In advance of publication, Steven Pinker’s new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes has been getting stellar reviews. The Guardian’s David Runciman has weighed in with such a review. The premise of the new book is that until the Enlightenment, the world was an exceptionally violent place.

Murder was common. Violence was the usual result of strangers meeting. Torture was widely practiced. As David Runciman noted in his review of Pinker’s book, murder was often a spectator sport. A victim might be stuffed inside a ‘hollow brass cow’ and roasted alive over a raging fire. The brass cow had an open mouth to amplify the screams of the person cooking inside, providing entertainment to those in attendance: a primitive jukebox broadcasting the lyrics of a victim being roasted alive. Remember: these people, both victim and audience, were our ancestors (may be not the victims unless they had reproduced prior to entering the brass cow). We come from this heritage. Historically our species killed each other on an epic level. We watched and were entertained by the slow death of others. Next time someone tells you they wish to return to the glorious past, mention to them what they thought about the ‘brass cow.’

The obvious question by the person in the back of the classroom, “Professor Pinker, What about all the people killed in the two world wars in the 20^th century?” He’s well-prepared for that one. Those wars and the slaughter only revealed what amateurs we are in the murder business. The killing was small change compared to the past. Also we tend to pay more attention to events closer to our own life times and invest that knowledge as having a privileged position.

What I’d like to find out when I finally have my copy of the new book is whether Pinker addresses killings that take place on the high seas. I’m prepared to accept that most of the slaughter racked up by our collective ancestors likely occurred on the ground, in forest, mountains, pastures, and the like. But I also have a hunch, and it is only that, the killing that happened offshore in many parts of the world remains locked in the old ‘brass cow’ cycle.

Thailand’s fishing industry, which is heavily reliant on use of Burmese and Cambodian immigrant workers for crew is a case in point. The BBC reported Thai fishing boat captains workplace consisted of drugs put into drinks, routine beatings and random acts of violence. Burmese crews worked under these conditions 20-hours a day for weeks and months, some even years. The BBC also reported an eyewitness who saw three of his fellow Burmese crewmembers killed on a Thai fishing boat.

The Bangkok Post quoted Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch, who wrote the report, saying “marine police in one Thai coastal area told him they found up to 10 bodies a month washed up on the shore.” That leaves unanswered how many more crewmembers were killed and their bodies have been recovered.

It’s not only the Burmese who get a bullet in the head for displeasing the captain on a Thai fishing boat. The Cambodians who are impressed into working as crewmembers on Thai fishing boats report receive similar treatment. The Bangkok Post reported, “In a 2009 study, more than half of Cambodian migrants trafficked onto Thai boats surveyed by the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) said they had seen their captains killing one of their colleagues.”

The eyewitness accounts are difficult if not impossible to independently verify. And that is a major part of the problem. A fishing boat offshore is an island into itself. What happens on the boat though seems to indicate a page out of Lord of the Flies. There are no authorities around. There are no bystanders who heard the shot. The bodies are found in the street or alley. This is starting to look like ancient life before civilization took root.

While Thai fishing industry spokesman have said it is ‘impossible’ to have forced labour on the fishing boats, and Burmese and Cambodian crewmembers who found their way onto boats through brokers have ‘volunteered’ for the job. NGOs dispute the Thai fishing industry position saying that thousands of people have been trafficked onto boats over the last decade. The reality of their employment conditions however they got onto a fishing boat it turns out wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. No one told them once they left dry land they had entered the domain of the ‘brass cow’ which roam the open seas. The US has placed Thailand on a ‘watch list’ for the past two years due to the problem of human trafficking.

The Thai government has acknowledged a problem. It has done what governments normally do when faced with a difficult problem: they set up a commission to study the problem.

If the land under our feet has generally become far less dangerous, the planks under the feet of immigrant workers on Thai fishing boats are a reversion to that dangerous world us land lovers no longer experience.

How does one go about bringing the law of the land to the fleets of fishing boats? While Thailand has an acknowledged problem, it might be reasonable to assume in the competitive world of fishing, other countries may have fishing fleets that are floating ‘brass cows.’ Part of the problem is that the smaller fishing boats can stay at sea for months, delivering their catch and receiving supplies (and fresh crew) from a mother boat. Once someone is on such a boat, there is no telling when he will ever see land again. Workers on fishing boats outside of Thai waters are exempt from labor protection under Thai law. The brass hard cold reality is they are exempt from all laws.

