaurant is playing a DJ less soundtrack that would be familiar to listeners of Radio 1 and Radio 2 from the 1970’s and 1990’s. In fact my own culture is more foreign to me than it is to the global audience. That’s because I’m an old mardy git who thinks any culture worthy of being so called, ended in about 1998 at the latest. 

Being foreign means having to jump through hoops just to get across a border. Wrap me in batter and call me a kipper but the border is not even a line in the sand even though this is one of places in world where it could easily be. The desert winds outside the cities and the infernal heat are their own barriers to travel. No need for walls between you or Mexico and there ain’t no channel to cross. What it lacks in physical barriers it makes up in paperwork and money. 

A taxi driver told me yesterday, in an episode of profundity usually lacking in your common cabbie from Camden (thank you), is that the only religion that is truly global is the religion of money. If that is the case, I am engaging with the high priests of this church on a daily basis, particularly the authorities. I have to buy a visa to get into Bahrain after having pay for another covid test. Fair enough I suppose, but it rams home how much easier it used to be nipping over to Roscoff in the old days when we still had an Empire.  I try 6 times to apply for a visa on the Bahrain eVisa site only to be bounced off with a system error. I am going to have to take my chances when I arrive. I hope there is not a box of blue vinyl gloves handy – other colours are available upon request if you prefer a pink digit to a blue one examining your tonsils from the wrong end. 

Money is no respecter of borders, it buys access and erases the difficulties. Except in Redruth. There is not enough money in the vaults of King Creosus that could get a Camborne boy to go there, apart from a Saturday night of course when the ‘swelling’ gets too much.  

Oh, Bahrain is quite nice.

Right. So I have been travelling and I’m in a different time zone. I get it, I really do. But I’m only 4 hours ahead. So why was I still awake at 0100 this morning? I can’t blame the booze. It must be the overwhelming sense of disconnection from all things familiar. There is probably a psychology doctorate in some posh university working away explaining the psycho-social ambivalence I’m experiencing. You see, it looks like I’m on holiday…but without those I love. I’ve also a stack of preparation to do. I don’t expect sympathy as I bask in 26 degrees under a blue sky in a 5 star hotel, oh no. No sympathy for this devil. 

In the film ‘Pulp Fiction’ one of the lead characters is fresh home in Los Angeles from being away in Amsterdam. He says to his partner as they drive to their next ‘job’. 

“they got the same shit over there as they do over here, but it’s the little differences…” 

He is right. There is so much that is the same in its seeming difference.

Dubai, after all is a city. And a very, very modern one at that. It is New York, London and Las Vegas in one but without the dirt and the subdermal grime only history provides. It is cleaner, bigger, shinier and brighter than any other city I’ve been to. It is certainly richer. The taxi driver dropped me off at the hotel and parked right next to a Ferrari. Later on my way ‘Downtown’, another Ferrari passed us….followed by Bentleys. The place is dripping with gold. 

Not all of it legal, not all of it real, and a good part is for ‘fools’.

As with Las Vegas, we are actually in a desert. I suspect that about 100 years ago the spot where I stand to gawp at the immense sparkling tower of the Burj Khalifa, and wonder at the half hourly dancing fountain show, was possibly a shrivelled bush or perhaps a lizard’s hidey hole or a dead camel fermenting in the afternoon heat. Its a blooming wonder what finding oil under your dusty sandalled toes can can do. 

The similarity to any modern city is striking. I pass recognisable names on the shops…Burger King, Wagamama’s and Pizza Hut. Cafes and restaurants abound as you would expect and they all have their names both in English and in smaller Arabic lettering. Everyone speaks English if, at times, a few struggle with pronunciation. Hey, so do the Cornish. I can imagine Denzil Penberthy, finding himself in the glittering multi story palace that is the Dubai Shopping Mall, confronted with marble and diamonds, asking the nearest local, ‘’ere wosson, wos a ‘Balenciager or that bleddy Versace’ mean? T’int proper’. The locals I fear would struggle with a Cornishman bashing their ears with what otherwise would have been a familiar language to them. 

We of course have Malls in the UK, and no doubt you can find them in Las Vegas, Milan or Sydney. They are modern cathedrals of course to the new (old) religion of money. The Dubai Mall takes your breath away on any measure. I’m not a fan of these places, but you have got to be impressed with the sheer scale and affluence of it all. Anyone coming from Redruth would need to be acclimatised first before being let in, otherwise the shock might do them some long standing psychological damage. I suggest that upon arrival at the airport that they are whisked to a modest hotel where they first look at pictures in a magazine over a nice cup of tea. They could have their teeth fixed and their spines straightened while they wait. Then, when they have had a hour or two with a few glossy magazines, they could be sent to bed to begin processing the wonder they have seen in picture form before being let anywhere near a Dior. 

