Dear Matt

Just been catching up on the Blog and have finally got around to your September 10th piece ‘Scared Away’. God did that ring some bells with me! I fully accept that not all writers have had awful, frightening or forgettable childhoods. There are many in our profession who had an absolute ball as kids. But like you, I was not one of them.

Looking back on it now I suppose I was a bit of a square peg as a kid. Where other girls were interested in rock music, disco dancing and being ‘popular’ I was far too geeky for any of that. I liked reading books about ancient Egypt, particularly books about the discovery of spooky, fresco-covered tombs. I liked dancing but preferred my own form of flamenco which I did on my own in my bedroom. I was clever and used to cover up my innate nervousness by making smart comments and swearing creatively. An odd mixture and one that could have worked had I also possessed the attribute of prettiness. I was so unpretty. I remain so. The only difference is that now I care less. Now I don’t get the fact of my unprettiness rammed in my face every single day of my life.

I remember one particular occasion, I think I was fourteen, when a very large girl who hated me for no reason, but with much passion, pushed me against a wall and told me I would never get a boyfriend. I was ugly, I had apparently, no shape and no man would ever, EVER look at me except to laugh. At the time I don’t recall losing any sleep over this one incident. I expect I just went home and read a book about the heretic pharaoh Akenaten. It was the cumulative effect that did the damage. Day after day, year in and year out. It took me years to drum up the confidence to actually show anything I had written to anyone. Everything that I did was always, in my eyes, rubbish. I was rubbish because I wasn’t pretty and so no-one would ever want anything that I produced because of what I so obviously was. Even when I got married and had a child that sense of lack of self worth didn’t leave me. On the plus side it did make me try to ensure that my son never ever suffered as I had and every knock back that he got was countered and dispelled by my husband and myself and in most strong terms. We didn’t always succeed and he did have some very dark times, but at least we did try to help him.

But back in the nineteen seventies no-one told their parents about the things that went on at school. No-one cared much about bullying full stop. If I had problems with other girls at school the attitude of my teachers was that it was my fault for being different.

As an adult, like you Matt, I found some solace in just simply removing myself from the scene of my persecution. I travelled, I lived in many and various parts of the UK and I got on with other things. I avoided and still avoid all and any school reunions. A friend of mine went to one a few years ago and was so horrified she had to be rescued, by me, from the hordes of middle aged men and women she had once known and disliked intensely.

People often ask me who my detective, Çetin İkmen is based upon and I always say the same thing. Çetin İkmen is the person I would be if I were more courageous. Çetin İkmen says and does the things that I would love to do if only I were not crippled by self doubt and the remains of this need to be something that I am not. He doesn’t care much about what he looks like or what other people might think of him and that for me, as his author, is very liberating. Living vicariously for pleasure and profit, what could be better? Not a lot. I enjoy my life as a writer. I love the way I can split my time between two very different countries. I am extremely fortunate. But would I give it all up to be able to go back in time and be pretty and popular, enjoy the social side of schooling and have an entirely different kind of life?

Not now, no. I like what I do even if I still find acceptance of what I am hard. But not so many years ago, I would have said a most resounding ‘yes’. I would have given almost anything to be pretty and accepted and ‘normal’. In the darkness of a sleepless night I can still find myself being seduced by that notion. Childhood and its trials and traumas do not just go away. You and I Matt, are just really lucky that we have found places to be and things to do that hold back, in part, some of those old, dark memories.

Barbara

This week, I’d planned to write a blog about making fun of people who can’t spell but a totally different topic dropped on my village along with the tropical rainstorms lashing us at present. It arrived in the form of Tin Tin. Not the annoying Belgian man-child Tin Tin but the almost Golden Retriever variety. (I’ll pause a few seconds for those of you who are cat people or not bestial at all to switch off and go make a rare steak sandwich)

Okay, that leaves just us. Tin Tin is a two-year-old Thai version of a Golden Retriever. That means he doesn’t have a pedigree and his legs are a bit short but, when he was a pup, he looked good enough to fool his hi-so, would-be owners.

“I give you special price for genuine Western show dog just like in movie.”

When he was still a little ball of energy he was allowed to frolic in the up-market furniture store to entertain the wealthy customers. They might have even turned a blind eye to him doing wee wee on the Afghan carpet. But, Tin Tin grew up, as these things do, and he was consigned to a back room. And, there he stayed…for two years, allowed into the alleyway to do his business as far as the chain would let him, then dragged back inside like a landed marlin. No runs. No other dogs. No discipline. Imprisoned. The Nelson Mandela of the canine set. His world was an eight-foot circle with occasional petting visitations.

