Ode to Jeremy

(Thailand)

It takes over 4 hours from Bangkok to reach Hua Hin, but fortunately I'm not alone. Jeremy is on the seat next to me, albeit face down.

Not that you would be bored. Every station along the line bring new vendors on board who pass though the aisle and offer some sweet, cookies, bananas and other more or less useful food for sale. I buy some water and a meal from the dining car, which is almost empty. There are windows, but they are all down. There are doors too, and they remain open during the ride. With over thirty degrees, nobody seems to bother.

I start to read the Bangkok Post and to my surprise there is some good news being squeezed in between the election of yet another prime minister, the demise of yet another hedge fund and a couple of murders. In an uncharted area in the North, near Chang Rai, no less than 20 new species of wildlife have been discovered. Among them are a grey rat with a tail like a squirrel, a hummingbird that can't fly in reverse and a giant beetle. The problem now is to find names for them. I think I might be able to help out there.

It used to be common practice to name the newly invented creatures after the person who discovered them. This is almost invariably a bloke, since women are more practical by nature and can't be bothered to travel into a jungle without any bathrooms under 20 square meters and three mirrors just to find new models of bizarre insects, when you could be having lunch in a department store reading the Cosmopolitan about the things in life that really matter, such as the costs of Victoria Beckham's divorce, or where your G-spot is.

Since the guys who discovered this lot all had names like Wannapee Komseemyporn or something to that effect, I would suggest a different approach. Why not name one of them after someone whose theory the discovery confirms. In this particular case, it would have to be Jeremy Clarkson.

Clarkson has been stating for most of his adult life, and that's almost as long as I've been watching BBC, that aeroplanes are not necessarily bad for the environment and cars do little damage to nature, but rather turn men into most agreeable partners in conversation once they're on the subject. Driving them is also cheaper than having sex, but this had already been scientifically proven by a sportsman named Boris Becker.

So now we know that Earth, rather than suffering under our carbon-dioxide emissions and constant attempts to dissolve the ozone layer can take good care of itself and replaces creatures that are extinct by new ones. That's a relief.

Which made me think of Jeremy, whose views on the environment are, in his own words, "not the same as everybody else's" but God, he's hilarious in the way he puts it and, I'm being serious now, a very talented writer and observer of mankind. He also observes foxes and then kills them reportedly, but I don't want to go there on this occasion.

There are two problems with Mr. Clarkson though. First, it is considered politically incorrect to buy any of his books (which I just did) and, to make matters worse, I'm halfway through it and Hua Hin is nowhere in sight, and secondly, he keeps making anti-German jokes.
I must admit that I'm slightly biased here, having a most lovable German girlfriend, but hardly as biased as Jeremy himself, as the war had long stopped before he was even born and frankly, not only are these sort of jokes out-of-touch, there more than out-of date. It is one thing to be conservative, it's quite another to be moulded. It's over seventy years ago, get a grip.

But that's small beer in comparison to what he does on the upside. I had to stop reading "For crying out loud" several times because other passengers stare at me when I burst out laughing. And believe me, it really is good. My favourite piece is the one about the meetings and conferences, and the one about the Americans must be the most recognisable for the majority of living creatures on this planet, including the newly discovered, though not necessarily the inhabitants of the States.

Clarkson appeals to the naughty one in all of us. The kind of person that sits inside and secretly admires looking at fast cars, playing with electronically advanced, but not strictly necessary gadgets and only in the company of non-trusted others speak up for the multi-ethnic society. That of course is part of his success. But I specifically want to dedicate this piece to him for turning a four hour train ride into a most enjoyable one.

As for the species then, I don't think the hummingbird. Too small and vulnerable. The rat looks like a squirrel and I seem to remember he puts squirrels in the same league with the foxes. And we all know what happens to them...

But the giant beetle somehow would seem to fit. How about: Coleoptera Jeremia. Would Herr Clarkson like that?