n Nelson’s Dictionary (1st edition). “Haggis. A meal-on-wheels which the Scots keep as pets preparatory to devouring them amidst scenes of great cruelty on the evening of January 25 each year, under the pretext of feeding the poetic impulse.”
Dear Walter,
Where did I leave you ? Ah, yes, in the desert with Gertrude the tobacco-chewing camel, on the way to Tripoli across the Libyan desert. As I think I mentioned, Parks was leading the way, navigating by bearings he was taking on the Southern Cross. Unfortunately it transpired that we were in the northern hemisphere and he was in fact taking sightings on bits and pieces from the Mir space station.
After we had gone in circles for two days, we were rescued by an anchorite who had been sitting on top of a pole in the midst of the sandy wastes for 40 years in search of the meaning of life and complained that we were making him dizzy. When I told him that the meaning of life had already been discovered by my guru at home, Paidrag O’Sullivan – and that he was disclosing it in a series of coded messages masquerading as a regular column in The Star – the good man clambered down from his perch and led us to Tripoli singing hosannas.
We were royally entertained there by Gadaffi, with endless bowls of sheep’s eyes and giant steaks which, judging by their tobacco tang, spelt the end to Gertrude’s career as a desert taxi service. Finding it difficult to sit down even on the soft desert sand after prolonged contact between her and my rump – not to mention the bucketsful of cud she had discharged into my eye — I had seconds.
When the banquet was over I took the colonel into a back room of the presidential tent and gave him a good talking to, pulling no punches in explaining to him that blowing up PanAm planes was a breach of the Queensberry rules. He looked suitably contrite and we sat down to thrash out a plan which would satisfy the Western powers and bring peace in our time.
As you know, Britain and the United States want to give the two Libyan bombers, whom they have identified beyond any possible doubt, a fair trial before impartial Scottish judges in the town of Lockerbie, before having them torn apart by packs of rabid haggises. I suggested that we stage the trial in South Africa in front of my old friend Albie Sachs, upon which the colonel rolled his eyes and said he thought the bombers would prefer to take their chances with the rabid haggises.
We came up with a compromise whereby the trial would be held on a melting ice-floe with OJ Simpson presiding.
I arrived in Edinburgh for the Commonwealth summit excitedly clutching this proposal. Asking bystanders whether they had seen a little man who looked like a Welsh rabbit, I tracked down the British prime minister and outlined the plan. “Gadaffi who?” he asked, before gabbling on about Princess Di’s funeral, anxiously inquiring as to whether the jungle drums had been able to convey the subtlety of his reading of the lesson to my part of the world.
One of his aides thereupon pointed out that I was privileged to be a neighbour of Earl Spencer. This reduced the premier to fresh paroxysms of excitement over the latest blow which the earl has struck for the rights of privacy, by signing a $4-billion contract with Hello magazine, entitling them to take world-exclusive pictures of himself sitting on the toilet.
The prime minister confided that he was negotiating similar deals for pictures of the royal family sitting on the toilet and inquired anxiously if I thought their sale as picture postcards to tourists would have sufficient impact on the balance of payments to assure him a second term.
I will not trouble you further with the august proceedings, Walter, except to mention the moment of high drama when a military coup was announced in Zambia. The delegate masquerading as President Chiluba thereupon burst into tears, cheering up considerably 171/2 minutes later when it was announced the coup had been quashed. It later transpired that it had all been an April Fool’s joke, someone having hung a barrack-room calendar upside down. The way things are going, Walter, I fear our continent will never be taken seriously on the international stage.
Despondently,
Nelson
* Editor’s note: This is the last Insincerely Yours column