The Secret Life of Oxiana

Ukrainian pop diva Natasha Koroleva left her husband, the Russian singer-songwriter Igor Nikolayev, for a male stripper called Tarzan who was largely made up of seaweed and several boar carcasses.

Nikolayev didn't even pause to wipe breakfast off his silvery moustache, but departed at once to take command of the 201st Gatchina Twice Red Banner Motor-Rifle Division of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, stationed at the time in distant Tajikistan.

This Rorschach horror of glaciers and dung pits, wedged sourly between Afghanistan and the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Testing Range, was emerging from 70 years of Soviet literacy, pavements and buttons into the awareness that its Afghan neighbours had spent the intervening period cheerily hacking off one another's heads and using them for mountain-top semaphore. It was time to catch up.

The 201st (Gatchina Twice Red Banner) Motor-Rifle Division had spent the 50 years since its glory days in the Second World War watching with dismay as non-Slavs basked in the benefits of Soviet bounty without having their geography, economy and womenfolk repeatedly ransacked, Berlin style. It was time to catch up.

Enter President Boris Yeltsin, who raised his face from a bucket of vodka jellies long enough to send this band of fighting, drinking demolition men down Tajikistan way to teach the sense-starved trainee-Iranian locals some manners.

The Tajik civil war, and the cultural fissures that lay beneath, is a complex matter than can best be summed up thus:

• The paleo-Communist government of Tajikistan was a bootleg recording of a live Mariah Carey concert.


• The armed Islamic opposition was a teenage girl singing along to said concert with a fucked Walkman on a hot train, stranded at points near Swindon.


• The 201st Motor-Rifle Division was a snarl of Cardiff City supporters on said train, returning home from a thrashing at Brentford. And the buffet car's closed.

This was the mess that Igor Nikolayev came to sort out. On arrival in Dushanbe, the country's capital and chief limb repository, he headed for the cunningly-named Hotel Tajikistan, where the 201st had set up an impromptu rest and recreation facility on, and often through, the first and second floors.

Here's a description by a Foreign Office diplomat visiting the British embassy, which then shared the hotel with the 201st:

"Breakfast was served in the basement and sometimes passed without incident, as the men of the 201st generally swung out of their companions at about ten. They descended for a brunch of roast ibex and fermented grain before touching up the décor with their Kalashnikovs. Their involuntary bedmates were perspiring enough by lunchtime to slip their leathren bonds and flee for the entrance, only to find that the 201st were using the central stairwell for heavy artillery practice. I dined elsewhere." (Daniel Thornton, "The Tajik Helix", Callard & Bowser, London, 2004, p.69)

Nikolayev took one look at this scene of double-jointed debauch and ordered the men to assemble in the remains of the central courtyard. He then delivered the following address:

"Men of the 201st! I am Igor Yurievich Nikolayev, the gentleman of Russian pop. I have the moustaches of a fin de siècle hussar on his release from Ottoman captivity, and the mien of the late Tsar as he faced his executioners.

"It is often remarked that I never dwell upon my betrayal by my former wife, the raven-haired rackasaurus Natasha Koroleva, who left me for a caramel-glazed glans called Sergei 'Tarzan' Glushko.

"This is true. And I choose not to waste my time on that stiletto-heeled sump of squalor precisely because of my profound respect for women. This is the basis of my moral code. And from now on, you are all going to do the same.

"These young ladies and their livestock - you are to free them at once! They are somebody's sisters, somebody's daughters, and sometimes both. How can we instill self-respect and respect for others among our Tajik hosts while we ourselves treat their women as meat hammocks?

"A person's individual qualities do not boost or undermine their inalienable rights. My ex-spouse Natasha Koroleva cavorts like a crack whore on late-night TV in ever more explicit music videos with her wax-balled baboon, but for all that I don't wish her ill. The fact that some of these girls may be tuppeny trollops with their own bank accounts makes them in no way less human, less deserving of dignity.

"So, men, recall the words of the French philosopher, Charles Péguy. He said that 'example is not merely the best way to lead, it is the only way'. Free these women from bondage, free yourselves from the Gordian Knot, and let us free Tajikistan from fear! And, yes, the quartermaster-general will pay them off - in local currency."

With that, Igor Nikolayev and the 201st Motor Rifle Division began the slow task of reconciling mullah with Marxist, jihadist with Jew, head with bayonet, and man with yeti. True, much blood was still to clog the tank tracks and roulette wheels, but sweet reason soon swelled from the Soghdian wells and peace returned to toxic Tajikistan.

Many an observer agreed that, although writing hit after hit for such stars of the Soviet and Russian fame factory as Alla Pugacheva and Igor Krutoi had made a man of Nikolayev, it was the slow crucifixion of watching his venal, bewitching Natasha roam the hairless plains of Tarzan's chest like some leopard of lust that stretched and strengthened his mental sinews into noble girders of courage that eventually spanned the chasms of Chorasmian mistrust.

A coalition government was formed - not quite as glorious as our own, but still impressive in its felix conjunctio of anachronism and ambition. Before returning to Moscow and his musical career, Nikolayev was invited to address the Majlisi Oli national assembly. With typical modesty, he spoke a few words of simple wisdom:

"Mr President, honourable members of the Majlis, ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary, ladies and gentlemen, few of us had the faith to foresee the day when we would all be sitting here, in one hall, planning the future of Tajikistan together - not with mortars and mattocks, but with diaries and draft laws.

"You may recall the reason some lost souls gave for joining the French Foreign Legion - 'To Forget'. Some have joked that I came here to forget the trivial and lascivious treason of my former wife, Natasha Koroleva, the top-heavy temptress of Ternopol. They could not be further from the truth, as I try not to lower my gaze to the gutter of TV talk-shows and gossip columns in the yellow press, where she preens and prattles like a cake-crazed cormorant of cupidity over the bronzed balustrade Glushko.

"No, we must never forget. Never forget the widow's tears, the village in flames, the meat-processing plant daubed with discriminatory slogans, or the lecturer in Dialectal Materialism used as a toilet. Those who urge us to forget want to rewrite our history and steal our past. That is why we must remember, remember the camaraderie of battle and the solidarity of adversity, as well as pain at the loss of a loved one - whether to gunfire, exile or some semi-literate mastodon on steroids.

"It is just as important to learn to forgive, of course. Without reconciliation there can be no progress. It is heartening to see how old enemies are already working together in this new dispensation. They have not forgotten who they once were, and what they were capable of, only a few months ago, but have chosen to focus on who they are now, and what they can do for their country.

"At the prayer meeting earlier I shared a rug with a couple of mujahidin commanders who, as was often the case, drew their noms-de-guerre from Indian cinema. Commander Jagi and I discussed the grapes of Samarkand, while Commander Tarzan commended Khorog as a cheap and appealing holiday destination.

"Now, I don't believe I let Commander Tarzan know what unhappy associations his monicker has for me [laughter from the hall] - I see you're shaking your head, Tarzan jaan!

"Well, perhaps I might have let slip a few thoughts on what it's like to see your ex-wife parade the child you were never able to give her in the embrace of an oiled ape - it's like having your entrails wound out through your throat, then salted and left to crack and bleed in the baking sun, if you've ever wondered - but the point is that I never, not even in the tensest standoff in the Surkhandarya Salient, let my subjective emotions overwhelm the strategic need of the hour.

"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you from my very soul for the gift of a home here in Tajikistan, plus the Tursunzoda Aluminium Works, that you have presented to me, but I must respectfully decline your offer. My work here is done, Tajiks must become masters of their own fate. I would only remind you of the bad old days.

"Someone once said that you can never go home. That's very true, because home is away and somewhere else. My native town of Kholmsk is not the bustling port of my youth any more, but rather an edgy frontier post on the cusp of three worlds. I would not be able to recreate those carefree summer days on the dockside, learning shanties from old sea dogs returned home to harbour.

