Oi Polloi's recent Autumnal jaunt to Deutschland on their 'Roctober' tour was a chance to indulge big time. However, the immersion into a life of loud punk rock, lots of good beer, irregular inputs of nutrition, daily autobahn travel and a lack of sleep left me a shadow of my former self. How can middle-aged men (well, 35 upwards) do this on a regular basis?
On the plus side, German beer is always an attraction. The trip through Edinburgh's duty-free is aye a chance to check out the whisky. Free samples were had of Balvenie Rum Cask - excellent stuff - and the Auchentoshan desk was surrounded by Polloi and their hangers-on. The Auch 18yo went down very well, and it wasn't even midday yet.
Once in Germany, talk turned to a bunch of loony anarchists who call themselves 'Anti-Deutsch' and who threaten to picket and disrupt any activities they deem to be 'anti-Semitic'. As this lot support Bush and Blair's war in Iraq, frown upon the speaking of German or Gaelic (even in their respective countries) as 'nationalist', and support Israeli phosphorous bombing of schools... they need a very wide net to catch all us 'anti-Semites'. Fortunately for us, this quasi-religious sect has very few hands with which to grab yon all-encompassing net and their activity was limited to grunts of dissaproval and calls for Anarcho-Semitic revolution from a colourless wee blog, written in...er... German. I guess their Hebrew aint up to much yet.
Interestingly, 'Semite' refers to the family of languages of the Palestinian region and included Arabic and Hebrew and gave birth to the subset of myths known as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. One language says 'shalom' and the other 'salaam'. How different can they be? Not much. But why let logic get in the way of good divisive blood-spilling mumbo-jumbo?
Meanwhile, England's very own bunch of loony politicos, the BNP, are apparently in turmoil after fat toff Griffin's pretty crap performance on Question Time. Griffin, despite being a twisted Tory bastard, is apparently the 'nice' face of this bunch of nazis. However, it seems that the 'not so nice' other face is gurning big time about their 'weak' leader. Is there a split on the horizon? Could be, especially when this hugely homophobic party start finding out that their overwhelmingly male membership aint actually that straight.
Worse than this though, at least on a personal level, was the earth-shaking and techno-esque (think of Joey Beltram and NJoi) snoring of Norman Silver. Worse even than the distribution - 'according to anarchist principles' - of a bottle of Queen Margot in Hamburg. It has to be said though that the punters enjoyed their Scottish windae-cleaner. Let's hope they get the chance to try the good stuff.
And, the 'good stuff' has to include Bunnahabhain's Darach Ur.
Slàinte mhath to a good night's sleep.
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