Teaching Tania - Love is all you need???

by James Gault

  So it’s all up to us, then! The formation of the security group at the meeting was a good first step, but I’m relying on you to take this group in hand and mould them into a well-honed fighting force, which no self-respecting peace movement can be without. Divide them into two groups! Find suitable weapons for the big hefty ones, and have them trained in their use! Also, enlist all of them in a course of karate or judo or some other martial art! Then you must indoctrinate them with total devotion to our leader and virulent hatred for anyone who dares to threaten her. Big George, the big lad with the broken nose who was put in charge of this group has the right idea. For the second group, you have to take the cleverest ones and train them in espionage and intelligence gathering. The first stage will be to divest them of all moral principles, as in this field the end always justifies whatever means you can think of. Begin by teaching them the art of burglary and housebreaking, using the experiences gained in the affair of the Cat Mafia!

  You’re probably thinking that these activities don’t fit well with an organisation dedicated to peace and love. Don’t worry about this! You may wonder how anyone can reconcile their ideals with the employment of such violent and underhand methods, but you only have to listen to any American President making a speech about democracy and freedom to appreciate how easily it can be done. I would not wish to suggest that you have moral standards as low as a normal run-of-the-mill American President, but we need to protect Tania and we have to fight fire with fire. Only, don’t mention a word of what you are doing to her! I have been working hard to help her understand the adult world, but I don’t think she’s quite ready for this awful truth just yet. I will drip-feed details of our security activities to her over the next few weeks, and she will slowly get used to the need for duplicity to achieve the objectives of our league for peace. But for now, let her keep her childhood illusions.

  In the meantime, don’t be concerned about not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to her. It is, I’m afraid, all part of growing up.

  Keep up the good work,

  Peace!!

  J.

  Chapter 13. Missing homework

  Dear Tania,

  Where’s your homework? If you recall, before I started teaching you we had an agreement that you would always do your homework. I’ve been checking my e-mails regularly, but no sign of Tania’s homework. I know you’ve been preoccupied recently with the Israeli-Palestine conflict and tension in Asia, Africa and South America, but you have to get your priorities right. The world might be threatened with imminent nuclear destruction but life goes on.

  However, I did receive your other communication. It was perfect in every aspect of grammar, spelling and style, but that’s not the point. I give you exercises designed to improve your linguistic abilities, so it’s just not acceptable to replace it with something much easier of your own choosing. There is a big difference between a healthy disrespect for authority and anarchy, so don’t ever do this again!

  As to the content of your letter, I can sympathise with your disappointment. I too would be devastated if the President of Israel and the leader of the Palestinian government declined my offer to mediate in their unfortunate dispute.

  I don’t think the refusal had anything to do with your English. Fist of all, neither gentleman is a native English speaker so any unfortunate unintentional nuances would probably have gone unnoticed. In any case, I thought your writing was perfect, with just the right degree of politeness and deference given the elevated status of the recipients. “Your most revered, worshipped and respected leader of the Palestinian terrorists” may not be the official term of address, but it expresses all the right sentiments. Personally, I would have chosen “freedom fighters” rather than “terrorists” but everything is a matter of taste, isn’t it?

  Probably the two gentlemen were just too busy to see you. All their time seems to be taken up meeting an endless stream of world diplomats and dignitaries with much the same idea as you, and they probably just couldn’t fit you in.

  On the other hand, they maybe didn’t take you seriously. The construction of your argumentation and your list of options was very impressive, but you rather spoilt your credibility by the ending. Of course I know that you would have had to ask for time off school to make the trip, but did you have to say so in your letter? And the request for permission to bring your favourite teddy bear frankly did not add much weight to your proposal.

  The question is, ‘Where do you go from here?’. If you take my advice – of late not something you are noted for doing – it won’t be to the Middle East. You only have to glance at the TV news in passing to see what a perilous place it is. However, the way you have been conducting yourself in the relatively safe city of Prague are making it just as dangerous as any of the known world trouble spots. And here I’m afraid I have to take the role of a real teacher and issue you with a few serious words of warning. (I have just realized that this letter has begun to acquire a somewhat strict and didactic tone which is totally alien to my normal personality. Perhaps the thought that your recent behaviour is turning your favourite teacher into something of a monster will make you stop and reflect.)