"Likewise, I never tarry in Kiev after a tour, because it reminds of times spent schooning on the Dnieper alongside a succubus with a Wonderbra fixation and no heart.

"Have faith in your future, Tajikistan! It is important to believe, no matter how unlikely success might seem. Who would have believed two years ago that a turbanned hafiz would be deflecting headers from a KGB colonel down the municipal football pitch? No more than the scant number who thought my Natasha would stay plugged into that mumbling sperm-hose rather than return to explore the life of the mind with me, I reckon.

"I've learned to accept that she was not the woman I thought she was, and live in the hope that one day I might find someone with her grace, beauty and talent, but who appreciates Chekhov and good conversation more than being ploughed up and down like an allotment wheelbarrow.

"And you, dear friends, will accept that your country is never going to be a second-rate Switzerland or Sweden, so work to make it a first-class Tajikistan - a land where men earn their bread through honest labour and appreciate good music, rather than flexing their bare buttocks for the titillation of beldames and pederasts, a land of chaste women who value age and dignity over cologne and dexterity with Chinese love beads! Ladies and gentlemen - Tajikiston zindabod!" [rapturous applause, turning into a standing ovation]

Nikolayev returned to Moscow and won the unreserved admiration of another generation of Russian music-lovers. Now the doyen of the Moscow stage, he still writes and performs. Perhaps you'll catch him after a concert one day, and ask him whether he ever recalls his days as a warrior prince. Perhaps he'll smile gently and walk on, perhaps he'll refer you to his bodyguards, or perhaps he'll take up his guitar and sing:

Either way, you will have shared a moment with Igor Nikolayev, scholar, soldier, a man at peace.

A Tale of the Extinguished Moon

Mad scientist and Laurie Anderson impersonator Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that there are aliens out there, and they may be less welcoming than the inhabitants of Llanfrothen.

When it comes to astronauts Hawking knows what he's talking about, so for once I agree with him: we need to be careful not to provoke these deranged space bugs.

It's only a matter of time before the triphallic crab pupae of Queequeg IV intercept a live broadcast of a U2 concert and naturally launch a battery of intergalactic sulphuric spunk missiles at the general Isle of Man area.

I'm aware that I may not measure up to Guardian or BBC standards in terms of celebrating the vibrant diversity of cultural responses to encounters with The Other, but on this occasion I simply don't want to be drowned and fried in flying space spoff because some interdimensional star-spawn blames me for Bono.

And further two-handed research on the Intern Net has established that we will only have ourselves to blame for our imminent obliteration.

You see, at some point in the otherwise excellent 1970s, Mankind sent the Voyager 1 spaceship into the cosmic ether with a message of greeting for any bored xenomorphs out there.

What NASA hurled skywards was a vinyl 33" containing a "Hooked on Bach" record, Da Vinci's drawing of a man with six limbs, and a porn flick. A 1970s porn flick, with bad hair, wicka-wacka plastic funk soundtrack and lots of lobstering. Oh, and it was narrated by Jimmy Carter.

It would be harder to imagine a more irritating communication without involving George Galloway and Jive Bunny. Moreover, it gave an inaccurate impression of the human race, shower of bastards though we may be.

I think we need to correct these mistakes fast, and send a new cosmopod beyond Pluto with a fair representation of what we have to offer our distant neighbours.

The vessel should contain a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a recording of a man breaking wind, and a Benny Hill DVD. The shoes and gastric eruption tell you all there is to know about the respective sexes, and Benny Hill sums up modern civilisation in an unflinching yet digestible manner.

The 1970s mission also lacked a crucial contribution from our Soviet co-planetarians. From the mid-1950s onwards the Russians liked nothing better than to fire small animals at Saturn, hence all the monkey skeletons in decaying orbits around the Earth and that little dog who's probably now worshipped as a demiurge on Neptune.

This Great Coalition of Ours is trying to improve relations with the Kremlin on the basis of a shared interest in evil, so I propose that we honour the Reds' previous space endeavours by packing Limahl out of Kajagoogoo into the cone of the craft.

He would give the aliens a fair idea of what pets Paris Hilton likes. And an affordable supply of Ryvita, hair gel and Embassy Number 1s ought to keep him going, given his slender build and necessarily restricted movements.

The Betelgeusians would be impressed by our level of development and obviously benign intent, especially the concern we show to the bald, Irish and underdressed in the work of Hill, and would request a meeting of envoys.

The obvious choice would be a delegation from the United Nations General Assembly, but I'm not sure that alien life is as convinced that the problematic emissions in the Horseshoe Nebula are all the fault of Israel. So I'd suggest a small mission of the sagest groovers we have to offer.

There is an emerging consensus that the acme of all human achievement - cultural, intellectual, acrobatic and erotic - was reached in the British popular music scene in 1980-1994.

From this Golden Bough I would pluck the first and finest fruits to establish contact with the carnivorous kelp of Alpha Centauri, namely Shakin' Stevens, Pete Wylie, and Bez out of The Happy Mondays.

Shaky combines hip-gyration with deserved modesty, Wylie has the righteous, random wrath of Jeremiah, and Bez adds something of Zen as well as pharmacology. They will be universally respected in the Heavens as they are on Earth.

The reply from the Venusians is easy to predict. "We thank you for the welcome afforded by Ambassador Shaky and the warning about the Sony Corporation provided by Special Envoy Wylie. We shall endeavour to seek out and neutralise this threat with our scrotal infibulator beam.

"Soon we shall send our own leading scholars to share their starry wisdom with your elders, those who are learnèd in your science of hydroponics, that which they call "Gabba", and the Belgian House.

"As for Counsellor Bez, we ask that he tarry a while with us. We have so much to learn from him. Oh, and Limahl is doing splendidly in our maritime breeding programme."

The Midrash Rabbah to Genesis 3:9 posits that God created and destroyed many worlds before He allowed this one to dangle harmlessly just beneath the Moon for a few thousand years.

Let us not give Him good cause to destroy the Earth again for all our sins.

But above all let us not irk the alkaloid rhombuses of Cnychbant Felix into doing the same, just because we wouldn't frogmarch Simply Red and Edwina Currie onto a leaky coracle off the North Korean coast and let international geo-politics take its course.

...and the Pope said...

"It's butter!"

Any the wiser? Neither am I.

Wanker Ashman told an interminable joke one dinner in college, and my mind went forth to slay approved dragons and weave baroque fancies of the érotique half way through.

I returned from Cappadocia via both of the girls out of Strawberry Switchblade in time for the punchline, with which I began this post.

Pride precluded me from asking Wanker to explain, so I've spent the last 28 years haunted by what John Paul II's dairy dilemma had been (while hoping it had nothing to do with choirboys and Last Tango in Paris).

The same thing happened today. I lapped into The Tethered Goat at 1630 sharp to take delivery of my quart of Champion's Speckled Johnson, only to hear our local barrister end an anecdote with the scholarly flourish: "... but I have told a donkey to fuck off!"

Cue gummy guffaws from the assembled rustics, but I'm frankly baffled by this rhetorical pay-off. What was the feed line?

• "Have you ever shunned a Shetland?"
• 
  
• "Do you parlay with ponies?"
• 
  
• "How about Muffin the Mule?"

The last might be the key to the puzzle, but I was too aware of how the nearby village of Gallowstree Common got its name to distract my quaffing companions from their pewter pots of Abdication Special.

This prompts me to propose a new department of state to this Great Coalition of Ours. I know we are meant to be minding the exchequer and what have you, but frontline public services are a top-shelf priority.

Never mind hospitals and edjucation, I'm talking about re-establishing bonds of respect across the generations and passing on ancient lore from elders to young striplings. We need a Department of Retrospective Anecdote Completion.