Would an industry regulation requiring CCTV camera monitoring on fishing boats reduce the problem? Some would say it’s not practical, or too expensive, and unless a camera covers every angle and has night vision, the captain would find a way to dispatch a crewmember with a bullet in the head. If cameras don’t work, then why not use Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology? The workers have electronic tags that use radio waives to identify and track their movements. If we can use RIFD to track hotel linen or our pet dogs and cats, why not require fishing industry workers to have such a means of identification, for their protection? The problem is the chip needs an external GPS device to work. Such a device might be disguised as a key chain, watch, or bracelet. Those could be easily removed and thrown away by the captain, and even if undetected, the battery life on a ship that might be on the seas for months wouldn’t be sufficient. Sanctions or boycotts are unlikely to work either. Changes in government policy in places like Burma and Thailand extending protection to migrant workers is possible, but enforceability remains a real issue.

Until there is either a technological break through that allows offshore monitoring of fishing boat crews, or an incentive given to captains as a bounty not to kill members of his crew, it is likely that bodies of Burmese and Cambodian fishing crewmembers will continue to wash up on the shore and many other bodies will be lost and forgotten. Somalia pirates have shown the world a picture of how vulnerable others are on the high seas. Thai fishing boats have demonstrated the perils of cheap, bonded labour. I have a feeling this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reach of law to the high seas where kidnapping and murder is a profitable business model.

Pinker’s ‘long peace’ post-1945 might just need a footnote: onshore peace. Offshore the murdering seems to continue just like in the good old days on land, in that distant mist, the place where those who fear the future wish they could return. But as Pinker suggests going back in a time machine, we’d find ourselves in a place not unlike the deck of a Thai fishing boat.

There is, of course, a fine chalked line between brilliant and nutty-as-a-fruitcake. We all approach that line from different directions. I sauntered through old Tom Foolery`s back paddocks and found myself there, gazing across the chalk dust but unable to take that last decisive step to brilliance. Far more people approach it at speed from the other direction – by first being a genius then realizing there is nowhere else to go. A year ago I was contacted by a university we shall call “#$$%&’= and invited to speak to its students about the jolly life of a writer. Having declined with great haste, I was told that an influential figure at the university (whom we shall call Jim) was a great fan of my books and would be thrilled to receive a personal email from me. I wrote in the guise of an Eastern European prospective mail-order bride, hoping it might show him what a mistake it would have been to shut me in a room with a load of young people. To my horror he wrote back in kind, making enquiries about the dowry and my breast size. Thus began one of my rare successful relationships. Over the year I got to see his live fried chicken and Coke taste test, learn how to cheat at final exams and discover through e-DNA testing that I was Jim`s long lost love child. So it was with trepidation that we decided to add one more dimension to our relationship by meeting for lunch in DC. The venue was Cafe Milano, so famously Italian that the hide of Pavarotti was pasted to the ceiling above our table. Fearing that there would be no place for Ray, me and Margaret took a spare chair from home. The surley waiters didn`t see the funny side. Jim did. Jim and his lovely partner, Ann saw our chair and raised it with a stuffed donkey. I thought it was a gift and proceeded to put it in my back pack. Jim and Ann were as appalled as Margaret would have been if they`d attempted to stuff Ray in their handbag. Siesta the donkey was, of course, a lunch guest.

So began our meal overlooking the deleted chalk line. Between them, Jim and Ann have more degrees than Celsius.They advise God. Great minds travel to earth for their counsel. So it`s only to be expected that this couple should travel internationally with a suitcase full of Beanie Babies. It`s no surprise that when Bill Clinton once reached out to shake Jim`s hand he should instead be snapped in a photograph with a pink koala in his mitt. And who else would arrive in Delhi with 47 monkeys in their luggage? Margaret, Ray and myself have never been so outclassed at lunacy. Our chair gag looked lame. We knew then we would never be granted even temporary visas for the far side. I wrote to Jim and thanked him for the funniest lunch we could remember. But he was at breakfast with the Pope. I did however get this reply from Siesta.

Hi, hi! It’s me, Siesta the donkey. I roused myself from a sound sleep to go meet this writing chappy. He seemed a little confused; sometimes, thinking he was actually in Spain or something, but my humans said this was what happened when famous writers are hauled fro and to all over the world to greet their adoring fans. And I wasn’t sure he was a *real* writer because he didn’t seem to drink half enough to get into the kind of stupor you’d have to be in to spend all that time writing a book and everything. But my major human, Ann’s her name, she thought he was just fine and she was really glad to hear that Dr. Siri is coming back soon. We went right home and looked him up on the Internet to make sure that he has a ticket to come and see us the minute he’s released. (I guess that means he’s been in prison again.) Anyway, hi hi, this is me, Siesta the donkey, very proud to have my own guest paragraph in this nice blog! Thank you, Mr. Writing Chappy. (??-ed)

Parents of America. Your children are in safe hands. What finer way to end this series of Awesome Vacation blobs? Thanks for reading them. I`m on my way back to obscurity so perhaps you`d all be so kind as to remember me once a year the way you do Jesus. Sayonara.