Denzil would say “tiz all bleddy fine, but no bleddy pasty shops?’ And he would be right. Cuisine from across the globe is thrust before you – seafood, steak, pizza, Thai…but not a single Rowe’s, Philps or a Warren’s in sight. “Christ, ‘ell up!”

I don’t see any poor people, perhaps they have been swept up in the morning along with any dirt that might have settled and sent off to a tent somewhere out of sight, I’ve no idea.  Poverty, like God, might exist but is never seen. 

I come to at about 0830 this morning. I wouldn’t call it awakening as fresh as the proverbial perfumed daisy. But consciousness slowly returns. The coffee and orange juice at breakfast helps.  After logging on to the work’s email I see a message.

Travel into Saudi Arabia from a new list of countries is now banned. Dubai, overnight, makes the list. My contact in the company phones to say they are moving me to Bahrain which still has access, but for how long who knows. Dubai is a non starter, so they are gambling that Bahrain will still be open in 10 days to allow access to Jeddah. One proviso..I have to get another Covid test, but no worries “there is a drive through test centre at the Mediclinic City Hospital” nearby. I have to merely get a taxi, drive through and hey presto!  I am sent a google maps link. Easy. Just have to show the map to the taxi driver and it will be all over before the fat camel farts. 

I believe I read somewhere, or someone told me, that men in certain countries do not like to lose face. Just as in England blokes will not ask for directions even when they know they are lost, and are loathe to “read the f*cking instructions!” when confronted with technology and as shouted by millions of long suffering wives. I am a simple soul and I have a tendency to believe people when they say yes to certain questions, such as ‘do you want cream with that?’, ‘is this your pen?’ or ‘do you know the way to San Jose?’. If you cannot stand cream, have never owned a biro or have never met Jose let alone know where he is, then I suggest you say so, unequivocally, and ask for help or find out. Don’t spin me some bullshit that you know what the f*ck I am asking you to do, don’t pretend with ‘certainly sir, follow me’ even after I have shown you the map and relayed my instructions in a cool orderly fashion. Don’t speed off driving somewhere you think you know where you are going but patently don’t or can’t be arsed to find out.

I need the covid test drive through. I don’t need a tour. It is only 10 minutes way…I know this because the map tells me so. 

The driver is a cheery soul, i’ll give him that. Ever eager to please and ever so polite. He is still a twat. He drops me off at the entrance to the clinic after asking security for the test centre. The security chap is as helpful as they can be, but obviously left his brain cell at home that morning because he waves me to the door and points to a chap who can ‘help’. Meanwhile the taxi driver, sensing he has got things a bit iffy, buggers off faster than you can say ‘abracafuckingdabra’. You see, he had no idea where the drive through was and thought to himself that any old clinic would do. I suggest that the absence of a line of cars, a sure sign of a ‘drive through’ if you ask me, was not an issue in his decision making. Once inside the chap at the desk confirms that this was not indeed a drive through and that it was not here.

At this place.

Where I was standing.

And that I needed an appointment (I didn’t) contrary to earlier instructions from my company contact. “Just scan the Q code and you will find the drive through”. Hurrah. “But you will need a taxi to take you there, it is only a kilometre away.’ 

I scanned, and google maps helpfully located it. The same google map I had shown the previous. What can go wrong? I got in another taxi, showed him the map, told him the details and we are off. He nodded vehemently that he understood both my needs and direction and what the map was saying. 

After about 5 minutes as we were speeding down a motorway in the opposite direction to the Q scanned google map, I sensed something was up.

“Er, are we going the right way?” Bear in mind the roads in Dubai resemble a plate of spaghetti thrown on the floor and spread around with a mop. “Oh yes, sir, please sir”.

I don’t mind being called sir as it befits my acquired station in life, but even I can spot a twat covering up his incompetence with politeness. “There is no drive through there, sir, you must go to the other place, sir, where it will be quick, sir’.  Yeah the other place that is 8 kilometres and an extra hundred dinar into the bargain. “Don’t worry sir, all will be well” I have no choice, I fly tomorrow and I need the test.

Well, of course this proves as fruitful an errand as asking a beer soaked tattoo’ed scouse docker for tips on knitting a pair of pink fluffy baby booties. Suffice to say I need to be taken back to the hotel to regroup, without a test. I am a little bit hotter, slightly more stressed and lighter of pocket. All through this fiasco I am informed by every man I have encountered that they know what is being asked and that they can deliver. No question. 

So, in order not to be fooled again, I registered online with the clinic whose website does indeed say there is a drive through about a kilometre from its main entrance. I ask the hotel concierge at the main door of the hotel, in slow and clearly explained terms, exactly what I needed and where I need to go. I again had a map. The taxi driver (another one) nodded after a long conversation with the concierge and we were off (again). This time success. Another hour, another 100 dinari.