This institution would soon replace the National Health and the chaps who leave porn mags under hedges in the public affection. It would not only benefit confused middle-aged drinkers, but also bring slack-trousered youth into the snug bars of Britain to ask their bearded betters about the one that ends "and there was a piece of sweetcorn on the end of it".

Before writing to Theresa May, and not anonymously this time, I'd like to gather some more examples of stories whose punchlines dawdle in the marshalling yard as the set-up and elaboration steam away. Apart from the three cited above, can you Cymru Rouge cadres and fellow-travellers alike think of any others?

One that still nags me in the small hours is "Thank you, Mother Superior, but these Fokkers were Messerschmitts!"

Answers below, please. In the meantime, here's some music:

Myn Duw, mi a wn y daw

A message to all Cymru Rouge supporters:

Fear not, human silage, your votes would not have been wasted.

This Con-Lib affair can't last. Despite the protestations of dominatrices the length and breadth of Baker St, there is only so much humiliation a liberal can take.

The Conservatives too will tire of bleating requests for fair trade ginseng tea at cabinet meetings, Chris Huhne, and elaborate pantomimes of self-protection down the golf club toilets.

It won't need 55% of MPs to dissolve parliament once we're in charge, just an acid bath and a winch.

Then the Day of the Rouge will dawn.

Henffych!

Paul Pot, etc

O Golomendy'r Ddwy Eglwys

An explanation for my long silence. Not an apology, of course, as the election is over and there's no more grovelling from us, you turkey necks.

With no party enjoying anything, let alone a working majority, in the Westminster Parliament, we in the Cymru Rouge are ready to play our role.

The Liberal Democrats received fewer votes than either the Conservatives or Labour, lost several seats and came in third in terms of mandates won. If this makes them kingmakers in the pissoirs of power, then just think how greater is the right to rule of the Rouge, who received no votes at all (apart from MC Ward's postal effort, which I'm proud to say he entrusted to our Passenger Pigeon service rather than the monarchist Royal Mail).

To this end, we present Mr Cameron with our minimum programme:

1. Not a hung parliament, but a hanged parliament. He went to Eton and ought to be able to sort the strong from the weak - both verbs and honourable members.

Mass execution of the Commons would solve the electoral dilemma, provide cheap entertainment for the cowled plague victims of London Town, and focus the minds of any estate agents, duff lawyers, National Union of Students hacks or women who might have considered standing for Westminster next time.

It would also leave the House of Lords as the sole parliamentarians, thereby justifying any jacquerie the bondsmen of England might fancy. Parading a naked, dung-smeared Baroness Kinnock around Lambeth in a cage made of her husband's live bones might seem excessive, but trust a Welshman - it isn't.

Some cadres have asked how the Cymru Rouge can back hanging, as our traditional method of dispatch is the slate enema. The answer the Prif Sasiwn handed down is that we expect the Tories to make concessions, and so must be prepared to meet them halfway on tactical questions before shoving them over the abandoned pit heads of the Rhondda, again and again.

2. Edjucation. This must stop, and we know that the Conservatives agree.

The failed rice harvests that Camden trustafarians, BBC staff and George Monbiot will be busy sieving through their cheesecloth shirts (see Economic Policies and Recreation) must be stored somewhere, and schools, colleges, Kindergärten and non-Russell-Group universities would make excellent silos.

The "new universities" and the University of Wales will remain open, and all surviving academics will be accommodated therein. We expect the sherry drought, heterosexuality and encounters with the student body will take care of them within months.

3. Foreign Policy. Like the Tories, we harbour a deep scepticism about Europe.

They see little to be gained from further expansion of the European Union, consider the euro to be an unwarranted erosion of British sovereignty, and oppose the disaggregation of any more powers to Brussels.

We just don't think Europe should exist, and propose a joint invasion with Communist China. Remember, we are Maoists.

In order to win unthinking Conservative support for a Redder East, we would form an Axis of Edwardian Evil. The Chinamen could dress up like Fu Manchu (and his foxy daughter, we hope), while we will affect the tifter, knuckledusters and kerchief of the East End footpad.

Once we've partitioned the Continent into East Suffolk, Brittany and the Yáng Guǐzi Zìzhìqū Autonomous Region, we'll squeeze the Cabinet into Ulsters, Piccadilly Weepers, Prince Alberts and other late-Victorian charivari, then Nayland their Smiths with an opium pipe.

4. Financial Management. The Conservatives have made a manifesto pledge to cut the budget deficit this fiscal year, while blocking any increase in employers' National Insurance contributions.

We wish to replace the Stock Exchange with the sound of insects feeding on the corpse of Capital.

As you can imagine, this amounts to much the same thing.

So, Mr Cameron, the Cymru Rouge coal mine is open for business. Our shaft is long and dark. Our veins throb with promise. Come plunge our depths. It's time to get some closure.

I'r Gad!

Paul Pot - Brawd Rhif Un

Huw Samphan - Brawd Rhif Dau

Ta Moc Tudor - Brawd Rhif Tri

Mike Peters (out of The Alarm) - Brawd Blawd, Beiblaidd

Prif Sasiwm y Cymry Rouge.

In me didst thou exist

People stop me in the street, press their webbed fingers to my breast and whisper "Please, don't". I nod, for they have understood my blog.

I'm often embarrassed by these unspoken comparisons with the giants of Internet comment - Sullivan, Geras, Blair, Daniels. I smile ruefully and explain, as my interlocutors step back and sometimes weep in awe, that I cannot claim to graze in that hallowed paddock, for my meadow is free of trolls.

A web blog worthy of the cut'n'shunt name has a least a pair of flecked buffoons staggering in and out of its comment section like a Barmouth Community Police Officer:

• Oliver Kamm hosts clammy gatherings of Tojo apologists and the odd shires solicitor who thinks Herbert Asquith wrote Shakespeare's plays;
• Harry's Place makes room for Odinists, Communists and, until recently, the magnificently Pooterish Benji; and
• Cymru Rouge cadre Francis Sedgemore has to put up with a bloke from Crawley who doesn't like Lord Rothschild and, I suspect, wears elaborate undergarments fashioned for the female form.

The worst I've had to endure is:

• being ejected from some mumsy blog ring for listing reasons why the real America is better than the Latin one;
• a brief barracking by a Solva Stalinist for revealing the aristocratic origins and Situationist stance of Shakin' Stevens; and
• a Popish ultra from County Durham once accused me of being a "New Labour posh Trot", but that was on another blog and so counts as spray-paint invective rather than trolling.

I drove these underarm objections into the long grass with the oiled willow of my dialectic, and therein lies the dilemma. So straight is my bat that even Trotsky would retire to the pavilion in a hail of bails, fearful that my Maoist cut and thrust might turn literal.

In addition I share the lady blogger's curse of being courted by my comment clones. Once glance at my photo and women want me, while men and the higher primates want to beat me, so all abstain from aggro for fear of forfeiting my favour.

Does this indulgence frustrate me? No, because I know my nemesis comes. For one day I shall troll myself.

I first became aware of my Doppelgänger as a student in Swansea, the Heidelberg of the Gower Peninsula hinterland. I'd entered the Inter-Collegial Eisteddfod translation competition in an attempt to impress a woman, any woman.

My rendering of Chekhov's "After The Theatre" into Welsh bore all the hallmarks of having been knocked together at the last minute, which made it a searingly honest piece of work. It came in third in a field of three, a decision that scotches the accusation that the Welsh are lacking in charity.

I trudged into the weekly self-criticism session of the college GymGym (Y Gymdeithas Gymraeg) Welsh Society, which began after apologies to the members of the Gay & Lesbian Group's Love Muscle faction who had once again been misled by the acronym.