Frequently Jerusalem hits the headlines because Jews and Muslims do rotten things to each other. They kill; they shoot; they make the most predictable speeches in the history of the United Nations General Assembly, which is not known for spicy dialogue at the best of times.

However, there are many benefits to living in a country where the Jewish and Muslim calendars predominate. Right now, for example, I’m reaping one of those benefits, wishing my Jewish pals a “shana tova,” or happy New Year, while outside the weather is balmy to bloody hot.

The Jewish New Year is a time, as a friend of mine mentioned yesterday, for praying. It’s followed a few days later by Yom Kippur, which is a time for asking God not to kill you in the forthcoming year. It’s not a time for getting wasted, trying to random kiss women in the street, vomiting in Trafalgar Square, or punching some bloke because he looked at you the wrong way.

Those, of course, are the traditions of December 31, and I never much enjoyed them. It’s very pleasant to wish someone Happy New Year without slurring your speech – an experience I never had before the age of 27. It’s also great that the Jewish New Year starts at sundown, rather than at midnight. I’ve got a seven-week-old baby. Why should I stay up until midnight to watch people get drunk and sing the nonsensical words of an old Scottish ballad?

The last time I “celebrated” the New Year’s holiday with which most of you are probably familiar, it was 1993 and it was New York. I had an eventful night. I was jostled by a police horse in Times Square, shortly after which the horse appeared to have a seizure and collapsed right next to me. I swallowed so many Jell-o shots I couldn’t stand up. When I made it to my feet, I hailed a taxi and got out without paying underneath the Williamsburg Bridge, thinking it was where I lived. (I lived 90 blocks away.) I got very cold and slept in a dumpster. I woke up early, went to my girlfriend’s house for a day we had planned to spend together, and shivered in bed until the afternoon, retching every quarter of an hour. (She’s married to a Wall Street bond trader. Which means she must be retching every fifteen minutes now.)

Happy New Year, eh?

By contrast, I’m not compelled by peer pressure to celebrate the Jewish New Year.  On Yom Kippur, I’ll take a walk with my family through Jerusalem’s streets, which are entirely free of traffic on that day.

My friends here will be going through the torment of family holidays. Of three straight days filled with the proscriptions of the Sabbath. Mothers all over the country will suffer nervous breakdowns as they strive to provide meals for the whole holiday period without actually cooking once the holiday starts. And then they have to run around apologizing to anyone they might have affronted in the last year, for fear God might not sign them into the book of life for the next year. For them, it’s pure craziness.

But for me it’s a great holiday. And I can completely ignore December 31! Happy New Year.

‘Madam, would you like a savage?’ A long week in Belgrade – I have been here for the annual congress of PEN, the international association of writers – has left me a left me slower than usual. Nevertheless I cast about valiantly for an answer. The Serbian air steward is glaring at me.

‘Ham savage or cheese savage?’ he barks.

I go for the cheese, some strong coffee. Awake now, I watch the plain that the Danube snakes through roll beneath us. Europe, with its frenzy of little squabbling countries is so tiny. It took the same time to fly from London to Belgrade as it does to fly from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

Serbia is a country where everyone seems to drink as much as possible. Everyone smokes too, everywhere, all the time. The taxi drivers don’t wear seatbelts. This cavalier approach to what the British call ‘health and safety’ is a relief after the fussiness of London. A week of apricot brandy, surprisingly good Balkan wine and no sleep has left me feeling fragile. Some nanny-state care is appealing.

There is a beauty to Belgrade, however, despite the ravages inflicted by Slobodan Milošević and his murderous cronies and the post-war reconstruction that left swathes of eccentric, glazed buildings in the areas flattened by the NATO bombing in the 90s. The city is situated on the confluence of two gracious rivers – the Sava and the Danube. On the horizon are rugged hills and the plain – in September a mellow patchwork of harvested earth tones – stretches as far as the eye can see if you climb to the top of the ruined castle situated at the highest point of the city. The evening air is pungent with the smell of distressed animals in the crowded zoo below. Below the city throbs. In the day it is the traffic – cars and the barges on the river. At night it is the pulse of disco music; clubs and restaurants blare forth what sounds like an endless Euro-Vision song contest.

