PARAPLEXED

I have no idea what the candelabra was doing there, perched on a half demolished wall in Muntazah, and judging from its very French shrugging posture, it probably didn't know either. Even within the category of 'things you'd miss if you were driving a car', this little tableau was unexpected, to say the least. If you have lost a candelabra and suspect this might be it, let me know and I'll take the same walk next weekend. If it's still there, I'll retrieve it for you. Same goes for the wheelbarrow.

Such is the deplorable degradation of modern-day English that many of us have forgotten all but the simplest formulae for effective communication. Indeed, it has become apparent that few, if any, of the under-93's have enough basic linguistic acumen even to question the beggar correctly. spare some change? Take the miserable specimen on the right, a typical sample of modern London's street furniture. Instead of asking pointless closed questions like- are you really hungry? which will inevitably be answered in the affirmative, better by far is to challenge with an open question- if you're so hungry, how come you're fat? or, if you have an eye for detail- if you're on the streets, why are your boots not worn? That's the way we used to do it, when Shakespeare was a boy and language was language. you poor old sod, you see it's only me Of course, not all beggars should be questioned in the same way. Should you be fortunate enough to encounter A...

Less than halfway through this post, if you read that far, you'll realise that it isn't yet another sarcastic diatribe against the Heathrow experience. Quite the opposite, in fact. I downright like the place. I fly out of LHR T5 three times a year and haven't yet had a bad one. The glass-doored lifts from the Heathrow Express railway concourse to the departure lounge are your first sign of being in a hi-tec building. The massive steel-work and the vast open areas they support are just plain impressive by any standards. Check-in couldn't be quicker, with plenty of self-service 'daleks' standing by to print your boarding pass. The only delay is the ensuing security check, but even that passes fairly quickly thanks to pretty adequate parallel processing. Then you have the departure lounge itself, certainly the quietest I've experienced, thanks to the decision to restrict tannoy announcements to emergencies only. It's amazing how much that single innovatio...

You see, there's nothing in the name 'Paraplexed' that specifically precludes featuring a 42 year-old cartoon of an irate fat budgie. I know it is 42 years old because, on the reverse side, in pencil, one can still read the deathless verse: This budgie was drawn by me In nineteen seven-tee where the 'me' in question was not me, but my brother, who was 21 at the time and just embarking on a teaching career from which he has recently retired. Strange that a throwaway sketch produced merely to lighten a moment should have survived so long (in the bottom of the drawer I was tidying this afternoon) only to be replicated, albeit briefly, on several thousand computer monitors across the world. Stranger still that it might now endure in file format for the remaining duration of human civilisation. And strangely unfair that this nameless budgie should be singled out for immortality ahead of the hundreds or even thousands of blackboard chalk drawings my brother produc...

At least, walkers' feet don't. For the most part, this comes down to footwear. In desert climes, sandals are the obvious choice for daytime walking. (They're fine for night walks too, except that they're banned from most bars, limiting your choice of destinations). You may well think that acclimatising your feet to five or ten mile desert hikes would prepare them for anything. You'd be wrong though. The heels and soles may indeed become as tough as shoeleather, but the tops of the toes, the instep, the nameless inner and outer 'flanks' and the back heel, which, sandalled, touch nothing but fresh air and dust, remain as soft as a soft thing of your choice preferably not involving babies. This wouldn't matter if you never ventured to the frozen north and the lands of proper shoes. That's when you are reminded that the only comfortable walking shoes are ones that you've lived in for weeks, ones that have exhausted their repertoire of nipping, pinchi...

and I'm not happy about it. I could switch it off, but then I couldn't see the keyboard. I could switch it off and wait till morning, but that would be tempting providence. It would be presumptuous of me to assume the sun will rise; that much at least I learned from David Hume. It will, of course, but let's not push our luck. The light is flickering because the dimmer switch is on its way out. It is very disconcerting. It's also a bit odd, because downstairs the lights on the Christmas tree are flickering too, but they're supposed to, which somehow makes it less annoying. I could switch it off and go out, and if I were in Doha that's probably what I'd do. But somehow wandering out into a late English night in near freezing temperatures doesn't hold much appeal. No, on balance, it's turning into another Chivas Regal in front of the TV night. I am on holiday, after all. Cheers!