What a waste of a whole morning. At least I saw more of Dubai. It is a city. A big one. It has cars and traffic like at home. It has underpasses and flyovers, traffic lights, horns blaring, and roundabouts. It has deliveroo nutters on mopeds weaving through the traffic, noticeable by the big pale blue box that sits precariously on the mopeds’ tiny rear rack. These boxes are so big I bet you can live in one. I think I know where the poor people are!

Turns out I don’t need a covid test to leave Dubai. I need one when I arrive in Bahrain. I log on, pay up and hope. I also just hope the pilot knows where he is going and does not try to save face if an engine catches fire. I expect more than a nod of the head and a ‘sir’ during an aviation emergency.  

Hangovers can feel like that. You reach for the pills and only succeed in grabbing some air. You half heartedly try to search for pain relief but your body says ‘no’. Everything slows down. 

Everything. 

Inside, every single bodily process can be felt wading in treacle, slow to react and when it does it react, it is to the wrong stimulus. Your head says ‘get up’, everything else says ‘stay down, just stay down’. The only organ in charge is your bowel which will not be mocked. It knows it is the boss for a few hours and no matter what your limbs and stomach are saying, it will have its way. You would be wise to have a clear path between you and the bathroom. And do not think that once will be enough. It will not. This is what air travel can do.

In my case this morning, alcohol is not the culprit. Tiredness due to a very long day, and a changing time zone, reduces my brain to fuzz and my limbs to lead. I got to bed, local time about 0530. Sleep just doesn’t overcome me, it envelops me in the totality of nothingness. It takes me to where I have already existed….in the 13 billion years of oblivion since the Big Bang. They could crash several squadrons of jumbo jets into my hotel tower; and earthquakes, cyclones and a major war would not rouse me. My whole body is shutting down just as a grizzly bear prepares to hibernate for winter. I welcome the comforting arms of the long dark sleep. And yet.

It is 0930 and the hotel room phone rings. Well, it rather chainsaws its way into my brain.

I wake up wondering what circle of hell I have just become conscious of. 

Reception informs me that a taxi driver has just arrived. What!? Has a meeting been arranged at this hour without my knowledge? I’ve been asleep for 4 hours, I am unshaven, and there ain’t no fuel in this boy’s tank. I’m running on fumes. I look and feel like a poorly tied bag of potatoes. Panic sets in…’you mean I have to spend a day, having had no  breakfast, meeting people I have never met, in places I have never heard of to discuss things of which I have no knowledge?’ This is what I thought, not say. I can’t really speak as my tongue refuses to stop clinging to the roof of my mouth in its dryness. 

“Give me 10 minutes” I croak, like a gin sodden Gollum, down the phone. 

Enough time to shower and throw on some clothes? I should have said “give me a day”. After all, I had no record of the meeting, so why should I dance to their tune. But, I’m a guest in the country, meeting the firm for the first time. First impressions count…right? God knows what they’ll think when presented with a complete and utter shambles of a man, a pale shadow of humanity, and certainly not representative of the post colonial imperial masters of the past who were besuited with linen, entitlement and arrogance that comes from owning the whole world bar the United States. 

Throwing some water in my general direction, and grabbing whatever shirt and trousers are available, since actually trying to find where I have put stuff in the room is as easy a task as solving algebra, I ooze painfully downstairs to reception. The taxi driver is waiting patiently, no hint of annoyance at having to wait. He hands me a laptop and turns to go. It is clear he is not taking me anywhere. He is just the delivery driver. 

I then realise that there is no meeting. He is simply delivering. I could kiss his head but this being a rather formal and polite country in every day interaction, that might have been a bit ‘forward’, certainly not ‘British’. I don’t quite skip back to the lifts, but my demeanour is somewhat lighter. 

And so, at that moment, the white fluffy heavenly clouds part, and a choir of beautiful angels sing my salvation. I am free to go back to bed to continue dying. 

When I log on, using the aforementioned technical kit, I get an email from my contact who makes it clear that today, nothing is expected of me due to the travel. If I was religious, and I’m not, I would sacrifice my virginity to whatever gods are in charge of ‘reprieve’. This is what death row inmates must feel when the last minute pardon from the President arrives just as the leather straps on the chair are being tightened. 

A thought crosses my mind. ‘Should this be a billable day?’ Maybe not. That would be taking the piss of epic proportions. Instead I’ll let nature takes its course and explore the hotel in the afternoon. If wake up.