Then his hi-so owners decided to move and the burden of looking after their status dog (I suppose boiling rice and supplementing water could be classified as a burden when it drags you away from the more important business of making money) was too much for them. My wife, Jess had met Tin Tin’s ‘mummy’ on a flight from Chiang Mai and heard about the dogs circumferential end-of-a-chain existence. She came home and asked me if we could take on another animal. We already have four very troubled beasts; plucked from the roadside, rescued from a doomed litter, or, like Psycho, scared and menacing who just wandered in out of the monsoons one day and decided to stay. We were too scared of him to say no. For a caring well-adjusted community pack, I thought Tin Tin could do better. But any of you who have entered into the tender state of marriage will already know that what I think means absolutely nothing. Nobody else wanted Tin Tin so we were lumbered with him. We went to pick him up on Saturday. He weighs more than me. I took him for a walk. As he didn’t know what ‘a walk’ was he thought we were escaping together and dragged me, belly down, along the gravel alleyway to freedom.

An hour later, after attempting to mate myself and Jess and the spare tyre, he was in a crate on the back of our truck. Five hours after that we were home and the crate was matchsticks. And, nobody will be surprised to hear this but our dogs can do without him. Psycho has twice tried to rip his throat out. The bitches scream and giggle and flee in panic even though the big guy is chain-tied to a post. See what we’ve done? We’ve taken him out of a caring but wimpy environment where shop girls gave him sweets and taught him to shake hands for whatever god-forsaken reason I know not, and plonked him down in the jungle with wild animals, and he’s still on a chain. He’s already mated the washing machine and the back fence and we daren’t let him off the chain because our elderly next door neighbour is a very slow mover. I walk Tin Tin on the beach three times a day to try to curb his passion and wear out some of those two years of inactivity. He’s obviously stunned by how much there is beyond the furniture store back room. We have to restrain our gang because I can’t do my ‘pack leader’ thing and hold back a Golden with the leash skills of a Pamploma bull. It’s all too much for him. He has to learn it all from scratch. I’m supposed to teach him how to be a dog and I haven’t even perfected being a man. And it’s all too much for my writing. I’m buggered. I’m supposed to have a book finished by next month but, well, what would you choose? A best-selling novel on the New York Times list grossing you a cool million, or a happy, integrated pack of nut-case dogs?

(Those of you providing the correct answer to that question will receive a chewed, totally illegible copy of my book and a real, live barely-used Golden Retriever.)

One of the features of traditional Thai society has been politeness. The Land of Smiles gains its name from the polite way that Thais greet others. These qualities extended into the hospitality industry with much success. After getting off one of those long-haul flights from Europe or North America, and finding someone at the reception desk with a warm smile did wonders for the tourism industry.

Among the Thais the wai has been a common way of paying respect. Rather than shaking hands, the Thai press their palms and fingers together and raise them nose level as if offering a prayer. This is done to show respect. Juniors wai elders. Students wai their teachers and parents. Employees wai their bosses. Everyone wais a monk. And so it goes.

Related closely with this idea of respect, is the Thai expession kreng jai (literally translated as “Awesome Heart”). Kreng jai illustrates a characteristic that runs deep in Thai culture. In a system where social rank and class play an important role, showing kreng jai or a little bit of fear or awe to the powerful, those higher on the social ladder has long been expected. If you are powerful, you wait for the other person to wai you first. And receiving that wai gives you face. A large face as other witnesses someone perform an act that appears as a submission.

But that was then. By ‘then’ I mean some years ago.

What about Thailand as we draw to near the end of 2009? It seems some people have stopped offering the wai to members of parliament. A memorandum has been sent to agencies under the Secretariat of the House of Representative reminding officials of their obligation to wai elected representatives. Representatives are complaining they aren’t getting sufficient respect. Of course, the lack of respect is a long ways from an incident where an Iraqi journalist tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush, but from a Thai point of view, for a member of parliament not to receive a wai from other officials in government is, well, not all that different having a sandal tossed at him or her.

So far there is no call for a piece of legislation requiring officials or others to wai members of parliament. But, according to The Bangkok Post, one member of parliament sought to remind officials that officials should follow tradition by extending a wai to MPs as a show of respect. There has been back and forth on whether the memorandum amounted to an order requiring officials to wai MPs. Ordering respect is a little bit like ordering loyalty and love. Certain things are simply very difficult to mandate. I suspect that respect is one of those things.

