For some people, the internet does not exist. For others, the internet is not a free, anarchistic haven but is instead carefully policed by the state. These two important facts were easily brushed aside by the clamour caused by British Primeminister David Cameron’s comments about Pakistan and fighting terrorism whilst visiting India. We, in the free world, may forget that what we can read on Wikileaks is far from accessible to all. When Wikileaks publishes documents alleging that some in Pakistan’s intelligence services are aiding the Afghan insurgents, how should a British PM respond? Should he act dumb, and pretend nobody has ever hinted such a thing? Or should he say something that alerts all those people who will never get to read Wikileaks for themselves? The significance of Cameron’s remarks are plain enough, unlike what Cameron actually said. He rather vaguely suggested (despite the assertions he was being ‘frank’) that Pakistan should not back terrorism whilst fighting terrorism. On one level, this is as dull a statement as one could imagine. In the context of the revelations gifted to us by Wikileaks, it has a much more significant connotation – it says Pakistan’s intelligence services need to get their own house into order.

The response by Pakistan’s intelligence services is to cancel a meeting in the UK in protest. This signals that they are surprisingly thin-skinned, and that they put their pride ahead of the fight on terror. The cancelled meeting was to be about anti-terror cooperation with the UK. But it also tells us far more about Pakistan’s military and intelligence forces. It shows that they are not beholden to Pakistan’s civilian government. Pakistan’s President will still be visiting the UK. Pakistan’s military and intelligence forces will stay home and sulk. This is unfortunate, because the Pakistan’s forces need all the help they can get. Pakistan is, after all, a country where terrorists can walk around the country’s second largest city, brandishing automatic rifles during daylight hours, and proceed to surround and attack the Sri Lankan cricket team on their way to a match. Whatever pride the Pakistanis feel at the sacrifices made to fight terror, it should be tainted by the humility that comes with realizing they are not winning that fight.

The would-be opposition leader and former Home Secretary David Miliband, has made the most of the opportunity created by a minor falling-out between Cameron and Pakistan. Miliband is the front-runner for the Labour Party leadership, but in danger of being eclipsed by his younger brother. To him, this is a godsend. For Miliband, foreign policy is one area where he can talk with some degree of authority knowing his leadership rivals will struggle to compete. He was, after all, Foreign Secretary for three years. His criticism of Cameron is that the PM said too much. This might be a more stinging rebuke, if it had come from some other former Foreign Secretary. However, Miliband was the Foreign Secretary who usually said too little. Even ardent supporters struggle to come up with one significant achievement from Miliband’s three years in the Foreign Office. Miliband was the Foreign Secretary when Israel was caught copying British passports for use to send assassins around the world – and he had very little to say on the subject. Miliband was long responsible for relations with the US whilst they were chasing British hacker Gary McKinnon for a completely unreasonable punishment, made possible by Labour’s grovelling and lop-sided acquiescence to the US anti-terror agenda – and he had very little to say on the subject. And when Gordon Brown was leading his party to electoral defeat, and many in his party were calling on Miliband to challenge him as leader, he stuck true to form – and said as little as possible, either in support of Brown or otherwise. Miliband is as slippery, intangible and inevitable as cold water… he prefers to follow the path of least resistance. No doubt he calculates this will lead to inevitable political success, as surely as the rivers flow into the sea. However, it also leaves vulnerable to the accusation that he is insubstantial.

To be fair to David Miliband, he did speak up sometimes. Unfortunately, it was usually at just the wrong time. Perhaps, being battered by his own bad experiences, he feels entitled to counsel Cameron from making similar mistakes. After all, Miliband knows all about putting his foot in his mouth whilst visiting India. This is what The Independent wrote about Miliband’s 2009 trip:

Miliband’s trip to India ‘a disaster’, after Kashmir gaffe

David Miliband was beginning to look as accident-prone as Mr Bean last night after yet another adventure backfired…

…the Foreign Secretary’s visit to India last week was labelled a “disaster” by the country’s leading politicians…

…he was accused of being “aggressive in tone and manner” in a meeting with the Indian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and dismissed as a “young man” by senior officials…

…Mr Miliband was forced to defend his three-day tour of India and Pakistan last night, insisting he had been “open and honest”. The visit had been billed as a “solidarity” trip over the terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

Much of that uproar was prompted by an article Miliband wrote where he commented on the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Miliband argued that a resolution would reduce the popularity of Pakistani extremists in that area, and allow Pakistan’s forces to concentrate on fighting terror on their Western borders. Obviously, this did not go down well with India’s politicians. The difference between Miliband in 2009 and Cameron in 2010 is pretty straightforward. In 2009, Miliband indulged his own speculative theories on how to attain peace, by writing an article telling foreign governments what they should do. In 2010, Cameron responded to a question, given without any prior preparation or warning, by reflecting on the fact that if some of the things leaked by Wikileaks are true, then that would be bad. Comparing the two circumstances, we should consider Miliband’s own advice to Cameron:

If you want to tell it how it is, you need to know how it is.

Cameron in 2010 gave an ad lib that pretty much said the frankly obvious about something which had recently been put in the public domain. In doing so, he offended some people. Miliband in 2009 sat down and, with careful forethought, wrote down a theory that was totally unprovable. In doing so, he offended some people. The question that comes to mind is: what did Miliband think he knew about Indian-Pakistani relations in 2009? And returning to the present day, what does Miliband now know about diplomacy that he did not know before?

It is at times like these we should turn to a respected leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner for some words of wisdom on how to be diplomatic in the pursuit of peace. Unfortunately, I do not know of any respected leaders or Nobel laureates with any words of wisdom to offer. Instead, here is Barack Obama with what he had to say about Pakistan, during the first Presidential campaign debate:

We’ve got to deal with Pakistan, because al Qaeda and the Taliban have safe havens in Pakistan, across the border in the northwest regions, and although, you know, under George Bush, with the support of Senator McCain, we’ve been giving them $10 billion over the last seven years, they have not done what needs to be done to get rid of those safe havens.

Hmmm… sounds pretty frank to me. I imagine the Pakistanis might have heard those comments too. So Obama said the Pakistanis had $10 billion – thanks to George W. Bush and Obama’s rival, John McCain – but had not got the job done. What did McCain have to say in response?

