The Taxi Driver

[smokingboot]

They say that champagne doesn't give you a hangover. I do not know if this is true or not, but I can state categorically it doesn't apply to prosecco.  Oh dear.

Before the sesh got beyond a joke, three of us bundled into a cab. We were still lucid then, and I was just on the end of a sentence praising the beauties of Botswana,so presumably our driver guessed we were friendly types. He was old and from Gambia and was all smiles and agreeable discussion. One small part of the conversation remained with me:

'I remember the [Boot forgets the words, but it meant GB representatives] coming to our village. They went to all the villages. And they said, 'Will you come and protect and defend the Queen? And of course, all the young men said, Yes!' The old man laughed, a nice laugh, and shook his head, 'And now they are telling us all to go home.'

And that,right there, is the signature of ignobility and a very selective group memory indeed; the girl whose relations made war in 1914, who herself made sieg-heil gestures approved by her mother and whoever is holding the video recorder (presumably our king) gets adored and given huge tracts of land and money as well as protection from prosecution under the law all the days of her life. The people who volunteered to help in those wars - having originally had their resources stolen by the very people asking for help -  get to be used, and to one day hear, for themselves and their grandchildren, the demand that they 'go home.'

Straight through the Looking Glass.