Two clues in yesterday’s Times Crossword. “London district where no one returns around cocktail time (9); No gin served up? One whisky short? He may be devastated! (5,6)” I like the way the compiler is thinking.
Today in The Times there is an ad for a cruise on the MS Queen Anne’s maiden season in 2024.
I’d rather be deported to Rwanda than be cooped up with 2,099 other internees on a floating prison, drugged with afternoon tea and cocktails. “I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.” (The Waste Land, TS Eliot).
As you see, I’m a traveller but not the sort of traveller wanting to be coddled by Cunard. The stamps on my passport lead me on to the war in Ukraine.
Cast your mind back to Suez. Anthony Eden and whoever was the French president cooked up a plan to capture the Suez Canal from Nasser. It was a bad bit of foreign policy but we all make mistakes. Putin was encouraged by Russia’s military success in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya and, of course, Ukraine in 2014. Maybe he should have reflected on Afghanistan but the circumstances are different, although the outcome will be the same.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the US and some NATO allies were smacking their chops last year when his revanchism (good to get in a long word) in Ukraine was revealed. The US rolled the pitch with a bit of help from allies, training Ukraine’s army to use smart weapons and supplying same after the invasion. War was not the preferred outcome but Russia wanted war and it was a trap that has destroyed Russia’s military capability for a decade, albeit at an appalling cost to the people of Ukraine.
Meanwhile Bertie is still poorly. The vet thinks he has a lung infection. He is a sturdy, philosophical dog and will get better in time.
Crossword answers: “Islington” and “Party Animal”
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Poor Bertie, have they x-rayed his lungs for aspirational pneumonia?
I made sure Calypso had the kennel cough vaccine yesterday when she went for her booster after reading about Bertie.