Now, on this issue of aiding Pakistan, if you’re going to aim a gun at somebody, George Shultz, our great secretary of state, told me once, you’d better be prepared to pull the trigger.

I’m not prepared at this time to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I’m not prepared to threaten it, as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan.

We’ve got to get the support of the people of — of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.

Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.

So McCain was saying that there are some things you should not say out loud about how you deal with the problems in Pakistan. To which Obama came back with:

Now, Senator McCain is also right that it’s difficult. This is not an easy situation. You’ve got cross-border attacks against U.S. troops.

And we’ve got a choice. We could allow our troops to just be on the defensive and absorb those blows again and again and again, if Pakistan is unwilling to cooperate, or we have to start making some decisions.

And the problem, John, with the strategy that’s been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, “Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator.”

And as a consequence, we lost legitimacy in Pakistan. We spent $10 billion. And in the meantime, they weren’t going after al Qaeda, and they are more powerful now than at any time since we began the war in Afghanistan.

Hmmm… so Obama’s saying something here about siding with and supporting democratic civilian governments, instead of just kowtowing to the Pakistani generals that had not only run the fight against terror, but have long been running the whole country.

If we place Cameron on an Obama-McCain scale, we find Cameron is:

- Like Obama and unlike McCain in saying what needs to be done and not accepting Pakistani failure.
- Like Obama and unlike McCain in siding with the civilian government and not appeasing the generals.

How very interesting that Cameron and Obama seem to strike a common note in how to deal with the diplomatic tensions around Pakistan – with a degree of openness and impatience for results – whilst Miliband and McCain preferred to keep quiet. Presumably this is a rare occasion where David Miliband disagrees with an Obama administration that Miliband has otherwise described as “brilliant”.

David Miliband is one of the few politicians to have explicitly talked about the Wikileaks revelations. The Guardian reported Miliband thus:

Labour leadership candidate David Miliband, said the “war logs” showed that the war could not be won by military means alone.

“We cannot kill our way out of an insurgency. Instead, the battle for power is fought in the minds of the local population, insurgents and western publics. The purpose of military effort and civilian improvement is to create the conditions for political settlement.

“There is now a race against time to persuade the Afghan people that the correct strategy is in place and show our own people it can succeed. Better Afghan security forces, better police, better schooling and economic opportunities are all vital but not enough. None of them are durable or possible without a political settlement.”

Miliband, the former foreign secretary, said any peace settlement “must include the vanquished as well as the victors” and urged the government in Kabul to involve Afghans in “defining a political endgame”.

All of which would seem to imply that the Pakistanis are irrelevant, or at least not worth mentioning. Did Miliband actually read what had been leaked about the Pakistanis, or is he just pretending there were no accusations about their involvement? Miliband may not always be the most careful reader, of course. At the same time as he is posturing about Cameron, Miliband was caught making another gaffe, this time relating to the war in Iraq. Miliband explained his support for the war in Iraq by saying:

I voted to support the government in 2003, not least having read Hans Blix’s 174-page document detailing the unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction.

Presumably Hans Blix’s report, like the Wikileaks revelations, were another example of Miliband doing his reading, but being none too careful to check his facts. This is what Blix himself had to say about the very same report:

It was not in my view a very revealing document. It was to be the basis for our selection of key remaining disarmament issues. But when [then Foreign Secretary, Jack] Straw read it on the plane he said: ‘Well, this is it. This is the way they behaved all the way through the 90s and this is the way they are behaving now.’ The only trouble was that at that very moment I was reporting to the security council, ‘this is not quite the way they are behaving now; they are behaving much better…’.

I do not have much to say about Cameron; his foreign relations performance has been plain enough to see. Cameron has not been particularly diplomatic, and he has been rather blunt. It is a matter of judgement as to whether he has been too blunt, or whether he was just saying what needed to be said. The facts are out, the words are out, and we should feel lucky to live in places where information is available and speech is free. Instead, let us finish with what Miliband has to say about making speeches.

The lesson for David Cameron is clear: opposition is about chasing headlines but government is about doing the right thing.

Perhaps Miliband has forgotten he is in opposition now. Or perhaps he is just following his own advice…

Luckily for me, this morning’s post included another letter from old friend Prince Karl Zeis of the royal house of Delthfia.

Dear Eric,

I write to share a wondrous find. It was discovered by my precocious fourteen year old niece. Her name is Karen Zipslicer and she has come to stay with me for a little while during her school holidays. Diligent young Karen has been helping me put the remnants of our royal archives back into some kind of order. As she did, she chanced something very unexpected in the back of an old atlas. The pages were loose; they had been torn from another book. We cannot tell if they represent a factual account or a whimsy of the author. Either way, we found them very entertaining, and thought you and your readers might enjoy the contents too. Please see the enclosed photocopies.

Yours &c.

Prince Karl Zeis of the Royal House of Delfthia

enc.

Within the envelope were a few photocopied pages as promised. The original had been neatly written by hand, and the pages were numbered from 272 to 275, implying they were taken from a longer work. The pages read as follows:

The Rules of the Tournament of Twiddlythinks, as Played in the City-State of Lundern

1. There are no rules to the tournament and game of twiddlythinks except for the fourteen rules stated here. These rules may never be amended or added to.

2. The winner of the tournament of twiddlythinks shall rule Lundern, according to its constitution, for a period of twelvemonth, commencing the April 1st that follows their victory.

3. All citizens and visitors to Lundern may enter the tournament at any time. When a contestant is defeated, they may not re-enter until the following year’s tournament.

4. No tournament match may take place outside of Lundern’s borders.

5. The game of twiddlythinks is played by two opponents. The winner of the tournament is the player who remains undefeated after having beaten all willing and eligible challengers at the game of twiddlythinks during the course of a tournament. In the event that there are two or more undefeated players at midnight of March 30th, the winner of the tournament is the player who has played most games; in the event of a tie, the winner of the tournament is the player whose name comes first in the alphabet.

6. At the start of the game, a piece is placed on each square of the board. Pieces are placed facing up or down at random.

7. Each piece is a counter with two sides. The top of the piece has a different colour to the bottom of the piece. Any colours may be used for either side.