Perhaps respect isn’t just what it used to be. The smiles found in the Land of Smiles are now less frequent than before. And if the wai is also on the endangered list of cultural artifacts, it may be that Thailand will join the ranks of other cultures where social status alone doesn’t carry an obligation that the lower ranks must show respect. A person’s accomplishments, talent, expertise, kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion—the list goes on—might be a substituted basis for extending a show of respect. But a wai out of habit based on the other person’s age and social rank may belong to another era. Think of it as the golden era of polite, civilized and regimented society. Everyone knew their proper place. And everyone performed their class rituals without being ordered to do so.

What the memorandum doesn’t document is how the Thai social obligations and network of relationships guaranteed a gesture like a wai and the withholding of the wai may be the green shoots of different social, economic, and political forces, a people’s perceptions shift on who is worthy of respect.

Matt is still on a book tour and will return soon.

Over the many years I’ve been going to Turkey I’ve met a few tourists who are shocked when they realise they’ve booked they holiday during Ramadam (or Ramazan as it is in Turkey). The thought of being amongst millions of people who neither eat, drink nor smoke during the hours of daylight horrifies them. Several things can happen under these circumstances. Firstly if said tourists are vacationing in one of the big Mediterranean resorts they won’t really be affected by Ramazan. Some friends who recently returned from one of the biggest conurbations, claimed that they didn’t even know Ramazan was happening. They did notice Roman Abramovitch’s vast, mega-yacht glide past their beach but people gamely refusing tea and biscuits did not feature. Some people, secondly, may know that Ramazan is happening but just choose to ignore it. It is however, the third option, getting with, as it were, the programme, that I always choose.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not fast during Ramazan. I am not Muslim myself and although I did try it for two days back in 2004, I was far too wimpy and pathetic to keep it up. I am a beast without my early morning tea. No, by getting with the programme what I mean is that whenever I am in Turkey during Ramazan I try to get into the spirit of the thing. Fasting is only part of what is known as the Holy Month. Ramazan is a time when people give – to the poor, to their relatives, to their friends and even their enemies. Such gifts may be quite invisible, like the gift of forgiveness to someone who has hurt you. People give to beggars in the street, to charitable organisations and make sure that they put a donation into the appropriate box when visiting a place of worship. One of the reasons for this latest trip to Turkey was to visit abandoned Greek Churches. Redundant since the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in the 1920’s, these buildings are now the responsibility of the Ankara government. Though largely empty, these churches are well maintained and votive candles and tubs of sand for them to sit in are always provided along with a box for donations. Normally I would donate. In Ramazan however I make that little extra effort. I like to think that this time I did my small bit towards lighting up those beautiful, deserted empty spaces.

Giving aside, the great joy of Ramazan has to be sharing an iftar meal with friends. Iftar is the meal that is taken at sunset after what can be a very hard day of fasting. It is a great privilege to be invited to an iftar meal and this Ramazan I was invited to several. Great feasts are lovingly constructed, without those cooking tasting the food during the preparation – a feat of self control in itself in my opinion. It is customary for guests to contribute too and so I arrived with goodies lugged in bursting suitcases from the UK. Swapping what a Brit considers quite ordinary, like a box of chocolate mints, for a gooey plate of Turkish pastries is always a laugh. Our ideas about what is luxurious and exotic are quite different. But let me tell you it is really great to see the look of rapt pleasure on someone’s face as they bite, with eyes closed, into a common or garden liquorice Allsort.

My message to everyone who has either avoided or just not been aware of Ramazan is to give it a go. Visit Turkey during the Holy Month and join in the spirit of the festival even if fasting is not something you want to do. No-one will judge you for eating, drinking and smoking – that is your choice. What you will benefit from however is contact with the spirit of giving and sharing that is the real crux of the matter. Also in İstanbul and other cities the after sunset food-booths, outdoor plays and concerts are fantastic fun. Can’t wait for next year!

I have an impressive bookshelf in my studio. It is filled from ground to ceiling with – wait for it – books. There are hard backs and paperbacks and falling-off backs and no backs at all. I have to say that they are all wonderful books even though there are a number I can’t read, not because they have big words in them, but because they are written in foreign languages. I think we should all feel sorry for people who have to read books in foreign languages because those other languages are so troublesome. Take German, for example; all that spitting and throat raking. Then there’s Japanese with all its huffy expectorations and the firework display of Cantonese. Thankfully, before their translations, all of the books on my shelf were written in English and all of them, without exception, were written by me.

