NOVEMBER 2024
My original idea for this month was to comment on October’s astonishing scenes as Space X managed to catch the Super Heavy booster right there on the launch pad with those crazy “chopsticks”, but that all seems to have been eclipsed by Elon Musk’s slightly disturbing contribution to the re-election of his presidential candidate of choice. I hope that Musk will be remembered for the space shit – it’s what he’s really good at.
Today, of course, everyone who isn’t a great Trump fan is ranting and raving about what went wrong and what lies ahead. I’ve even read an article suggesting it proves that we Brits are not like the Americans at all, which strikes me as being just as silly as suggesting that we are. Some of us are like some Americans, and others are like other citizens of the USA, and lots of us are weird and wonderful in our own different ways. I think the Oscar Wilde quote in the article, which suggests that we are “two peoples divided by a common language”, is funny but little more than that, and I wonder if the journalist in question, an Oxford graduate from a family of intellectuals, has much in common with the majority of his fellow Brits. After all, the UK did overwhelmingly choose Boris Johnson as prime minister not so long ago based largely on his promise to “get Brexit done” when it was fairly obvious he had no idea what that actually meant. And, going back to the US, I can’t help thinking that a vice president should be someone the president is grooming to take over the post, if only we could have leaders capable of curtailing their boundless self-belief.
But that’s already more than I should have said on the subject. It’s like having to listen to De Niro’s lectures on politics, or J K Rowling becoming the spokeswoman for “old-school feminism” in the transgender debate. Or Elon Musk. Just because people have a louder voice it doesn’t mean that their opinions are necessarily more valid than yours or mine.
On a more personal level, I was struck by a comment a good friend made over lunch last weekend when he was telling us how his son’s future father-in-law had been a communist in his youth but now supported a – relatively – far-right party. Now, I know this will sound like sour grapes (okay, I’m not a Trump fan, but how could the man not know what Starlink was? Putin and Zelenskyy certainly do!), but I think there are two ways to look at this fairly common transformation. People with right-wing tendencies will have us believe that it is a case of the naivety of youth being replaced by the wisdom of a mature person. But – without suggesting that Conservatives and Republicans have no principles! isn’t it also true that most of us slowly but steadily lose our ideals as we get older or watch helpless as life takes them away? Forced to cross lines, we draw new ones for a while before we finally stop bothering altogether. There are taxes that are simply unfair! (Paying a “value-added tax” for getting a plumber to fix a leaking pipe?) We therefore avoid paying them when we can. We tell our kids that stealing is wrong when music/video/TV piracy shows that almost everyone would steal – from appropriate “victims” – if they were confident of not being caught. We do it because everyone else does. Just like the bankers taking their investors’ money and chucking it away on subprime mortgages before the financial crisis of 2007 2008. Just like the cop taking his or her first “bribe”, or the politician lobbying (or voting one way or another) for a friend who has done him or her a “favour” …
Getting more personal, this line of thought reminds me of something that happened to me at the tender age of twenty-three. I was in charge of a piped water project in the Ntchisi area of Malawi (see photo below!), spending one week in three in the government rest house (now the Ntchisi Forest Lodge and in Tripadvisor!), getting up at dawn and riding my little Honda down the escarpment as the rising sun turned Lake Malawi into a strip of silver in the distance. And I hadn’t been there long when a local party man (it was a dictatorship at the time, so there was only one party) presented me with a bag of assorted tinned foods. Since I was eating beans, rice and cabbage every day of the week, I was delighted and thanked him profusely.
Of course, at the end of that week, when we were about to take the pick-up back to the capital, I found the man standing next to the official driver, Mr Malikebu, together with nearly a dozen friends and relatives.
“What …?” I said.
“They want a lift to Lilongwe,” said Mr Malikebu.
“It’s a government vehicle. We’re not allowed to …” I began.
He looked at me as if I was stupid. And I remembered the gift. Yes, I had been bought!
Halfway back to the city, on the main north-south tarmac road, a stray ox suddenly sprang out from the trees and stood in front of us. Without breaking appreciably, Malikebu weighed it up, deciding which way to swerve. At the last minute, he made his choice and went left, bringing a chorus of screams from those hanging on as best they could in the back of the pick-up. It was a close thing. If anyone had been hurt, we would all have been in big trouble. But you always need a bit of luck when you’re breaking the law, don’t you?
As an aside, Malikebu and I were driving north again about a week later when another ox trundled out in front of us – or was it the same, suicidal beast? – and on this second occasion I only had time to brace myself against the dashboard area above the glove compartment (seatbelts were for wimps!) before we crashed into its enormous flank. I remember my sunglasses flying off and hitting the windscreen, but the pipe-carrying frame built onto the pick-up absorbed much of the impact and we were able to limp to the police station in Ntchisi to report the accident. I confess I don’t know what happened to the ox.
And the very next week I was in Ntchisi again, just after the turn-off and heading east for the rest house on my Honda, when a man ran out from behind a parked truck, and I suddenly found myself doing a somersault through the air and then sliding along the dirt road on my back wondering when I would stop. Both my bruised and bloody victim and I were bustled along to the police station, where the officer on duty looked at me and said, “You! Again!”
They decided it wasn’t my fault (again), gave me and the other guy tetanus jabs with a blunt needle (a year or so before Malawi was devastated by AIDS) and packed me off back to the capital, Lilongwe, on the next bus. I had a broken wrist and had to stand all the way.
I don’t believe in karma, but since Ntchisi I’ve never really enjoyed receiving gifts in the same way.
PS – For those of you who haven’t already shelled out hard-earned cash on the second and third novels in the series, I’m doing some FREE GIVEAWAYS on Amazon this month (The Safest Moon from 8 Nov to 11 Nov, and then from 16 to 17 Nov; and Callisto’s Monstrous Secret from 22 Nov to 24 Nov and then from 30 Nov to 1 Dec. In other words, something every weekend this month!). No strings attached, of course, though a review would be very nice! You see how it works?