  First of all, I think you are taking the events of last night too lightly. You may think you made a lucky escape from what might have been a routine traffic accident, but there are signs that more sinister factors were at work here. A large Volvo running into the side of the tram you had just climbed into may seem to you to be no more than a coincidence. It is a well known fact that Volvo cars are rather sturdily built, but why did this one have a reinforced steel bumper? And do you really think the four foot long spikes protruding from the front were there solely for decorative purposes? And what explanation do you have for the large quantities of – fortunately – unexploded Semtex which the traffic police found under the bonnet? When I read your letter, I phoned the police for further details and they told me that they found a computer controlled ignition device. Luckily for you the computer they were using had the latest version of a well-known personal computer operating system installed, and therefore had no chance of working properly, so you owe your life to the notorious unreliability of the computer software industry.

  Frankly, the most worrying thing about this incident was the manner in which you wrote about it in your letter. I quote: ‘By the way, a rather strange thing happened on the way home from the meeting last night.’ ‘By the way’? ‘Strange’? Let me introduce you to a new English word, Tania – naïve. In your case it means ‘stupid’. I realize that this is the first time I have called your intelligence into question, but you don’t really think that your tram collided, completely by chance, with a lost delivery vehicle from the plastics explosive factory in Pardubice, do you?

  I can only assume you are so blinded by being in love and spreading world peace that you are oblivious to the most obvious evil. Fortunately, the other half of your doe-eyed couple is managing to retain a remarkable amount of lucidity. So, when you see him, please tell him everything , and maybe he and I together can work out what is going on.

  To protect yourself from now on, here are some rules which I absolutely insist you follow. If you are too stupid to protect yourself your friends are going to do it for you. I know I sound like some western government lecturing a third world regime, but in my case the intentions are really entirely honourable.

  Rule 1.

  Keep away from all embassies and consulates! You run a double risk near these. As I have tried to explain to you several times, your new career as a peacemaker makes you a target of every secret service in the world, official and unofficial, and this kind of unsavoury person tends to congregate near official buildings. And in addition, every country has someone who bears a grudge against them, so if you venture near such establishments you risk being a victim of collateral damage.

  Rule 2
.

  It is better to avoid carrying placards with provocative political messages, but if you must, try to keep them to a modest and discrete size.

  Rule 3.

  Don’t accept sweets from strangers – they may be poisoned.

  Rule 4.

  No matter how keen you are to be helpful to foreign tourists in the city centre, never in any circumstances give directions to apparently fat Arab gentlemen wearing loose fitting clothes.

  Rule 5.

  Honza and I are in the process of arranging for a team of highly trained bodyguards to protect you, and you must never go anywhere without them.

  Rule 6.

  Don’t say anything to your mother! While breaking this rule might not be life threatening to you personally, it could be fatal for your father.

  It is my greatest wish that you could go back to being the simple little girl who only wanted to learn English and have a cat, and dedicate all your attention to doing your homework on time. But all children grow up, and as they get older their problems tend to increase. So you are no different from other children, except perhaps in the extraordinary rate at which your problems seem to be increasing.

  Please be careful! And get that homework done!

  Your teacher,

  J.

  Chapter 14 Sponsorship

  Dear sirs,

  We acknowledge receipt of your recent letter and thank you very much for your interest in our organization. Please forgive us for the delay in replying, but you, like many others, contacted us through the TV station as a result of Tania’s television appearances to publicise our aims. We rely on the TV company to forward such correspondence. Unfortunately, just at the time of Tania’s interviews, a new pop teenage pop group named ‘Tania and the Tom Toms’ had made their first appearance on TV, and it is a sad reflection of our times, but it appears that they received a great deal more mail than we did. You can imagine that the existence of two ‘Tanias’ being ‘mediatised’ concurrently led to some confusion in the mail sorting department of the TV company, and your letter was one of the unfortunate victims. But we have it now and I will do my best to reply in a satisfactory manner.

  First of all, Tania herself asks me to apologise for her not being able to reply in person. As you can appreciate, she has a lot of important tasks which take up her time, but in spite of this she is not excused homework either for her school lessons or indeed for the extra English lessons she receives from me. It’s all very well being the saviour of the world, but if she neglects her studies she won’t get a real job when she grows up. However, although she cannot reply herself, I can assure your proposals have received her and her committee’s full and detailed attention and I have been charged with communicating the results of our deliberations.

  I have to tell you that yours is not the only offer of this nature which we have received. Governments from all over the world have written with expressions of moral encouragement, financial aid and helpful suggestions. The Cuban government, for example, sent us a couple of dozen cases of rum, pointed out that their current communist regime was particularly beneficial for and helpful to children, and asked us if we would care to sign some petition or other. We threw the petition in the bin and gave the rum to Tania’s mum, in the hope that it may have some medicinal value for her mental condition.

