Good shot, old chap!

Sorry for the long gap. I have just returned to the US of A from three weeks in England where I played one game of cricket. I mention this because cricket is to be the subject of this blog. For those not in love with the game I will not be at all hurt if you give this missive a miss and carry on with your life as if this blog never appeared on your computer. But of course it's more than about cricket, it's about life, about different cultures, about tea, travelling to the countryside, meeting fellow human beings, focusing on a small red leather ball rather than deeper issues such as the relentless death toll in Afghanistan, the diving US economy, the desperation of America's first black President, famine in Somalia and the Arab Spring which turns out to be an Arab Winter. That little red leather ball has left its mark on my whole life, from about the age of seven, and, on this occasion, has left a very angry-looking bruise on my right shin which, in the humid heat of Washington DC, appears to be getting angrier each day and transforming my perfectly decent leg into a swollen yellow and black lump. Gangrene, I have no doubt, will set in in due course. 

Cricket has always been a dangerous sport which is partly, I guess, why I have always enjoyed it. Danger in one form or other, though without meaning to sound too Hollywood dramatic, has played a part in my life since 1991 when I covered my first of many wars, learning the art of dealing with maniacal militia, banditos and insurgents, dodging bullets, artillery shells and mortar rockets - and glue-besotted child soldiers with long-bladed knives and Kalashnikovs in Sierra Leone. I'm digressing, apologies, but it has just struck me that cricket has much in common with knowing when to duck and when to run in war zones. The ball hurtling and swinging towards you from 22 yards away - it always seems much closer when the bowler puts his front foot right on the crease, a centimetre from being called "No Ball!" -  brings back memories of mortar rockets literally - or liderally as the Americans would say - flying over my head in Bosnia, AK47 rounds skipping between our convoy of cars driving in the mountains outside Tusla in Bosnia, dodging the sniper's bullets at Vitez at sniper's alley, diving to safety from rampaging Russian BMP armoured personnel carriers at Pristina airport in Kosovo, stepping daintily between the unexploded cluster bombs and rockets in the Kuwaiti desert from the 1991 Iraq invasion, cowering from the withering Taleban fire across the poppy fields in Helmand, and looking in the eyes of the deadly Shia fanatics in southern Iraq and waiting for the next explosion in Baghdad. Oh yes, there are a lot of similarities with cricket! 

But I had not set out to inject warfare into my musings about cricket. This is about a game I have loved all my life - and partly feared. That terrible waiting for the bails to fall when it's your turn to bat, that first over when everyone on the field expects you to bowl on the spot and get wickets, that moment of panic when a ball is skied and it's coming towards you from a great height and the whole match depends on you grasping it in your hands, that occasion when one of your sons is plumb LBW (when the ball smacks the pads in front of the wicket - leg before wicket) and, as the umpire, your index finger on your right hand knows instinctively that it should be raised boldly into the air to declare he's OUT. but remains in the pocket which causes outrage from the bowler and the whole of the opposition, including the man on the boundary at cover point. There are things that are more important in life than giving out your son LBW. 

Anyway, cricket is in my blood and there I was, living as I am in the US of A, thinking that perhaps my cricketing days were over. The fear factor had taken precedence over the love factor. Perhaps I could survive by never playing again, I could just umpire or make the tea or sit in a deckchair and ruminate on the moments of glory - not many - when I returned to the pavilion a hero in the team's mind, having completed a 50 or taken five wickets or engineered a wondrous acrobatic twirl to catch an impossible catch. I know cricket is played in America, I know there are clubs everywhere where Brit ex-pats, Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis continue the traditions of the game, but I was afraid to offer my services in case I fell short. I can fall short amongst my dear cricketing friends in England, they would sympathise, but in America playing for a hot-shot team of 20-year-old fast-bowling Indians, this ageing cricket-lover might soon be patronised as the old English goat who thinks he can play but who can no longer contribute much, apart from filling up the numbers. You see, the Fear Factor had taken over. Also, I can't see America as a cricket-loving nation. They do baseball. As someone delightfully said to me: "Cricket, that's on horseback, right?" A friend in Philadelphia tried to explain the rules of baseball and I reckon I made a pretty good fist of it, but I still don't get it. Where is the elegance, the sweet late cut, the flick off the legs, the gentle push through the covers, the sweep (or attempted sweep in my case), the snick through the slips that has the fielders scrabbling desperately for air? Only the mighty clout over mid-wicket's head bears any comparison.

