From back pain to insanity

Washington is all about politics politics politics. But ordinary life also goes on where Obama's future, if he has one, is not the main topic of conversation. I approached a couple the other day in one of the prettiest sidestreets in Old Town Alexandria. He was standing on his raised porch and she, quite an attractive woman , was standing on the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) looking up at him. A sort of Romeo and Juliet in reverse. As I got closer I was imagining the most likely conversation, perhaps, "Darling, don't just stand there, come in and let me cook you a souffle," or "Have I ever told you how beautiful your eyes are." In fact, when I got near enough, the charming gentleman was saying: "I've gotta put the trash out for tomorrow." Hey man, what's with you?
 
Television adverts for new medicines remain one of the funniest shows in town. They go something like this: "Chuck Ferrari had back pain so bad he couldn't work for months or lift up his children, but now his life is changed. He took Avarazismell (they're always called something ridiculous) and in just two weeks he was back at work and playing with his kids." A picture is then shown of Chuck throwing a large kid into the air, failing to catch him and they both fall in a heap on the ground, but he gets up laughing and smiling at the camera. Then comes the bad bit. "Avarazismell could change your life too, but if you suffer from frequent colds it could cause your blood to stop flowing leading to death, if you suffer from diabetes, it's likely that one of your legs will fall off, and if you are taking any other form of medicine, whether Aspirin or throat lozenges, you should see your doctor because the combination of Avarazismell and other medicines could lead to insanity." Then the advert reverts to Chuck. "For Chuck, Avarazismell was a life-changer. See your doctor to see if it could change your life too, always read the small print." It comes from living in a highly litigious country where everyone sues.
 
God bless America.

Feeefty feeefty

Travelling with Robert Gates part two. This time in some style. All the way in his Air Force One type plane, reasonably comfy seats, attentive staff, not to my every needs, but food and water etc. Not much sleep, no lying down beds, just airline-type seats though a bit bigger. Himself turned up on a couple of occasions to brief us about Libya, him sitting in a large chair facing us as we all gathered round like expectant pigeons in Trafalgar Square. The trip this time was more exotic. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were on the itinerary, instead it was Russia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, all in six days. But Libya was on all our minds, in fact except for a brief flutter of different news in Israel - rockets landing from Gaza  - I wrote exclusively about Libya. It turned out to be a very expensive way to get information, my bill for the six days was extortionate, largely due to our charming hotel hosts in St Petersburg and Moscow charging for two nights on each occasion although we only stayed for one in each establishment. Why? Because Mrr Eevans you arrived urrly and we gave you yourr rroom straightaway, so we charge you for twoo nights. But... No buts Mrr Eevans, you're in Rossia now, this is the way we do beesness.

To relieve the frantic rushing around, going from one meeting and briefing to another, largely ignoring whether we were in St Petersburg, Moscow, Cairo, Tel Aviv or Ramalla, the personalities on the trip helped to provide some comic moments. At the start of the trip standing at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, waiting for the rest of the journalist clan to turn up, a bloke I hadn't met before approached. "Hi, I'm from the Wall Street Journal," I said hi and then asked why Adam wasn't coming. Adam Entous is the paper's Pentagon man, a nice guy and I knew he was coming on the trip. "Well," said the columnist, "Adam is a reporter, I'm a columnist." Well quite. They both came and in fact I sat with them on the plane journeys and got to know The Columnist quite well.  He had an amusing view on life. We were all in the hotel in St.Petersburg after dinner, waiting for a briefing from one of Gates's senior advisers. I had eaten at the gloriously named National Vodka Museum with about eight others, Mr Columnist had eaten elsewhere with a few others. We swapped food notes. Various people spoke of delicious blinies, pancakes with salmon caviar and cream etc, then a voice from an armchair said: "I had bear." It was The Columnist. After the briefing, I asked him why he had eaten bear and what was it like. "Well," he said, "It was a choice between bear or duck. I asked the waitress what the bear was like. She replied, 'Feeefty feeefty'. I asked her what that meant. She replied:'Feeefty times eez goood and feeefty times eez not so gooood' ".