 

The Sheraton Grand is a 54 story edifice of modern steel and glass. It soars into the stratosphere pointing the way to the pole star in the heavens. On the top floor is a swimming pool and small bar…just as if you were on a Mediterranean island resort. The pool is set among white and grey marble, allowing the sun to bounce its light within. The glass walls on one side allow a view a cross the city to downtown Dubai and the towering spire of the Burj Khalifa. It sparkles in the daytime light like a diamond encrusted upside down Cornetto. There are not many guests allowed in, and the limit is 20 at any one time. The late afternoon heat is about 25 degrees and a hardly perceptible breeze ripples the surface of the pool just enough to indicate it is actually water rather than pale blue glass. The underwater blue lights are iridescent, matching the total blue sky above. The Queen of Sheba would have been impressed and for Cleopatra only the ass’ milk is missing.  

There are a few extremely mini bikinis on show….and I mean ‘on show’. Were bikinis this skimpy on a 1970s Cornish beach? I don’t remember it being so. These appear to be merely ‘pencilled in’ as if they had taken a small brush and just covered the important parts. Now there is a business. Take enough material to cover two nipples (about a postage stamp size each) and charge £50 for less than 50p worth of silk. The ‘bottom’ bit is extra.  Two bikinis strut their booties while taking the classic posed selfie to send to themselves, to the remind themselves just how beautiful they think they are. The puffed out pouty lips are obligatory.

The bar sells G and T. Of course it does. I order a pre prandial libation, Hendricks being on offer. Now, as we all know, ordering a G and T in the U.K. is a fools errand unless you enjoy sipping water with a hint, a merest hintette, of gin. The offer board sets out singles and doubles prices…so suitably drawn in, of course I go for the double. 

Doubles in Dubai, in this bar in any case, are not what they are back home. I know this because after a few sips I can feel it. Perhaps it’s still the jet lag…but I know the feeling of an early evening aperitif that leads you to the edge, if not quite over it. Ok I’ve not eaten today so perhaps that’s the reason for the sudden mild dizziness. I’ll not bill the client for this one.

And so to bed, hoping oblivion this time is a happy place rather than the deadened senses of doom it was last night. 

From Home to Heathrow. 

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” 

Well, sometimes you do know what you have got, but the leaving of it enhances the feeling that it is, indeed, very very precious. 

As a young man, leaving Cornwall was an exciting adventure. Mostly by train, I used to head ‘up country’ and beyond, with a light step and a thumping heart. Standing on the ‘up’ platform at Camborne, one could aways see the Diesel engine approaching from Penzance, grunting and smoking as it pulled up the slope from Penponds. Back in the 70’s British Rail’s finest blue and grey coaches rattled limpingly towards you. Once on board, one of the best views was out of the window of the railway carriage just as the train left Redruth. The train curved around the bend in the tracks to present a view of Carn Brea rising above the houses and slowly retreating into the distance. The granite capped Carn, with its castle at one end and the tower of the Basset monument at the other, was a touchstone, a marker of home both in its going and its appearance upon return. Whenever that might be. 

Today was different. No Carn in view as it was still two hours before sunrise. No railway station either as due to a little issue with a virus, railway travel is very much curtailed. So, instead the car was loaded and in the dark we were off. Grant, me and some luggage. A four and half hour journey to Heathrow along an eerily quiet M5 and M4. It was also different because this time, I did not really choose to go, or to seek out the opportunity. It sought me. It came as a seductive invader promising heaps of gold in Arabian nights if only I’d rub the lamp. The genie had escaped and granted wishes beyond the dreams of avarice. It is often said that everyone has his price, and so it is. All the better if that price involves first class travel and accommodation. 

I guess all of us, unless we are independently wealthy, sell our souls to the highest bidder in exchange for a modicum of financial security. Most of us have little choice in the matter. When the temptress bids you to eat gold, when the lure of the dollar dims your senses, when the oil well spouts its bounty, many of us will succumb. There is little morality in earning many a crust. Those who have only their ‘labour to sell’ must maximise the opportunity in a faustian pact dressed in a thawb, the long white coats of Saudi Arabia.

That is why I found myself on a Qatar Airways fight to Dubai via Doha before eventually, in two weeks time, landing in Jeddah on the Red Sea coast. Apparently the Royal House of Saud require a little help in developing their health service. And it seems I am the very chap to help out, along with many others of course.

Given the current pandemic context it is a wonder I’m on the flight at all. 

Heathrow terminal 5 in a gloomy January morning, when the sun is a misty shadow of itself hiding behind a damp layer of low cloud, is a grey, metal box. About as welcoming as a diagnosis of syphilis but not as much fun. Grant had done the driving up from Cornwall. While in the car, this was a journey like many others but with less traffic and less stupidity exhibited behind the wheel of fellow drivers. However, getting out of the car and unloading the luggage was another dimension.

Suddenly the enormity of that I was doing hit me like an electric shock. What the actual fuck was I doing here? I had spent the last two nights safely tucked up with Ann. Absolute heaven. And a pasty too. I even had a pint of beer in front of the reassuring TV madness of Midsomer Murders (we know how to live). And now I’m about to do my own stint as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. 