The shadow of the protracted war lingers. At the Congress I am attending there are writers from Kosovo. This, I am told, is a major achievement. At the opening ceremony the dapper Serbian president makes a moving speech about freedom of expression and the future. He specifically mentions the presence of Kosovar writers. The audience relaxes when the gesture of inclusion is made. Other than that there is little reference that I can discern to the savage and bloody fracture that took place in Serbia so recently.

Perhaps it gets lost in translation. Perhaps the Balkans will deal with the fact that they killed each other with silence, unlike us South Africans who tried to deal with it with partial confession and half-truths. In the headlong dash towards consumption and forgetting I see in the tacky malls in Belgrade and Cape Town, it seems to make little difference in the end.

After the speech there is a performance – the composer conducts and plays her own music. It is lovely and haunting. The instruments seem to blend many threads of this part of the world’s heritage – eastern and western – and old hatreds into a captivating symmetry. My spirits lift – the potential and seduction, I suppose, of creativity – music, writing – in places reinventing themselves after annihilation.

I spend the day before I leave walking in the park that extends down one bank of the Danube before curling up the narrower Sava River. It is a Saturday so there are weddings on all the riverboat restaurants where muscular men escort slinky women with their hair peroxided to a uniform Dolly Parton blonde. At the kiosks teenagers are buying Cokes and huddling around cigarettes.

I heat drives me to sit on a bench under one of the protective oak trees. On the opposite bank is the castle. The skyline is familiar, although I have never been here before. The war – imprinted in my memory from the television footage of the time – has rolled on. The war criminals – sheltered knowingly by some in this small city are dead or on trial. Death is elsewhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. A young family walks past– two little boys running ahead of their pretty, pregnant mother. Her husband puts a tender hand in the small of her back, guiding her through the promenading crowd.

Peace and love seem so easy, if people choose just it.

I’ve just got back from seeing a fascinating exhibition at the British Museum in London. Called ‘Treasures of Heaven’ it’s an exhibition of Christian holy relics and reliquaries. It traces the genesis of what, in the Middle Ages became a big business, to early classical examples of votive offerings placed on tombs. At the end of the exhibition the whole caboodle is tied together with a short film about the place of relics in the modern secular world with examples from Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate and our own Princess Diana.

But it was the mediaeval reliquaries, covered in gold, silver and precious stones, fashioned by the most eminent craftsmen of the age, that really bewitched. Bones, blood, even breast milk thought to have come from saints are still just visible behind windows of rock crystal and wrapped in lovingly folded linen or cloth of gold. So called ‘Speaking’ reliquaries where the head or the whole figure of a Holy Person is fashioned around a tiny piece of bone or vial of blood can and do look spookily alive. Pieces of the ‘true’ cross and thorns from Jesus’ famous Crown of Thorns sit amongst gold and gems so dazzling it makes your head spin. Massive disputes between individuals and even nations have raged over the ownership and/or the veracity of things like this. It’s a terrible thought and is one that is made no easier by the fact that it’s all still going on.

As I wandered amongst the bones, blood and ancient gold covered wood of the past I thought about the current situation in the Middle East, about the Arab Spring and about Israel. It occurred to me that the city of Jerusalem is probably one of the worlds biggest and most potent relics. If one views a relic as something in which a believer invests supernatural and awesome power, then Jerusalem is just that. Not only is it the ultimate monotheistic pilgrimage destination (in terms of numbers of pilgrims from Christianity, Islam and Judaism) it is also a city that encompasses thousands of other relics connected to the Jewish people, Jesus, Muhammad, countless saints and Holy Men. It’s one enormous reliquary and that just on its own, means that the outlook for that poor, battered city has to be, to my way of thinking, bleak.

However ‘secular’ one may be, there is a need inside all humans to hold on to something that is meaningful, if not divine. Many pilgrims to the French town of Lourdes are not religious at all. They visit because the Marian shrine in that town has a reputation for healing. People want to be cured of illnesses that make their lives miserable, that threaten their existences. In times of trouble, whatever that may be, we all seek to hang on to what is familiar, what looks divine, what could be magic. And there isn’t much wrong with that. I carry talismen myself. They are very personal to me and I would be very upset if I lost them. And as an individual if I did lose or have them stolen there is little I could do about it.

As usual it is when politicians and Religion (with a capital R) get involved that the simple pleasure of having faith in what may or may not be magic goes astray. Not only do ‘Holy’ thorns proliferate on a gargantuan scale they also have to be covered in gold and jewels, given into the ‘care’ of some power crazed leader and then fought over with hideous ferocity. People want the essence of these things and it doesn’t just stop at religious artefacts. Over the years the mummified body of Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square has been worshipped and fought over, preserved at great cost and held up as a symbol of everything that is corrupt by those opposed to the old Soviet regime. Poor Eva Peron’s mummified body was used as a bargaining chip by both pro and anti Peronist forces in Argentina right up into the 1970s. Powerful people retain their magic even after death and however rational we might think we are, we all, somewhere deep inside feel that might be true.