To my surprise I was not Oswestrised for my failure. Panda-eyed Portalbot peris and Capel Seion sign painters alike rushed to laud my apparent triumph. Eisteddfod entrants compete under noms d'ardoise - flinty bardic pseudonyms - but the final bulletin also publishes their real names. I glanced at it. The winner's monicker was the same as mine.

I decided to be generous and share the credit for the other Boyo's work. Chips were bought. Harps were plucked. The English Department was daubed green in my honour. Life was good, but soon doubts crowded out the carols of crwth and cryman.

My double studied at the same small college, spoke Welsh and Russian and bore my name, yet we hadn't met. Others had, though:

• I was cut at the Pesda première of "Cynan the Barbarian" over rumours that I scorned the Red Book of Hergest;
• Someone said it was my grandfather who had split Flint in half; and
• I could see their point in Monmouthshire, apparently.

It was only a matter of time before a Labour poster was stuck on my door to show the Merched Y Wawr (Provisionals) hit squad where to find me. I had to get to the bottom of this or risk being "sent to Shrewsbury", as the queasy euphemism had it.

Some enquiries in the queue for cawl uncovered several sightings of Boyo II. He looked "like a Welsh", which could mean anyone under 5'6" in love-bites and stone-washed jeans, "sang like a cormorant" and had to pluck his own cheeks.

He was nonetheless distinct enough for at least one bouncer at Cinderella's night club in Mumbles to give me the S-bend shampoo ("It's fucking tasselled fucking loafers by 'ere you Car-fucking-marthen fucking cowboy!") only ten minutes after shaking my double's hand and pointing out the cockles and custard slice free buffet.

A portfolio of like provocations persuaded my peers that this persecutor was real, at which point he vanished - taking with him my stolen moment of Chekhovian glory. Inept renderings of belle epoque ballroom terms from my translation still make it onto the "funnies" page of the Welsh baccalaureate syllabus.

My shade parted the drapes a couple of times while I was studying in London, where his priapic pursuit of inversion scuppered my coracle of love on the skerries of slander. I heard of him a couple of times in later years, when new acquaintances along the Caspian shore cited friends who had met this degenerate djinn they called Boyo.

He's faded in recent years, but I have no doubt that a comment will one day appear on my site condemning me for some motion or act between which that familiar shadow has fallen. And then I can call this a Blog.

The Man on the Engels St Omnibus

Roger Waters Out Of Pink Floyd is clearly tired of making people laugh through his music and has branched out into egomania as a source of mirth. Why anyone would want to pay money (get back!) for a slice of his progrock salami is beyond me, but then this is a country where newspapers employ astrologers, so who knows.

The epic courtroom battle for the honour of the concept album is a warning of how weird the early 1970s were for those of us old enough only to remember the penny tray, school milk and socially-acceptable racism.

As I've remarked before, the Soviet leadership correctly analysed the situation and sought to insulate Red Youth from hip-gyratin' Western good times by exposing it exclusively to aural mudbaths like Jethro Tull and The Doors. The result was several generations of otherwise healthy Slavs with a penchant for ruminative guitar solos and gnomic references to Mexican drug cures.

Such is the crystalline nature of the human spirit, however, that the occasional soul manages to deflect the daily dross from its sheer surface and let harmony, euphony and other Earth, Wind & Fire backing singers flit in.

One evening I was slumped in my seat on the bus home. It was the cold winter of 1986 in Voronezh, the Bridgend of the Soviet Union. I'd spent a few hours with an agreeable selection of provincial bohemians - artists who lived in boiler rooms, guitar-playing medical students with a ready supply of ethanol, kohl-smeared girls in Polish sweaters a size too small, a Latvian who could open beer bottles with his eye socket, and a character simply known as "Ruslan, the Meat-Eating Poet".

We'd spent our time in a way familiar to all British students in Gorbachev-era Russia: drinking whatever was available, eating pickled matter, smoking dandelion & gunpowder cigarettes and debating who was the bigger dickhead - the General Secretary or President Reagan. Mrs Thatcher was universally admired in the Soviet Union for being a woman, and it was a brave CND-badged drab who dared to question her Klebb-like perfection.

Inevitably conversation had turned to music, and I ended up trying not to explain Genesis lyrics to the masses. I even produced a photograph of Phil Collins and noted his facial resemblance to 78% of all KGB officers, to no avail. As usual I left them a few cassettes of The Fall and hoped they hadn't been taped over with Modern Talking by the following week.

I watched the sleet slide down the totalitarian advertising hoardings - Use Toothpaste! Drink Juice! Ensure That Your Television Does Not Explode! - until the doors clattered open and a stringy teenager in Baltic knitwear loped in. He sat opposite for a while, then realised with that Soviet social telepathy that I was a real foreigner, not just some loser from Leipzig.

He moved to the seat in front of mine and, after some hesitation, turned to me with the English form of address unique to that time and place:

"I'm sorry, maybe you speak English?"

Soviet schools taught that this is how to speak to the British, in an effort to make the average Englishman laugh in the face of his Russian interlocutor and turn the latter into an embittered insurrectionist. You could tell KGB plants in the student milieu because they always knew the correct form of address, even if it amounted to "Stand and face the wall, Prisoner Ж1948Я!"

I told my young friend that I did speak English.

He thought for a while, then asked "So, maybe you like the music of Pink Floyd?"

I had two basic options here:

• I could follow the standard British student response of smiling and going "Mmmm, yes please!".
• I could be honest and say that, whereas I had the greatest admiration for the audacity and longevity of these thatch-headed public-schoolboys, I had long ago accepted Sid Vicious as my Lord and Saviour and would rather subsist on the toenail cuttings of Yasser Arafat than listen to Dark Side of the Moon, with or without the benefit of The Wizard of Oz.

Instead I distilled the essence of the latter in the concision of the former and replied "No, I'm afraid I don't".

My companion sat silently for a while. The bus reached its next stop, and he ambled to the door. As it opened he turned, smiled, and said "Neither do I!" With that he stepped out into the snow and was gone.

Whenever I hear of new disappointments from Russia I think of that brief and unsentimental exchange. As a generation grows up with no recall of either Communism or an effective opposition, led by a president who seeks out the company of Deep Purple and a prime minister who pretends to fight bears, I hope my fellow-traveller is still out there somewhere, quietly keeping his children's minds clear of all this cant.

I remain an optimist about Russia, all told. It has survived Stalin, brown nylon flares and a health system based on grain alcohol and being punched in the face, so it will get over these preening dwarves. When the final call to account comes, I'm convinced the Man on the Engels St Omnibus will answer for Russia.

And I bet he hates Oasis too.

The Mark of Mahmud

Polish composer, statesman and - according to Wikipedia - hermaphrodite shapeshifter Ignacy Jan Paderewski used to tell a joke that summed up European interbellum national characteristics. A representative group is asked to write a book about the elephant:

• The Englishman spends a month in India and returns with "The Elephants I Bagged".
• The German buries himself in the archives of Heidelberg University and produces "An Introduction to a Study of the Migratory Patterns of the African Elephant".
• The Frenchman gets to know the keepers at the Paris Zoo and passes an agreeable afternoon in their company, pausing to pen "L'eléphant, et ses amours".
• The Russian retires to his garret and drinks himself to death. In his stinking greatcoat is found the scrawled pamphlet "The Elephant - Does It Exist?".
• The Pole sets out for the National Library in Warsaw and dashes off a fiery tract entitled "The Elephant - and the Polish Question".

All good clean fun, and an insight into the stereotypes of 1919. The perception of Englishman and Russian has changed since, and the punchline then was the Polish obsession with their Cause. But I find the French response more interesting, for out of it grew the entire discipline of cultural history.