The waitress asked: "So, you will have the duck?" "No, the bear," he replied.  I asked: "Was it gooood or not so gooood?" "It was disgusting," he said. For the rest of the trip, we ate out and briefed out on that wonderful line from the waitress. "So, what did you think of the briefing from the Russian Defence Minister?" "I thought it was feeefty feeefty, ok in parts, otherwise rubbish." Despite his culinary adventure, The Columnist suffered no after-affects. A venerable columnist of the Washington Post was also on the trip. I think he gets invited to them all. He is a favoured writer. Such a serious dude, always engaged in very quiet, very earnest discussions, always with his arms folded and his head tilted to one side, and such elegant sunglasses sported in Tel Aviv where the sun shone.  A good bloke, very courteous and polite, but I've never heard him speak above a sotto voce. Everything is turned inwards to go with the cerebral arms-folded persona. The "Bear" columnist had a nice line in humour and didn't even blow his top when, after interviewing Gates on the last leg of the trip, from Jordan to Washington, he took too long to write his piece and when he went to file it on the plane, the Internet had gone down and he missed his deadline. Now that's pretty cool. I mean not blowing his head off in frustration. He just said, oh well, they'll probably use it on Monday instead of tomorrow (Sat). That's the difference between a reporter and a columnist. A reporter would never be allowed to miss his deadline. He was right though. The Wall Street Journal did use it on the Monday. It was a very good read. No mention of bear though.
PS
The blog picture, for those curious about the background, is of me standing by the frozen Neva River in St Petersburg.

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Yessir, yes maam

Americans are very polite, very careful, very obliging when confronted with verbal diarrhoea from the person sitting next to them on the Metro/bus, and in Washington, always labelled. You just don't see anyone walking the streets without an identity wonga flapping around their belly or attached to their chests, unless of course they're tourists from Ohio, Alberqueque, Florida or name your town/state in which case they have no labels other than the statutory tourist US garb, shorts and tops for both men and women, the women often in very short shorts never mind the legs, and they never know exactly where they're going and always have to ask someone with an identity label sitting or standing on the Metro whether they get off at Metro Center, Foggy Bottom or Faragut West to visit the Spy Museum/National Portrait Gallery/White House/nearest McDonalds etc.

Tourists and labelled Washington staffers thrown together, the latter buried in their BlackBerrys and I-Pads and the tourists just wanting to chatter about everything. Here's one I listened to the other day: "A'm fraam Ohio, me and ma hursband Chuck, that's heem over therr, he comes fraam Nebraska and has a seester still living therr, she's never been to Warrshington though we've tried to persuade herr but it's her leegs, her carsin jerst hates Warrshington, says it's full of wonks and people eatin salads but I don't think that's true we had a good chile harttdarg in Clarendon but now we're off to the Spy Mooseum but don't know whether it's near the White House or not, we'd like to do both in one day, ma leegs are ok but Chuck has a prarblem with you know whaat, no not his leegs, his you know whaat, isn't that right, Chuck, you can't go for too larng without, hmm, visitin... so we have to time it, and I reckon we can do the Spy Museum, they'll have rest rooms and then we can go to the White House which I guess won't have rest rooms, at least not ones we can use, this Obaama hasn't done murch has he, I mean he prarmised change and Ohio looks just the same to me and Chuck says Nebraska hasn't changed either. It's another reason why his seester won't think of comin to Warrshington. She blames Obama for her leegs, she can't get Medicare to do anythin, they say they don't do leegs, not under Obamacare, which seems kinda unfair, but we're lookin forrard to seeing the Spy Mooseum, is Obama in the White House, I'd like to see the darg, we have a darg, we're only here for three days."

