A wag more waggish than I once said that the unofficial motto of the London Ambulance Service was Sic transit gloria mundi.
This declaration was made not because of the English translation ‘Thus passes the glory of the world’ or, to put it in the vernacular ‘Oh dear, there goes the neighbourhood’.
No, the waggish wag made play on the English soundalikes in the Latin. Sick. Transit.
And unless someone is being sick in a Ford Transit on a Monday, the phrase has very little meaning.
Where the heck is he going with all this stuff, I hear you ask.
*cocks an expectant ear towards the window*
Well, pull up a sandbag, young nipper, and I’ll tell you.
Biological Warfare (BW to its friends) has been knocking about this planet for a very long time.
I believe the earliest recorded use of what we now know as BW originates from around the C5th / C6th, when those fun-loving folk in the middle-east used toxic fungi to poison the oases and wells of drinking water, of their enemies.
Fast forward a couple of millennia, and through a whole bucketful of geo-political changes.
A big bunch of countries (not a bunch of big countries, obv) got together to sign the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which made the stockpiling, mass production, and use of BWs illegal anywhere on this planet.
But still the Armed Forces of many of those countries train their troops, so that they know how to react in the event that BWs are deployed against them.
We were repeatedly drilled in the rapid suiting-up of our Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) clothing, when I was a trained killer.
The weird material on the outside of the charcoal-lined trousers, the equally weird charcoal-lined jacket, linen gloves, gas mask (which we had to call ‘a respirator’, not an actual gas mask), fitted hood with draw-strings, over-boots, rubber gloves.
That was the order of dress.
And we had to aim for 60 seconds or less, to get all that clobber on.
We’d look a bit like this:
(though the guy on the right would be dead in a real NBC/BW attack, with gaps between his sleeves and his gloves like that)
But of course, and despite the 1972 BWC, germ warfare/NBCs/BWs are still being deployed.
There was Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by a rare form of radiation as he lived and worked his routine life.
And let us not forget the Bulgarian dissident/writer Georgi Ivanov Markov, who was poisoned by a BW-laden pellet that was injected in to his thigh as he walked around London.
I don’t want to trivialise these two personal catastrophes, but I do have slightly more positive and upbeat news.
Due to my superior physical condition, I have been able, this weekend, to fight off a germ warfare/NBC/BW attack on my life.
This weekend, the dark and shady forces that inhabit the netherworld of cloak-and-daggerliness and international intrigue, made yet another desperate attempt to stop me from revealing state secrets.
Incapacitated though I have been, by violent attacks of sickness, diarrhoea and vomiting, I have manfully struggled through the dreadful illness.
And yes, I shall be back at work tomorrow, defending the country from the nefarious underlords who wish to ruin our lives.
What?
No, what?
Yes, I’ve been ill.
Sicking up all over the place.
Much to my girlfriend’s amusement enjoyment consternation.
No, really.
Thanks for all the good wishes.
Really.
I’ll just struggle on.
Thank heavens some us can still carry the good ol’ British stiff upper lip.
Stops the sick getting on your moustache, y’know.
And…
I have not only seen with my naked eyes (but only just, cos it was bloody small) but I have actually held the pellet (more of a tiny ball bearing, actually) that killed Markov. It was in a sealed petri dish at the time and it was – I hasten to add – AFTER it had killed him.