One may consider it vane to have an entire wall of ones own books and I may be that one. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go to bookshops and buy them, neither do I sneak them under the flap of my raincoat and run out without paying for them. They are sent to me absolutely free of charge whether I want them or not. It is included in contracts that the creator of the ‘product’ shall be entitled to twenty free copies of said ‘product’. In the beginning it was fun. I’d give them to friends as birthday presents or hand them out to relatives who gleamed when they read their names on the acknowledgement page. The following birthday or Christmas the smiles were less enthusiastic. And then it got to the stage that you’d hand over your gift and they’d feel the shape of it through the paper, throw it on the pile and change the subject. “Not another one of his books?” they’d say that night in bed. “Who does he think he is?”

So, not only did I run out of friends to give books to, I also lost a percentage of the friends I’d started with. I tried donating my books. As I don’t have the je ne sais quoi to read anything in French I handed cinq copies of Le Dejeuner Du Coroner to the library in the university French department. They handed me back quatre. I have twenty copies of Dr. Siri Und Seine Toten (That’s German) and I don’t even understand the title. After days of searching through all the fishing villages to the north and south of us, I finally found a German. He was seventy-nine and married to a twenty-two year old whom I saw laying on his back veranda in hot pants and a bikini top. I was prepared to give him the lot plus the ten CD audio books and every other shipment that arrived on these shores. He was very frank(furt) and told me he didn’t expect to live long enough to make it to the end of a book.

There was recently a competition on this blogsite and the prize was an autographed copy of one of my books. I’d sent the Moore bloke 397 to give away as prizes. It was a hard competition and nobody could answer it – I supposed. So the blogcatcher simplified the question and still nobody replied. He dumbed it down again to the point that even I could answer it but what would I want with one of my own books? Still they held back, those millions of people who read the blog, lurking, waiting for the moment when the prize was changed to something they actually wanted. In the end the question was whittled down to something akin to, “What colour is a blue tit?” Two gentlemen at the extremities of the earth who had obviously just woken up, sent in half-hearted replies and won themselves a copy of my book. As the prize was just the one book I’m afraid they’re under a time-share agreement. But my heartfelt but wary congratulations go to the following two gentlemen; Norman Price of Exeter, England, and John Murphy in Hawaii in the USA. I don’t know about you but they sound like made up names to me.

I always thought at trophy shouldn’t be used in a sentence that didn’t include bowling shoes. I was wrong. I just read an article where trophy was used in the same sentence as Asian women. That should make it toxic for any white male author, especially one living in Thailand and married to an Asian woman, and ingesting something toxic, as we are told by our mothers will turn you green, throw up, and guarantee a trip to the emergency ward.

Never mind that we soon enough unlearn our lessons of childhood. Asian men and women, on the other hand, never forget what their mother taught them. They stay far away from anything that remotely might cause a loss of face. If that happens, well, just go to the end of this rant and you’ll get and idea of what happens. Back to the main point: the question is really why marrying a Western man doesn’t cause the Asian bride and her family’s face to be shattered like a mirror hit with a hammer?

Ying Chu’s article The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women pretends to let out the dirty secret that really, really wealthy men, the one’s with enough fuck you money, to well, fuck you, decide to marry Asia women. Chu’s essay avoids larger point, which in the words of Aristotle Onassis, who as far as we know never married an Asian woman, “If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”

Maybe rich men have moved on since Onassis’ time.

Others have websites are devoted to tracking Asian beauties and cross-cultural relationships. Maybe in her circles poor Western men who at the end of the line of a trophy in just about everything they do, can never hope to get an Asian wife. I personally know a lot of men who aren’t rich and have Asian wives. If you went through the list of Forbes richest men, I suspect most of the white guys on the list don’t have Asian wives. And if they dumped their existing wife, would probably marry someone just like her. Younger, but basically the same version with a few more features and upgraded systems. Lift the hood on any male, and what you find is mixed in with a quart of testosterone, electrical system held together by habit, valves pumped with porno films, and a design flaw that comes from following the blueprint of My Fair Lady. But I don’t want to complicate a good story with too many inconvenient facts.

Bowling. Dating, marriage, inter-racial stuff kinda comes down to bowling.

