A post with a bit of an international flavour

Today was set aside for doing yet more boring domestica: this has given my mind plenty of time to think, as making mutton stew, scrubbing the kitchen floor and tidying up Mini's mess in the front room are not exactly tasks designed to be mentally absorbing.

Firstly, regular readers of this blog, whoever you are, will be surprised as yet I haven't made a comment on the forthcoming US elections. This is not a mistake on my part, but just deep boredom with the whole process, I'm afraid. There is also a bit of me which thinks the sort of obsessive interest in ANOTHER COUNTRY'S elections is a bit peculiar - we don't pay this much attention to elections in, say, Italy, now, do we?; a brief mention on the international news round up is all one could realistically expect there. As many of you will know, I detest the slow, or indeed not-so-slow creep of US culture into this country and I regard the whole election process over there as more akin to a circus than a serious piece of political activity; moreover a circus which is being increasingly copied by our so-called leaders here.

However, today I had a long old think about the whole thing. I'm not American, so it matters little who I think is the best man for the job; however, I do think it is pretty obvious that Barack Obama is certainly the more statesmanlike of the two candidates. He is patently a thinking man, and one whom I believe would not hesitate to take advice if he was out of his knowledge-depth on a particular issue: something which has been sadly lacking in recent years and which I suspect would be deeply unpopular with, for example, the military. McCain is, in my opinion, far more of a hothead and we'd just have more of the same lunacy we've experienced already if he were elected. Furthermore, he's a much older man... and if anything happened to him the grisly spectacle of that creature Sarah Palin stepping into his shoes raises its ugly head. I'd sooner put Mini in charge of a nuclear arsenal than I would that woman, frankly. However, the Americans were stupid enough to elect Dubya twice so I wouldn't put anything past them.

All this having been said, a bit of me hopes Obama will NOT be elected. Mainly because I don't think he'd even get close to standing for his second term because some lunatic would undoubtedly assassinate him well before that time. Americans love shooting their leaders (the rest of us just dream about shooting their leaders), and, as the first 'black' President, Obama's time would almost certainly be numbered - there are just too many nutters of varying hues in the country who would feel perfectly OK with claiming 'God told me to' as an adequate defence. I understand he's already had death threats and has a souped-up bodyguard force... my advice would be 'Get out now, Mr Obama'. I don't want to see the TV coverage of his widow and small children at his funeral, frankly - the world has too few decent men already. So, if Mr Obama is elected - you heard my predictions regarding the probable outcome here first, boys and girls.

Staying with America, today, as everybody who has trogged down any High Street for the past month or so and had to push past the various tacky 'displays' of witches' hats and plastic spiders is aware, is Halloween. Now I make much of being an old moo, but I'm still a long long way away from getting my bus pass, so the Angevin childhood is not THAT long ago... and yet I cannot remember any of this hype and commercialism going on then. The most exciting thing anybody did was perhaps a bit of apple bobbing in the back garden with somebody's Mum supplying the towels to dry yourself off and the sausage, mash and beans afterwards. At school, you might make the obligatory mural display of witches, pumpkins and spiders with black pipecleaners and bits of orange crepe paper and Teacher might read a mild ghosty story (in my school the nuns always managed to get in the one of Little Johnny falling down the well because he was a Bad Boy and Baby Jesus beating off the evil witches to save him - but my school was far from normal). 'Trick and treating' was something you watched Yank kids do in films... even as late as when ET was 'THE film' the trick and treating scene was very much something 'foreign'. The whole 'modern' (ie. American) experience of Halloween to me is a 100% imported grotesque merry-go-round merely encouraging people to spend more money because 'the kids want it'. Tough luck kids, if any of you dare to come trick-or-treating up the Chateau Angevin drive - you will be told you are engaging in a form of begging our current society misguidedly sanctions, asked if you are American and if not, told to go away before I call the police and do you and your parents for trespass. If you ARE American, you will be asked more politely to go away and stop pestering me with your imported cultural activities. We don't get the local Jewish kids pestering us Gentiles for 'gelt' at Hanukkah; so you can follow their example, thank you.

Moving country now, there was a bit of fuss this week when the Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Topolánek, smacked a photographer who was trying to get some snaps of him. If it had been as simple as that, I would have fully approved of the photographer doing Topolánek for assault; but it WASN'T that cut and dried. Looking at the video of the event, http://www.javno.tv/en/index.php?id=10955f7094915168 , it seems pretty clear to me that here was a guy just taking his new-born son out for a walk in the pram when he was pounced on by a group of photographers and reporters behaving in a highly intrusive way. I have a lot of time for Czechs, having been to Prague and its environs a fair few times, they seem family-oriented sensible people, and I'm surprised there hasn't been more comment saying Topolánek was quite right in dishing out a bit of old-fashioned discipline to the annoying little scrote intruding on his privacy. It was quite clear the the guy was trying to take pictures of the baby and that's why I suspect Topolánek reacted. If somebody can't even take his baby out without being treated in this rude way I think it's quite sad. I'm afraid I probably would have lamped the pest too.

Lastly, I may have mentioned on here before one of my greatest pals, Tim, is off on a charity walk on Everest in November. I was therefore a bit worried to discover it's been snowing in Tibet since Sunday, which is earlier than usual, and so far over 2ft of snow has fallen, creating major chaos. Puts in perspective all the fuss we've had in the UK about a few flakes falling in October, doesn't it?? I'm not sure whether this will affect Tim's walk, so I'll keep you posted. I think he's bonkers, but if it's raising money for a good cause then I can sort of understand why he's doing it... as long as he doesn't expect me to treat him like Edmund Hilary when he comes back! He could, after all, have confined himself to the Original Mountain Marathon (which the media are STILL bleating about) mentioned in a previous blog-post so we could all have had a laugh at him ... perhaps I'll suggest he thinks about this next year?