All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Animals Without Borders

Nearly all governments employ a splendid technique for announcing success as far as drug seizures are concerned: if a truckload is intercepted, that proves how well its approach is working; if the interception rate goes down, that proves it too. This doesn't automatically make authorities look ridiculous, but it certainly gives them a commanding lead in the preliminary qualifying round. Meanwhile, the piped Thai Rak Thai mood music has wafted over the cabinet's dinner table and drowned out the more awkward questions.

This pretence also results in a lot of official activity; and, as we have come to expect, official activity has the opposite effect to that intended. With the evolution of intoxicants from religious sacrament to party-down fuel, the "drug problem" has never been handled well because it's too big, too profitable, and too overwhelming for mere human agencies. Any effective approach must include empathy for the sufferers and self-knowledge as it pertains to human susceptibility. Don't hold your breath.

The Nation recently ran a story with the headline "Semi-stray Dogs". I know plenty of semi-stray humans, but surely a dog is either a stray or it isn't. They don't exactly leave the house on Monday with a backward glance and yap, "See you at the weekend. If I'm late, just leave a bowl of Chum on the porch. Ciao guys."

In 1890, it was estimated that there were some 750,000 stray dogs in London. Back in the 12th century they were even tough on pet dogs. A royal edict declared that 'if a greedy and ravenous dog shall bight a 'Royal beast' (deer), then the dog's owner shall forfeit his own life.' So we may imagine the inhabitants of early medieval London nervously taking their huge mastiff's out for a pee on a lead made out of heavy duty triple link chain. In 1850, a Home for Lost and Starving Dogs was established in London, the first instance of canine welfare. It flourishes still, as the Battersea Dogs Home. Can we not do the same here? How about the Hopewell Home For Homeless Mutts? Strays make excellent companions, once you get to know them:
I'm a stray with a taste for low humor.
I'm gay in the old-fashioned sense.
I'm riddles with fleas and I'm prone to disease,
But my instinct for fun is immense.

Altering the shade of our skin is an enduring paradox. For Caucasians, the darker the tone, the cooler they feel; plus, there's the essential bonus of the envy it creates among their pallid countrymen. In Bangkok, working expats have even been spotted leaning out of the office window, their faces turned up to the simmering welkin, trying to catch some rays.

Thais seem both amused and perplexed as to why visitors come here to absorb the ultra-violet at every pore (if that's how it gets in) to achieve a tan, while their own sisters are forever slapping on a cream to create a Nordic ghost buster look.

But why is sunshine deemed superior to all the other stuff which falls out of the sky on to people? Few citizens have even gone down with rainstroke or fogburn, and the numbers of those who have dehydrated to death in sleet is hardly legion.

I remember being 18 and conducting a wobbly young girl to Brighton for an afternoon beneath the sun (and hopefully the stars) and remember the sinking of the heart as she stripped to a minimal bikini that left exposed 95 per cent of her alabaster skin. By sundown, her own mother couldn't have touched her. This heat finds me behind drawn blinds, before a whirring fan, and outside an icy spirit.

The British prime minister has just turned 50. Before 30, your life is spent shouting "Turn it up." From then on its, "For God's sake, turn it down!" It's a birthday for looking back rather than squinting forwards. It's the year when you finally realize that your tennis, eyesight, memory, personal waste disposal management and sex are only going to get inexorably worse. On the other hand, you have accrued a sizeable volume of experience… if only you could remember where you put it.

The Thai science student on my soi is an absolute nutter with fantastically antisocial hair and thus, one of my favorite people. He told me yesterday that he's about to begin final testing of a nasal spray that may cure arthritis and baldness, while doubling your capacity to remember dates.

"Do you know where I can get a baboon?" he asked. "If I can inject several pinhead-sized 6V batteries into its rump it will enable the baboon to wash, rinse, spin and tumble-dry up to six rai of rape-seed without tangling, eliminate cold-starting problems on your DVD and play chess with itself until 2012, charging the whole operation to your credit card in less than a Pico-second." Way to go Thailand.

By Roger Beaumont

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