When I finally came out of the exhibition and into the grey light of a London afternoon, I must say that as well as feeling as if I had re-entered the ‘real’ world again, I did feel somewhat bereft. As well as possibly containing some ‘power of God’ the things I had seen had dazzled me with their intimations of immortality, of the truth of a good and beautiful after-life beyond the clouds. Although I would never do so myself, I can see why people could and continue to die for that. Doesn’t make it right, it isn’t, but it does make it understandable.

The Washington DC Metro is so uncompicated even a country boy like me can master it. It was there to greet me beneath the belly of Ronald Reagan and, half an hour later, there I was popping out at the zoo near (not in) which my friends reside. Even though they knew I’d spent the previous two weeks on book-related events, Margaret and Ray decided it’d be fun to take me to a bookshop on my first evening here. But, I suppose Politicas and Prose isn’t just any old bookshop. It’s the District of Columbia’s Mecca for thinkers, book lovers and people who just love to hog the microphone at question time.

I can give you two examples of the high standards P&P sets itself. Firstly, the event we attended last night was the launch of The Quest by Pullitzer Prize winning energy guru Daniel Yergin. The audience was salt and peppered with genius. Secondly, my book was on the recommended reading table just inside the front door. If that isn’t class I don’t know what is. I signed their stock, pretended to understand what Yergin was talking about for half an hour, then went for a beer with Ray.

We’d been at the event because Margaret is an ace researcher and she’d done a last-minute photograph search for Yergin. Her favourite was the portrait of Hugo Chavez wearing a beret and holding a parakeet…wearing a beret. Yergin gave margaret a well-deserved credit in the book. He’s an all-round great guy, they said. P&P doesn’t invite just anyone to give a talk so when the manager asked me if I’d be kind enough to come back for an event, Margaret fainted right there in the store. We had to bring her around with a pint of Old Rooster. When I announced my retirement from book tours she reminded me that I wasn’t nearly famous enough to start acting fascinating. I was far too obtuse for that (I had to look up obtuse). Only great writers could fade into obscurity and still sell books, she said.

When she wasn’t looking I kicked her cat.

He sat back, folded his arms and frowned.

‘It should be banned. Simple as that,’ he said, mind firmly made up on the issue.

My friend, a alcoholic who followed ten mad, self-destructive years with twenty (and counting) dry ones, has strong views. We were talking about booze. This is something the Nordic countries do well. Drinking is an extraordinarily popular pastime and these people have some odd (to some eyes) ideas about alcohol.

Back in the old days there were only half a dozen shops in the whole of Iceland that sold alcohol, plus one or two hotels that had licences to sell shots of the hard stuff at wallet-crippling prices. These shops were the state-owned tobacco and alcohol monopoly, and although there are now more than half a dozen of them and they’ve been smartened up to resemble supermarkets rather than the Soviet-style shops they were thirty years ago, they are still, supposedly, the only outlets for anyone who wants to stock up for a party.

If you wanted a bottle for the weekend, it meant getting to one of these shops before six on a Friday, or if you somewhere with no booze shop, ordering a bottle that you could collect and pay for at the post office. In winter it could be touch-and-go. If the roads were snowed over and the post delayed, the dreaded spectre of a dry weekend could loom over many an isolated village.

Iceland’s odd hang-ups about alcohol stem partly from US-style prohibition in the early part of the 20^th century that presumably seemed like a good idea at the time, but didn’t last. This was partly because it didn’t stop people finding other ways to get a drink, and also because Spanish and Portuguese traders wanted to sell wine in exchange for buying Iceland’s salted cod.

So alcohol was allowed again, but gradually. First there was wine, then the hard stuff began to make an appearance. By the 1980s, the shelves of the booze shops had pretty much everything – with one glaring exception. This was a beer-free country, and a sore burden for an expatriate Brit with a liking for a pint.

But the reality of it is that despite my friend’s opinion that the evils of alcohol could be done away with by implementing a ban (see that last blog), prohibiting booze does nothing to stop Icelanders drinking. There are plenty of enterprising types who are happily brewing and distilling, and who aren’t put off by the mere technicality of something being illegal.

But back to the beer… by the end of the 80s, Icelanders had become fed up with their beerlessness. Bars began selling ‘mock beer’ in the form of legal but piss-weak ‘pilsner’ (A peculiar Nordic brew that bears no resemblance to the magnificent golden liquid that comes from Pilzen), blended with shots of the hard stuff. The ban had become eminently pointless and soon enough Parliament had to lumber into gear and after a long and tedious debate, beer became legal.