8. The board shall be divided into squares. The board may be of any dimensions, so long as it is not so large as to extend beyond the borders of Lundern. There may be any number of squares on the board, in any arrangement, so long as they are each large enough to hold one piece and that there are at least two squares on the board.

9. All squares must be of the same colour, to maximize the difficulty in correctly executing a move.

10. Any player who makes an incorrect move immediately forfeits the game.

11. The following moves are all valid: turning a piece over and replacing it on the same square, moving a piece from one square to any other vacant square without turning it over, and removing a piece from the board.

12. Players take it in turns to make moves. The player with the greatest value of small change in his or her pockets shall make the first move.

13. After each move, the player shall say something to enlighten their opponent. Players may not communicate with each other at other times, nor may they use intermediaries as a way of circumventing this rule.

14. If all pieces are removed from the board without there being a winner, all pieces are replaced on the board and the game recommences as if from the beginning.

The Strategy and Tactics of the Tournament of Twiddlythinks

It must be noted that the game of twiddlythinks has no specific goal, no means of keeping score, and no clearly defined criteria to determine who is the winner. This is all according to the rules, which clearly state that there are no additional rules nor any possibility of change to the rules. As a consequence, each game continues until one or other player resigns. This means there are three possible strategies for winning a game of twiddlythinks:

Persistence: the winner is the player prepared to keep on playing for longer than their opponent.

Threats: the victor intimidates their opponent into conceding. A player may choose to make threats immediately after making a move.

Bribery: a player induces their opponent to resign. As with threats, these offers may be made immediately after making a move.

Commentaries on the constitution of Lundern note, with some pride, that twiddlythinks is not a game of simple merit. Players do not win through intellect, skill or via a better appreciation of the rules and the subtleties of how to make moves. On the contrary, the role of the tournament in deciding the ruler of Lundern is presupposed on the assumption that rulers should either be rich and generous, ruthless and powerful, or just so determined that they can demonstrably bend the will of others to their own.

The board, the pieces and their arrangement are all understood to be incidental to gameplay. Their role is formal. This is not without some utility; by facing each other over the board, passersby can verify the two players are engaged in competition until there is a definitive winner. Just as importantly, there is no order of play as is found with most other tournaments known to men. No two players are forced to play each other. Match-ups are by invitation, and may be declined. To win the tournament, all that matters is winning the most individual games during the course of a year. Clever selection of opponents is hence a vital aspect of winning the tournament. Successful tournament winners are also known to employ so-called ‘professional’ players to frustrate their rivals; these professionals lure the unwitting competitor into a match-up, and then ardently refuse to concede, thus denying their opponent the chance to play again and rack up more wins during the year. However, professional players tend to be short-lived. More often than not they become targets for the assassins engaged by the opponents whose hopes they seek to thwart.

Due to the extraordinary and unfamiliar nature of the rules, the histories of Lundern record that on only three occasions has the tournament been won by someone other than a citizen. Nevertheless, Lunderners take great pride in the fact that their tournament is open to all, meaning that in theory literally anybody could become ruler of Lundern. Allowing outsiders to compete is seen as a necessary way of maintaining the strength of Lundern’s governors; if Lundern’s leading citizens become corrupt or weak, then a strong outsider may take command via the exigency of what is effectively a bloodless coup. Despite the seeming openness of the process of picking Lundern’s ruler, few conquerors are willing to submit themselves to the annual tournament. They are much more likely to resort to warfare as a means to take over Lundern. The Lunderner’s faith in the tournament is underpinned by two observations. Firstly, the tournament has determined Lundern’s ruler for the last three hundred years without interruption. Secondly, during that time, Lundern has successfully repelled all would-be invaders.

Though the account of Twiddlythinks is fascinating, no explanation is given as to where Lundern is supposed to be. You have to imagine this fantastic account is the product of a fanciful imagination. After all, who would choose a ruler simply based on who has the greatest wealth, power, or lust for the job?

The limits of language might, on first consideration, seem a curious topic to write about. But then, like all topics, if not discussed in language, then it is not discussed at all. And by most measures, this language – the English language – is least likely to impose constraints on what can be said and written. According to the people who write the Oxford English Dictionary:

…it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages.

The reason for this is historical. English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German, and it shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages. However, after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was hugely influenced by Norman French, which became the language of the ruling class for a considerable period, and by Latin, which was the language of scholarship and of the Church. Very large numbers of French and Latin words entered the language. Consequently, English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family to which French belongs.

There are many English words; 200,000 if calculated conservatively, a million if we indulge the wilder estimates. Studies show that an educated native speaker might be familiar with 20,000 words at best, leaving them lots of opportunity to learn more. If that were not enough, the proficient may simply resort to inventing new words. Shakespeare is estimated to have added 1,700 words to the language, including ‘assassination’, ‘bump’ and ‘critical’. Yet for all its expansiveness, and its willingness to borrow from slang, science and other languages, English is not infinite. At some juncture we may always reach a limit and find there are things that cannot be said.

A shortage of words is the bane of the writer, of course. Whilst I have no pretension to include myself in that category, this post counts as halfthought 127, or well over 2 years’ regular writing if you kindly overlook the one week I missed (more by accident than laziness; the halfthought had been written but I blundered and failed to publish it). From that voluntary output, it might seem that I am tapping a plentiful flow. Not always so. There has been many a weekend where I have neared its end full of angst, because no fresh ideas have come to mind. Thankfully, life is rich even if the imagination is impoverished. A look around at the diversity of what occurs on this planet is guaranteed to reveal something worthy of comment before too long.

Whilst a lack of imagination may be the writer’s curse, even pure intellect has its limits. The philosopher Wittgenstein went to some pains to hint at the existence of an outer border to our expressive capacity in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This was concluded in the final statement of the book:

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Having written everything that needed to be written about philosophy, and satisfactorily proven to himself that to write anything more would entail scribbling gibberish, Wittgenstein did the decent thing and stopped doing philosophy. He turned his attention to teaching and architecture instead. However, like a top sportsman that spoils a perfect career by coming out of retirement, Wittgenstein changed his mind. In later life he explained why there was a lot more to say about philosophy after all.