So there I was, standing at the wicket, as one of the openers (!), awaiting the first ball I had faced for two years. It was a moment of acute introspection, worrying about failing, imagining I had forgotten how to watch the ball and choose the right stroke, anticipating a clump on my unhelmeted head. Humiliation was upon me. But I thought, as the bowler marked his spot and began to run up looking determined and menacing, at least if I was out first ball I could take satisfaction from the realisation that my time as a player was over, that age had caught up on  me, that I was never much good anyway, and that there was more to life than cricket. The bowler bowled, I watched the ball as it curved towards me and then suddenly veered away. I reached forward and struck it sweetly, not quite a late cut, but a cut of some nobility, and the little read leather ball swept away towards the boundary for four.  My first shot for two years was a boundary. I had stared the bowler (gunman) in the face, I had shaken off the fear and had dealt with his venom with finesse. "Good shot," said my fellow opener. A faint sound of clapping could be heard from the pavilion steps. 

I was back in the cricketing groove I had known and loved for so many years. Let it be recorded that I scored 30 runs. The Fear Factor had gone, the Humiliation had been spared, the adrenalin was flowing, and when I was finally out, heaving a full toss into the hands of Mid On, it didn't matter. I was on the scoresheet. There's a phrase in journalism when a reporter is at his desk and his hands are idle. "Not bothering the printers today?" Well, on that bright, sunny day on that cricket pitch near Marlow, I had bothered the scorer - with a row of 4s and 2s and singles. I was back! Today as I sit in my quaint house in Old Town Alexandria, I have my spectacular bruise to remind me of that afternoon. I might even go looking for a cricketing team in Washington, although it sounds like I may first have to learn to ride a horse!

I know nothing!

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The Pentagon is about to be hit by change at the top. Robert Gates, long-suffering Defence Secretary, is desperate at the age of 67 to retire after serving eight presidents during his 40-year career. He has a fancy lakeside house in Washington State and is heading off on June 30. At least some people know when to retire!! He is being replaced by a man six years older than him, Leon Panetta, CIA Director. It's a great swap, a former CIA Director (Gates) handing over to the present CIA Director.

 I have it on good authority that the following conversation took place between Gates and Panetta the other day. The dialogue is based around the famous quotation from their predecessor at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, who, you may recall, once said at a press conference: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as you know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."

Thank you, Mr Rumsfeld, for this gem, always worth repeating. Anyway, here are Mr Gates and Mr Panetta facing each other at the Pentagon, two weeks before Mr Gates is out of here and yippee to the house in Washington and Mr Panetta is why on earth did I say yes to the President, now I'm stuck with this dreadful place for the next two or three years.

"So Leon, what do you want to know?" asks Bob Gates.

"I already know what you know," Leon replies smugly.

"Yeah, but you don't know what only I know."

"Bob, I'm the Director of the CIA, I know everything you think you know and probably what you don't know."

"You can't know what I don't know because even I don't know what I don't know although I've got a pretty good idea."

"Ok, I don't know what you think you don't know but I do know what I know you don't know."

"So how can I help?"

"Hm, how the hell am I going to cut $400 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next 12 years, as the President is demanding?"

"I don't know."

"And how are we going to get out of Afghanistan by 2014 and declare a victory?"

"Haven't a clue."

"And is there any point in Nato?"

"***** Nato."

"Well thanks, Bob, that was very useful."

"My pleasure. Anything else you want to know?"

Leon shakes his head and the two men shake hands. Being Defence Secretary of the only superpower on the planet is tough.

Something entirely different. Musical events in Old Town Alexandria. The world's worst musicians perform every weekend on the streets of Old Town and I am close to a plan to eliminate the lot. My top victims are: the saxophonist who stands on the corner of Royal Street where I live and King St, the main street, with a bucket in front of him and plays two tunes, only two tunes. I will NEVER give him a cent.  The harpist, a strange Romanian gypsy woman who sits on a rock overlooking the Potomac River, plucking at a harp and singing so quietly I feel like saying, "SING UP, LADY", but I don't because she's total rubbish. Her plucking fingers bear absolutely no relation to the unlyrical vocal meanderings claimed to be a song, it's like someone singing God Save the Queen while the band is playing Moon River. The old boy who sits on the steps of a shopping courtyard and strums at the guitar. I say strums but actually he feathers the strings so that to hear it you need to place your earhole one centimetre from the instrument, and apparently he sings as well but whatever sound is coming from his throat makes my gypsy harpist sound like Mick Jagger at his most raucous. The drummer, well forget drums and forget drumming, he sits all day on the pavement with two empty buckets in front of him and just hits them with a sort of drumstick. It's unbearably awful, lacking any sort of rythm. There's also a guitarist who stands up outside a restaurant. But he CAN'T play the guitar. He has never learned how it works. He might as well sit on a bucket and blow a whistle. I'm going to tell him that next time I walk by. Anyway, secret plans to eliminate the lot.