I don’t think watching 15 episodes of Rick Stein touring Cornwall over the past two weeks helped to prepare me for the wrench I now feel. And my God it is a wrench. It tears into your gut and threatens to engulf the senses. 

Life in Cornwall can be a bit predictable, living in predictable places with predictable routines and of course very predictable weather. But its wonderful for all that. It is a truism of course that its the people that matter, not the fancy sights and sounds of far flung places. “You can have gold in your pants and gold in your socks, but if you ain’t got folks, gold is just rocks’ “ goes the old negro spiritual that I just made up.

The first class lounge was ok. Comfortable. Clean. Quiet. Better than enduring the loud hen party totally pissed on Prosecco on its way to Magaluf, or the drunk Stags intent on upsetting anyone within earshot on their way to catching a dose of the clap in a back street bar in Ibiza. One avoids the family of screaming kids and vomiting baby whose dysentery arrived early as it explodes in a vile stream of steaming faeces into a nappy designed to hold only a quarter of what it is now expected to absorb. Perhaps I’m exaggerating. 

No none of that.

However, I was bitterly disappointed by the low standard of sartorial elegance. Given the price of the tickets these folk must have paid, one would expect at least a bit of, well, ‘effort’. Instead we are treated to the standard uniform of the Saturday night out in Manchester but without the sparkles and the tits. Trainers, T shirt and Jeans. Is there no imagination left in the world? This is an international lounge, so one would have expected to see feathers, glitz, pizzaz from all over the globe. Instead, Sandra from Salford has taken all of a minute to choose an outfit so uninspiring it resembles a wet Sunday in Scunthorpe. Then into view comes a muffin top, white plastic trainers and a ‘gold’ handbag so cheap you could not give it way, I thought ‘Mate, No. Have some respect for yourself, this is not what being ‘metrosexual’ means’. 

Buy a suit. 

If this is the first world, mired in its affluence, then I can’t wait to be back in Camborne. Really.

Boarding time soon arrived, obligatory glass of fizz as one is shown to one’s ‘booth’. Yes. A booth, not a seat. Now this is flying. The food was delicious given we are 5 miles up. A mezze selection of tabbouleh, mamatha and hummous…olive oil dip and flatbreads. Followed by lamb prepared according to islamic principles it helpfully informs me on the menu. I suppose that means, indeed of being stunned with a bolt to the head just before one’s innards are ripped and separated from one’s consciousness in a good Christian time honoured and blood soaked fashion, that one’s throat is cut and bled to death while invoking Allah’s will?  Either way it was delicious. After a 6 and half hour journey we touch down in Doha where I will make my connecting flight to Dubai, inshallah.

At about 0340 local time, my body tells me it is about twenty to one in the morning back in the UK. I disembark and attempt to find the hotel. Hot, tired, thirsty I am accosted by a taxi driver and whisked away to the Sheraton. My mind is telling me that this bloke is dodgy….well, I know this because a tripadvisor guide stated that one should only take the official taxis just outside the airport. First of all he said he only accepts cash not a card. I’m in no mood or have the energy to argue. Upon arrival at the hotel lobby he charges me 200 dirham – I have no idea what this amount means. He cannot give me a receipt because he says something in broken English that I just don’t have the energy to interpret. I suppose all would be ok if I did not enquire rat check in on reception what the usual fare to the airport is. Well, that would be 50 dirham. The receptionist apologises profusely on the taxi driver’s behalf, who by this time was no doubt laughing all the way to nearest whore house.  This is what world travel is all about. Its not just sightseeing and eating in fancy and exotic restaurants or sampling the dysenteric street food. Its about getting lost, being at the mercy of some local  – begin or others – and being ripped off for losing like a ferkin tourist. Well the next time yer man from the local pasty shop charges an emmet an extra 50p for his traditional steak, he is only doing what locals do to the stupid, tired and disorientated. 

A sadder and a wiser man, I went to bed. Knackered. 

Richard Drax – Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax – the MP for South Dorset since 2010, seen here enjoying an ice cream with another ‘Greedy Bastard’ Jacob Rees Mogg.

You may think I am being gratuitously offensive using the term ‘Greedy Bastards’ so let Graham Scambler explain in his opening piece on Jacob Rees Mogg.

“I’d best open this likely ‘series’ with a word about the technical term ‘greedy bastards’. These comprise that subset of exceptionally wealthy accumulators of capital intent on further accumulation via donating, sponsoring, lobbying and otherwise cajoling favourable policymaking by the state’s power elite. The adjective ‘greed’ captures their all-consuming focus on personal wealth and influence through capital accumulation, and the term ‘bastards’ reflects a willingness to privilege this project over any kind of compassionate concern for others. These greedy bastards are comfortable with class-exploitation and state-oppression; they can live with the austerity-induced misery and suicides of those deemed and dismissed as lesser mortals.”

