2005-07-05

News exclusive: Haggis to blame for the withdrawal of France from the military command of NATO! �I�ve long suspected this to have been the case,� mourned the aptly named Sir Peter Ricketts at a press conference on Sunday. �I maintain, however,� he added defiantly, �that a deep-fried Mars Bar never hurt anyone.� Minutes later, Sir Ricketts's teeth all fell out and he suffered a massive coronary.

I�ll be visiting the headquarters of NATO myself in a few weeks: yes, it�s off to Brussels, land of excellent beer, gourmet chocolate, and execrable taste in public monuments. Brussels is reputed amongst those of my acquaintance to be an irretrievably boring city (of course, these are people who have never been to Thunder Bay, and whose frames of reference are therefore somewhat skewed); but with eight hundred and sixty-two billion varieties of finely crafted microbrewed ale at my fingertips, I think I�ll manage to rustle up a bit of fun somehow, even if I have to plunge face-first into the gutter to find it. (I�m telling you now, though � if I wake up next to Jean-Claude Juncker, I will officially consider my holiday spoiled.)