I enjoy cultural history. From its brilliant origins in the French Annales school, it slouched into Britain as the latest form of our native snobbery. It now gives well-read types the chance to dismiss entire civilisations with a saloon-bar swagger.

Corduroyed scholars toil among decrepit records to raise squat outbuildings on foundations of footnotes and an abandoned social life. Their reward for "Curricular Changes in the St Petersburg Higher Women's Courses: 1896-1906" is tenure somewhere like Aston, if they're lucky.

Cultural historians leaf through some Penguin Classics Turgenev, gaze at silver birches from a taxi and chat to a lady violinist in a wagon-lit, then craft an illustrated treat called something arch like "Samovars & Saints". For this they get a CH4 series and a wardrobe allowance for jeans a size too small.

I am too idle to breathe properly most of the time, but if I ever had the energy O! a cultural historian I would be. As for my pet project, I'd trace the trajectory of the Mongol arrow as it pierced skull and social strata from Karakorum to Cracow, and the book (and TV series) would be called "Tamgha".

This refers to the livestock brand that the Mongols brought with them across the wolf-haunted steppe, and which provides the basis for both Ottoman imperial seals and the heraldic emblems of the Polish nobility.

In Baghdad, where Genghis Khan had given the Caliphs a lesson in applied atheism, I fancy it lived on in the sociopath and thwarted dynast Uday Hussein's alleged habit of branding his unwilling bedmates' buttocks with his mark - whether a curvaceous "ع" or a suggestive "U" is not recorded.

It endures in its more natural state among the herdsmen of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, where Circassians in particular take pride in their ancestral mark.

One such Cherkess mountaineer, Mahmud, worked for a Turkish construction firm in Uzbekistan during my spell in that terrier-shaped tyranny. As a paddler in the brackish pools of Tashkent expat life, I admired his brisk, Atatürkian approach to lifting the dead hand of the Karimov régime from the exercise of his various appendages.

Mahmud soon discovered that this city of two million mutton-hawking drabs and underage drivers had no bars or clubs, apart from a nylon-draped nightmare filled with bugs of all kinds on the top floor of the Hotel Uzbekistan (imaginatively renamed from the Hotel Tashkent on the fall of Communism, if only to let travellers know they've arrived in the wrong country).

Uzbek law rivals that of Singapore and the Shulchan Aruch in banning all fun, and even tries to stop wealthy foreigners doing exactly what they like. The rest of us resorted to the ancient Soviet tradition of kitchen parties, but Mahmud decided to do something about it.

He found an emollient Uzbek businessman, offered him wads of cash and the chance to retain his danglers in roughly their current order, then encouraged him to open an establishment called "Mahmud's".

This involved taking a quaint, Russian-imperial town house of the sort that Uzbek ministries would use for press conferences with stunned United Nations nabobs, and turning it into a little corner of Stamboul.

It had the trappings of an Irish theme bar that wasn't trying too hard and served unmemorable Euro fizz, but was blissfully bereft of the usual blights of a Tashkent night out - lackadaisical but bossy prostitutes, the Billboard Chart of 1987 on a warped cassette tape, German engineers, and gawping, none-too-secret policemen (this was before the day of rogue British ambassador and histrionic lothario Craig Murray).

It all came down to good door policy. No one got in who didn't know Mahmud, and the twin golems in dinner jackets who guarded the portal were rather like Arthur C Clarke's monoliths - large, dark, and capable of immense but silent violence.

I and a few colleagues passed most Friday nights there, enjoying a respite from both Karimov's efforts to turn the country into a Pinochet theme park and the piping tedium of expatriates in kilts.

The regulars were the sort of people who know how to have a good time - arms dealers, oil prospectors, Tajik warlords, Turks, the IMF man and sundry spooks. Mahmud would turn up at about eleven, lean over the back of a chair and recount tales of seedy glory between draughts of rakı and Marlboro Red.

He punctuated my life like a happy apostrophe. The Grand Turk once turned up on a flight to Ashkhabad, bribed the stewardess to disable the fire alarm, and retired to the bathroom to smoke away the 90-minute journey. He paused only to speculate at full volume on Turkmen political leaders, wolves and the fun that could be had by trying to mate them - to the horror of the crosslegged crew.

A dashing entry promises little, as many a lady can testify, but a stylish exit is the true mark of a man, as Mahmud knew well. One evening he gave us a demonstration.

We drones, relaxing down Mahmud's as usual, were surprised to see two sultry, unchaperoned young ladies glide in. They were Tashkent Tartars, the ethnic group on whose cheekbones Uzbekistan's intellectual and erotic life depended, and dressed like dedicated followers of Thai kickboxing films.

"Whores," said Big Time O'Farrell. "Big Time O'Farrell," I imagined them muttering to themselves.

"No way they'd get past the doormen," said Jenny. "Perhaps they're independent businesswomen clinching a contract?"

The word "clinch" did for me, frankly, as I'd been imagining that they were very attached to one another. The two ladies chatted and sipped coffee at the bar without even glancing at anyone else.

Eleven o'clock came, and in bowled Mahmud. He did the rounds of the tables and eventually settled at ours, chair akimbo as usual. A bottle of Altınbaş appeared alongside the car hub that served as his ashtray, and the stereo switched from Tupac to the tambur.

"I sold hotel to Jew. You have seen?" We weren't sure whether he meant the hostelry or the Hebrew, and shook our heads. This spells assent to the Turk, as we recalled too late, and Mahmud launched into what he thought was a shared rhapsodic reminiscence of the state he'd left the building and Mr Berkowitz in after celebrating the deal.

The hours rolled by in a fug of fumes and fretwork before Mahmud gracefully bade us good night. "Tomorrow Bukhara. All men are gays," he remarked as we shook hands. I wasn't sure whether the second phrase was meant to stand alone, and decided not to enquire further.

He lumbered over to the door, patting backs and exchanging nods as he went. Just as he shrugged on his coat, Mahmud stretched out an arm towards the bar and snapped his fingers. Both Tartar beauties sprang from their seats and skipped eagerly after him.

Mahmud had left his mark.

Exquise de Corps

"Mr Amin was then banished to Gaafaru island and later brought back to vihamanaafushi island (Now Kurumbaa Island Resort and at that time it was an uninhabited island). Mohamed Amin ,Once a loved and respected leader passed away in that island on 19 January 1954 at 1:05 am. He was 44 years old. Before his death he Forgave every Maldivian except Mudhimu salih and Mudhimu Dhon thuthu,the two brothers who harmed his genitals."

Thus, with a coda worthy of Joyce's Ulysses, ends an early version of a Wikipedia article on the first president of the Maldives, Mohamed Amin Didi. When people I know, blog visitors and even strange men in the park ask me whether I find Wikipedia useful, I always refer them to these words; they seem to set like the Sun over Kaafu Atoll.

Reactions to Wikipedia fall into three broad categories:

• Those like the Mighty Oliver Kamm (and where's his knighthood, Mr Cameron?), who regard it as a populist "affront to the notion of disinterested intellectual inquiry";
• Others like the Mightier Prof Norman Geras, (and where's his peerage, Mr Brown?), who see in it a handy reference tool if used with care; and
• Viewers of daytime TV, who think it's got something to do with pagan child-molesters and promptly shove excrement into the disk-drives before setting their computers alight.

Kammo is right. A scholar or journalist who relies on Wikipedia might as well start scanning the BBC job ads now, as its clumsy carpentry buries errors and omissions deep beneath planks of plausibility. I recently checked two references in two separate Wiki articles. Both were sound sources, and both were quoted inaccurately - in one case disastrously so.

Nonetheless I'm also with Norm, as there's still nothing like Wikipedia for humbling you on a matter that you thought you'd mastered.

