Sunday, September 07, 2008

Ordeal or obnubilation...

The BBC describe the 'ordeal' of Lichfield MP Michael Fabricant who has mentioned how, whilst on a trekking holiday to South America last week, he was held at gunpoint by guards in Colombia who searched his bags, they all carry guns so it’s fairly common at Colombian airports – I'm presuming he was in Bogota - to be 'in the line of fire' so to speak; however I am dubious, MF says that they "mistook a jar of coffee whitener he was carrying for cocaine". Now who am I to suggest it is a fabrication (no pun intended…oh all right, it was!) but these soldiers aren't stupid, and they usually have dogs, in fact on my numerous incursions into Colombia I've been stopped many times and I always have little bags, bottles and boxes of white powder…all part of the job you understand…and I’ve never had need to 'panic' and stuff my face with the offending article (MF said he did just that); in fact on one occasion I had several clear, square, transparent plastic bags looking exactly like those you may see in many films with drugs and never has anyone bat an eyelid – they know and they have ways of knowing and their dogs tell them if drugs are about.

Mr. Fabricant actually sounds like a clever (and a good) guy and according to what his website tells us can speak French and German plus a little of some other languages…so what’s all this about then? Why tell the press about it? Surely if it was just him and his friend they could have kept quiet: it’s not really news, it’s uncommon for the BBC to advertise (Coffemate)….something is odd…

That said, the real crazy part is that Mr Fabricant said...

although Colombian coffee was "really very, very good", he did not trust trying the local milk, which is why he had brought the coffee whitener with him

For fuck's sake…the coffee's really very good so you put whitener in it? ...you're on a trekking holiday so you need to travel light but you take coffee whitener? ...come on, what really happened? What were you doing there?

P.S. Colombian milk is fine...mostly: there's always the odd local problem!

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2 comments:

Paul said...

Funnily enough Span, I've got a survival book by an ex-SAS guy and he suggests using old camera film pots to carry....coffee whitener. Strange days indeed.

Span Ows said...

Various comments... army coffee is shite and I presume the putting in film pots would be to avoid having to leave sachets lying around from ration packs while you either getting lost in the jungle or laying low behind enemy lines. Camera roll pots aren't particullay air tight (enough for short term crossing rivers etc but coffee whitener is very hygroscopic so despite being tight enough to protect your film they still let in some air so your coffee whitener will be gooey muck) ...I could teach the SAS a thing or two ;-)