There are many problems in our world – probably a fair share are currently in the Middle East. The Middle East has proved to be a Gordian knot…a man from Glasgow has a solution…
I met Steve, a London black cab driver, originally from Glasgow, when he was driving me home from work on a rainy night. As most conversations with black cab drivers go – it was a little unusual in the fact that we were able to chat about things other than the price of diesel, the evil Uber, and how Boris was ruining the flow of London traffic, for about 15 minutes -before we reverted back to one of the subjects of choice for most members of the London taxi trade…. the price of diesel.
“Thaur is nae bunsens (that’s ‘business’ in English) in th’ cab trade nowadays – price ay diesel is killin’ us” Steve explained.
“But I thought petrol prices were low for the moment…” I said
“Nae, atween Uber an’ th’ impact ay Hoomoos is havin’ oan oil prices – we ur bein’ driven ayt business.”
Did he say houmous was driving up oil prices ?? I was stupefied – never been keen on the chickpea paste personally – but never thought that it was affecting global oil prices before. This was interesting – could this be something that oil traders had missed ? Had I missed it and everybody else knew it ? Was there an element of correlation between the oil and chickpea markets ?
I was shocked – never been keen on houmous, it is rather bland in my opinion, and at best should be served as a small side dish when eating Lebanese food – but never felt the urge to resort to carpet bombing when I was eating it. Made me think of when we put a french firecracker in a pot of Anchor spreadable butter in Thompson Jr’s study at school – we had redecorated the whole study in butter within minutes – would bombing houmous have the same impact on the Middle East? Was this a humane new way of bombing people – drop giant vats of houmous onto Raqqa and Mosul. Would certainly be unpleasant having to get the chickpea paste out of an Islamic beard – a more gentle way of fighting back against the Islamic terrorist threat. Maybe it could work – unusual suggestion from somebody with army strategic training I felt- but then again it may be worth a try and it was certainly cheaper than dropping bombs. Carpet bombing houmous may be the answer the western world was looking for.
“Tay mony foreigners in London – nae enaw pure Londoners Ah feel. We hae tae gonnae sae no th’ syrians comin’ tae London. That’s wa we hae tae bomb hoomoos.” Steve was explaining – not being in the slightest bit perturbed by the fact that he was from Glasgow and definitely not a local.
It was as we got to Clapham, that I thought I had got to the bottom of the Houmous strategy.
“It aw started in Gaza – that’s waur th’ problem started” Steve was saying.
Hamas ?? Was homous actually Hamas ??
As I paid Steve for the taxi fare – I asked him what regiment he had served with.
“Army Caterin’ Corp – based at St Omer Barracks in Aldershot. Prood tae hae served”
Maybe it was a houmous strategy after all…..