There was a book a few years ago called Bowling Alone or words to that effect. Basically you could say it was for guys who never got a trophy and knew nothing about Asian women who, in my experience, rarely go anywhere near bowling alleys. What few bowling alleys that exist in Asia no one has ever counted, or if they have, it is buried in some Shanghai vault. I’d guess, though, and what is life unless we can’t speculate, Asian bowling alleys could be counted on two hands and one foot. Don’t get me started on feet. But filthy rich Americans don’t exactly grow on trees. And the few pears that do occasionally fall, shouldn’t they be received into the waiting arms of American women who aren’t Asian?

Anyone who thinks that his Asian woman can be displayed as a trophy on his personal social mantle is in for a big surprise. In fact, for many, many surprises; and the old Chinese saying that may your life be interesting is one of those ninja stars that suddenly appear lodging themselves in the throat or back or foot of a Woody Allen relationship clones who treats an Asian woman are decorative wallpaper. Or a trophy. Whatever. Something that looks good on the arm or the wall. Seriously, leaving aside the celebrities and boldfaced names, anyone marrying someone from another culture is doomed without some understanding of the mental wiring of their intended mate. They need to spend some time on the ground in Asia. Read a few books. See some films. Get a cross-cultural consultant or two. Of course, we don’t know that these rich guys didn’t do this. But I’ve seen first hand some rich men who have crashed and burned in a marriage that lost its wings and feel to earth. I see that as ironic. Actually, in most cases it is more moronic than ironic.

Powerful, supremely competent lords of the business realm men understand the importance of due diligence when doing a business deal but a petite Asian woman smiles at them, and fuck due diligence, common sense. If one of men in their vast empire of serfs ordered a pizza the way these men pick a wife, they’d be fired? How is that people so rich and power go from throwing strike after strike to sending one after another gutter ball without really understanding they are losing the game? What happened to these guys on the way to the trophy room? Asia isn’t the only place in the world that produces stunningly beautiful women. Try Latin America, Russia, or Denmark. Supermodels, Miss Universes, actresses—the whole world parade of beautiful women shows Asian women have no lock on beauty.

No one has to do a great deal of research to prove these highly beautiful women around the world aren’t leaping to marry unemployed, homeless white men. Or white men who work as a fry cook for the minimum wage. Even if he has a good heart. Good teeth. Two working arms and legs and a full head of hair. No, women everywhere, it seems, want something else.

But let’s stay with Asia. The trend, they say, shows that rich white men have a fetish not just for beautiful women, but beautiful, petite, and young Asian women. As you can see I have a number of questions that spring from Ying Chu’s article The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women.

But Ying Chu’s article isn’t about Asian girlfriends; it’s about Asian wives. You have to commit to the bowling league to be taken seriously. Get the shirt, the shoes, the ball, and get yourself accepted into the new culture. Or you could just pretend that she only looks Asian; but in fact she’s really an American. Or Canadian. Or English. You get the picture. Looks can be deceiving. That’s the point. Since The World of Suzie Wong and A Woman of Bangkok created the mental image of an Asian woman that a Western male has a moral obligation to rescue a woman. Men in the West have been drawn to the image of the Asian woman in silk pajamas, funny accent, passive, polite, and small—kinda trophy size—that has messed up the minds of many men from London to New York and Toronto. Most men from Vancouver of course understand this perfectly. There is always an exception.

Let’s look at the lineup on this Rich man’s bowling team: Rupert Murdoch, Leslie Mooves (never heard of him but he’s some big wheel at CBS), Nicolas Cage (hammered for marrying not just an Asian but a young Asian), Bruce Wasserstein (rich guy) and Vivi Nevo (another rich guy). Basically these are all terribly filthy rich guys. Chu’s band of brothers share a common history—they have bowled one perfect game after another. Never losing. Over confident men who believe they are masters, that they are the exception to the rule—of every rule ever invented.

Women everywhere have evolved radar to locate such a man. Asian women have the same tracking equipment. An Asian woman, like any other woman, understands this white guy actually believes that his bowling team, of which he is the captain, is in a league of his own. She encourages him in his belief that he is the ultimate winner. She applauds and smiles. It’s as if all women, not just Asians, grew up reading the Art of War. Winning is all about how and when to applaud, pull back. Ambush. Wait until he’s wrong footed. Then go in for the kill. She’s patient. She understands the value of a rich man’s delusion.

That and guilt are a woman’s best friend—I have a wise Thai friend who once said the fundamental difference between men and women is vastly greater than any difference of culture, race and nationality that separate any two men. But that’s another bowling team essay.

Everyone knows if you have that kind of money you never have to bowl alone. So why are these guys seriously into marrying Asian? Is it because there are more of them? They cost less to feed? Smaller sizes means less yardage to buy in terms of fabric. I have an answer. Of sorts.