That Wittgenstein was able to change his mind says a lot about both the academic and societal freedoms he enjoyed thanks to his upbringing and lifestyle in Europe, and the freedom that language afforded him to explore his ideas. None of these freedoms should be taken for granted. Though most readers of Orwell’s 1984 focus on surveillance and torture as the most obvious evils it depicts, I find another of his inventions to be much more chilling. Newspeak would be a language that progressively reduced its vocabulary, and as it did so, increasingly limited the speaker’s ability to express or even think thoughts they should not. As a consequence, thoughtcrime would become an impossibility, as there would be no objectionable thoughts any more:

By 2050 – earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Thankfully, we have so far postponed the impositions of an Ingsoc-like tyranny for more than a couple of decades beyond the date Orwell envisaged. Whilst oppression is to be dreaded, sometimes it is in our own interests to keep schtum. What we say and write is a kind of advertisement for who we are, and may be made public even if not intended. Recently revealed recordings of Mel Gibson’s tirades against second wife Oksana Grigorieva are even more troubling than the antisemitic remarks he made when arrested for drink driving in 2006, placing him firmly at the head of a long Hollywood walk of shame. Mad Mel would have been better off heeding the advice of Abraham Lincoln:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Whilst we recognize intellectual limits to language, it is more often that emotion causes us to reach an impasse where words simply will not do. Heightened emotion, whether the emotion is anger, fear or lust, draws our energies away from the verbal. The idea of a conversation during love-making might be presented as comical, especially if the topic is banal. Most sex talk involves a few usefully intense expletive utterances meant to signal encouragement, or, if things go awry, pain and a desire to reorient proceedings. However, two people with the right relationship might enjoy stimulating and erotic chat that goes beyond the monosyllabic.

For some circumstances, words can only seem paltry for their allotted task. At the other end of life’s cycle from love-making, language can seem desolate and paltry for the task of mourning a loved one. For all the craft of the eulogy, it is poignant that silent contemplation is our society’s most elegant means of showing our collective respect for the dead.

Speechlessness due to anger or fear is hard to overcome, as anyone who suffers from stage-fright can attest. There are few greater psychological agonies, for either the person who dislikes public speaking, or indeed for an audience that tries to listen to them. In contrast, anger may turn curtness into the epitome of apt expression. When the Germans surrounded Bastogne during the WW2 Battle of the Bulge, they sent a communique to US General Anthony McAuliffe, asking him to surrender. On hearing the request, McAuliffe uttered one word:

Nuts!

So pleased was he with the eloquence of this instinctive response, that he wrote it down and this was relayed back to the German command as his official answer. McAuliffe’s defiance was a morale raiser. In contrast, the American wordsmith Normal Mailer was a hellraiser who resorted to punching or even stabbing people in order to make his point. At one party he socked his literary rival Gore Vidal, knocking him to the floor. Vidal, though still down on the ground, got the upper hand when he quipped:

Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.

At least that goes to prove that whilst the pen may not always be mightier than the sword, wit is always sharper than a fist.

Long long ago, possibly before time began, and certainly before Tuesday last week, there was a saga called Star Wars. And lo, the people said it was good, and that it did verily enthrall them with its tales of derring-do, good versus evil, and the adventures of pretty princesses and manly warriors. People liked the cool special effects too. Then about a thousand unimaginative people decided to further entertain people with many parodies of the series. And then, even later still, I did the same, and I called this new series Star Wars Parallel Universe. In the previous installment from the parallel Star Wars universe, R2-D2 and C-3PO had gone to the wrong palace on Tatooine. We pick up the story with Darth Vader’s shuttle en route to the new and improved Death Star….

Shuttle Pilot: (Speaking over the radio) Command Station, this is ST-3-21. Code clearance: blue. We’re starting our approach. Deactivate the security shield.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: (Responding by radio) Security deflector shield will be deactivated when we have confirmation of your code transmission – and not a moment sooner. Standby.

Shuttle Pilot: (Impatient, sarcastic) When you’re ready.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: (Looks at the code appearing on his screen) Hmmm… I see you’re using an older code, though it checks out. What is your cargo?

Shuttle Pilot: Are you serious?

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Yes, I’m perfectly serious. We’ve beefed up security around here. We don’t just let anyone saunter up and land whenever they fancy. Now, ST-3-21, what is your cargo?

Shuttle Pilot: No cargo. Just a passenger.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: How many passengers?

Shuttle Pilot: A passenger. A single passenger.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Did I hear you right? A single passenger? Haven’t you people heard about shuttle-sharing? The Imperial Fleet is never going to be carbon neutral until flyboys like you realize that shuttles are not for joyrides.

Shuttle Pilot: You don’t understand. We have a VIP on board. Our passenger is Lord Vader. And he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Lord Vader? Never heard of him. I don’t care if you’ve got the Emperor himself on that shuttle, you could have carried some cargo over at the same time. Did you at least bring some toilet paper?

Shuttle Pilot: I beg your pardon?

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Toilet paper. We’re running low. For the last fortnight we’ve been on rations of four sheets per day. It used to be that you had three-ply and can pull them apart to make them last that bit longer, but now they only give you two-ply. They say it’s cutbacks. They must have overrun the budget on building this station.

Shuttle Pilot: Is this a joke? We’re not here to transport toilet paper! And I never spoke to anyone who didn’t know who Darth Vader is before.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: What was that name again?

Shuttle Pilot: Darth Vader.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Darth Vader? Nah. I once met a guy called Ralph Nader. He talked a lot of sense about fixing problems with the galactic economy. He kept standing to be elected to the Republic Senate, until some halfwit abolished it before he succeeded.

Shuttle Pilot: Do you know what you’re saying? Never mind. Put your supervisor on.

Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Oh, it’s like that is it? Very well. Please hold. (Signals to supervisor to come over and help. Puts his hand over the microphone and talks to the supervisor as an aside.) We’ve got a right charlie here. You try speaking to ‘em. I need to go for a pee anyhow (gets up and leaves).

Supervising Death Star Space Traffic Controller: (Sits at the microphone). Hello, my name is Stephen and I’m the supervising space traffic controller for today. How may I be of service?

Shuttle Pilot: We’ve got Darth Vader on our shuttle and we want to land – pronto.

Supervising Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Darth Vader, eh? I’m sorry I don’t know who that is.

Shuttle Pilot: You’ve not heard of Darth Vader?