For example, I am a student of Russian history and considered myself au fait with the career of Alexander Kerensky, the doomed leader of the 1917 Provisional Government. My professors said he went on to teach at Stanford, but only Wikipedia told me he was also the "Star League general who liberated Terra from the rule of the usurper Amaris" in the BattleTech wargaming universe.

This must have come as a comfort to the ageing tribune, and a source of pride to his family - in particular to the hitherto obscure Natasha Kerensky, a "bioengineered Warrior from Clan Wolf".

Moreover, simply by appearing in Wikipedia a genuine fact can acquire a curious taint. An interest in paranoiacs of the Carribean took me to the biography of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo and the surprise news that he had a small part in the film Casablanca. This is also reported on the International Movie Database and so ought to be true, but it still has the Wiki ring of brass bollocks about it.

Wikipedia's appeal lies in this unattributable triviality. Pacifist précieux Nicholson Baker likened it to "some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks". His is a generous spirit. I would rather peer down at the Wikitties through a magnifying glass and cackle "You scurry through your tiny world like ants! Ants!" before letting the Great Luminary do its work, but then no one invites me to dinner parties.

Baker treasures the gentler corners of the Wikiverse, and calls for an accessible archive of deleted items. He is right, for this is the vein of fool's gold that runs through the whole enterprise and provides its true value. I would add that the deepest joy comes from perusing earlier versions of apparently sane articles. The current redaction of President Amin Didi's ill-starred life is unremarkable, but a Fantastic Voyage into its fundament reveals the surreal delight with which I began.

An article about last Irish Governor-General Donal Buckley (Domhnall Ua Buachalla - "politician, shopkeeper and member of the First Dáil") shows how spurious anecdote can be incorporated without debasing the currency of knowledge:

One myth according to The Cynics guide to Irish History regarding the abolition of his office, was that de Valera had called Ua Buachalla over the telephone. De Valera simply said to Ua Buachalla; "You're abolished". Because of Ua Buachalla’s failing hearing, he had misinterpreted what de Valera had said and replied, "You’re an even bigger one."

This nonsense is clearly sourced to a disreputable publication, as it should be. That steers the careless reader away from error, while giving him an entertaining and dubious insight into the tensions between Sinn Féin and the institutions of the Free State in the mid-1930s - as well as a quick lesson in Hiberno-English insults.

An august Erse correspondent has noted that an equally useless source (The Round Table journal, vol 90, March 1933, p 291) also recounts the story but gives Buckley's reply rather lamely as "And you're one too". I'll go with the Wikipedia, and believe neither.

Voyagers conversant with foreign languages have new satellites of folly to tread in the shape of the vernacular Wikipedias. Gyppo Byard, who has acquired a whorehouse smattering of various eastern tongues, assures me that the Acehnese Wiki is a bijou box of balls written by a pious Pooter. The concise article on Animals, for example, tells us that they are "among Allah's creations" and seems pretty much satisfied with that.

This, as you might expect, does not apply to the German Wikipedia, which is rigorously patrolled by Dozents and Doktors and therefore crying out for some methodical sabotage. Perhaps someone ought to intersperse Yiddish exclamations here and there:

Die Etat-Kürzungen an den Hochschulen haben dazu geführt, dass Lehrbeauftragte auch eingesetzt werden, um Kosten zu sparen. Die Vergütung liegt meist erheblich unter der Bezahlung hauptamtlich Lehrender. Dies ist insbesondere bedenklich, da nach einer Studie über die Arbeits- und Lebenssituation von Lehrbeauftragten^[1] 46% der Lehrbeauftragten in Berlin angaben, dass Lehraufträge für sie die Haupteinnahmequelle darstellen. Nu, bistu nun ingantsn farblonjet?

A worthwhile Wikipedia article ought to have a whiff of Breton's exquisite corpse. A solemn, sourced opening will pass from hand to hand, as if unseen, picking up fact and fancy along the way. Like the farmer who turns over a clod of earth to reveal the aspect of an emperor on a lost coin, the reader can profit greatly from this exercise. Not least of all by investing in some books.

Hermannsdenkmal

I nodded in casual agreement with the whole of music-loving, non-Tantric humanity as The Daily Mash recorded a popular wish for Toyota not to fix the brakes on Sting's car.

Still, I rather enjoyed some Police tracks, in particular the robust "Dead End Job", and began to wonder when did Sting change from being just one more puncheable peroxide ponce among many into the most reviled musician, activist and erotic explorer since Arthur Askey.

Are all the bêtes noires of our modern menagerie putrid from their first plunge into the pool of publicity, or does the sewage seep slowly, like water under a picture frame, until an idolised image is washed away?

One of my Russian literature tutors used to set us students the task of trying to spot the moment when the anti-hero Hermann in Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" turns from being your average callous Guardsman into an hallucinating madman.

Hermann becomes obsessed with an elderly nobleman who is said to know a winning gambit at cards. He seduces the countess's ward in order to gain access, then scares the old lady to death. Thereafter he descends steadily into insanity, seeing his victim's ghost everywhere.

We all had our pet theories, and mine set the moment of madness at the point when he started quoting French novels. Mr Williams, however, was right to say it came as Hermann stood outside the countess's house in the early hours, wondering whether he might become the octogenarian's lover.

So subtly has Pushkin lured us into Hermann's hermit mind that we barely register how barking the boy has become.

The same applies to Sting, minus the talent and granny-groping. That first solo album of his was "jazz-influenced" - a 1980s term for anything with a saxophone in it - and heralded the horrors of "Ten Summoners' Tales", "...Nothing Like the Sun" and other hey-nonny nonsense.

(Note to all musicians: just as putting brackets in your song title guarantees quality, ellipsis spells more than a slight pause in your career.)

But the element of crime came much earlier, even before the primary-colour Jungian daubs of "Synchronicity". Incidentally, it's a shame The Police didn't dally with Adler, as I might have bought the LP of "Gesundheitsbuch für das Schneidergewerbe".

But no. It was when young Sting was crafting "Don't Stand So Close To Me" in 1980 - and if any song title needed a pair of brackets, by the way, this was it. The Devil perched on his shoulder and whispered "Need a rhyme for 'cough', Gordon?"

So Nabokov took the former English teacher on a trip of three steps to the Fitzcarraldo folly of his Amazonian adventures, where piranhas, blow-pipes and those tiny fish that burrow up your Jap's eye patiently await.

There's a fine Stanley Kramer film from 1961 called "Judgment at Nuremburg". In it lawyer Burt Lancaster acknowledges that Nazism made him betray everything he had stood for. He said he didn't know it would come to that. Judge Spencer Tracy replies "It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent".

So, what was Bono's capital crime?

Et in Arcadia Egos

It looks like we're in for another jolly bout of Tory government in a matter of months, so we in the Cymru Rouge are ready with some advice for Master Cameron and his swanky swan-guzzling chums.

"What can Welsh Maoists possibly have to say to Old Etonians that can't better be expressed with a mattock-blow in a paddy field?" you may ask.

As it happens, some of us have read The Independent and know all about Gramsci, hegemony and the like. Having acknowledged that our own electoral uplift is not going to burst out of the Thames Valley Bustier, we are happy to have the Conservatives implement our policies for us.

If there's one thing hemp-clad, slogan-shrieking Silurian child-soldiers have in common with whale-shaped grandees it's a love of wholesome country living. They eat nursery food in unheated piles, compare bowel eruptions and mount one another with bellies full of port. We sit and wait in thickets, endlessly, like the owl Blodeuwedd.

The greatest crime of the Blair Government was to persuade the grimy urchins of the Labour Party that it is acceptable to be a ponce. It is not. New Labour then cast its Mabuse shadow over the Tories, so that you now hear distressing tales of Cameron's Notting Hill "lifestyle":

• sober dinner party discussions of personal finance,
• foreign, non-curried food eaten with sincere relish,
• public education - indeed, any education, and
• ladies taking ministerial responsibility for more than milk-snatching and nurses.

