CAMEL TRADERS

I have just returned from a holiday in Morocco. It is a country that I hadn’t visited since 1978. Like most places there have been many changes. The last time I was there I recall that my travelling companions were offered 3,000 camels for me by a rather bizarre gentleman.

Thirty four years later, as Outdoor Man put it, “There was no such luck!”

He wasn’t even offered a camel’s tooth, which, I guess, places me very firmly in the dromedary’s dung heap of life.

Well it has had me wondering. I mean if camels were a generally acceptable trading commodity would it make divorce settlements easier or not? I can’t imagine many people willingly offsetting pension claims for desert caravans and would the needs of the recipient be increased by having to provide food, shelter and sand dunes for them? Could either party object to a particular beast on the basis that its halitosis really was unbearable? How would they be counted and valued? Would there be scope to wander the Sahara abacus in hand? If so, would it be to count beasts or humps?

 

I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the lot of the English divorce lawyer or the humble seaside donkey again.