Supervising Death Star Space Traffic Controller: No. But it’s a very big Empire, isn’t it? Thousands of star systems, millions of planets… you don’t expect me to know everybody by name, do you?

Shuttle Pilot: It’s Darth Vader. Darth Vader. (Pauses) Never mind. Can we land?

Supervising Death Star Space Traffic Controller: We’ve just got a few shuttles backed up here. Please enter a holding pattern and we should be able to squeeze you in within the next 15 minutes or so. (Hangs up) (His fellow space traffic controller returns from the toilet.) Make them wait 20 minutes and then direct them to landing bay Theta 12.

[The radio crackles into life as another shuttle signals its intention to land.]

Second Shuttle Pilot: Hello boyos, this is shuttle Tyrannium here, with a code clearance red. We’ve got a big load of bog roll on board, and we hear you’ve got some backsides cryin’ out for some over there.

Supervising Death Star Space Traffic Controller: Great! You’re cleared for immediate priority landing!

…

[C-3PO and R2-D2 finally arrive at Jabba's Palace on Tatooine.]

C-3PO: R2, are you sure this is the right place? We don’t want to go through another farce involving knocking on the wrong door.

R2-D2: Beep (translates as: “look at the sign, dumbass”)

C-3PO: (Looks up at the nameplate alongside the door and reads it out.) Palace of His Excellency, Jabba the Hutt. Bounty hunter scum welcome. Door-to-door salesmen scum not welcome. (Looks to R2-D2) This must be the place. I’d better knock, I suppose. (Taps on the door, and waits briefly). There doesn’t seem to be anyone here. We’d better go back and tell Master Luke.

[An electronic eye emerges from a hole in the door.]

C-3PO: (Startled) Goodness gracious me. (To the eye) We’d like to talk to Jabba the Hutt.

Voice of the electronic eye: Are you bounty hunter scum?

C-3PO: No.

Voice of the electronic eye: Are you selling something?

C-3PO: No.

Voice of the electronic eye: Are you Jehovah’s Witnesses?

C-3PO: No.

Voice of the electronic eye: Then why do you want to speak to Jabba?

C-3PO: We have a message for him.

Voice of the electronic eye: A message? You brought a message in person? Haven’t you heard of email? Anyway, you’d better come in, now that you’re here. But if you try to persuade us to change electricity supplier, we’ll disintegrate you without a moment’s hesitation.

…

[In landing bay Theta 12, Darth Vader walks down the ramp from his shuttle. Two valets, dressed in blue uniforms, follow him down the ramp. They bring Vader's bags - an assortment of shoulder bags and wheelie cases. There is a single Imperial captain waiting to meet Vader.]

Darth Vader: This is an outrage! We were kept waiting 20 minutes before being allowed to land.

Imperial Captain: (Removes a pen from his breast pocket and starts to make notes on a clipboard.) Name, please.

Darth Vader: What is this?

Imperial Captain: Security check. Name, please.

Darth Vader: Don’t you know who I am?

Imperial Captain: No, I don’t.

Darth Vader: Look, I’m tall, I’m dressed all in black, I have a black cape and a great big black helmet with a facemask that makes strange breathing noises. Does that give you a clue?

Imperial Captain: Well, you could be Lord Vader. He’s on my list of arrivals for today (taps the clipboard with his forefinger) and I hear he dresses quite like you do. But then again, you might be someone else, mightn’t you?

Darth Vader: Excuse me? Of course I’m Lord Vader.

Imperial Captain: Well, how am I supposed to know that? You think you’re the only person who’s allowed to wear a helmet and a mask covering his face? If it was up to me, I’d make you take it off, but I can’t ask you to do that. Apparently it offends some people’s religious sensitivities. But for all I know you could be a bodybuilder from the West Country, or a superhero who helps children to cross the road safely.

Darth Vader: Do I sound like a bodybuilder from the West Country?

Imperial Captain: No, but that might not be your real voice. Who knows what your voice would sound like if you took that facemask off.

Darth Vader: This is ridiculous.

Imperial Captain: It may seem ridiculous to you, but on the first Death Star they had all sorts of troublemakers running around the station, causing mayhem and releasing prisoners and starting fights. All because nobody did proper security checks on arrival. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see your ID.

Darth Vader: Very well. (He pulls out a plastic card from inside his left glove, and holds it up so the Imperial Captain can see it. On the card there is photograph of his former self, Anakin Skywalker, before he was horribly burned.)

Imperial Captain: Is this a recent picture?

Darth Vader: Recent enough.

Imperial Captain: Very well, Lord Vader. Your luggage, did you pack it yourself? Did you leave your bags unattended at any point during your journey?

Darth Vader: Do you think a man like me packs his own luggage?

Imperial Captain: Is that a no? Then I’m afraid we’ll have to search your bags before we can let them through.

Darth Vader: How long will that take?

Imperial Captain: You don’t need to wait. We’ll have them delivered to your quarters later today.

Darth Vader: (Sighs) Very well. Just let me get my toiletries out.

Imperial Captain: Toiletries?

Darth Vader: I need my face cream. I suffer from dry skin.

Imperial Captain: Do you have a prescription from your doctor?

Darth Vader: Yes, as a matter of fact I do. (He pulls out a piece of paper from his right glove, and hands it over.)

Imperial Captain: (Looks over the prescription and returns it.) That seems to be in order, but I’ll still need to see the face cream.

[Vader turns around and gestures to a valet, who opens up a wheelie case and removes a clear plastic bag from inside. He brings the bag and its contents over to the Imperial Captain.]

[The Imperial Captain scrutinizes the bag. It contains a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a small bottle of eau de toilette and a roll-on deodorant, in addition to a large pot of cream. The captain opens the bag, takes out the pot of cream and then removes its lid.]

Imperial Captain: This looks safe enough. (Puts the lid back on.) But this is much larger than the maximum permitted size of 50 millilitres.

Darth Vader: I have very dry skin.

Imperial Captain: Okay. I suppose we can make an exception just this once.

Darth Vader: Thank you. I don’t suppose I can complain about you having tight security – not after what happened on the last Death Star – but I really thought the station commandant would be here to greet me in person, and that there’d be some troops lined up and standing to attention.

