Gin, good people. My glass trembles not from the gentle tremors of a perfectly balanced G&T but from the seismic stupidity of geopolitics. Word reaches this reporter, here in a snug corner of a Whitehall pub that smells of stale beer and vague menace, that the US and Iran have traded strikes, shattering what passes for a ceasefire like a cheap sherry glass at a vicar's tea party.
The news ticker, that relentless oracle of doom, flashes with a breathless urgency that suggests someone, somewhere, has just realised that war is not, in fact, a spectator sport. Whitehall, I am reliably informed by a man whose breath could strip paint, is 'watching closely,' which in diplomatic parlance means they're flapping about like startled hens and hoping no one asks them to do anything useful.
For those keeping score at home, a ceasefire is that fragile arrangement where everyone agrees to stop killing each other for a bit, often to allow for the delivery of aid or the filming of plucky news reports from the rubble. But, as ever, the grown-ups have decided that peace is for the weak, and so we return to our regularly scheduled programming of mutually assured destruction.
Let's undress this nonsense, shall we? The US, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer in a crystal shop, has evidently decided that the best way to maintain stability in the Middle East is to drop something explosive on someone who was supposed to be not dropping explosive things. And Iran, never one to let an opportunity for theatrical outrage pass, has responded in kind. Now we have an escalation, a word that sounds like something you do to a recipe but actually means death on an industrial scale.
I picture the men in rooms, those architects of our discontent, staring at maps and pushing little plastic tanks with sweaty fingers. They speak in acronyms and euphemisms, a language designed to anaesthetise the sheer horror of what they're suggesting. 'Collateral damage' is a personal favourite, a phrase that allows you to kill a classroom of children without the messy business of admitting you've done so.
But let's not be too hard on them. They are, after all, simply following the grand tradition of posturing and brinkmanship that has kept the world's munitions factories in business since the last time someone thought a world war was a good idea. The civilians, as always, will pay the price. They will be the ones whose homes are flattened, whose children are orphaned, whose lives become statistics in a report that no one will read.
Meanwhile, back in the cosy warmth of the pub, a man on the telly is talking about 'market volatility.' Apparently oil prices have spiked, which is news that will surely concern the hedge fund managers and luxury yacht enthusiasts. But for the rest of us, it's just another twist in the endless spiral of madness.
I order another gin, partly for the taste and partly because I find that a decent measure of mother's ruin makes the farce of human existence marginally more bearable. The barman, a man of few words but impressive eyebrows, nods sympathetically. 'Another round of the end of the world?' he asks.
'Make it a double,' I reply.
And so we drink, we watch, we wait. The war is coming, they say. But then again, the war has always been coming. It is a permanent feature of our civilisation, like taxes, reality television, and the NHS's winter crisis. The only question is whether we will be smart enough to stop it before it consumes us all. Based on current evidence, I wouldn't bet the price of a packet of crisps on it.
This is Biff Thistlethwaite, filing from the edge, because that's where the truth lives. And because the bar tab isn't going to pay itself.
