It was a week of drama at many levels. The most engaging story was the rescue of a football squad of twelve boys and their coach after nine days trapped in Tham Luang caves in Chang Rai, northern Thailand. The rescue team of Thai soldiers and civilians, and three expert British divers was led by caver Vern Unsworth, who had lived in the area for six years and had planned to explore those caves at the very time of the incident. After initial revival, the 13 were brought out in three groups over a three-day period, and hospitalised. All are now well. The event generated some

interesting insights into human frailty. An offer of help had come from the entrepreneur, Elon Musk, who offered the rescuers his six-foot mini-submarine invention. In a display of pique, Unsworth dismissed the offer as mere publicity, since the rigid tube could not negotiate the crooked channel within the cave, and suggested that Musk might prefer to stick it up somewhere. Musk, equally up-to-date on insults, responded by calling Unsworth a pedophile. Such is the level of politeness we endure these days, reminiscent of Trump’s insults to Kim Jung Un, calling him the “Rocket man”, his country a “rogue nation”, which he threatened to destroy, and handled with sanctions and bullying. Kim responded by calling Trump a “political layman”, who made “unprecedented rude nonsense no one has ever heard from any of his predecessors. A frightened dog barks louder…I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying the DPRK…I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.”
This is all in keeping with the lack of courtesy and respect for people, especially in the USA, amounting to frank racism; recent examples are increasingly disturbing, from householders’ calling Police on seeing a black person nearby, even one carrying out an official job. One instance of a white lady verbally assaulting a black person was taped and sent to her employer, who fired her. Another woman, in South Carolina, thrice poked a youth in the chest for swimming in a pool. She is charged with assault. A Maryland priest abused black boys and ordered them out of his church. Perhaps he should watch black football players instead and meet talented people like Kylian Mbappé of the French squad who became the second teenager to score a goal in a World Cup Final, the first being Pelé of Brazil versus Sweden in 1958.
Meanwhile, Trump visited Britain where Theresa May, under fire for a sluggish Brexit, held his hand, and later watched him walk in front of the queen during the guard inspection; this upset the Brits, who thought him terribly rude, while Americans reminded them that the war of independence had long relieved the USA of royalty. The Queen didn’t seem to mind, only to find which way to turn; and finally went to his right.
Theresa May’s swift condemnation of Russia for the latest poisoning incident in Amesbury, near the British Army’s Porton Down poison research centre, seems trumped-up. That the victims of the March event were Russian, one an old spy, made the accusation convenient for May to gain politically in a gullible and poorly-informed population. The average British citizen is quick to trash non-Brits, especially non-white immigrants, and condemn Russians, in line with American sanctions, relating to Russian retaking of Crimea and actions in Ukraine and Syria.
Diplomacy in international relations, as in interpersonal ones, seems to have escaped Americans. Suspicion and distrust are common. The US has never really had any diplomats, at least not the professional types common elsewhere. In recent years, we’ve seen such incompetents heading foreign affairs as Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, and the serial “hires and fires” under Trump.
Putin met with Trump on Monday, a day after conclusion of the successful FIFA tournament (France won), and just days after the US Attorney General indicted twelve Russian agents for alleged hacking into US Democratic Party computers during the 2016 elections: surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and using the Justice system for political purposes! The twelve remain safe in Russia.
Putin strenuously denied a Russian role in UK poisoning and hacking US elections, which Trump believed over his own intelligence agencies, for good reason.
Syria remains a sore spot, while US CNN, peddling many unproven assertions, flays Trump for not smothering Putin!

On those extra hot afternoons the sun would heat the road so the tires of parked vehicles sank into the pitch leaving behind four threaded impressions. Some days the pitch was so hot that the edges of the roadway bulged when heavy trucks rolled by. It was a relief when the rains finally came, the first drops hitting the roadway with a fry-pan sizzle, the smell of pitch rising with the steam.
The blistering world fired up our imaginations, forcing us to seek out the cooler spaces in our sun-drenched world. One of the tricks we learned was to crawl under the houses that stood on shorter pillars. Here we re-enacted as games the

comics we were reading – so the dank crawlspaces became caves, which we explored inching along on our bellies, clearing the cobwebs away, enduring the irascible and irritation of a setting hen sitting on her clutch of eggs reaching futilely out to us with an occasional warning peck. Ignoring this territoriality, we remained unfazed by the sulphur-scent of unhatched eggs gone bad, detouring around the unhealthy spaces reeking of chicken droppings in the miasmic, enclosed air. It was in these spaces, where in search of cooler air away from the equatorial heat and humidity outside, where we fired up the imagination from our reading; here, in the semi-darkness under a kitchen or a bedroom, beneath the creaking of the floorboards, we outlined with chalk the dimensions of our bat-cave, the alpha of our pack of boys each taking it upon himself to be “Batman”, the runner-up in the dog-fight under the house for leadership grabbing the right-hand role of “Robin”, even as the apprehensive hen, brooding on brown eggs while breathing through an opened beak, watched us with incredulous shakes of the head.
It was out of this den of inequality, where those among us who were lesser in the hierarchy were sent out on “missions”, mostly food-gathering, the objective being to purloin items from food-cupboards and fridges and bring it back to the “bat-cave”. So it was we set out, the objective being to collect an array of items ranging from candy, sugar, molasses – any item not under lock-and-key, a watchful household eye, or could later be discovered missing from a pack, or bag, or from a package that was counted and numbered. It could be anything edible, which could be snacked on while we passed the afternoon under the house, waiting for the great heat of the day to dissipate, so we could emerge and continue with boyhood mayhem. Primary among the objects to be gathered, the role entrusted to the most discreet boys among us, was the acquisition of as many ice-cubes as possible. In a world where the sun is merciless, the owner of a fridge is a godsend; but in times of extreme humidity, even those who are godsend must take a siesta. We pooled our knowledge of the neighbourhood, the kitchens that were accessible, and our past experiences with parents and guardians most likely to be taking a nap away from the “pelting sun”.
Since I was among the youngest and most likely to not be punished if apprehended red-handed with a hand in the sugar-tin, I was chosen to ride shot-gun with another companion to raid his household’s fridge. However, while my timidity made me cautious, his familiarity with the kitchen alerted his snoozing mother to the invasion. Quickly alert to the possibility of a known and inveterate intruder, she shouted the warning, “Cat in the kitchen!”, at which her son, my betraying companion, bolted in a flash, running away on the pads of his feet while clutching the largesse of purloined ice-cubes to his stomach. I was left behind to face the consequences.
The mother rounded the corner broom in hand to meet my large, wide-opened, and piteous eyes. I answered the penetrating question in her eyes, saying I had come in search of my playmate, and wondered whether her son would like to come outside to play a game of bat-and-ball.
“Sonny-boy, you want to play outside in this hot sun? Before you go outside, why don’t you have a nice ice-block?” At which, this nice, trusting mother opened the freezer and produced an ice-tray of the most precious of ice-blocks, made with the richest cream from coconuts and condensed milk. The ice-block was so rich it slid out of the tray with the gentlest of shakes. I took it carefully in both hands for the gift it was, the whites of my eyes speaking with the language of hunger and gratitude, my cupped hands shaking with my good fortune, fingers holding the ice-block with the fragility of an egg. What good fortune had befallen me! The temptation in the heat of the day was to quickly devour this precious gift of ice; however, I savoured the treat.
This kind and generous mother wondered about the whereabouts of her son – he too should cool down. Right away I reached out with my free hand, wondering whether the refreshing ice-block would find its way to my betraying friend.

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