Bilbao
Blade and I had just docked in Bilbao, having come to the end of a hideous 36-hour ordeal on board a large, lower-class ferry. I was hanging around the reception desk of the vessel wearing Blade’s Israeli Airforce hoody, and trying to look offensive, when I noticed a man whom I assumed to be northerner, wearing some nylon shorts. We disembarked without showing anyone our passports, and with the Liverpudlian following us. The northerner then offered us a lift with him and his brother, whose parents have moved to Spain, and to whom they were driving. They dropped us outside our five-star hotel. I left Blade’s 2003 rowing jacket in the car. I was more upset about this than he. So in the car we conversed on various matters. Blade told the nice men that he wanted to be a teacher in order not to make them feel bad about their relative stupidity. I told them that I did French, and English, thinking this to be a rather inoffensive combination as would be studied by asinine girls from the north. Blade later told me I was wrong on this point. The younger of the brothers said that he was in the army fighting in Afghanistan, and this pleased me very much. I said that my cousin was also there shooting the savage Taleban, and we bonded. He spotted my hoody, and asked me if I was in the Israeli airforce (this was before I had told him about my studying French and English). I said that no I was not, and that I had the hoody because I had bought it as a souvenir, and because the Israeli Airforce is the best in the world. His only point of contention was the superiority of the British in this area. This, again, pleased me very much. We made a few small jokes about F16s and mohemmedans, and, again, bonded. This was a very heartening conversation. These people have not been perverted by the scourge of moral relativism, because they do not know what it is. They prefer to talk about aeroplanes and guns than Edward Said. They are excluded from the post-al-aqsa tide of anti-semitism, that I shall very originally observe, has swept along islamo-facsists as well as ‘intellectuals’. This is very good, and I entered my Bilbao hotel happy.