What They're Doing In Beirut This Summer



Help!! I am a 20-something Lebanese yuppie!! The Israeli attacks are ruining my Summer! I cannot get down to where my uncle's speedboat is berthed and the bombs keep making my shades slide down from their oh-so-cool perch on my head!! Usually the shopping malls, clubs and beaches are full at this time of year but now my father tells me he will have to reduce my allowance - I will not be able to avail myself of the already-reduced opening hours of the ravaged boutiques!!

Thank God your British journalists are reading the blogs of people like me and so understand something of our plight. It must be very reassuring to know that were such a crisis to affect your own country they would be just as interested. Probably.

Our cybercafes cannot hold out much longer!!! Please send help (preferably dressed in this year's fashions)!!!


Please!! We are desperate!!

Send some of your wonderful film directors such as the man who made 'Welcome to the Sarajevo Hotel' or 'A Fish Called Rwanda'!!

Send some of your TV reporters to file copy about two lovers from different sides of the conflict, their sportscars trapped on opposite sides of a barricade!!

Some of my groovy Beirut friends are organising a show this weekend to draw world attention to the city's plight: 'Compassion Through Fashion' will feature combat fatigues, savagely-ripped jackets and good-looking amputees sashaying down the catwalk even as the bombs rain down around James Naughtie.

If only Susan Sontag was still alive - she could show solidarity with us by staging Margaret Beckett's classic play 'Waiting For Dickie Davis' Hair'....