Beer Day was the 1^st of March 1989 and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was on a course in Reykjavík and the city went wild. There were cans of beer everywhere. The poor guy who was teaching the course on the Navigation College’s antique radar simulators repeatedly had to go and lie down.

Then it was all over. As if fingers had been snapped, the beer all disappeared, life went back to normal and Icelanders gradually acclimatised to having beer on the booze shop’s shelves and in bars.

It’s taken a while, but the pub culture that other Europeans had has also flourished in Iceland. Twenty years ago, the very idea of a quiet drink or two was enough to make people look at you as if you had two heads. Either you were drinking or you weren’t. There was no point keeping the cap for that bottle, as nobody was going to stop until it was empty.

That’s all changed. The traditional Icelandic binge boozer, touring the country for a week at a time with a pocket full of cash in a taxi with a crate of liquor in the boot and the meter running, is an endangered species.

These days Iceland is in the throes of being close to prohibition once again. The financial crash has resulted in increased taxes all round, which includes the duty on booze. A litre of legal, state-supplied vodka will set you back an eye-watering $55 or €40.

So private enterprise has taken over. A litre of decent-quality moonshine, brewed and distilled in someone’s garage or barn costs around a third of that, so it’s no surprise that production of illegal, home-made hooch has become a thriving cottage industry now that the state-run suppliers have effectively priced themselves out of the market. In fact, moonshine (along with its stablemate, growing dope in the attic) has become a highly profitable business run by sharp entrepreneurs who do their market research, take pride in their work, deliver on time and to order.

What’s blindingly clear is that where there’s a demand, someone will meet it and turn a buck in the process. It seems that a ban, whether on the statute books or a de facto version, is great for business.

It’s a shame that other aspects of Iceland’s business and political sectors can’t  attract these enterprising individuals and learn a few pithy lessons, but unfortunately moonshiners seem to operate on gut feeling and instinctive sense rather than according to the MBA textbooks that the real business gurus read at college.

You can see how silly it is to name airports after real people when you substitute your own name for theirs. ‘I was stuck in Colin Cotterill for two hours last night.’ ‘I flew into Colin Cotterill from Eric Stone.’ ‘Colin Cotterill is closed due to heavy rain.’. In fact they sent me to George Bush which, given my relationship with the family, was a cruel twist of fate. It’s way out of Houston and there’s no public transport so the taxi fare could have fed a family of eight for a month down on my gulf. Luckily the driver was Etheopean so it was a bit like donating to Oxfam.

Minotaur put me up in a very swish hotel called Zaza. It’s very dark and the waiting staff parade around in little black dresses. But only the women. It is working a little too hard at appearing ‘hip’ and I’m a firm believer that if ‘hip’ doesn’t come naturally…it isn’t. The ‘do not disturb’ sign says, ‘I’m busy putting on my makeup’. Not funny. Not hip. But it does have a very cool buffalo skull on the front of its shuttle bus. Hip. It’s in the museum district so I am surrounded by potential culture. But first I have to do something about my new elbow. Two days ago my left elbow inflated. It’s as if a new limb is attempting to grow out of it. But at the moment it feels squishy like it’s full of cottage cheese. This morning I headed off to find an upper extremity doctor. This is a medical hub and there are micro-specialists. Ear, nose and throat are three different buildings. The left elbow clinic was recommended to me by a retired doctor who attended our panel last night at Murder By The Book. More of that later.

People don’t walk in Houston. When I mentioned to the concierge that I might stroll down to West Holcome he suggested it was the equivalent of walking to Mexico. i was there in half an hour. But as i neared the clinic I remembered Sicko, the movie, and that people go bankrupt in this country paying medical expenses. I’d left my credit card in the hip hotel safe and I had barely $300 in my pocket. Would it be enough? Would I be turned away because I had exotic medical insurance? Would they laugh at me because people don’t use bank notes any more. Perhaps they wouldn’t know what they were.  I was so paranoid by the time I sighted my destination that I turned round and headed home. My elbow will have to wait til I get back to Bangkok. They’ll jab a nail in, drain out the cottage cheese into a bucket and stick a bandaid on it. A dollar fifty.

But I digress. This is all about Murder, the best events bookstore in the country. It was me, Stuart Neville and Jim Benn. Three little authors from Soho are we. Jim’s a really old person so they couldn’t hear him at the back especially beneath the whir of his respirator. Stuart’s Irish so we’re all waiting for the dvd version with subtitles to see what he said. So it was up to me to carry the show and win the audience around as always. McKenna was so pleased, she and her mum took us out for Mexican food afterwards at the Tiempo. I’m told the food was very good.  I can vouch for the beer.

