Adrian's own auto-erotic fantasies take him, for several nights of each week, to an imaginary America — a now fully eroticised version of the same space in Tamarisk Row —where he copulates frenziedly with tag-teams of female film-stars.

Most cruelly, the immediate security interests of the United States and the states surrounding Somalia are now to keep it a failed state, to prevent Islamists from consolidating even a weak state centered on Mogadishu. The leader of the victorious faction, one Aden Hashi 'Ayro, is said to be a veteran of Afghanistan; he knows well what a small sanctuary in a backward corner of the globe can mean for al Qaeda.

I wish St. Pathrick had made a trip to India and dhriven the sarpints out av the counthry the same as he did in Ireland."

When I was growing up (Ok, Boomer) the only office that had a dog was a firehouse.