Tea With bin Laden

Well, I've been doing a bit more soul-searching this week. Oh, I suppose that sounds terribly self-indulgent (and of course, it is), but I'm sure it's not something that is unique to me only. The plethora of self-help books that weigh down the laudable shelves of Waterstone's is almost an embarrassment to our society, which indicates that many of us engage in lengthy bouts of navel-gazing whenever we can. My problem is that I make high demands of myself, and so therefore I often end up being disappointed with my own efforts. Maybe I should just become someone who never does anything at all, and then I wouldn't get the wolves of guilt snapping at my heels whenever I fail to deliver.

Probably my worst trait is never being able to say 'No', either to other people or to myself. This means that my little timetable (I've mentioned this before) gets so crowded with multifarious tasks and obligations that I am left with little room for manoeuvre whenever things veer off track. I then find myself slipping down a steep slope of shale, feet scudding as if they were clutching at marbles, and before I know it I am clinging hopelessly to a feeble sapling of hope that is just.... about to snap!

That's how I feel right now, anyway. And so that's why I've undertaken yet another bout of introspection in my never-ending search for some peace. Peace? Is that what anyone of us really wants? Of course it is – who would ever want anything else? Well, it seems (from today's news) that Osama bin Laden doesn't. How could anyone applaud death and destruction in the name of progress (apart from George Bush and Tony Blair, that is)? I'd like to sit down for a cup of tea with that man (Osama, that is) and find out what really makes him tick. Oh yes, I do understand that the Israelis are being intractable in their occupation of Palestine, but mirroring that with a similar intractability doesn't seem like a sensible answer to me. It must be far better to sit down with a nice cup of tea (mint, if you insist) and see if there couldn't be a more friendly solution.

And now I hear that haggis is back on the menu for the Americans. Apparently, haggis hasn't been allowed to darken the doors of the USA for almost twenty years (the dreaded BSE, of course), but now we hear that the ban has been lifted. Hurrah! say the haggis exporters of Scotland. Yeuch! say the poor residents of America. Well, I would say yeuch! because I've never seen the point of haggis – my parents always used to bring one back for us from their annual holiday in Scotland and we invariably fed it to the dog... Haggis is revolting stuff – dry, stodgy and tasteless (well no, not exactly tasteless, because it tastes like shit) and as difficult to swallow as a house brick. By the time you read this, gentle reader, it will be Burns' Night and you will no doubt be cajoled at your various dinner parties and celebrations to engage in the wolfing down of this diabolical foodstuff. My message to you is therefore this: Do not succumb to such popularist indulgence when your palate could end up being as offended as Osma bin Laden presumably is by the existence of love. You have been warned.

Now, back to my timetable.... where was I?