The polite bit comes on the oddest of occasions. Waiting at a Pentagon lift to take me to the 4th floor, a uniformed chappie steps out of the lift and says: "Excuse me." I wasn't anywhere near him. Walking down the long corridor towards Room 4E800 on the 4th floor, another uniformed bloke comes out of his office. "Excuse me." I'd already passed him when he said it.  Robert Gates, Defence Secretary and former CIA Director, says "Yes Sir" when pointing at me to ask a question at a press conference. I like that. A bit of respect. Pestering the CIA to meet me for lunch, a representative replies: "I'm so sorry we haven't yet managed a date, thank you for your patience, if our two countries succeeded in launching Operation Overlord together I'm sure we can arrange a lunch in due course." I replied, heading the email: Operation Overlunch.

Another incident on The Bus - ie my bus(not the Old Town trolley) that takes me from the bottom of King Street, Old Town, Alexandria, up to the Metro. Hey, it's a long walk! Bus stops to let on a big guy in a wheelchair. It's an elaborate process. The driver presses a button and a special lift is lowered to the pavement, the wheelchair guy backs into it, it shunts upwards and then he has to reverse into the bus towards the ticket machine which requires $1.50 to be inserted into a slot. But of course he is facing outwards with his back to the machine. I'm afraid we all watched as he struggled to insert the relevant money by twisting painfully round, but after a few attempts he gave up, stood up, turned round, threw the money into the receptacle and sat down again. "It's a miracle!" we all cried.
 

Burgers and top secret files

This post is a bit out of date. Went on a trip with Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, in August/September last year to Iraq and Afghanistan. But a few recollections.


What's it like travelling with a superpower Secretary and his team of superpower civil servants and military? Well, first off, we get our own Air Force One plane - probably Air Force Three, but you get the picture - for the main part of the journey but then switch to a C17 Globemaster super transporter for flying within Iraq and then from Iraq to Afghanistan. It's decked out to carry VIPs and the like (I and 17 American newshounds are the like in this case). The Secretary spends the whole of the C17 flights sitting inside a steel box, like a giant garden shed at one end of the plane. No doubt with hot and cold running water, a Queen's size bed, DVDs, leather armchairs and a phone to speak to the President. 
 
No sign of Himself on the C17 trips, but plenty to watch from my more humble seat along the side. Everything is about pecking order. One poor Pentagon official pretty high up the ladder was forced to sit in the second row of a line of seats in the middle of the plane. Front row with a scattering of generals had masses of leg room, but his second row seat was so jammed up against the front row - think Easyjet and then halve the space - that he spent each journey with his legs and feet twisted and contorted while he tried to read the endless verbiage in the special Top Secret File given to all the officials to consume before they landed anywhere, so that they were fully prepared to emit verbiage when they got there. He looked bored the whole journey from Iraq to Afghanistan and in total agony. When he was delivered a meal to eat he spent at least ten minutes wondering how on earth he was going to have the elbow room to use his knife and fork to poke at the burger - yes of course a burger - while continuing to read the secret stuff written by teams of super-intelligent people back in Washington. So much for being a high-up defense official.
 
 A man with more leg room and sitting in another section, facing my row of seats was a large official with a protuding belly. He was also engrossed in the Top Secret material and when his burger arrived, he put his file down momentarily, piled the burger, tomato, lettuce, mustard, tomato sauce and mayonese into one huge chunk and took a mighty bite, the various sauces squeezing out in all directions and sending splashes of red and cream onto his shirt. He didn't notice. In between subsequent bites, like a shark grabbing the unfortunate leg of a swimmer off Miami Beach, the official - even higher up the food chain - picked up the file he had placed next to him and continued to read. After each bite and when he wanted to turn a page he would briefly lick his right thumb and forefinger to facilitate the turning of the page. Each lick, and presumably each top of the page must have tasted of burger, tomato sauce, mustard and mayonese. He devoured both the huge burger and the Top Secret File with the sort of concentration and devotion normally associated with hyenas scavenging on the carcass of a hunted-down gazelle. After he finished his banquet he was summoned to A Meeting with The Secretary whose eating habits were fortunately not on public view. Being a former Director of the CIA he would have known everything in the secret file anyway, so he probably enjoyed his burger while watching the New York Yankees losing again. 
 
