PURE DEAD BRILLIANT

Posted by Lianne Gutcher at 15:14 on 30 Jan 2010

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As trailed, a poetic appreciation of Kabul's men, in all their shapes and forms, by the fabulous Heather Barr:

A Toast to the Laddies

Good evening, good evening and thanks to Mr Starkey,
For his very kind words and the usual malarkey.
It's time now for us to proffer our own kind greeting,


And try to make it snappy so as to not delay eating.

A toast to the laddies is the task set by Ms Lianne,
We undertake it happily and sing the praises of man.
We'll not over generalise by trying to mention every them all,
We focus on a specific species - the expat of Kabul.

If you travel the world - and we girls are certainly of travelling bent,
You'll find that men adapt to their environment.
They wear different shoes, they wear different hats,
They drown you with charm or fidget rather than chat.

In this grand rainbow of men there's a breed particularly rare,
He's got mud on his boots and excessive facial hair.
He's Kabul ex-pat man, but he comes in many types,
We'll toast them all now, on special Haggis night.

We'll first tip our hat to the Afghan lad,
As we are his guests and don't want to make him mad.
Whether salwared or silver-suited his style is his own special brand,
He's got curled up shoes and he won't shake your hand.

But back to our ex-pat beauties, as we know them the best,
Some we run from, but we love all the rest.
You know all the types, but we'll drink to each,
Each in his own special way a darling little peach.

There's the mercenary, keen to tell you how many people he's offed.
He's dim but at a neck the size of a ham you'll not dare scoff.
He'll buy all the beer and be terribly polite,
And he knows which Chinese offers ladies of the night.

There's the EUPOL who comes with a charming little hat,
He's chirpy and cute and a pleasant young chap.
Taking a break from the stress of law enforcement at home,
He's teaching the MoI how they bust bad guys in Rome.

There's the soldier - arrived here from nations all over the place,
Alas you'll never meet him -- as he cannot leave the base.
There's United Nations man - a truly multilateral chap,
He'll yammer about PHPs, P5s, and SRSGs - its okay if you nap.

There's NGO boy, variety francais,
He'll be patoo'd, pakuled and feeling very au fait.
There's embassy man, unclassifiable indeed,
He ranges from the sedate Norwegian to the Italian on speed.
There's think tank guy who's terribly sincere,
He despairs of downward trends and cries in his beer.

There's contractor guy who implements the project in a snap,
And bilateral man who the sector will map.
There's special forces dude with his black ops,
Since he can't talk about it, his party chatter flops.

And last but not least is our personal fave,
The journo guy who is both nerdy and brave.
Imbedded with the Marines, he risks IEDs,
Washes his pants in a well and scoffs MREs.

To all these fine laddies we now raise our toast loud,
In hopes that Mr. Burns of these weirdos would be proud! 

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