Ta' barra mod ieħor ieħor...

Male teenagers are a common evening sight on a typical Libyan thoroughfare pavement. Not gangs, just clusters, gaggles, giggles of friends. They stand there and chat and smoke and laugh and they sometimes throw a rock, a hubcap or a lump of wood at each other. But that is not their main purpose. These are mere interludes from their main business. The main item on their agenda is that of harrassing, or as a Libyan apologist put it "teasing" young females. Of course, it would be unreasonable to be too po-faced and comdemnatory about such behaviour. Young and not so young men the world over have been known to vocalise their appreciation for the female form in all its splendour since time immemorial. Construction site humour seems to be one of the occupational hazards of womanhood and, however unacceptable some of us may judge it to be, it isn't going anywhere fast. Indeed, there seem to be at least three behavioural traits that are universal to male teenagers in every known ...

I have been in the desert for four days now and every night I settle down in the evening to read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in America, a collection of his letters from 1968 to 1976, by torchlight. This has made me mindful of the need to create a large enough body of correspondence, in order to support me in my pension years. I am not sure how this will work, as unlike HST I am not a writer, but anyway. Although, obviously HST will not be enjoying the royalties from Fear and Loathing in America as he shot himself to death last year. Anyway, to that end I am writing this e-mail to you. I arrived in the desert on Monday night and stayed in the Funduq Afriqia and was Range Rovered by my guide/driver/cook/desert expert to the Jebel Acacus the next morning. Here, ancient volcanic rock structures protrude atop orange mountains of sand, like chocolate syrup spooling over the tops of massive scoops of mango ice-cream. No-one in sight for miles and miles around and, when the win...