It matters not if they love their mum or support the local village church fete. This is not about a personality characteristic. It is about surfing social structures they are completely unwilling to change. Moreover they act in way to shore it up.

Right, now that is out of the way let’s get on with it.

On 13th December several newspapers reported that he was asked to make reparations to the people of Jamaica and Barbados for the damages done by slavery on the Drax family plantations between 1640 and 1836. He inherited Drax Hall in St George Barbados in 2017. The Daily Mail, as Mail Online, also ran the story with a picture of the plantation showing an old corrugated iron roof storage shed rather than the grand house that is Drax Hall. The picture, I suggest, was deliberately used to play down the fabulous wealth Drax actually inherited from his family’s long standing activities. Anyone seeing the sheds might think what the fuss on reparations is all about, and surely first impressions looking at the picture suggests the wealth gained over the years must have dissipated by now. It firmly establishes in the minds of Mail readers that this is history and therefore cannot be connected to the present. I would suggest this is a common tactic used to distant and exonerate all current wealthy beneficiaries of British colonialism. It is a very necessary tactic otherwise you stain the reputation not only of Mercantile Capitalists and their current wealthy beneficiaries, but also of Aristocracy and Monarchy. 

There is a picture, however, of Charborough House, Drax’s UK home,  further down the Mail Online piece. This picture is distanced from the first in the article, and I would think deliberately so to indicate the distances between the colonial slave owning past in the Caribbean and the post colonial aristocratic present in the United Kingdom. The Mail also chose to picture the emancipatory festival of 1834 in Barbados. It depicts smiling and dancing well dressed ex-slaves while a white man, who might be a plantation owner, smiles paternalistically upon the scene. The choice of this scene rather than the actual horrors of slavery is again telling. The message the Mail is subliminally getting across is this: “Yes slavery was horrible, but we ended it, the slaves danced, its history…so that’s that”.

The Mail quotes Drax who defends his position by saying:

“I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable. But no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.” Nothing to see here, move on. 

Note the use of the words ‘very distant ancestor’ (singular) rather than ‘my family’, again I suggest is used to morally distance himself. This is the use of language to create what Davies and Harré call a ‘subject position’ of ‘innocent’ (“not me guv”). I also wonder, what lesson has been learned apart from the obvious that slavery is an inhumane abomination unless you believe in inequality, the superiority of an ethnic group or the prioritisation of wealth/progress. 

His response and the Mail’s piece illustrate the stock response one expects from those whose ‘class habitus’ is one of defence of the status quo and capital accumulation through historical colonialism, dispossession and genocide. A class habitus (Bourdieu) is a discrete mind set which predisposes us to think and act in predictable ways. Drax’s class habitus not only pushes him to the ‘not responsible defence’ (no one said he is) but also involves his negative attitudes towards Black Lives Matter. Instead of focusing on the substance of the points made by BLM he decided to attack two protesters whom he called rioters:

“The desecration of the Cenotaph by rioters two weeks ago, on the actual D-Day anniversary, was beyond ironic.” He is vociferous on immigration, too. Voting to increase curbs in 2013, he said: “I believe, as do many of my constituents, that this country is full.”

Drax is a fully paid up member of the ‘Greedy Bastard’ club. Graham Scambler’s “Greedy Bastards Hypothesis’ is a call to sociologists and others to examine in detail that fraction of the 0.01%  – Capital Monopolists and their apologists and allies in the political power elites. Dax is both a Capital Monopolist and as a Member of Parliament firmly part of the political power elite working to further his own and his class interest. 

The GBH contends that health inequalities for example are the unintended consequences of the strategic actions of the GB’s. Scambler contends that there is a class-command dynamic of structural relations that individuals such as Drax use to further their own and their family interests. Drax is both Greedy – because he privileges capital and wealth accumulation over just about everything else, hence instant dismissal of the benefits he accrues from historical slavery – and a Bastard because he displays a ‘callous indifference to those struggling to cope’. 

To substantiate those claims it is necessary to examine his family background, education, career and wealth and perhaps voting record.

From his own website we get this portrait of the man: An ex soldier, ‘serving’ across the world. Then studying land management at the Royal Agricultural College and then a 17 year career in journalism. All very Tory, all very petit bourgeois middle class. It then says he ‘took over the family business in 2006’ and then mentions his charitable/voluntary work as an Honorary Watchkeeper at Portland’s Coastwatch station which is run by volunteers. His altruistic credentials further served by stating “Keen to educate children about the countryside, Richard continues to invite schoolchildren to his farm every year”. 

That’s nice of him. A bit of ‘noblesse oblige’ – a helping hand to the lower orders. 

“He will continue to serve, without fear or favour.” Unless of course you are a skiver not a striver or a riotous supporter of BLM. 