Next stop…DC.

Most people are aware of the presence of CCTV cameras in major cities. Bangkok is no exception. There are apparently 10,000 of these eyes tracking your every move. CCTV cameras play the modern role of medieval gargoyles, staring down, watchful, vigilant as you go along your way. Looking to keep you safe, out of trouble, and like a good Nanny ever mindful of your welfare. CCTV cameras have become that Orwellian eye that will never let you out of sight once you step into the street.

Let’s put this way, some Nannies are better sighted than others.

The news of 500 fake CCTV cameras has local officials scrambling for an explanation. This is the tentative number. Like many round numbers it may well balloon as the investigation continues. And as one would expect, some of the explanations sound as real as the cameras. One official did what you would probably do: pass the buck to the Traffic and Transportation Department telling them to address the problem and explain to the public about the fake cameras.

Sure enough the department complied, saying that fake cameras were set up near hospitals, schools and areas where political rallies were normally held. Those are exactly the areas I’d choose to put fake cameras. If you can fool anyone, it’s got to be the ill, students and demonstrators. These people see a camera and believe it is watching them hobbling down the broken pavement on crutches, or clutching schoolbooks, or carrying banners and hand clappers.

As with many of these stories, the more they explain the more you wonder if the real cameras ought to be inside the office of the official explainers. We are told that those who had been a victim of a crime had asked for footage. Something that might be useful to identify the wrongdoer. The crime victims were told the cameras were ‘broken. The original story surfaced on Pantip website and the mass media seeing blood in the water dove in. Nothing better than a story about ‘fakes’ in Bangkok to start a feeding frenzy.

In a broad definition (remember Clinton’s definition of ‘sex’?) the CCTV cameras were indeed broken. But it is a bit like saying the life scale dummy of a police officer at a busy intersection can’t testify as a witness to a road accident because he’s lifeless.

Officials have said that many dummy cameras can be found on Ratchadamnoen road along with real CCTV cameras. Makes one wonder whether there are any casinos along that road? Just politely asking.

“I’m sorry for the people who asked police for footage and images from security cameras for evidence against suspects but the BMA told them that the cameras were broken when the in fact they were dummy cameras.”

Dummy cameras they are admitted to be, but “don’t call them fakes,” says the Bangkok Governor MR. Sukhumbhand Baribatra.

Resisting the word ‘fake’ in favor of the word ‘dummy’ is a slippery slope. If it were a story about a ‘fake’ cop would the good Governor counsel that the press should refer to the person as a ‘dummy’ cop? Given this is Bangkok, it is understandable the desire to avoid the word ‘fake’ as that does draw a lot of international attention that authorities would wish to avoid.

A great cartoon appeared in the Thai-language popular daily ThaiRath :

The poster (with the image of MR. Sukhumbhand on the lower left) reads: “Prepared to take care of Bangkokians for life”

The caption (on the upper right corner) reads: “Taking Care… In Fake Style”

But Bangkok citizens have been assured by the city authorities of their commitment to replace the fake cameras with the real ones. We don’t exactly have a timetable when this will happen but I am certain in six months someone will pop the question as to whatever happened to those ‘fake’ I mean ‘dummy’ CCTV cameras, and I will yet have more material for another blog.

The Bangkok Post reports:

“Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said on Tuesday the fake cameras were intended to help scare off criminal activity. Later, when City Hall, had the budget funding, it installed real ones.” The Governor has watched over the installation of 10,000 CCTV cameras, and promises another 10,000 will be installed on his watch.

What remains to be released by authorities is the cost of the fake cameras. Did they get a discount from the price of the real cameras? And how did the workers installing them know whether a camera was a fake or not? Were they told? Could the workers have mixed them up? Is there someone assigned to go around and test the camera? Will that test distinguish the real and fake cameras? Would some owners pay to keep the fake cameras in place? What will they do with the fake cameras? Auction them? Burn them? This could get quite interesting.

Fake CCTV camera need to be placed in context. There is a bit of a history to recall. Bangkok watchers will remember the GT200 devices (from the UK) purchased in large quantity and at major expense for soldiers to use in detecting and clearing roadside bombs in the South. The company making the GT200 got into hot water in England after it was disclosed the devices couldn’t distinguish a frog or banana from a bomb.

What was the reaction in Thailand when it was discovered there was no science at work inside the GT200? Denial. First thing to remember is all of GT200s were ‘fake’ in the sense that they didn’t work. Only they weren’t bought as ‘fake’ devices but as the real thing. But apparently the fakes did give ‘comfort’ much like an amulet gives comfort. Officials at the time said they many soldiers had ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ in GT200 devices as assisting them in finding unexploded roadside bombs. That seemed to close the debate down.