While the C17 ride was perfectly comfortable, this was a military plane, so no carpets anywhere, just a mass of unexpected floor rivets, and a deadly rail system under the seats in which our scrunched-up senior official was sitting which moved the seats back and forth when the plane took off and landed. The rail was deadly because the end bit stuck up - right in front of me - and presented to the unknowing passer-by an instant metal banana skin. ie everyone from assistant secretaries of defense to the New York Times reporter to the Voice of America broadcaster, tripped up every time they went by. It provided comic moments every five minutes, not a bad bit of free entertainment on long journeys. The only ones who knew to sidestep this jagged piece of metal were the military of course - and me who spotted the problem as soon as the very senior official with the tummy nearly fell into my lap, spluttering apologies and tomato sauce into my face. Incidentally, before he went off to brief The Secretary, Mr Secretary as they call him, he had seen the splash of red on his white shirt and spent five minutes dipping his serviette into a glass of water and sponging himself down. He did a pretty good job although Secretary Gates must have wondered why one of his most top advisers had a large damp patch on his shirt.
 
The mass of officials and journalists, exhausted and overfed, landed at 11pm at some remote Iraqi airbase,  only to find of course the time difference meant it was 6.30am the next day, so straight to work, on to helicopters and down to Ramadi in western Iraq to speak to troops and get hot - 130 degrees and rising. Gates had a different baseball hat for each occasion. Then onto the C17 for Baghdad for the handover ceremony - from combat mission to advise and assist mission (a new lexicon of language is now de riguer in Iraq, the word combat is banned). During the ceremony which went on too long - the speeches getting more and more verbose and more and more unrealistic  - I became riveted by the name on the back of the American soldier standing in front of me. It was Wyrizchkistiwan, or something like that and it reminded me of a wonderful BBC comedy show called the Fast Show which had a sketch about the FBI - or Feebi as Paul Whitehouse, my favourite comic pronounced it. He comes in and says: "Can I introduce you to Sergeant Wzichigh...Wwyzwz...Wyzziff, Sergeant Wozychi.. etc etc.  He never gets it right. Gates looked pretty cool the whole time and must have shaken the hands of more than 1,000 soldiers by the time he had finished the trip - his tradition is to meet about 300 soldiers on each part of the trip, shake their hands and given them a coin. The poor officials, still clutching their Top Secret files, and sweating in their suits, flak jackets and helmets, looked like versions of Quasimodo by the time they climbed aboard for the journey home. I still looked immaculate of course in my smart blue suit, and polished shoes, well ok they were a little dusty.
 

The name's Churchill, Lisa Churchill

I am constantly amazed at the obsession Americans have for their antecedents. They never say, "I'm an American". They say:"I'm half Irish, a quarter Scottish, a tenth Welsh and......" The other day, I was lunching a contact, a Brit, in a restaurant and our waiter was a short stumpy fellow with a ginger sort-of beard and floppy ginger hair. When I put in my order, he asked the usual predictable question: "Where you fraam, are you Bridish?" I said I was. He then said he was Italian. I thought, yeah right, you look as about Italian as my lunch companion looks Venezuelan. The waiter wanted to tell me more. "My middle name's Luigi," he said, to underline his claim to be of good Mafia stock. I cheekily asked what his first name was. He hesitated a second or two and then replied: "Chuck". Well quite. Debate over. You, Chuck, are an American. In a wine bar near The Times office, I had an hour or two to kill and some food to eat prior to meeting Nicky at the airport. A waitress came up to take my drink order, and when I asked for a glass of white wine, she was astute enough to realise I didn't come from Nebraska. "Are you fraam England?" Sighing deeply, I said she was right. No kidding, this is the conversation that followed. "D'you know what ma name is?" "Eh, no, I don't." "Have a guess." "O'Connell, Macpherson, Jones???" I tried, thinking Irish, Scottish, Welsh. She looked triumphantly at me. "No, it's CHURCHILL. Aam so proud!" Well good for you, now can I please have a menu!