Imperial Captain: (Chuckles to himself) Oh, really sir? We don’t have time to stand around all day, rolling out the red carpet and giving it all that pomp and circumstance. We’ve got a space station to build, don’t you know…?

Darth Vader: Hmmm… I suppose I can’t argue with that either.

Imperial Captain: (Points to an archway to his rear, covered in flashing lights.) Now if you’ll just walk through the metal detector, sir…

Darth Vader: (Sighs) I’m more than 50 per cent metal.

Imperial Captain: Forgive me saying so, sir, but you look more plastic than metal. That tough kind of plastic they use for stormtrooper armour, except yours is black and theirs is mostly white.

Darth Vader: The plastic is just a clip-on cover, to stop the metal from getting scratched. It’s mostly for show. (Sorrowful) I’m essentially more machine than man.

Imperial Captain: Well, sir… (looks apologetic) rules is rules and… well… the alternative is a strip search…

To be continued (of course)…

March 14, 2006

Hooray for mother Russia! Hooray for my new home in the corrupt and materialistic US of A! What a glorious day; the first day of my new diary and the first day in my new hometown of Baltimore. Ball-ti-more: I love the sound of that name even though it reminds me that Americans always want more with their fancy big SUV cars and their wide elasticated trousers necessary for the eating of the Such-A-Big Mac with the supersized soda. According to our training, Baltimore is near Washington D.C. and not so far from New York, which means I can both do the spying of the American government in the capital and in the Big Apple I can spy on the corrupt Wall Street and also even the United Nations. I very much like my condo, which has the 2,500 square foot and was paid for by the SVR in cash – not credit cards or subprime loans like these degenerate Americans pay with. Thank you my hardworking Russian brothers – I will strive to repay you with the value of my intelligence many times. My condo has all the benefits of modern American life, like the hot running water and also the cold running water. But I need to buy some furniture. The SVR said they will send me money for that shortly. I will be assimilating into the American lifestyle so seamlessly that nobody will suspect I am undercover Russian agent, so tomorrow I will be looking for the place to buy the mom’s apple pie, as my own mother is very far away, in Vladivostock. I am hoping also I will one day get the chance to meet my favorite Hollywood actor, the incomparable Thin Diesel though to my eyes he is not thin but rather the muscular well-built type of man. That reminds me I must join the gymnasium and not just work out but also make the useful contacts there with the towel horseplay whilst in the locker room.

March 15, 2006

I actually found a store called “Mom’s Apple Pie” but when I asked to speak to the mom they looked at me very strange like I don’t know the rear of a horse from its mouth. Then I went to the drug store, expecting to see some degenerate crack heroin dealers, but instead they just sold painkillers and cigarettes and other health products. Whilst I was there, I bought 20 menthol Kools like I know that Thin Diesel smokes. On my way home, I visited my dead letter box. Sadly, there was no money for furniture though I have plenty enough cash to keep me going for a while so long as I am happy with the air mattress on the floor, which is good enough for me but not so good for my cover as no internet entrepreneur can be sleeping on the air mattress. In the dead letter box there was an orientation DVD for my new town. It is called The Wire, seasons one, two and three. I have ordered the pizza to be delivered to quickly help establish myself as a regular ordinary joe to the people who work at the Domino’s and when it arrives I shall sit down and watch my training video using the new Xbox 360 which I bought so I can better understand the lazy decadent sofa potato American lifestyle. For the desert I ordered the Haagen Daz ice cream from the Domino’s to with the remaining slice of the apple pie I bought. The pie is v.v. tasty. There goes the doorbell – that must be my pizza!

March 16, 2006

This The Wire had me very troubled. My word, the SVR have sent me to a dangerous town with the drug dealers, crack hoes and the Stevie Nicks at the city port. I realize now my comrade agents did better with going to Arlingtown and other nicer suburbs. In The Wire the English was so bad I had to watch with the subtitles on to make any kind of sense of what half the people are saying. So bad must be the schools in this country, it makes me wonder how the Americans cannot be learning the English even. They only learn one language and yet even that is too hard for them! This is most unlike my glorious Russia where every child is guaranteed a chance to become a fine engineer making the gas pipelines or a great chess grand champion or the good-looking lady tennis player or the scientist in outer space. Though also it is true the American children sometimes grow up to go into the outer space. And Serene Williams wins a lot of the tennis but what man would want this woman? The poor American men to be faced with so much of the booty, as they call it, on Serene Williams especially but also on many other of these American women. If I was to be with Serene Williams, I would be afraid this woman would sit on me and suffocate me or else would be too eager and would pull my arms out of their sockets during the love-making like the Chewbacca in the Star Wars. No, I much prefer the Russian beautiful women like Kournikova and Sharapova. Yes, these are the women for me though I must forget the Russian women and think of getting myself the American girlfriend, maybe even like Serene Williams if that is what it takes to get the good intelligence. I must lie back and think of mother Russia and not forget my SVR sex training though I was wondering I must have been in the wrong class as I think that the sexual entrapment is better for the blonde long-legged women than it is for the hairy shorter man like me. And I must not forget, that I should go to the National Air and Space museum when I visit to Washington D.C. the first time. They have the rockets there and the spy planes too. Tonight I shall watch Thin Diesel in the Chronicles of Riddick DVD. If they remake the Star Wars, he should be playing Han Solo I think.

March 17, 2006

I saw Thin Diesel even smokes the menthol Kools in the Chronicles of Riddick though this film is made very far in the future. This made me think that the film is really much of a lie about American business. How can this be, that the Kools cigarettes, though very good, should still be sold many thousands of years from now, on planets so far away from here? It makes no sense at all. In the future, all cigarettes will be Russian, I am sure of it. Though I cannot blame the Thin Diesel who despatched his enemies and should be employed to clear up the Hamsterdam in The Wire. Tomorrow I shall go to this Hamsterdam as I have bought a new American car, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, though I understand this is only mid-size and I wanted a big car to fit in inconspicuously with the ‘more, more’ Americans. I could not afford bigger with the allowance that the SVR give me and it is only second hand though it is the limited edition with the leather seats and keyless entry. It is black which is funny as I think the previous owner was black too, not that I am the racist but in this backward country they will never have the female or black leader like we inevitably do in the mother Russia.