  We also received a couple of rather strange offers from some obscure companies purporting to be in the business of home and business security. The letters were remarkably similar. Each letter told us that we should keep our eyes and ears open, particularly for information - and this is the strange part – about the other company. From time to time we would receive a short questionnaire, and if we completed and returned it a handsome contribution to our funds would be forthcoming. Someone had the bright idea of holding the letters up to the light, and on doing so we notice that the paper of both letters was identical. The only difference between them was the watermark – one said ‘KGB’ and the other ‘CIA’. But perhaps the most surprising fact of all was that both companies had the same address and telephone number. We filled in the coupon and ticked the box for further information, and we’re waiting to see what happens next.

  Several commercial companies have been in touch too. Most of these involved Tania wearing outlandish clothes with tasteless logos for her TV appearances, and were rejected out of hand. ‘Protest for Peace with Pepsi’ did evoke some discussion, but it too was felt to be inappropriate with our aims and objectives.

  You can see from the above that we are receptive to every idea, but at the same time we are very selective. So I hope you won’t be too disappointed but I have to inform you that we feel that an association with your organization would not be right for us just at the moment. We can sympathise with your aims, but we can’t agree that they should be pursued by all means available. Your motto, ‘Peace through Violence’ just about sums up everything we are against. We understand your argument and can agree that it is founded on good adult common sense, but as a children’s group this to us is the core of the problem. We appreciate fully that your credo is based on academically sound references to the history and philosophy of all the world’s major religions, and we have carefully noted that you have the clandestine support of all major governments and international companies. When you tell us that you wield an awesome and terrible power, we can well believe it. We are sure that we need the kind of protection you offer, and that we need it as badly as you have pointed out. But if you don’t mind, we would rather seek the protection from an organisation whose ideals are somewhat closer to our own.

  I am returning the brochures about the courses on ‘Urban Terrorism’, ‘How to Defend Yourself Against Armed Policemen’ and ‘Forging Identity Papers Made Easy’, as they are of no interest to us following our decision. You may be able to use them elsewhere, and while World Peace is our main aim, we have as a subsidiary target ‘Saving the World’s Trees’.

  Tania has asked me to make a final point which she feels may improve the moral quality of your group. She suspects from your attitude that you are all over twenty-one by a considerable margin, and she suggests that you retire from your positions and hand over the reins to your children or your children’s children who are as yet untainted by your adult cynicism and blatant disregard for human feelings and life.

  I thank you for your interest in our society, I hope very much you will overcome your disappointment at our decision, and I trust that your group will go from strength to strength, albeit in a more peaceful fashion than at present.

  Yours sincerely,

  J.

  Secretary

  LAW-HA-FLACE.

  Chapter 15 Mysterious Women

  Hi Honza,

  I need your help again. Can you tell me what Tania is up to? I am getting really frustrated, her personality is changing so fast I can’t keep up. In our lessons she just sits there with a gleam in her eye and a far away look, and answers all my questions correctly, of course, but automatically. I know she’s concocting some devilish plan but I can’t get anything out of her.

  She used to be so obvious. Give her a grammar exercise and she would inadvertently let slip her innermost secrets. This was the endearing simplicity and naivety of childhood. But now she is beginning to exhibit some disturbingly adult traits, like secrecy and deviousness. It is just another manifestation of the unfortunate process which changes a girl into a woman. They are led to believe, no doubt due to the influence of their mothers, that thoughts are like money – a man should share all his but a woman needs to keep hers to herself. Their mothers also tell them that it is appealing to create an enigmatic impression by revealing you have something on your mind while concealing what that something is. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it at all appealing, I find it appalling.

  The trouble is that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t get her to appreciate that her life is in danger. Yest
erday our head of security, Big George, sent me his report on last night’s trip to the radio station. I think it illustrates the point I’m trying to make quite well, so I quote it in full here.

  “I proceeded at a leisurely pace behind my charge (he means Tania) while carrying out my assigned surveillance duties. I had disposed my force in tactically acceptable ‘protection and defence’ positions around the target (he still means Tania) according to the recommendations of the ‘CIA Manual for Accredited Presidential Bodyguards’ (He found it on the Internet, apparently). The target was obviously preoccupied with something, her brows were furrowed in deep thought and her mouth was set in a vacant grin. (I told you she was plotting some secret cunning project).

  “The first part of the journey through the tourist area from the radio station to the Metro was accomplished without any unusual or remarkable incidents. There were, of course, the usual four pickpocket attempts and three abortive bag-snatches, which our charge parried automatically with a series of reflex actions, … a deft kick, a quick sidestep, a jab of the elbow.