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  We were somewhere around Falkirk on the edge of a trading estate when the referendum began to take hold...  we started seeing cars racing past with saltire flags fluttering oot the windy, and by the time  the airport bus  arrived at Buchanan Street you could feel the electricity in the air and my attorney, Dr Gorbals, a 49-kilo Scotsman, was screaming about bats.He had previously been boasting of how peaceful the whole run-up to the referendum had been, no violence, all very civilized.  And he was right.  As we approached George Square w e   stepped aside to allow a guy in a T-shirt to pass, bent double between two Glasgow polis.  I checked into the hotel and as I closed the door behind me the fire alarm went off.  In our drug-fuelled paranoia we thought it was us, and the whole hotel started to evacuate.  One woman was walking calmly towards the exit in her dressing gown and bare feet.  We slipped out the front door...

TRAVELS WITH THE KNOB* ATHENS 2015 The KNOB participated in the 2011 European Oompah Championships last May, known to the initiated as Euroompah! On arrival in Athens, we found posters the length of the main drag proclaiming "Euroompah Go Home! And take your hot air with you!" Charming. Apparently the work of the Greek bouzouki players' union. The contest was to take place in the magnificent Megaron Mouzikis, an enormous concert complex with several auditoria and a vast marble atrium where lederhosen and dirndl clad musicians from all over Europe were already gathering on Sunday and meeting up with old friends. Some groups were practising in corners, creating a cacophony of trumping which echoed around the vast space. It was sheer pandemonium, to use an ancient Greek term. Bert, who had flown in separately from Dusseldorf, met us at the hotel with a long face. All the triangles had been lost by Lufthansa. This wrecked our entire plan, as we had rehearse...

    Vi Hornblower and I went on a demo in Paris once. Not on purpose, you understand. We had been shopping at Galeries Lafayette and wandered into it by accident. As we arrived at the station, we walked into a great hullabaloo, people waving flags and shouting through megaphones. With the benefit of hindsight, this was possibly not the best moment to get out the Instamatic, and before I knew it I was surrounded by burly chaps with berets and moustaches and T-shirts proclaiming “CGT” (Che Guevara’s T-shirt, perhaps?), breathing garlic in my face and asking me if I was an “agent provocateur”. Obviously an hommage to my penchant for French lingerie. In a show of solidarity with the workers, I handed the camera to a large policeman who took a snap of me arm-in-arm with the sans-culottes; he then pointed to a nearby building,, where a video camera was pointing down in my direction. I waved enthusiastically for my French fans, so intent on my appearance on the nine-o-c...

  THE HORROR, THE HORROR (PART ONE) There are two kinds of expat Brit in France. The first kind is retired, upper-middle-class, patrician, to be found mostly in the Dordogne or Provence, well established for 20 years or more. Public school and university education, very comfortably off thank you on their mandarin's pension or share options, they are to be found discreetly integrating into the prettier villages of rural France. Only identifiable by their UK registered cars and their Church shoes, they pass unobtrusively, speaking charming Eton-inflected French and ordering wines with an expertise that causes a Périgord sommelier to suck his teeth in admiration. Les Anglais, after all, are the greatest tastevins in the world. The men are tall, broad-shouldered, aquiline-nosed, trim silver moustaches lending them a military bearing, vaguely reminiscent of John Cleese, sporting linen jackets and Panama hats; their wives petite, thin-lipped and copper-bronzed, in Jaeger lin...

PREAMBLE “Welcome to Hell” There were two omens.  The dream, the night before we left.  We were on the plane, taxiing down the runway, the engines started to scream, and I suddenly felt an enormous rush of fear and loathing for the journey I was about to take.  “No!!”  I yelled, “I don’t want to go!!!” The second omen was conveyed via the inflight movie, which was “Groundhog Day”.  This tells the story of a man who is condemned to live the same day over and over and over again, but of course I couldn’t know how prophetic this was until I’d been in Nigeria some time. On arrival at Murtala Muhammed airport, Lagos, my first thought on leaving the aircraft was: “So that’s what foetid really means.”  We were greeted by Jim’s two colleagues from the High Commission with the words “Welcome to Hell.”      Friday, 25 June 1993 We set off last Friday, after staying overnight with Uncle Bill and Jackie in Sevenoaks.  Thursday night I dreamed I was ...

DIPLOMATIC BAGGAGE MOROCCO, 1992 Rabat We flew to Rabat from Orly Sud in separate parts of the same plane - for operational reasons (i.e. getting his fare paid by the office) Jim had to travel First Class, while I had paid for my own bucket seat in Economy Class. Being the egalitarian chap he is, he cheerily waved his glass of champagne at me as we taxied down the runway. We were met at Rabat airport by an Embassy driver and taken to the Hotel Yasmina, a very nice, clean and friendly small hotel. Arriving late at night, we only had time for a drink and a snack before bed. We awoke to the sound of the muezzins on Sunday morning, and set off to explore the town. Rabat has no tourists as such, the Casbah is therefore easy to wander round at your leisure with minimal hassle from the traders. The Medina and Casbah separate the “new” town from the sea. The beach in Rabat is small and largely (and thickly) populated by Moroccans. Returning via the Casbah, a guy casually says “He...