I've discovered one way to confuse American drivers in Washington. They can't cope with jaywalkers. In London, Paris, Rome etc,you step off the pavement and weave your way between the moving cars, with an instinctive understanding between driver and pedestrian, the former wanting to continue his way without killing anyone and the latter intent on crossing the road and catching the eye of each driver to let them know that everything is under control. In Washington DC you can't do that. The lights are green for the oncoming traffic, I step off the pavement, having spotted a gap large enough between the oncoming cars to engineer a quickish manoeuvre to the middle of the road, but it creates panic. The first car in line does an emergency stop and the driver honks his horn with indignation. No instinctive understanding, just total bewilderment. I now adopt the matador approach. I bow slightly and sweep my right or left arm in the air in the manner of a matador playing with a bull and mouth "Ole". Still causes confusion but the word is now getting round Washington. There's this crazy Brit pretending to be a matador, just drive around him. Hurray!!

You'd have thought following the terrible shooting in Tucson where six were killed, including a child, and a Congresswoman was severely injured, that America might at last wake up to its appalling gun laws and do something. But no, just the opposite. After the shootings in Dunblane and Hungerford, the government of the day brought in bans on pistols and automatic guns and everyone felt a bit safer. But in the US of A, the majority of people believe the following: more guns mean less crime. Even Obama has failed totally to do anything meaningful about guns. He wrote an oped in some minor newspaper in Atlanta this weekend in which he proudly affirmed the right of all Americans to carry guns in accordance with the Fifth Amendment and added that he had even expanded this right by allowing guns to be carried in national parks and wild life reserves. Then he urged his fellow Americans to consider tightening the laws so that nutters and mental screwballs couldn't walk into a gunshop and come away with an automatic assault rifle. Well boo to you Mr Obooma. I'm indebted to a columnist in The New York Times for this piece of Wild Westery. Since the Tucson shootings, a state representative in Florida has introduced a bill that would impose fines of up to $5 million on any doctor who asks a patient whether he or she owns a gun. WHAT!! Well actually the bill apparently has more to do with Obooma's health care reforms than gun laws but I won't complicate things more than they need to be. And more and more states are now considering laws that would prohibit colleges and universities from barring guns on campus. "It's about people having the right to personal protection," said Daniel Crocker, southwest regional director for.....wait for it......Students for Concealed Carry on Campus!!! This is an organisation of students dedicated to opening up schools to more weaponry. By the way, for those of you confused by the word "concealed", let me enlighten you. In God Bless America you can get a licence to carry a concealed weapon. I met an American female journalist the other day who runs an online newspaper. We got talking about things and she told me about an incident outside her flat where a drunken male was misbehaving by her front door. She then revealed she had a licence to carry a concealed weapon. She also had a licence for other guns, presumably not concealed. I asked what guns she had. "I have three pistols, an automatic assault rifle, a sawn-off shotgun, my grandfather's 12-bore........" This innocent-looking female had an armoury of weapons in her Washington DC flat. I didn't dare ask what she did to the drunk outside her door but I presume she gave him both barrels and some!!

Stay safe, get yourself a gun. Remember, more guns, less crime. God bless America.

 Observations and eavesdropping in Washington DC

*A long queue to get into the Pentagon through the main security office where bags have to go through the x-ray machine and people are checked for metal. A shapely black woman walks through the metal-detector frame and sets it off. She is sent back and forth and still the machine doesn't like her. She is wearing tight trousers and a black top. The black security man is getting exasperated. "Lift your pants, Ma'am." She looks doubtful. "Ma'am, lift your pants." Still no response. "Ma'am, I want to see your legs." "Don't we all," muttered one of those waiting in the queue. She got it, at last, and hitched up her trousers to reveal her ankles. No sign of anything dubious there. "Okay, Ma'am, you can go through."

*Admiral Eric Olson, the first US Navy Seal to be given command of the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, desribes the direct action his men get involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan: "Manhunting, killing, capturing the enemy, or habeas grabas." He had been introduced by the chairman of the conference as having a reputation "tougher than a woodpecker's lips."

