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A Season for all men

Well, we’re used to hearing about the Camping Season, which for Scouts runs from approximately 31st March to 31st October each year, although Graham Norton’s camping season lasts all year.

Then there’s the Caravan Season, where Jeremy Clarkson spends six months with extremely high blood pressure as he tries to overtake them on the A38 in an excruciatingly expensive and completely unnecessary car.

The Japanese have their Scientific Season, which was a series of sporadic weeks where they slaughtered endangered whales for scientific research, the results of which seem to be a closely guarded world-secret. This season now looks set, thanks to a group of spineless, land-locked countries threatened by the Land of the Rising Scientific Research with paying more for their Nintendos and PlayStations, to last until the final whale is wiped off the face of the oceans.

I have written to the Japanese Embassy four times now seeking details of this research (email address info@ld.mofa.go.jp) without eliciting even as much as a “Go away you Eeeengrish” - silence seems to mean they must have something to hide. Or perhaps it's just all those Japenese businessmen stuffing themselves silly with Sushi that just happens to co-incidentally be whale meat, are too embarrassed. But hey, sorry, can’t stop now to discuss this – I’m in my Toyota.

The press have their Silly Season, traditionally in tandem with the 6-week school summer holiday period, where hard and decent news is at a premium, resulting in even the dimmest PR practitioner gaining valuable column inches for the likes of the insurance industry (cannot understand the huge disparity in quotes from identical insurance companies featured on the different comparison websites – nah, we’re not being ripped off), nay even front page news, declaring that Kevins are the worst drivers and people in red cars are more prone to crash them on the M42 on Thursdays than they are on the M62 on Fridays.

The opera buffs enjoy their early winters with an Opera Season, where various fat ladies and chaps screaming “Go Compare” prove its all over when they fininsh singing.

And of course, the entire UK has just entered the Simon Cowell Banking Season (one of many), this time, thinly disguised as a television programme called either “Britain’s got Cretins”, or the "Fax Extra" complete with dancing frogs, musical coffins and singing children who maybe should have been left to the mercy of Father O’Brien.





However, while we infidels enjoy all our various seasonal and often enjoyably recreational activities, the news that for those gentlemen of superior social standing and skills, the Taliban, it’s the start of their traditional “Fighting Season” where they like to maim and murder Americans, non-believers, infidels, teenaged girls who want to learn to read and write, women who don’t submit to wearing to the headbag, people who smoke or who listen to One Direction and then head off and encourage some misguided rural bumpkin to do a bit of recreational bomb-belting.

Why the Talibannies have to have a Fighting Season while the rest of the world has plain, simple, stupid yet harmless recreational seasons, is totally beyond me.

I must be missing something.

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