© Always Worth Saying 2025, Going Postal
They say that lightning doesn’t strike twice. They are wrong. And if it scorches a doorway or two and sets one of my old cars alight, then so be it — some things are meant to burn away to make room for something new. Regular readers will recall a previous explanation penned by this contrite reviewer from the drawing room of his respectable Debatable Lands family home.
At the time, one felt compelled to explain a bizarre series of misunderstandings regarding the exchange rate of the Baht and the use of those bewildering things, sent by the devil himself, known as travel apps. As you may remember, while trying to make a modest donation to an overseas orphans’ fund and book a day return to Penrith with Mrs AWS, I accidentally gifted £30,000 to a young Thai man. I also subsequently spent a month (sans Mrs AWS) trapped in a notorious Southeast Asian fleshpot.
This discomfort, combined with fake news coverage of the event and photographs that might have been AI but were definitely posted in plain envelopes to both my wife and the newspapers, meant I must be much more careful in future. I would now use the money transfer and travel apps with greater caution! Unfortunately, as you will have gathered from heavy hints in the tabloids and a series of arrests, other pitfalls await any church going provincial family man dedicated to public service in these times of confusing technology.
Future historians may conclude this to be the Age of the Grinder. Putin’s meat grinder appears nightly on the news in disturbing reports from the front line of the war afflicting southern and eastern Ukraine. Given the recent Brexit reset and its consequences to our distressed coastal towns and their fishermen, the grinding tanks used to reduce fish meat to waste are a conversation piece at every fashionable Islington dinner party.
Surface grinders, cylindrical grinders, centerless grinders, tool and cutter grinders, belt grinders – all are used both in the building trade. Also for odd jobs about the house, from making habitable the most humble abode in the kingdom to improving further the pleasant outer-suburban respectable pile of the television reviewer and article writer.
Alone in my office one night while doing my research to keep abreast of the important issues of our times, I was presented with some interesting results upon entering ‘meat’, ‘grinder’ and ‘Ukrainian’ into a search engine. Determined to show my empathy to the suffering people in the aforementioned blighted land, I fell into conversation with a number of young men of that territory.
Despite what you may read in the press about their reticence to flock to the colours, judging by their photographs, the youth are slim, willowy, lithe, eager and ready for service. However, my Ukrainian isn’t what it could be, as a result of which a series of misunderstandings and bizarre coincidences set in motion.
The first coincidence was that my new acquaintances were in London, perhaps on leave, at the same time I was staying in the WC2 bachelor pad of an old friend of mine, a Mr Ahmed. One felt obliged to arrange a meeting. Mentioning this in conversation over breakfast with Mr Ahmed – who has never married and therefore has plenty of space for such a thing – dropped into my ear the idea of a ‘daddy party’. As the proud father of a grown-up family, at once I thought of a gathering of like-minded middle-aged married men who might pass an evening talking of blokey stuff.
Mr Ahmed concurred and suggested a broader and less age-exclusive gathering to include our needy Ukrainians, and offered the availability of his multi-million pound penthouse – decorated in tasteful accents of sunflower yellow and Yves Klein blue. White gallery walls in the main living spaces allow for floral fabric prints. The dining room features a sculptural light installation shaped as a bower of foliage.
Ideal for man-cave nights in and easily split into different rooms for special interests, one thought of a model railway room, another for gardening or do-it-yourself. Perhaps Michael Portillo’s train programmes might play on a big screen? Mr Ahmed’s outdoor terrace with planted trees, a fire pit and a jacuzzi would be perfect for, say, a bit of middle-of-the-night innocent indulgence with a telescope. Mr Ahmed set about making the arrangements.
On the actual evening, the apartment filled with esteemed older gentlemen of respectable professions. Disk jockeys, MPs, BBC-types, the occasional newsreader and clergyman circulated over canapes as my young Ukrainian acquaintances arrived. As expected, they were in uniform – naval rating, soldier, traffic cop and, well, not going to lie, one presented as if a red Indian. Perhaps, the full ceremonial dress of an elite Ukrainian regiment?
However, after the sensual overload of railway videos, star gazing, do-it-yourself tips and Mr Ahmed’s always overactive wrist near the punch bowl, my recollection of the night becomes rather hazy. In the light of subsequent events, I can only assume, as one might expect, the conversation turned to drone strikes with at least one of our young Ukrainian friends suggesting a demonstration.
I’m a great believer that an Englishman can do as he likes on his own patch of this blessed land. In these Isles, a gentleman’s home is his castle. If a homeowner allows for an explosion on a property he rents out to a relative in a quiet North London street, then it is neither the business of the constabulary, judiciary nor His Majesty’s Press.
Suffice it to say, to make the reenactment as lifelike as possible, I allowed the use of such a property that I have an interest in. Following previous threats from the Bangkok mafia, usefully there is a fireproof porch in place. Upon arrival, an improvised traffic cop’s helmet with a red Indian headdress for a fuse substituted for, according to the Ukrainians, a ZALA Kub-BLA warhead.
But we were missing anything explosive. By coincidence, when still living there myself and under financial stress due to the expense of an unwise libel case, I’d sold my car to a neighbour. Fortunately, I could still recall the knack of how to remove its filler cap without a key. Having extracted from the tank to the traffic cop’s helmet, as luck would have it, the vehicle caught fire.
Not to make a waste of a night, we proceeded to explode the fake ‘drone’ in my relative’s porchway all the same. With some of the flammable liquid remaining, we ran to another property nearby in which I used to reside. This also enjoys a flameproof porch left over from a nineteen-eighties entanglement with a disgruntled Amsterdam magazine publisher linked to the Cockney underworld.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the next day a journalist contacted me to tell of arrests at a departure gate at about the time of the daily shuttle from Luton to Kiev. An innocent explanation? Perhaps curtain twitching while too much midnight carbon dioxide and heat was emitted in one of Mr Khan’s ULEZ zones?
Anyway, the evening taught me to empathise even more with the good youth of Ukraine, who have to put up with exposions all the time at the hands of a dishonest rotter called Putin. He who will – unlike this humble reviewer of television programmes and writer of articles – say anything to get away with nefarious and underhanded goings on.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