March 18, 2006

I shall not mention it to my SVR handlers, but I had what the Americans call the fender-bender in my new Jeep Grand Cherokee. I paid off the man I hit with some few thousand dollars to keep his mouth closed and not tell the cops. He was very upset – it may be because he was standing on the sidewalk at the time I hit him. It is true what they say that these stupid SUVs are dangerous as well as bad for the planet. Only a decadent American would buy one so they can drive on their own and have the big cup holder for the skinny latte.

March 22, 2006

A week has gone by and still the SVR has not sent me the promised money for the furniture in my condo. I do not think the air mattress is very good for my back. My momma told me not to join the SVR spy agency but I did not listen to her, and at times like this I have some sympathy for her misinformed ways in badly the need of the re-education. The SVR have been very good to me and if it takes them another week or two I will gladly suffer the air mattress though also they must send me the money to set up my internet business. I was thinking that perhaps I would do something that I know these horny degenerate American men will like – a bridal service with our fine Russian women. They not only play tennis but make the excellent housewife as well as being equally the match of men in every job and every aspect of society, as all our Russian Premiers have long agreed. I have uploaded the proposal in the photos I took and shared on the Flicker. The proposal is encoded in a photograph I took on the day I went to visiting the Hamsterdam. I was looking for the hamsters, but there were none. Later, I saw the pet shop and stopped and took my photograph with hamster. It is in this photograph I will encode the proposal to run the online Russian wedding bureau service as my cover and then put it on internet where my handlers can download and decode it. I did think about buying the hamster but this is not butch enough for the alpha testosterone American male, so I bought some exotic fish instead. I would have bought the big dog but I thought it would be inconvenient for when I need to go spying.

April 6, 2006

The SVR has finally sent me more money so I can buy furniture and set up the front organization. But they said no to the Russian online bridal service. They said they made already plenty of these online bridal companies before and all that happens is the Russian women get married and then they never hear from the women again instead of getting the sexy pillow talk secrets. That was not the point but it is too difficult to explain to them that I just want to sell the women and not keep the secrets because I will get the secrets with my own training. So now I must do something else. I will set up a business offering the online real estate instead.

April 21, 2006

I think I now know my way around Baltimore. I know the MacDonald’s and the Domino’s and I have signed up with the gym and know the good dry cleaners and have used the bus though that was a little scary when some people who looked like they were from Hamsterdam in The Wire came and sat next to me. The guys at the gym are not very friendly and tend to avoid me when I make the guy talk in the locker room. Perhaps I shall not make such good contacts there after all. I told one guy he had the good muscles like Thin Diesel but he did not even speak back. Maybe he thinks I am the homosexual like they have all over the degenerate USA, unlike Russia where we hardly ever have any of these men who like other men, although we are also completely liberated and a homosexual man is just as free to be leader of our country, unlike this prejudiced and backwards USA.

May 15, 2006

I visited Washington D.C. for the first time, under the cover of making a business trip to obtain some venture capital for my internet start-up. Nobody asked me where I was going or where I was from or why I was there, but my cover story was prepared anyway. I managed to secure myself the very useful tour of the White House where President Dub-ya Bush lives. Even the President of this country needs subtitles so you can understand what he speaks. I secretly filmed the visit though the shooting of the video was often interrupted by the tourists getting in the way and generally being so supersized. Then I went to the National Air and Space Museum and saw the very impressive rockets and spy planes and other military hardwire. I will not report it all to my handler as I am sure he knows about these already but it was good intelligence for me and helps me to understand what the American can achieve if they put their mind to work as much as they need to work their big fat booty. In the evening I went to the quite fancy restaurant but I was worried when the snooty waiter recommended I eat the Chicken Kiev. Stupid American – Kiev is in the Ukraine, not Russia. But I think maybe I worry too much as my American accent is very good and I make use of many American phrases like to make the homer simpson run, shake ya tail feather and bent out of the shape. Then to prove to the waiter I am an ordinary joe I ordered the Beef Stroganov.

August 11, 2006

The SVR has started the demanding of receipts for my expenses. I sent them a Flicker photo of my exotic fish saying that the running of the internet start-up for the real estate is expensive as is the gas for my SUV and my expenses in traveling backwards and forwards to Washington D.C. but I do not think they will listen. Mamma, before they re-educated you, you sometimes were right but I did not say so in case I encouraged your insurrection talk. Now I wish I could be more like the Thin Diesel Triple-X who snowboards down the avalanche to be the spy, but I do not see how this will help me find out anything of useful, not that they let me buy snowboard now despite my taking lessons to fit in with the people and make some useful contacts. Actually, the fitting in with the eating fat food in this country is making me feel overweight. I need more exercise but I am not going back to that gym since there was another confusion with the man in the locker room with the big muscles who thinks I am hitting on him.

October 3, 2006

Dear Diary, forgive that I neglected you this last week. I drove up to New York but left you behind. They call New York the Big Apple and I can see why because it the materialistic corrupt American society is rotten and riddled with worms right through to the core. To give example, the Statue of Liberty does not welcome the huddled masses but was closed. There was no wall on Wall Street and no village in East Village. However, I did see the musical Rent and learned more about the inevitable consequences of America’s self-gratifying decadence and its inevitable consequences.

April 7, 2007

As the Americans say, the time sure flies! It is over a year since I came to America and I have infiltrated every layer of society. I have been to the baseball games and eaten the hot dog and the corn dog and the chilli dog. Sadly, my weight loss program is not going well and I look less like Thin Diesel and more like Fat Diesel every day. Being an internet entrepreneur I do not have many opportunities to meet possible contacts face-to-face, but I do meet them at the face-to-book, which is a very useful network for the spy who also likes to talk about the important cultural issues. My Facebook friend Pedro says that Thin Diesel is no longer ‘in’ and that his movies suck and he should never get a part if they remade the Star Wars. Perhaps he is right but I still think David Hasselhoff would be perfect for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

July 7, 2007

These iPhones are brilliant devices. You can use them to record messages, take film, take pictures, and send all sorts of data over the web. I was showing one to my buddies down at the golf club. It is a shame that there is nothing really practical I can think to use it for, but it makes for a great toy to impress my pals. My interior designer friend came around and said he did not much like my drapes and that they were badly out of fashion. Sadly, I do not think I will get money for new drapes though I try to explain to my handler that all Americans redesign their apartment at least once a year. At least, this is what my interior designer friend says.

