Guardian All Ears 21st March

Funnily enough I'd just spent a small fortune on Deet & Mosquito nets for my upcoming trip to Africa when I got the copy for this week's article - very prescient! My wallet is now smarting from paying for 4 week's worth of Malarone anti-malarial tablets so the little f***ers better leave me the hell alone -
I swear I've actually seen mosquitos donning napkins & holding knives & forks when they see me coming - nice to be popular with someone I suppose (even if it's pesky insect filth)
This will probably be my last post for a few weeks due to my aforementioned trip to Africa (never sure if anyone reads / looks at these things anyway so might just be talking to myself!)


(article by Michael Holden)

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times but I’m hearing a lot of conversations lately where people are trying to outdo one another by some abstract measure. I sat on the bus the other day and found two teenagers at the back debating who had the least hospitable ancestral connections.

Teen 1 (emphatic) “The mosquitoes back home are out of hand.

Teen 2 (quietly confident) “They’re big where we’re from.”

Teen 1 (after some consideration) “I’ve been bitten enough times. I think I’ve had malaria.”

Teen 2 “You’d know if you had malaria. It kills folk.”

Teen 1 (unhindered by fact) “Where I’m from the mosquitoes come out in the day.”

Teen 2 (like this was a good thing) “It’s worse at home because of the sewage.”

Teen 1 “When did you last go home?”

Teen 2 “When I was four.”

Teen 1 (emboldened by his friends lack of recent first hand information) “I tell you, where I’m from you can’t walk anywhere without water. You’ll dry up. You will die.

Teen 2 (sagacious, dismissive) “I’d never go home at this time of year. I’m not kidding it is literally like walking on fire.”

There was silence for while then, no comeback proved forthcoming. Teen one then got up to leave.

Teen 2 “Did you do that maths homework?”

Teen 1 “No.”

You could see from his face that he understood that no amount of competitive nostalgia was going to change the fact that he was going home with a sports bag full of problems still unsolved.