II and Prince Charles? Everyone is asking what will become of the Ark Royal? It will operate in the same manner as it did before being decommissioned. As a floating gay bar. Only now it will be docked in the Thames instead of prowling around the Persian Gulf in the dark like an old queen looking for trade.
Defence cuts mean fewer weapons – so at least it’s a break for Afghan wedding photographers. You’ve got to feel for them. Just setting up the tripod and in comes a NATO drone. You’ve got an 8 by 10 of shrapnel and body bits, and all you can think to put underneath is ‘The bride’s family’.
A beauty queen joined the RAF in Afghanistan. It’s nice to see someone in modelling who wants to kill someone other than herself. She has realised that there’s more to life than being beautiful. There’s being appreciated for your brave humour as they graft your bum skin onto your charred skull. Jodie Millward was pictured in a red vest and her RAF uniform – and I must say she looks better in blue – so I hope for her sake she’ll die in a gas attack rather than from shrapnel wounds. Most models hate bits of their bodies; Jodie will be able to have those bits shipped home ahead of her rehab.
Fears about women now being allowed to work on British submarines are just sexist – they are just as capable as men. And anyway, under the sea there isn’t as much call for being able to reverse. In the US, women have previously been barred from their subs because it was thought an unborn foetus would be affected from living near nuclear weapons and fuel fumes. It’s now realised that this child would still grow up to be a fully functioning American. Protocol is very different in the navy now. In the old days, a woman entered a submarine and all the sailors would stand. Now, for young male recruits, women being on board will mean they’ll be able to sit down for the first time in months.
Afghanistan has had a massive effect on me personally. Those shares in coffins and Union Jacks have gone through the fucking roof. I could retire tomorrow. According to defence chiefs, we have just completed the ‘first stage’ of the war against the Taliban. First stage? We’ve been there for ten years! What is the second stage going to consist of? Waiting for the tectonic plates to move and change the borders organically? Why is everyone talking about this as if it’s only just started? I’ve got news for the Ministry of Defence. If you thought you’d erased all our memories, it didn’t quite take. You may have to flash us again.
Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A lot of Scottish people used to say that Afghanistan was the only war we really needed to fight. But now that the street price of heroin is so low, even they don’t see the point.
Hamid Karzai won the corrupt election and now has sovereignty over, er, Kabul and a miniature golf course just outside Kabul. In fact, even the capital isn’t secure – they’re thinking about renaming it Kaboom. He beat Abdullah Abdullah, who was unfortunately baptised in a cave with an echo. Karzai’s brother was shot dead by his personal bodyguard. Never mind training Afghan leaders in democracy, we should probably start with interview technique.
The US army had to apologise for photos showing their troops posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians. Generals have been quick to say they’ve insulted the dignity of the rest of the US army. Is that the dignity of pissing on a Koran in Abu Ghraib, or the dignity of dangling from a rope ladder off the last helicopter to leave the US embassy roof in Saigon while your illegitimate children scream beneath you?
The Taliban are finding it impossible to get hold of essential supplies, so at last we’re fighting on equal terms. But let’s not get complacent. Just because they’re running out of bullets, we mustn’t assume our boys won’t get shot. Remember, US troops have still got plenty.
Children of troops killed in Afghanistan are going to have their university education paid for. Kind of ironic that some girls will get highly educated thanks to the Taliban.
The British forces have handed Sangin to US forces. Many middle-class liberals are asking how we can leave these vulnerable people in the care of poorly educated, poorly paid, selfishly driven rednecks? And then they pick up their children from the two 16-year-old work experience girls that staff the best local nursery.
To be fair, British generals do a difficult job. Usually very, very badly. The Taliban are holding us off with regular prayer, and guns they stole from the set of Rambo III. Still, good to see it’s all spilling over into Pakistan. A whole load of nuclear missiles and a bunch of people with different ideas about what Mohammed said. What could possibly go wrong?
The other day I was reading a book about how the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann (there’s a thrilling intelligence operation to check his identity, then they hit him on the head and throw him in a bag) and realised how little I knew about the Holocaust. In the course of reading up on it I found a collection of pictures – taken at the camps – of people on their way to the gas chambers, which is really something you should be certain you want to see before looking at it. It will remain with you. These are the people fresh from the trains, tired and bewildered. Children sit exhausted at their mothers’ feet as they unwittingly queue to become victims of this monstrous and inhuman crime.
It all seems so remarkably singular, and yet also you can see these sort of pictures every day – newspaper photos of refugee camps, of families in war zones, emergency rooms in Gaza, children from the dollar-a-day world. Some of these people are victims of dictators too, but most are victims of an economic theory, and of our affluence and indifference. Daily, you see pictures of people queuing for death and somehow the worst thing, the very worst thing, is that if you really tried you could do something about it.
‘Aye, it fucking is him an all’
Paul makes me a cup of tea – he’s one of those people who always makes half a cup of tea – and I get my panic list up on email. It’s the only group email list I’ve ever had, one I compiled to announce that my daughter had been born. It included anyone who might give me work. I’d just got home from the birth and knew I was so broke I didn’t have the money to get a taxi the next day to bring her home.
I’m flush nowadays – my company just landed a big advertising contract for an anti-speeding campaign. On dangerous stretches of road we are putting up family photos (the ones you get done in a photographers where the kids have been distracted by bubbles) of the actual people who have died there, over the words DEAD NOW. It’s a suggestion I made as a despairing joke after they hated our other ideas. Everybody loves it. It’s like the fucking ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ of the post-Apocalypse.
I drag my suitcase out of a cab at Glasgow Central and take my glasses off. I’m trying to buy the papers for the train but I can see fuck all, accidentally picking up the Star, which has a front page about a mystery Old Firm player being blackmailed. I queue and wonder what Lovecraftian practice could set this young pervert apart from his peers.
The woman at the counter goes, ‘What’s with the beard, Frankie?’
I honestly can’t think of a single response. Eventually I say, ‘When I stop shaving, hair grows out of my face,’ and she laughs like I’ve made a joke.
I’m squinting up at the departures board looking for the London train. I’m normally OK without the glasses but some wee guys by the bank machine are nodding over at me. Eventually one of them walks over, stands about 18 inches away from me and blares, ‘Aye, it fucking is him an all,’ as dispassionately as if he’s noting that it’s raining.
On the train I’m trying to do some work on a pitch for tomorrow but every time I look at the screen I feel sick. There’s