Any more of this and our democracy will be in serious danger. A choice between three political parties of middle-class bores is no choice at all, and the drinking, smoking, rutting and recreational-fighting classes might well march on That London with the heads of estate agents on pikes come Imbolc.

To effect national reconciliation and avoid the reign of King Mob, I would like to resurrect an idea Gyppo Byard and I developed some years ago. Then we considered it a diverting television programme; now we understand it could save the Crown.

The instigation was an American programme called "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", in which five shameless inverts sought to undermine the not-at-all repressed male obsessions with contact sports, body odours and drunken fisticuffs by a strict regime of couture, musicals and salad. The result - the eventual election of President Obama - signals the success of this cultural osmosis.

We proposed to take ownership of this device in a uniquely rural way. We would take a representative group of metropolitan degenerates - Peter York, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Wayne Hemingway, Polly Toynbee, Madelaine Bunting, the Bishop of Southwark and The Pet Shop Boys - in the back of a Land Rover to the Welsh Marches.

We'd con them into coming by saying it's an all-paid trip to a delightful converted farmhouse in Le Marche Gallese.

Once esconced at Taff's End, an underheated Tudor nightmare of noisome plumbing and over-familiar beagles, they would be matched up with a local type - poachers, arsonists, Gypsies, matrons of the Ladies Fellowship, hereditary Fenian prisoners, the colonels who detained them, and the usual selection of unqualified doctors, Welsh policemen and shell-shocked Classics masters.

These would introduce them to antic pursuits that we deemed least suited to the individual drone/harpy. For example:

• Miss Kilgore ("It's Miss! Miss!!") would have Yasmin buffing St Oswald's chalice in good time for his feast day,
• Major Tarry the magistrate and amateur gunsmith would demonstrate the finer points of Lex Despenser in the Ludlow usage ("Guilty as a Frenchman, fetch the barrel!") to York and anyone in a quarter-mile radius who dares to wear cologne,
• Ms Bunting would expand her understanding of different faith traditions with the help of the Rev Elias's collection of Medieval shriving tools ("Yes, sinners were smaller in those days, but I'm sure you'll fit once Miss Kilgore's finished the preparations."), and
• Wayne Hemingway would have an entire episode devoted to his adventures with Tinker Mullins, simply entitled "Eels".

Our aim was purely fun at someone else's expense but, as is often the case, we had stumbled upon a solution, or at least a solvent, for our fractured fiefdom. Instead of meretricious televisual entertainment, an imaginative government could make much more out of "Let Fly at Their Back Eye" (no more than a working title, it's true, but it captures the essence of violence, colloquialism and bigotry).

I propose a Department of State, devoted to rooting the deracinated firmly in the soil of the pays réel - whether literally or not will be left to local referenda, on a property-holder's franchise.

Any members of Central Office who might be reading, please feel free to get in touch by cleft stick.

Dis aliter visum

"2009" was inscribed on one of the many milestones that the Boyo charabanc dislodged on its Cambrian career through the last 13 moons. Each month brought new triumphs and challenges, but not that I noticed. Let us get kinkily Fabian for a moment and carry out an annual audit.

Summary: Overall, the number of No Good Boyo posts halved on the year, a pleasing result for the leader of a movement dedicated to the overthrow of the productive aspects of capitalism while retaining its viciousness.

Prospectus: This Celtic indolence won us the accolade of 47th Welshest Web Blog in the World - a stunning drop from 10th in 2008. We pledge to improve on these figures in 2010 by sending No Good Boyo plunging into the lowers hundreds - the Cantrefi Gwaelod of torpor to which all Welsh would aspire if they could be arsed.

This we will achieve by writing less frequent and longer pretentious posts, fattened as ever by abstruse foreign tags and cinematic references. The subject matter - my Neronic debauch of Eastern Europe in its man-made fibres period, plans for the same in Wales, political extremism, vague longings for librarianly women on television, and further excerpts from my 25 years of lolling at the taxpayers' expense. And that's a promise. Now, to the detail.

January saw me take on the antick duties of Cotsengi (Hound of the Ladygarden), the hereditary inquisitor of would-be-Windsor princesses, on the demise of Sir Dai Llywellyn. His spurs and stirrups have stood me in good stead, especially when assessing twins.

February we dedicated to Santes Dwynwen, such was its Welshness. The Cymru Rouge vanquished the penny-dreadful Poujadists of the British People's Alliance, scorned comparisons between our witch-peaked principality and the sodden marshes of Atlantis, and persuaded Mancunian sage Professor Norman Geras that aesthetics, eugenics, heredity, expediency and the Will of God trump liberty every time by citing the case of nudistry.

March marked the passing of the holiday-home-scorching torch of Cymreictod from one generation to another, as stepfather of the nation Sioba Siencyn wandered off among the menhirs of Lud and our son Bendigeidfran (pictured above) served notice on Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Hemps and whatever that the Day of Glyndŵr slouches closer on all fours.

April heralded the launch of the Cymru Rouge abroad, as we hammered the Scots and pledged to save the English from themselves again by completing the Cerne Abbas Giant. The harvest will be reaped at the 2010 general election with the sickle of Siluarianism, when the Thames Valley will return a shrieking phalanx of black-clad child MPs to promote Maoist-Mabonism in the maw of Mammon.

May displayed the European dimension of our native largesse as I recalled how a young Englishman was tutored in the ways of the Welsh by a trainee nymphomaniac called Delyth, several spiked ales, a ruck of rugby players and the noble Bohemian art of defenestration.

In June I continued to unravel the remaining threads of the New Labour tapestry. In a show of appeasing Baroness von und zu Kinnock, for fear that she might use her new position as Minister for Europe to thwart our holiday plans, I incidentally listed her most outstanding shortcomings. Mr Brown must have noticed this, as he rapidly shifted her to liaison with dozy countries and the UN.

Wales's own first minister, Rhodri Morgan, in July tasked me with encouraging immigration by affluent metro uitlanders. I came up with seven cracking reasons why Wales is the place to live. Morgan's resignation followed in December, and was deemed by the unkind to be an eighth.

August went down in history as the month some slackers voted me the 47th most intense Welshman on the Intern Net, and prompted me to give the following assurance:

I pledge to the people of Wales that I shall not cease from recounting my abuse of Soviet hospitality, fatal cocktail recipes, inaccurate film reviews, scorn for the public-spirited and desire to mate with various fading, and in some cases deceased, 1960s celebrities.

The reference to fading stars came back to haunt me that very same month, when Gordon Brown rejected my campaign to have Fennella Fielding's birthday enshrined as a national festival of anti-jihadist defiance. No 10 flaunted its dhimmitude by dubbing my patriotic efforts "not in accord with government policy". Just wait until May, Herr Braun; Mr Cameron strikes me as the sort of chap who appreciates a finely-turned fetlock whatever its vintage.

In September I reclaimed the name "Britain" for all of Wales, although my suggestion that Israel should rename itself "Nelson Mandela" did not win such universal approval.

I added my many voices to the campaign to commemorate Iolo Morganwg, the inventor of modern and Medieval Wales, with a cromlech on Primrose Hill. It gave me the opportunity to extol the fine Cambrian virtues of theft and deceit throughout October. We are not unique in being a bunch of lying tea-leaves, but who else has elevated it into a national epos?

Nepotism is also a characteristic that we prize, sensibly enough as some of our mountainous counties regard incest as a competitive sport, so I was proud in November to recommend my brother Steffan ap Morthwyl fab Boyo as leader of the less intelligent wing of the English Left.

He combines the timing of Arthur Scargill with the appeal of the Kinnocks, and would give Labour plenty of opportunity to get used to opposition.

