"Through early morning fog I see

Visions of the things to be

The pains that are withheld for me

I realize and I can see..

Refrain:

That suicide is painless

It brings on many changes

And I can take it or leave it if I please.

The chopper used to appear from nowhere over the ridge with its cargo of casualties.

My chopper arrives at 6am every morning. I always feel suicidal at that time. Another day to feed the cats, cook for ourselves, download the stupid jokes that people with a lot of their employers’ time have sent, and occasionally enjoy the day.

As an old friend from America commented to me last week after the mighty crash in the stock market. "A bundle just evaporated from my portfolio over the past week. I could have had a Porsche Cayman for that!" I think that I can understand Hemingway’s point of view. A former co-worker took the same approach earlier this year.

As far as Hemingway was concerned it was the only way to go. He was a manic depressive in the same bag as Federico Garcia Lorca and many others who achieved fame by just being utterly boring. Anybody who has read "For Whom The Bells Toll" or saw the film (saved only by the wonderful Ingrid Bergman) will understand my way of thinking.

Nobody I know of has come back to tell us that suicide is painless. It certainly must bring on many changes but those are irreversible.

Years ago, in UK, we were regular patrons of one of those old-fashioned pubs. One of the other regulars was a young chap in his early twenties. Always sat on his own. Good looking, well dressed, impeccably clean. I asked the landlord why that young guy was always alone. "Oh! He is so boring that nobody wants his company!" I tried to engage conversation once and found that indeed he was as boring as Hemingway on a good day. Really he would have exhausted the patience of an oyster.

One Sunday night we were in our usual corner and he came to sit by us. He looked lively, full of beans and for once quite funny. We had a good chat and basically enjoyed ourselves in his company until closing time

At 4 am the following morning he was found hanging from the old oak tree in the churchyard. A heavy rope with an elaborate loop had been rigged up from the old Roman door to the ancient tree. There was no way that he could have organised that in the dark. He had it all prepared before he spent the evening with us. He was at peace.

I am talking about suicide because the problem of immigration is a very similar decision for those desperate people. Some of them do not survive. And it is not painless. The problem will get more and more acute in the future as the West will not be able to assimilate the hordes of them. It is utter suicide for both parties.

Nevertheless there is some hope. The same friend from America has designed a scheme that might work to solve the US mess. He proposes to ship all the liberals to Mexico and trade them for workers. Your run of the mill liberal would net one gardener or field worker. Of course, Barbara Streisand would command a greater number of applicants to the US. A further advanced idea, in his opinion, would be to ship all their liberals to France. They all seem to want to go there anyway and quite frankly they could not possibly make things worse in Asterix country. Frenchmen could go to UK hopefully improving the national cooking in the process. Englishmen could go to Mexico for the sunshine or Canada when they could dilute the Quebec problem. Either North or South the Englishmen could teach their language to the Mexicans and South Americans who are to be found everywhere.

I can’t see any flaw in that scheme.

There is always another smart solution. A friend of his parents noted that he could not afford to put gas in his car any more. So he is contemplating hiring a gang of Mexicans to push it. Claims the arrangement would be cheaper..

I have said it before: people have got to move otherwise a country and its language become defunct. But the newcomers have got to offer their skills, pay their Social Security and abide by the laws of the country that they have chosen and the land that has accepted them. Otherwise it is social suicide.

Cooking can be painfully suicidal. After a lifetime of earning my living with a wooden spoon and a pot of some kind (most of mine are chipped and bruised by years of overuse and my meanness to buy new ones) I am still ready to do the deed when a sauce splits or the whole casserole is too salty. Don’t believe for a moment that putting a raw potato in an over salted dish will cure the problem. Whoever invented that tale must have also believed that Adam’s first domestic pet after the expulsion from paradise was a snake.

I once was cooking a huge pot of chicken casserole and vegetables for a pre-organised party. All my spices, wine, herbs and the rest were on the worktop. Unbeknown to me my little assistant had left the bottle of washing up liquid with that lot. To cook a lot of meat without it to catch on the bottom takes concentration. It was just ready. Without looking I grabbed at what I thought was the wine and squirted a good dose of Mistol in the pot. It bubbled. I looked at the bottle. I considered suicide.

There was no way I could have started the dish all over again. I stirred. I poured more tomato sauce, more herbs. I poured myself a glass of wine and decided that suicide was too painful a solution. I waited. Finally I tasted it.

It had that French " je ne sais quoi" in it, like a smell or a taste that you can’t quite define. Everybody in the party enjoyed it and I far as I know nobody came to harm although some of them must have been farting bubbles during the night.

Painless, unlike suicide.