 On the other hand, I've discovered a restaurant where upstairs after 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, a bunch of guys and girls get round a piano played by a woman who looks 102 and wears a wig but is pretty damn good on the ivories, and the singers are cool too. When we arrived the other night, a bloke with a belly the size of the Grand Canyon was belting a number from one of the musicals, and later a guy who looked like a waiter with the longest nose I've ever seen sang a sexy number and sashayed around the room swaying his hips at all the girls. Great stuff. Proper music. Real entertainment. Eat your heart out gypsy woman.

Safe House: no hawkers

The Obama bin Laden Raid

Correction: The Osama bin Laden Raid (White House ed)

Now we know everything about the famous raid. But do we know everything?!!! Here's a different take on this mammoth story (please swallow after reading):

 Bin Laden was traced to the compound in Abbottabad in August last year. Well not exactly traced but everything pointed to it. No one had actually seen the bloke reading the New York Times in his backyard but if you're in the intelligence business which of course I am, a few leads are as good as "a smackeroonie we've gotim" situation". So the CIA boys set up a safe house. WHAT!!! A CIA safe house in charming Abbottabad?! Perhaps with "No Hawkers, no nosey Pakistanis and definitely no snoopers from the ISI [Pakistan's naughty-boys Taleban-loving intelligence service] notices on the front door. What did they do for food I wonder. Had to go down the local super for burgers and stuff, a dead giveaway. Anyway, here we have smart-looking Ivy League graduates sitting it out with their dark glasses peering through the window and seeing, well seeing what? Apparently not much. The safe house must have been so far away from The Compound that it was... well safe from being spotted by anyone. I guess that's why it was called a safe house. So on Day One, through fancy binoculars, they spotted this bloke pacing up and down in the inner courtyard of The Compound. He was about 6ft 4ins, longish beard though not as long as the one in the usual bin Laden photos, a bit stooped and head down, always looked thoroughly miserable. "What you reckon, Chip, bin Laden or what?" asks Watcher 1. "Sure, looks like it, but this place is kinda nice, let's stick it out for a few months, there's a mound of DVDs to get through and that local kebab place is a beaut," replies Watcher 2. They high five each other and settle down to watch The Magnificent Seven for the third time.

Days, weeks go by. Langley (CIA HQ in Virginia) asks what the hell is going on. "Not 100 per cent sure yet, boss, s'looking good but gotta be sure. We think it might be Obama, sorry Osama, but it's difficult from here to be absolutely you know whaco certain. Chip, put the other one on, no that one, we haven't seen that yet." Langley:"What! what you say!" "Oh sorry boss, I was just talking about the eh, eh.. camera feed." Langley:"We're going to send over Boogey III." Boogey III (I made the name up for security reasons), is a super-sleuth Stealthy spy drone that can't be seen from the ground because it has been painted to look like a cloud. Boogey III spends the next two months hovering in an otherwise cloudless sky trying to check out The Pacer in the courtyard. The CIA Boogey III operators at a secret base in Pakistan devote most of their time shouting: "Look up, damn you, look up, we can't see your face!!" But The Pacer is always head-bowed. He knows a thing or two about what floats around in the sky after a lifetime of avoiding passing US satellites, but because he never looked up into the sky above The Compound he failed to spot the sole little fluffy cloud with the ever-so-tiny brrm brrm noise attached to it.

It's now December. The CIA boys have got through all their DVDs and the local stock is rubbish. So they're getting bored. Between them and Boogey III, they have signalled back to Langley the following secret intelligence: "There's a bloke about UBL's height [they always called Osama bin Laden UBL except when they called him Geronimo] with a beard living at The Compound. Spotted three or four women - doesn't he have four wives? - and some children and a couple of blokes who go out each day and come back with a mound of groceries. Watcher 8 followed one of them and it seems The Family eats nothing but aubergines. Please check files for UBL's diet."

Biggest worry is: is this a UBL decoy or the Real Deal? Safe House Team panics at the thought of getting it wrong. Osama would be furious. Sorry Obama would be furious. Reputation of the CIA at stake. Or at steak, medium rare please. There's also another spanner in the works. A bloke about 6ft 4ins with a beard and looking quite like UBL has been spotted going into the rear entrance of the ISI headquarters each day with a name tag round his neck. CIA followers couldn't quite make out the name but it looked something like Mr O'Laden.

