We have a little rule here that we never slag off other charities – but that doesn’t mean we can’t get mad at them!
We heard last week that a ‘rival’ charity was launching a huge new advertising campaign, claiming to be the only charity that helps animals and therefore their owners.
What total tosh!
SPANA has been doing that since the year dot – Kate, our founder, was very aware of the poverty of the animal owners she saw, and how by treating their animals, she helped the people, particularly the women and children.
And I bet you can think of other charities that do the same, more or less.
So everyone has been hopping mad – the more so as the charity tried to pretend the words used didn’t really mean that. Weasel words. Then someone contacted the Advertising Standards Authority and asked them what they thought the words meant, and they agreed with us. So there.
But what can you do? Their fundraisers had clearly said, ‘this is a great new angle for us’, and blow SPANA and all the others. But if you see it, have a wry little chuckle, and move on.
At last we had a decent weekend, and those with better memories will remember that strange yellow thing in the sky – used to be called ‘the sun’.
So what better than to take out that anger on hedge cutting, lawn-mowing etc.
I have just reached a certain age, and where other men might be given Champagne, or perhaps a few shirts or ties or books - I got a shed.
So all the family rallied round, and we dug and levelled, carted and mixed rubble and ballast, then finally screwed the shed together. Just like a giant Airfix kit – I used to get those as birthday presents a long time ago.
Then just as we were clearing up, we moved a lump of old wood, and there, cool as you like, was Mr. Toad. Now our Masters keep telling us there is much wrong with our country – perhaps there is – but I’m proud to live in a country where in Spring, dozens of people are out on our country lanes with plastic buckets, helping migrating toads across the road so they don’t get squished. Really nice that – and perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t honestly think of another country where that would happen.
So much nicer than weasel words in Ad Campaigns.
Jeremy Hulme
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And if you want to know why there is a picture of an Ostrich here, you'll just have to read on...!
Hate to say anything good about Air France, but we actually managed to stage through Paris and arrived in Tunis, more or less on time, and with nearly all our luggage. There is now no way you can fly anywhere in North or West Africa by British Airways – really thoughtful business strategy that – for example now there’s three planefulls of Brits every day, direct to Marrakech, and Willie Walsh doesn’t think there’s any money in that.
From the man who organised the flawless opening of Terminal Five? Well, anyway, there it is, so Air France it has to be.
And Tunis is still 35 degrees even in the night, and of course deep into Ramadan, just to remind any non-muslims, that means not eating or drinking during the hours of daylight. Not drinking, even when it’s forty degrees plus at mid-day. So a certain degree of discomfort for all and sundry.
After doing the budget, and visiting the Education Bus – entertaining (and at the same time teaching) kids at the cultural centre in town during the summer holidays, we set off on the road north-east to Bou-salem.
This is the road the British Army fought its way down against the Deutsche Afrika Korps. All along the road are little green signs indicating Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries.
Immaculately kept, they chart the battles against General Von Arnim and the heavy price that had to be paid in young men’s lives. There are many graves of Black Watch soldiers, my old outfit, all the more tragic by the simple inscriptions on the plain stones - ‘Our only child’, ‘Farewell Daddy’, or ‘Aged 18 years’. And all killed in the last days of April and early May 1943 – it was all over on May the 8th.
Now, they really did have a degree of discomfort.
All a bit humbling and deflating as we continued visiting our three centres in the country. Bou-salem in the north, Kasserine in the dry, bleak middle, and Kebili down on the edge of the Sahara in the south.
We built a little hospital there in the sand of the palmerie – just half a dozen stables, and a classroom over the top of the surgery. And a pond of course – and boy, you should see the colours of the dragonflies. Oh, I nearly forgot, two ostriches as well. And before you ask, no, I’ve no idea how we end up with two ostriches. But I bet the eggs make a hell of a big omelette.
What a place this is. In the hotel we stay in in Douz, a village about ten miles further south, you look out of the window, across a little road, and that’s it. Sand. Miles and miles and miles of it. About two thousand in fact, of wonderful, rolling dunes before you hit the Niger River (remember that?) on the other side. Some beach.
And lots and lots of camels.
But of course all this comes at a price. Tourists. Thousands of them.
Working with the mobile clinic amongst the camels (mostly treating them for mange), we watch as streams of tourists – usually Italian or French, stream by for their ‘desert experience’. They appear to have to wear a brightly coloured tea-towel wrapped around their heads, and a stripy sort of cloak thing - makes them look like convicts on a chain gang. One can only imagine it’s meant to make them look like some kind of Arab warrior. But as most of them are fat, wearing trainers, baseball caps (yes, under the tea-towel), and smoking or chewing gum – it somewhat fails to capture the desired romance and mystery.
Oh, what a piece of work is man!
Jeremy Hulme
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