And in December our daughter Arianrhod reminded me that the title of Most Welshest Boyo must constantly be defended, like Offa's Antifaschistische Schutzwall itself. While trailing through the sports and weaponry section of John Lewis, a leading Welsh workers' cooperative retail unit, out of all the misshapen baubles she chose a rugby ball.

Above my work trough hangs a draft election poster. I stare out at the voter, above the slogan "Êtes-vous plus Gallois que Lui?" Once I eyed it complacently. Now I'm not so sure.

The Skull of Idris Kadeer

I was taking flummery in my rooms at Lampeter when came a knock at the door. At my weary summons Szczackowsky trailed in and draped his limbs over my prie-dieu.

"Sorry to trouble you, Boyo, but I wonder whether I could pick your brains on some heathen lore."

"A pleasure, " I replied, proffering the spoon that heals. Szczackowsky took a listless sip. After some pleasantries about the disposition of my mistletoe, he told me a tale the like of which I had long feared to hear.

"I gather the swart Mussulman does not bury his dead in a decent coffin, but rather winds him in the poor fellow's own headgear before consigning him to a shallow grave and having done with it," he began.

"Not entirely the case," I garbed my distaste in the mildest of rebukes. "The Mahommedan does not despoil our holy oak through entombment, it's true, but is most solicitous towards the memory of the departed, with commemorative feasts on the fortieth day of his kinsman's sojourn in Paradise and its anniversary. Alms and sweetbreads are offered to the indigent. Heathens perhaps, but certainly not barbarians."

My Polish colleague grunted, and cast a lashless eye at the sleet that slathered the windows of my set. "Always happy to acquaint you with the latest research," he muttered. "You remember my field trip to the archives of the Emir of Bokhara?"

I nodded. Szczackowsky's discipline was the heraldry of his itinerant homeland, with particular interest in the hitherto elusive enoblement of his ancestors. The few versts of palsied peasantry that bore the Szczackowsky name near Gszmak were too little and too far.

"Well, I tired of the musty indices and decided to take the air on the outskirts of that sand-girdled satrapy," he continued. "Soon I found myself on broken ground, alone but for some carrion birds. It must have been some forlorn battlefield, for I nearly tripped over a bald rock that, on closer inspection - well, a kick, I admit - turned out to be a skull."

"A human skull?" I mused.

"That of a local," he replied hastily. "It was round like a water-melon, as is common among the Sarts."

"Of whom there are few in Bokhara, a city of Tad-jeeks," I remarked. "But do go on."

"I mean it was not elongated to fit a honey-melon, the measure of the Turcoman." I swore his duelling scars grew fevered in the peat light.

"A welcome discovery for the historian of the lay of Tamburlaine's campaigns," I concluded. "I shall mention it to Deakin. Now, I must dress for Calennig, and I fear my garlands have swollen since last year -"

"Please hear me out, Vortigern, for pity's sake!" My guest all but grasped the lapels of my jerkin.

"Sit down, Wozzeck, and pray a little more candour this time." I loaded the hookah as he puffed impatiently on a biddi.

"Very well, it was no battleground, and I wasn't taking a break from my work. Far from it - this was to be the acme of my academic achievement. Tell me, have you heard of Idris Kadeer?"

I set the mushrooms down for a moment, and drew a manuscript from my Khwarazmian cabinet. "The Tareekh of Buyouk-Muinack," I gently brushed the dust from its grey leaves. They seemed to whisper as I traced a path to the seventh chapter, the one that treated of Kadeer the Mad, and of His Curse. I translated aloud from the Tchaghatai:

"...and he who had walked gladly without the Light of the Merciful, who had passed through dunes and vaulted cisterns in the company of serpents and djins, now he met justice at the hands of the Prince's guards. Before his head rolled in the pious dust before the Kalyan, Idris fixed both eyes upon the crowd. His lips did not move, but all heard his words -"

I replaced the fading folio, as Szczackowsky's head had slumped in his hands. "What did you do?" I asked quietly.

"I'd heard the story of the great Necromancer of Bokhara, and how possession of his remains could bring unimaginable wealth and power -"

"Yes, unimaginable, and only to the adept," I interrupted.

"I know now." His voice was barely audible above the twilight patter of ravens in the courtyard below. "A chest of piastres had bought me an audience with a blind Maulana at Lab-i-Khawz. Imagine my delight, my exhilaration at being told where to find the tomb of Idris and all it contained!

"I ventured out at midnight, bribing the guards at the Ark to let me pass, and soon struck the path to a ruined medrassa on the very edge of the desert. The key I'd bought so dear let me down steps to a vile vault almost submerged in a sulphurous brine. And there I found it.

"I shan't bother you with the details of my nightmare of horror - the sounds, the sluggish movement of half-shadows, the underwater whispers - or my deranged flight across broken walls and cracked tombs until I piled sobbing on my rude bed, the prize in my hands. Merely to think of it robs me of nights of sleep.

"All I had found in the tomb was a handful of dust and a skull."

"The skull of Idris Kadeer?"

"I had no doubt, and less now." Szczackowsky lit another spindly cheroot, unaware of its sibling that still smouldered between his blanched lips. "I was disappointed to find the remains already reduced to powder, but felt grateful that at least the skull was intact."

"How do you feel now. Powerful? Prosperous?"

"Don't mock me, man!" A sickle moon spun unwholesome skeins across his brow. "I brought it out of Russia on a packet from Odessa, packed in a samovar, then by wagon-lit from Constantinople. It's fair to say I've not really slept since. At first I put the dreams down to fatigue, the ague, whatever, but soon the incessant clanging of gongs, the choking cloying fumes, the screams that surged into one endless shriek, the throbbing, indescribable colours, they all began to take on a shape - oh God, if you can call that a shape!"

"You know the curse," I asked as he covered his face again. Meeting only silence, I took up the manuscript of the Tareekh once again.

"... Who owns my bones shall have dominion over those who scattered them to the corners of the world, and over all that passes between, but woe upon those who divide me! The Two-Horned One shall greet them at the gates of Jahann-Am, and endless will be the burning blizzard of their torment. And then they shall behold my face..."

"That wasn't the tomb of Idris was it?" sobbed Szczackowsky.

I shook my head. "It was the Maulana's own ruined academy, the one that the mob had destroyed when they learned of his ungodly pursuits, the one where he had put out his own eyes rather than see what had been promised to him."

"He had been tricked into taking possession of the skull and becoming - how did Kadeer put it?- "

"One of 'those who divide me' - literally." I replaced the manuscript. "Until he passed it on to you."

"What am I to do, Boyo? You're my last hope."

I pointed skywards with a faint smile. "We ought to consider 'benefit of clergy', don't you think? Look, I know an imam - a Moslem cleric - as learned and devout as any of those Low Churchmen at St David's. He'll give the skull a decent burial, something that's clearly never occured to anyone. I take it the, er, object is here in your set?"

"Yes," he gabbled, "It's in a cupboard under my washstand! Of course I'll make it presentable, and - "

"Here's what you'll do. The whole college will be attending Calennig in an hour. If you stay at home, burn a good fire in the hearth and leave your door ajar, I'll send my fellow up. No one will see you."

"I don't know how to thank you," wept my colleague.

"Just go, and stop worrying." I pressed his hands, and led him to the door.

A while after he'd gone I set aside my nargileh, tapped at the connecting door to the next set of rooms and eased it open. It was dark inside, but warm and still. My neighbour sat in a high-backed chair by the empty hearth. I took his hand in mine, and traced calligraphy on the parched palm.

Across the square. The Frank has it. You will feel the warmth of his fire on your breast, and hear his breath in your heart. His fear will hang heavy in your throat. And soon you will see again, and speak - Master.

Idris Kadeer rose, and I followed him to the stairs.