Back in the Situation Room at the White House Obama (yes Obama) is into his fourth special Osama meeting to decide what to do about all this fascinating non-information. It's February. Most of his advisers advise the evidence is all circumstantial. Ok it looks like UBL, but you can never be sure with foreigners. And the beard looks too short. And what if the right UBL is the guy clocking in to work at the ISI. Can't take out a staff member of the ISI without causing a right rumpus. There's also concern about The Safe House. There had been an odd complaint to the local authority in Abbottabad that two non-Pakistani blokes had been at the centre of a street scene after someone tried to grab a bunch of DVDs from their shopping bag. (Yes the CIA boys had finally given in and had begun to watch the local DVDs, having seen The Magnificent Seven 14 times and The Right Stuff 20 times). Obama says it's time to make a decision. Everyone in the room says, "Don't do it, Mr President, if it's not UBL, you're going to make a fool of yourself and it'll be all your fault. We as your most senior advisers will tell The New York Times that we advised against it."  Obama scratches his chin and pronounces: "Ok I'm going to do it. Send in the Seals, and make sure one of them is 6ft 4ins, so when they shoot whoever is in The Compound, he can lie next to the body and measure up." Everyone in the Situation Room shakes his head wisely. There's only one Seal who is 6ft 4ins and he was due a weekend off on May 1 but instead became a hero of US Special Operations Forces, the man photographed lying next to the dead body of the Most Hunted Terrorist on Earth.

So it was the greatest intelligence feat of all time. The Safe House closes down. The CIA Watchers emerge into the sunlight humming the theme tune from The Magnificent Seven, and the UBL look-alike continues to clock in each day at the ISI HQ.

PS Don't forget, swallow this good.

PPS How do you know the toothbrush was invented in West Virginia?

Because if it had been invented anywhere else it would have been called the Teethbrush. Boom boom.

Crisis, what crisis, just shine my shoes, boy!

Apart from being a five-sided monster of a building alongside the Potomac River (and that's PotOmac), the Pentagon in all its glory is like a town with all the necessary facilities required to keep its thousands of inhabitants fed, watered, haircutted, dry-cleaned, gift-wrapped and, above all, shoe-shined. If your shoes are even slightly musty from the outside air - and boy, do the US military like their shoes to bristle with shineness whether in uniform or civvy dress - then the little shop just round the corner from the escalator that takes everyone up into the building from the  Metro entrance entrance is always in fine business. Always a queue. Always men sitting in chairs awaiting their polishing moment. I swear the barbers are not half as busy. Big meeting in Room 987, Corridor 3, full of exceptionally serious-looking dudes in army and marine uniforms about to ponder contingency planning for invading Iran, there's an empty chair. "Where's Colonel (everyone's a colonel) Mc.....?" "Sorry sir, the colonel's unavoidably detained." "Well, hell this meeting has to start, get me Col Mc on the line." "Col Mc, where the hell are you? I want to start the meeting." "Sorry, general, the queue was longer than I expected." "Shoe shine?" "Yessir, shoeshine." "Ok Colonel, we'll wait. You get a good shine now!" "Yessir." I haven't dared introduce my tacky shoes to the shoeshine man yet. Whenever I think I'm tempted, there's a row of heavy combat guys or oversized Pentagon civvy boys waiting to be treated. I pass on by. As for the barbers, well, far too risky. "You wanna what?" "Just a gentle trim please." "No 1, 2 or 3?" "Er, in England, a gentle trim means...." "You British or retarded?" I actually heard that the other day. Not said to me but relaid by someone else.

 

Talking of Pentagon, I had an interview planned with a US Air Force general last week but was running late. Osama (not Obama) bin Laden had been shot a few days earlier and I had to do an instant profile of the admiral in charge of the Seals who carried out the mission. I dashed out of my house in Alexandria Old Town and spotted a taxi. "The Pentagon please and quick, I'm going to be late." The taxi roared off. One minute later the taxi driver asked: "Have you got the address?" "Er, no, but it's the Pentagon, you know that building full of generals and admirals." Silence for two minutes. "Have you got the address?" "NO, BUT IT'S THAT HUGE OFFICE BUILDING, FIVE-SIDED AND I'M GOING TO BE LATE!!" Five minutes before I'm supposed to be sitting in front of this general.the taxi driver is playing meaninglessly with his SatNav. I've been in the taxi ten minutes - he said it would take ten minutes to get to the Pentagon - and make the mistake of looking out of the window only to see the Pentagon to my left but about three highways to my left. "There it is, where the hell are you going?" He mumbles and takes me into DC, past the Washington Monument. The Pentagon has disappeared. I'm LATE. The general's aide rings me. "Where are you?" "Not the foggiest", or words to that effect. "Come to the southern car park entrance." Frankly I'd be happy with any entrance provided it has something to do with the Pentagon. I see a sign for Chevvy Chase and decide that the only option is to leap from the taxi and run back. But miraculously after three three-point turns, fourteen requests for directions from bewildered police officers and a near running over of a poodle with a tartan coat, we return within sight of what used to be - still is? - the biggest office building in the world, and by some chance of fate I spot a sign which says southern car park entrance, I scream at the driver, l pay him 20 dollars thank you very much - the metre read 48 dollars - and run like mad towards the Corridor 3 entrance where my general is waiting. Fortunately he turns out to be pretty cool and relaxed and I notice that his boots are not over-polished. Clearly needs to join the queue.

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.