November 20, 2007

My handler will be so pleased with me today! I got some really great intelligence that will surely be more than worth the time I have spent to get this deep undercover into American society. Pedro introduced me to an internet friend of his that likes to remain anonymous, and he only ever calls himself the ‘grassy knoll-man’ which is some kind of reference to the events in 1963 when Our ‘Enry Cooper knocked Muhammed Ali out cold though the evidence has almost all been covered up since. Grassy knoll-man says the Dubya Bush deliberately was in league with the Saudis over the Florida recounts. His arguments were pretty long and hard to follow, but I summarized it and wrote it up in my notebook, which I left in the dead letter box.

November 21, 2007

Someone brushed past me on my way out of Wal-Mart today. When I got home, there was a note in my jacket pocket. It read in Russian: “no more of the stupid internet conspiracy stories, please”.

June 11, 2008

It was disappointing that we never succeeded with the IPO of the internet real estate business, but today we finally closed the deal and sold it to Facebook for an undisclosed sum. An undisclosed sum of two million dollars! That is not bad, since the only sales that were made on the site were from comrade SVR agents, looking for somewhere with a bit more room for the kids or a pool in the backyard.

June 12, 2008

My SVR handler has demanded I pay over all money I made from selling my internet real estate business. He said I am not in US to play at being businessman and that I have cost the Russian state far more than two million dollars with all the internet advertising I bought for my phony company. Mamma, you were right. What little gratitude I get for my long years of suffering and hard work infiltrating the materialistic and mechanical American society, which is v.v. like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, except it has a rusted, broken heart.

August 28, 2008

A man at the Wal-Mart asked me: “do the pelicans fly south for the winter?” I responded, as I was trained to, with the response phrase “no, but the burritos taste like tostadas if you use enough tabasco.” Then he looked at me like I was completely mad. It turns out that it was not I that was mad, he was the man who was completely mad, and not a good comrade like I first thought. It was very lucky for me that he was mad. If he had not been so mad, he might have blown my cover. Instead, he went back to searching for food in the trash, like the typical poor ordinary working American this country turned its back on. I was so upset. All I could think to do was to go home and plan a whole new look for my apartment to get my mind off it. Then I ordered Chinese to be delivered. Tomorrow I can look forward to the release of Thin Diesel’s new film, Babylon A.D.

August 29, 2008

I drove to the multiplex and saw Thin Diesel in his new movie, Babylon A.D. which was very disappointing. He looks no more muscly and, more important, the film shows the Russia of the future as full of mobsters, whilst New York is safe and nice. I think Diesel must have been completely corrupted by the materialistic society that surrounds him in un-holy-wood. The only good thing was that there was a deal where you get an extra large popcorn and soda free when you ordered tortillas.

November 27, 2008

Congratulations are in order to President-elect Obama, and congratulations are in order to me. I found out that Obama was the original owner of my worn out old Jeep Grand Cherokee. Now I can auction it for a profit, but I will be sure not to let those cheapskates at the SVR find out about the money I make. I have made so many sacrifices in the name of the mother country. I even put on weight like Robert The Nero did when playing the title role in The Rage in Bill. For me, putting on weight to look more American is the proof of my dedication to mother Russia, but my handler says I am a fat lard-ass that needs to shape up. Forget him. I shall celebrate by ordering some take out and treating myself to a new pair of pants tomorrow.

February 14, 2009

Momma, what sacrifices I have made for my homeland. This country is no good for meeting women and it is so expensive to take these American women on dates. They eat so much! They expect me to be muscly! The internet dating is not going well. In Russia I would be surrounded by wonderful blond tennis-playing graduates. But in this country I am too poor to attract the good-looking women. Momma, I wish I had listened to you… you were right that the SVR are no good as employers and I will regret working for them. I shall show them the power of intelligence. When I am finished in this country, I will bury this diary where nobody will find it. That will show them there are some secrets they will never never never uncover.

February 15, 2009

It seems the SVR have been monitoring me with a hidden camera in my pen. They have been reading my diary entries all these years. Forgive me brother SVR comrades, for my rash words. You are truly heroes of the Russian Republic and without… wait… (scribble)… is my pen running out? I think it must…

February 16, 2009

I drove out of state and bought the cheapest pencil I could find. Now let the SVR try to spy on my secret diary. For all the complaining they do that I do not spy enough, you would think they would spy on somebody other than me. But I should have been smarter. I should have written this diary in invisible ink. Of course, writing in invisible ink is so hard. I mean, you cannot see what you are writing, which makes the writing very scribbly and difficult to read afterwards.

August 12, 2009

There was something of a breakthrough today. One of the guys at the golf club knows a guy who knows a guy who is assistant secretary of defense. There will be rendezvous – he will make up a fourth for our game next week.

August 19, 2009

It turns out the guy was the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. I wanted to know about gulf war syndrome but he would only talk about ingrown toenails and the alarming prevalence of genital herpes amongst American troops. Still, I will report this information to base, as it may be useful.

June 26, 2010

I could not believe it. Four years I am deep undercover and as I close in a breakthrough, my handler tells me to come home. My American girlfriend’s niece is friends with the brother of the weekend sous chef at the White House. This is my big chance. At last I can find out how Obama likes his eggs, and much more besides. But my handler says I have had my chance and the rotten SVR will not pay my bills for elasticated trousers and Thin Diesel DVDs any more. I am so deep undercover that nobody would ever know I even came from Russia, never mind that I am working to reveal the truth that lies hidden under the USA’s rotten underbelly. But I am not going to go home. I will show them…

June 27, 2010

Dear Diary, I am going to change my identity once again, and nobody will ever know that I, Mikhail Rostov, who once changed his name to Bobby Darren, was not only a deep undercover agent, but that I subsequently went on the run from the SVR and changed my name again, to Darren Roberts. I have dug up the stash of cash I kept back from selling the real estate company and have my fake passports too, just in case. All the techno gizmos and shortwave radios, I will leave them behind. But wait, who is this coming up the driveway? Men in suits and dark glasses, carrying guns. Would you believe my luck?!? They must have found out I understated the earnings on my tax return…