*At a "gaggle" (a gathering of journalists) in the office of the then head of the Press Office at the Pentagon, following a background briefing about military aid to Pakistan, all the assembled US hacks, broadcasters and print, are outraged that it was on background and not on the record. A female reporter from one of the networks, cries: "What am I going to tell my viewers? They will want to know why this was on background. I shall have to write that it was on background because the subject was so sensitive. Would I be right to say that?"

"I'm not telling you why it was on background, other than to say that some briefings are on background and some are on the record, and this one was on background," the longstanding head of press honcho replies wearily.

"But I've got to be able to inform my viewers why this one was on background. I don't understand why you can't give us the reason," she persisted.

"All I'm saying is that this was on background. If you don't like that then you don't have to come," the official says.

Get a life, lady, he should have added.

*I get emailed to me all the twitterings from the White House pool reporters who report every cough, spit and golf swing of The President. What a life they lead. Obama is always referred to as POTUS (work it out). Here's an average type of dispatch.

"POTUS had a nine-holer this morning, and nearly got a birdie on the fourth, Went for a hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains with FL (First Lady), told to say this wasn't a holiday, just a short break from work. Retired early, around 9.30pm, said he had a lot to do the next day,  North Korea, Iran, the Republicans in general and Sarah Palin in particular - 'Hell, Veep (Vice-Pres) said on TV he liked her, fancied her moose-ass more like' - Secret Service guys - Bob, Bill, George and Sally - in position for the night. Nite nite Mr President, SIR."

*Love the Washington Examiner, a free sheet and excrutiatingly anti-Obama and right wing, so great fun to read for a laugh. Been a lot of stuff about a bunch of Navy SEALs who have been up before the judge for beating up nasty Iraqi types after the murder of four American contractors some time ago. Latest story is the acquittal of a SEAL who stood by while fellow SEAL did the beating. Headline: "Navy SEAL of Acquittal, Not Guilty of giving boo-boo to captured terror suspect." Doncha just love it.

*Walking down King's Street in Old Town Alexandria, my home town, I spot a chef-looking type standing outside a restaurant with a plastic bucket and a protruding spoon with something on the end of it. "Frozen custard, taste it!" Not on your Nellie mate, thanks all the same. Looked more like frozen Polyfilla.

Mad daaaargs and Englishmen

I'm a Brit in Washington DC, working as the Pentagon Correspondent for The Times (of London), you have to add that here because of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times etc. This is the start of my odds and sods reflections on the American way of life.


You have to know that dogs play a huge part in the American life. I mean huge. We love our dogs but these guys and girls here just luuurv their dargs. Very common sight in Old Town Alexandria where I live are women of a certain age clutching tiny dogs to their bosoms, more often than not attired in sweetie little ribbons - the dogs not the bosoms . But get this for a conversation the other day, and to read this you have to do so in a long Virginia drawl.

Woman and child approaches man and woman with large dog.
"Oh I just luuurv your daaarg."
"Uhun."
"Can I stroke your daarg?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"What d'you call her?"
"George W, Ma'am."
"Well aaright, it was nice meeting you folks, now you have a nice day d'yhear."

Overheard on the Metro going up to DC: Two women, one sitting, one standing, one black and one white.
"Hey, how's your niece?'
"She's guuurd."
Long silence.
"How's your Maaam?'
"She's guuurd, she's with my brother."
"I didn't know you have a brother."
"It's how come I gotta niece."
Priceless.

Another gem. Military-type man walks into the main "restroom" in the foyer of the Pentagon with his young son, and standing side by side before the relevant troughs, as it were, nothing seems to be happening in the son's department. After a while the father says: "Fire when you're ready buddy."


I have to say I'm in love. With American firetrucks. They are something else, two-tone, scarlett red on the bottom and white on the top and shiny shiny chrome everywhere. And they make a noise like a pregnant elephant. Wow, I'm going to have join the Fire Service or buy me one of these babies and have it parked outside my house so folks can pass by and say: "Can I stroke your firetruck?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Do you have a name for your firetruck?"
"George W, Ma'am."