So far no Thai official has come out and said they had ‘faith’ that the CCTV fake cameras worked, but apparently officials had ‘faith’ the fakes would fool the public. Indeed Apriak the prior Governor, and M.R. Sukhumband, the current Governor, have taken the position that the dummies who live in Bangkok were deterred by the fake, I mean dummy, CCTV cameras.

Now that it is disclosed there is (at least) a one in twenty chance that the CCTV camera watching over your illegal casino is fake, you can play the odds. Take a flutter. Big Brother might just be faking it. He’s not really watching you. But there is a nice symmetry at work: Fake cameras watching over roadside vendors selling fake Rolex watches, fake Viagra, and fake perfume to a number of fake tourists who are really ‘brand’ agents seeking evidence for a bust.

What do we hear from City Hall about the fate of the fake cameras?

The Bangkok Post,   “We’ll replace the dummy cameras with actual CCTV cameras as soon as possible,” said Mr Suthon.

He added that 10,000 CCTV cameras under the Pracha Wiwat scheme were operational and 20,000 more cameras will be installed in the capital within next year.

“Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said on Tuesday the fake cameras were intended to help scare off criminal activity. Later, when City Hall, had the budget funding, it installed real ones.”

If it turns out that one out of twenty of those beautiful Thai smiles are also fake, that’s probably a better ratio than in most other countries. Still it is a worry for the Tourist Authority of Thailand, which may have to go back to the drawing boards for a new campaign to bring travelers to the Land of Smiles. “Thailand Mostly Real” or “Enjoy! You’re Safe with Our Dummies.”

Beale Street, the traditional home of Memphis blues music, is a short noisy road with police cars at each end and, that night, a very white couple performing ballroom dancing to a bemused black crowd in the street. The warning sign tells tourists they may not walk dogs or reptiles there. It didn’t say anything about tangoing. I think the dancers were tourists. Most of us were.  I doubt there were many locals. My faithful sidekick, Eric, and me was checking out the live vibes. We heard a pretty good Johnny Cash impersonator, some Sly and the Family Stone, and at least one Elvis tune, but not a hell of a lot of blues. ‘Tourists tend not to favour it’, a barman told us.  Of course that wasn’t true of me and Eric who’d been driving along to blues road music the whole way from St Louis on old route 61. Finally we found a little place with a Haight-Ashbury flower child lead guitarist, a displaced Japanese housewife base, a comatose drummer and a feisty old lead singer wiht a harmonica and a tip bucket. They briefly made some real music and we were saddened when the set ended and the bucket came around. We didn’t stay out too late because we had a platinum tour pass for Graceland the following day. We needed to be at our freshest.

It was peeing down with rain as we drove along Elvis Presly Boulevard, passed the Heartbreak Hotel and pulled in to the only parking lot i’ve ever seen where handicap spaces outnumbered regular. If you come from Europe where the sink unit is a short poney ride from the lavatory in royal bathrooms you may decide that the Graceland Mansion…isn’t.  A long snake of devotees with headphones shuffled through little ol’ rooms barely the size of my mamma’s lounge.  The legendary jungle room was no more bizarre than most Chinese living rooms in Thailand. Apart from a whippet in an Elvis waistcoat and an Aussie DJ who’d gelled what was left of his hair into a sad coiffe with drawn-on sideburns, the crowd lacked colour. But perhaps that  was just the rain. There were sincered tears at the graveside and a Japanese wreath dedicated to Mr. Elvis Presery, and bunches of soggy hand-made flowers. There wasn’t anything nearly tacky enough to buy in the thirty-two gift shops and only peanut butter and banana sandwiches on sale at the diner. So we left empty handed with nothing funny to say about the place. We hoped our irreverance hadn’t stepped on His blue suede shoes.

And perhaps the highlight of our Memphis trip was last night at Ernastine and Hazel’s. Eric had heard it was a rocking little blues joint nowhere near the tourist traps (but watch your back if you walk there). So we moseyed on over. It was shut. Or at least the lights were out, the TV was on and the barman had his feet up. “Aint much goin’  on here on a Mondee,’ said he.  But in twenty minutes we had the TV off and were pumping quarters into a juke box voted ‘the best selection in Memphis’ by the local newspaper. We got a guided tour of the upstairs brothel (decommisioned in the sixties) and the hidden outback speakeasy. We spent the night swapping stories with the bar keep over a few ales. That…was the Memphis we’d been looking for.

Next stop…Houston.