Charles Darwin who never married a petite Asian woman

All these rich Western men have Asian wives because, in their view, it makes them look like winners. If you always think of yourself as a winner, and need to display how excellent your performance is, then bring on the evidence, baby. Exhibit A in a size zero dress; if she were any smaller she could be worn on the lapel. Alpha males in all primate colonies want to be seen has having the best of all possible women. Naked apes are no different. Evolution favors the children sired by alpha males. Asian or otherwise, women are attracted to alpha male.

There is no need to channel Charles Darwin with this question: Have Asian women have evolved a winning variation giving them a natural selection an advantage (like the peacock) in the competition for mates? He left his answer: “that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system–with all these exalted powers–Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

In other words, an Asian beauty, or any other beauty for that matter, can’t cover up the fact, rich or poor, we males are naked apes looking to show our social status and rank.

Oh, before I forget, next time you’re in a Thai restaurant, or Thailand, ask a local about the relationship of girlfriends and wives to ducks. That’s right, ducks. Trust me. Ask. Ducks, you know, the feathered bird known as “Donald” or “Peking.” Ducks eat just about anything. Ask a local what an Asian girlfriend or wife feeds to a duck after she has discovered that her boyfriend or husband with another woman (beautiful or not). Hint: there are a number of Thai doctors that have become very rich in a highly specialized area of reconstructive surgery (assuming the duck is slow off the mark) who do the best they can for such a husband. When the duck gets there first, then no matter how rich the guy is, Westerner or Easterner, he will definitely be spend the rest of his life bowling alone.

New clues

5) Colonial era
6) Cause of death TB

We have decided to settle for the name of a famous member who frequented the club housed in this building and whose name is known throughout the world.

The first person to email the name wins the book!

On September 11th we started a contest. Name that building. No one has guessed. Frankly the building could be anywhere. Here are a few clues:

1) It is located in Southeast Asia;
2) The same country where a certain Lady has been under house arrest for many years;
3) You had to be a member to gain entrance. Or be an invited guest;
4) Elephant execution

Identify this building, location and literary association. The first reader to do so will receive a free copy of Colin Cotterill’s Curse of the Pogo Stick, a Dr. Siri Investigations set in Laos (hardback edition).

By the time you read this I will be ensconced in a cave house in the middle of Anatolia. Hopefully, much of my research will already have been done and I will be having a few days to myself relaxing with family and friends. I am actually writing this just before my flight to İstanbul and so I will of necessity, keep this short.

The United Kingdom is, as I am sure many of you know, the most watched nation on earth. There are cameras everywhere. Go to the bank, there’s a camera, cameras line our roads, stare unblinking along our streets and follow our every movement in city centres. There is some evidence that CCTV technology can and does help to prevent crime. Provided the cameras are actually working, film taken by them can lead to the conviction of those are seen brawling in the street or committing criminal damage. But they can, I fear, be put to more sinister use. Evidence is emerging of some local authorities using CCTV to watch people they just simply suspect of wrong doing. At present such actions are frowned upon and usually, when discovered, are curtailed. But for how long? Once surveillance apparatus is put into place, it is very rarely dismantled or removed. The argument for CCTV technology runs along the lines of ‘if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’. This assumes we all live in a benevolent democracy. But what if one day we find that not only do we not live in a benevolent democracy, we don’t live in any kind of democracy at all? What will the cameras mean and be for then?

Life changes all the time and the law changes with it. What was yesterdays legal act, can become today’s misdemeanour and tomorrows criminal offence. Sometimes legislation is introduced so quickly, people don’t even realise that such changes have happened. I do a lot of driving up and down the highways and byways of the UK and I can tell you that sometimes I have to shove the anchors on pretty damn smartish because a speed limit has just been downgraded. I am not in the habit of speeding but I know that one day I will get a conviction for just this offence because as sure and night follows day, the cameras will get me in the end.

Why am I harping on about cameras on the eve of my flight to İstanbul? Well it is because friends over in Turkey tell me that the cameras have started to appear in their lives too. How far down the path they are, I don’t yet know. But I am bracing myself for a bit of a shock. Sadly, it would seem that the example set by our ex-Prime Minister Mr Blair, who championed CCTV, is being followed. Oh, yes, Mr Blair, the man who took my country to war with Iraq – against the will of the British people. The man who, it is rumoured, may one day be President of the European Union.

I’ve done nothing wrong, but that frightens me.