Welcome Home!

Well, I've had some great news today. My friend Hicham Yezza has won his case against this ridiculous government and will not now face deportation! I only heard this news this evening, on the way home from work. I was driving in the blinding rain (god, it was awful) and there was so much noise I could hardly hear Musab announce the news to me over the hands-free. I'm so excited that Hich has finally managed to convince the authorities that their case against him was nothing more than a mealy-mouthed, face-saving, vindictive attempt at persecution.

Hich has been languishing in gaol for months, just because the jumped-up judiciary couldn't bear to admit that they'd made a mistake. They kept him in a series of prisons as far away as possible from his home in Nottingham because, as they said: "Mr Yezza is an illegal immigrant with no family or friends in this country, therefore it doesn't matter where he is incarcerated." This is all ballast! Hich has lived and worked in Nottingham for thirteen years – paying his taxes and National Insurance like the rest of us – and has a huge network of friends and colleagues who all care for him and who would all have liked him to be nearer. This is cynical, spiteful and cruel behaviour on the part of our glorious Home Office. It was just nasty, and not something any of us should feel proud of.

But now, hopefully, his ordeal is over and very soon he'll be coming home. Now there is going to be a big party to which I think we should invite Jack Straw and Alan Johnson and put them in the stocks and throw tomatoes at them. Frozen ones.

I had a wonderful experience yesterday. I was talking to a group of archaeologists when one of them suddenly whipped out a hand axe that had originally been crafted by a Neanderthal Man something like 200,000 years ago. It was quite remarkable to hold something that was actually man-made, yet that old. But the interesting thing was to learn that Neanderthal Man - having existed on this planet for roughly 190,000 years – then somehow co-existed with us (what the anthropologists call 'the Moderns') for around 10,000 years before dying out. How odd is that? I hadn't realized that we – the 'Moderns' – hadn't evolved from the Neanderthals. It was a revelation to me that we are a totally different species, and that for 10,000 or so years, we were neighbours! I wonder if one of us ever popped next door to borrow a cup of sugar?