To be fair, no one is going to do anything other than paint a favourable picture on one’s own website. In advertising terms this is called a ‘puff piece’ and he is no different in this from every social media wannabe influencer and the rest of us on our own social media sites. And yet I think it is deeply misleading, as it plays into the idea of being merely middle class, just like the voters he wants to support him rather than the wealthy greedy bastard he actually is.

Drax was born in 1958. The family name Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax is the quadruple-barrelled surname of the descendants of Admiral The Honourable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1880–1967), who was the younger son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany by his wife Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor, née Burton, later Ernle-Erle-Drax (1855–1916). The surname of Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was assumed in lieu of Plunkett, his name from birth, by royal licence on 4 October 1916. Ernle is pronounced earnly. He was privately educated at Harrow and later graduated from Sandhurst. 

At this point, I suggest the adoption of the simplified name to merely Drax has a role in disguising his heritage in order perhaps to seem more ‘ordinary middle class.’ Whether this was the intention, who knows but it serves that purpose in any case. 

According to wikipedia: He lives in the ancestral seat, Charlborough House in Dorset and has the lordship of the manor of Longburton. He just happens to be the largest landowner in the county owning approximately 13,870 acres. In addition he owns two other properties, the 2,200 acre Ellerton Abbey in Swaledale and the 520 acre Copperthwaite grouse moor.  According to the Guardian, he has opaque estate finances, with at least 6 trusts and other disconnected financial entities. He owns 125 Dorset properties personally or through family trusts and could be worth as much as £150 million. He also owns a £4.5 million holiday villa at Sandbanks which is rented out at £6,734 per week. For those who do not know of Sandbanks, it is a particularly expensive piece of real estate on the Dorset coast.

He is the eldest son of Henry Walter Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1928–2017)JP DL and The Hon. Pamela Weeks (1931–2019) and a grandson of Admiral The Hon. Sir Reginald Drax, younger son of the 17th Lord Dunsany thereby being in remainder to the ancient Barony of Dunsany (cr. 1462): the second oldest title in the Peerage of Ireland. His great-uncle was the writer and playwright the 18th Lord Dunsany, and his maternal grandfather was General the Lord Weeks. His first wife (divorced 1997) was Zara Legge-Bourke, younger sister of the royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, relations of the Earl of Dartmouth. Drax married his second wife; Eliza, daughter of Commander James Dugdale RN (related to David Cameron). Drax since married Norwegian-born Elsebet Bødtker and has four children in total. At least six of his ancestors, including John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle-Drax and the 17th Lord Dunsany, were Members of Parliament for Dorset and Gloucestershire between the 1680s and 1880s. A cousin is the 19th and present Lord Dunsany

Not so middle class after all. 

During the 2010 United Kingdom general election campaign, the Daily Mirror reported that Drax’s family had earned their fortune through slavery. Drax’s response questioned his responsibility for “something that happened 300 or 400 years ago”, stating “it’s not what I stand for”, and cited the desperation of his opponents- “all they can do is pick at bits of my family history”. In 2013, the BBC noted that his ancestor John Erle-Drax, who had an estate in Barbados, was recorded in a database created by University College London as having received £4,293 12s 6d in compensation for 189 slaves when slavery was abolished . No wonder the chap in the picture watching the dancing ex slaves was smiling! 

Historian David Olusoga has stated that: “From the very early stages of the family’s involvement in slavery and the sugar trade, the Drax dynasty were able to generate extraordinary wealth through the cultivation of sugar grown by enslaved Africans.” Today’s plantation workers earn about £24 a day, about half the average wage in Barbados. 

Drax and his ilk are clearly surfing the waves of past and current privilege. 

As for his voting record,

On social issues he has voted against equal gay rights and almost always voted against laws to promote equality and human rights. 

On Welfare and benefits Consistently voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the “bedroom tax”). Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices. Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability. Almost always voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent on such support. Consistently voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits. Generally voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed. 

On tax and Employment: Generally voted for increasing the rate of VAT which of course makes zero difference to him. Generally voted for higher taxes on alcohol which could be seen as being public health minded but again this makes no difference to the wealthy who can afford fine wines, craft ales and rare malt whiskies at any price. Almost always voted against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000. Generally voted against a banker’s bonus tax, voted a mixture of for and against higher taxes on banks. Consistently voted against an annual tax on the value of expensive homes, almost always voted for reducing capital gains tax. Almost always voted for more restrictive regulation of trade union activity.

On housing: consistently voting for phasing out secure tenancies for life while of course enjoying a secure tenancy for himself while also being a landlord. Consistently voted for charging market rents to high earners renting a council home. 

