Tuesday 23 February 2010

Beware Terrorists Carrying Sesame Seeds

Today’s offering has to be brief, because I have a new short story that is itching to get out of the blocks.

A friend of mine was returning home to Prague on Sunday. When she checked in at Birmingham Airport, they confiscated her pot of houmous because it was ‘liquid.’ Her protestations brought only the threat of arrest.

Now, maybe there’s some arcane logic at work here, but it still seems a bit...well...silly. I’ve just finished reading Kafka’s The Trial, and a certain resonance, albeit diluted, pressed itself upon me. (By an odd coincidence, The Trial is set in Prague.) Some critics are wont to interpret the novel as a black comedy, and I suppose there is something lightly amusing about having your pot of houmous confiscated. Maybe it belongs more appropriately in Becket’s theatre of the absurd, of which I’m also a fan. Nevertheless...

More on the subject of (1) God, and (2) the disturbing road our culture is taking, in a day or two.

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