Dear Denis, old cock,
Well, your spouse Margaret, the old battleship, has finally shuffled off her mortal coil - or dropped anchor, or whatever - and, notwithstanding having been made a life peer, has gone to join you in that giant house of commons in the sky. Once a grocer's daughter, always a grocer's daughter. No sweat, my china. My lot grew beets in Latvia (as did Boris' folk). You don't really get to choose your antecedents.
Her arrival might cramp your style a bit - less single malt, less golf in the clouds, less hanging out in bed of a morning and smoking. But what the hell, you married her, you deal with her. We all have to deal with our spouses; and I suspect that you realised sooner than most of us romantic morons that there is no happiness until one realises that this is (or in your case, was) as good as it gets.
You might find Margaret a bit changed. Apparently she's suffered for 12 years from dementia. I had a loved one who suffered from dementia at the end of her life and you're going to need all the patience that you have proverbially always possessed in order to deal with the old biddy. Lucky too that you've had off 10 years in which to chill a little.
But it's probably a good thing that Margaret didn't know what was going on around her. I mean, I'll tell you gratis, Denis: cell phones or no cell phones, iPads or no iPads, emails or no emails, Facebook or no Facebook, tweets or no tweets, people don't get any smarter or better. What did Lord Byron write? "This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions."
But I digress. What I wanted to tell you was that the stupidity never ends. For example, when Margaret bought it on Monday, the Asians went a bit weird. Taiwan's CTI TV, in footage aired on Monday evening, showed the Queen dressed in a green coat and waving at the crowd with a caption reading: "Former British Prime Minister Thatcher passed away, the Iron Lady is missed."
In Thailand, army-run Channel 5 TV station showed a photo of Meryl Streep playing Thatcher in the 2011 movie The Iron Lady. "We apologise for the mistake over the use of the photo during the report on Margaret Thatcher which caused misunderstanding. Our team will try harder and be more careful," someone wrote on the channel's Facebook page.
And of course the ranks of the bloody yobs haven't been attenuated. If anything, there are more of them. Six Brit cops - your guys, Denis - were injured, one of them seriously, when they tried to break up a street party apparently celebrating Margaret's death.
It happened in Bristol at one of the impromptu events held across the country. Police said about 200 revellers in Bristol refused to disperse. "Bottles and cans were thrown at officers, six of whom suffered injuries," Chief Inspector Mark Jackson of Avon and Somerset Constabulary said.
What a bunch of bozos the Bobbies are, Denis! We don't put up with that sort of crap here. Our guys, on the tip of Africa, would have gunned down those revellers without so much as a by-your-leave. And we use serious weaponry too, none of that hand-gun nonsense.
Our army too has been on the ball lately. Quite ironic, really: remember the trouble in which the Boy Mark was unceremoniously dunked? In August 2004, the Boy Mark was charged in Cape Town with contravening two sections of the "Foreign Military Assistance Act" that bans Seffricans and those living here from taking part in foreign military activity. He was apparently involved in Simon Mann's failed Wonga-Wonga or Bongo-Bongo coup in Equatorial Guinea.
Things are different now under Jacob G Zuma. Now, apparently, the president or his friends or his family or the ANC have been involved in some strange stuff in the Central African Republic - shoring up some tin pot potentate. But then one of our two crack units, the parabats, got whacked by a bunch of car guards, the average age of which was below 17.
Why there was such a song and dance about the age of the car guards, I do not know. You'll know as well as I, Denis, that when the allies moved into Germany in 1945, they faced child troops, which is mostly what the Third Reich had left, and the kids were absolutely ruthless.
But not only are the hooligans fighting about Margaret. The lefties are also gaaning aan much better. "We'll be glad to see the back of her," Judith Orr, editor of the UK's far-left Socialist Worker weekly newspaper, told AFP. "She ruined the lives of tens of millions of working class people in Britain... And she rejoiced in war. That was one of her most disgusting moments, but there is a long list of crimes."
Rights activist Peter Tatchell told AFP that Margaret was "heartless," saying she had presided over the decimation of Britain's manufacturing base and introduced "Britain's first new anti-gay law in 100 years," Section 28.
Eish, Denis, the feygeles, the fellows who bat for the other side, what can you do? The moffies are everywhere - and if you dare say a word about them, your life is not worth living.
You'll get Dr Eve and Eusebius McKaiser and the whole glum shooting match all over you like a rash. The only person, it seems, who's willing to stand up straight for us heterosexuals is the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu and even he is going to get into deep diddly for the most recent comments he's made via his spokesman, Prince Mbonisi Zulu. Oy.
But even worse than them are the local politically correct intemellectuals. They have of course launched a righteous rearguard (as it were) campaign aimed at proving that Margaret wasn't as horribly right-wing as we all know she was.
Even on this very site, you will see a piece by the learned Ratcatcher in which he/she shows that Margaret never said that that "anyone who thinks [the ANC] is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land".
But what's the bloody fuss, Denis? Even if Margaret never said those words, she ought to have said them, don't you think? And what's more, she has been shown to be correct in a way, hasn't she?
Take a look at what we have here now: Marikana, wild and deadly escapades in Africa, Angie Motshekga (the alleged minister of education), our police commissioners, the New Age newspaper, a very wonky legal and judicial system, Dina Pule (she of the red shoes and the alleged communications minister), and, above all, that genius among men - drum roll, please - that leadingintemellectual ... Pallo Jordan - who said of an old biddy who's had dementia for for more than a decade and who's just died... "Good riddance to Thatcher ...blah blah woof woof"...
"I've just sent a letter of congratulations," Jordan, who was the ANC's chief propagandist in exile during the apartheid era, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.
A letter of congratulations? What a bozo. Now tell me, Denis: is this or is it not cloud-cuckoo land?
Best wishes and salaam alai'kum. Say hello to the missus.
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