His voting record on other issues display all of the traits of a socially conservative, neoliberal with a bent towards centralising power at Westminster. Drax is wholly part of the modern neoliberal conservative party who massively benefits from colonialism and current property portfolios which of course he has done very little to ‘earn’ in any sense someone from the working class would understand the word. His enormous wealth provides a buffer against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune while doing little to alter the social and economic structures of those at the bottom.

 

I found this story back in 2017. Still makes me chuckle:

Bugger.

And there was I thinking that the military was a bastion of middle class, middle England values, whose members would no more indulge in the seven deadly sins than Marks and Spencer would sell strap-ons* and hugely girthed dildos next to the children’s toys. The Army, Navy and Air Force were renowned for taking on wayward individuals whose career paths would otherwise have included a little light pilfering of the church collection box, assault as a matter of beer fuelled ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ ritual or becoming a Health and Safety Executive statistic in the shipyards and factories. The Armed Forces would then turn them into highly trained and disciplined targets for every dispossessed colonial with a bullet, bomb and bitterness. Officers, of course, being drawn from the ‘respectable’ middle classes, already know the score and how to keep their little peccadillos from being dragged out of the shadows, blinking into the harsh light of justice. Officers are the moral backbone of the military, whose first principle is of course ‘don’t get caught’.

Our fabled military is a supposed home to a solid conservatism, one which would no more recognise impropriety in the ranks than Whitehall remembers Imperialism.

And yet…turns out someone, and eight of his shipmates on a nuclear submarine, likes a toot of Colombia’s finest marching powder, while two of his superior officers breached the ‘no touch rule’ designed to prevent intimate relations on board. There was panic in the rest of the fleet as the then Defence Secretary, Micheal ‘Fiddler’ Fallon, wanted all submarine crews to be drugs tested. Is he mad? That’s like lifting manhole covers in London hoping to see sweet scented, pink ribbon wrapped, bouquets of roses instead of a fleet of fetid, faecal flecked fatbergs clogging the arteries of the city.

Who does he think joins up and why they do so? The Royal Navy in particular was built on Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. Hearts of Oak joined up to serve King/Queen and Country, to go to other countries and shag their women, bomb the natives and shout loudly for more beer. They went to sea to avoid having to do the shitty zero hours, low paid, dead end bullshit jobs back home. Alcohol is the lifeblood that makes it tick over. Pusser’s Rum was the oil lubricating the penile pistons in whorehouses from Devonport to Sembawang. Adultery is, and always was, an option especially now that Wrens also are part of the ship’s crew.

The Navy is not the Church of England at sea.

So, there is of course a stonking great big elephant in the room here. It is drunk and wearing a big red sash called hypocrisy while waving its engorged phallus at anything remotely looking like a lady elephant while not caring where the phallus ends up or who is perturbed by its presence.

Fallon himself, it later turned out, was no one to throw stones at other people’s drug and alcohol fuelled whorehouses, and was in no position to lecture anyone about financial and other improprieties.

According to The Daily Telegraph Fallon claimed for mortgage repayments on his Westminster flat in their entirety. The rule was however, that MPs were only allowed to claim for interest charges. Between 2002 and 2004, Fallon regularly claimed £1,255 per month in capital repayments and interest, rather than the £700–£800 for the interest component alone. After his ‘error’ was noticed by staff at the Commons Fees Office in September 2004, he asked: “Why has no one brought this to my attention before?” 

This is the question many a jack tar asks when stood at the Captain’s table after being caught balls deep in the Ambassador’s wife after a rum sodden run ashore in Gibraltar, after it was pointed out that dipping one’s thumb into someone else’s Plummy Jam Jar is just not cricket.

It got worse for Fallon.

In late October 2017 it was reported that he had had repeatedly and inappropriately touched journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer‘s knee during a dinner in 2002. Hartley-Brewer recalled that after Fallon kept putting his hand on her knee, she “calmly and politely explained to him, that if he did it again, I would punch him in the face”. Fallon resigned two days later believing his “previous conduct” towards women had “fallen below” what is acceptable. At least it was just a knee being touched rather than retrieving the ping pong ball from a ‘performer’ in some of the darker smokier and less morally reputable bars in Bangkok.

It was subsequently reported Fallon had been forced to resign in part due to an allegation of inappropriate and lewd comments towards fellow Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom. Inappropriate and Lewd – a Tory MP, who’d have thought it? He was also accused of making comments of a sexual nature about other MPs on the committee and members of the public. I can only surmise that he must have been on the lash in Union Street in Guzz or the Reeperbahn in Hamburg to have picked up such habits.

So, if you ever find yourself in a huge metal tube, cut off from the outside world for very long periods of time with the coming apocalyse in nuclear form as company, and you don’t sniff a little, swig a little or shag a little to avoid facing up to the insanity of your situation…I fear for your soul. You may tell moralising conservative types to merrily f*ck off.

*don’t ask your mum.