As I stood upon London Bridge and viewed the mighty throng

Of thousands of people in cabs and ,busses rapidly whirling along,

All furiously driving to and fro,

Up one street and down another as quick as they could go:

Then I was struck with the discordant sounds of human voices there,

Which seemed to me like wild geese cackling in the air:

And the river Thames is a most beautiful sight,

To see the steamers sailing upon it by day and by night.

William McGonagall

CHAPTER 50 THE CHOICE SITE

Sir Charles Hardy, the Permanent Secretary looked out onto the Thames one last time and said “Well, if we are all satisfied? We should continue.”

There was a hurried downing of cheap coffee, a last munching of the nicest biscuits and a scraping of chairs.

“Right. Where were we. Doctor Starr? We haven't heard from you yet.”

“Ah, ya. You want the full works eh?” Even after all these years in Britain, it still showed that Doctor Leander Starr was born in Jameson Transvaal.

“A brief summary will do for now,” said Sir Charles.

“Ya, well the ho...., the uh people I've been trying to get to grips with, they uh....Well you know, the beaker types think Cape Three Points near Takoradi is OK. Probably cos the surfing is great there, eh? Uh. But the Ghana government just aint too happy with it. You know, having the old colonial power back. I mean they'll play ball if it's the usual scheme where the local big shots get their pockets full, but they don't want us running the thing. They want to do that themselves. They don't want to get labelled as pro colonial stooges of the British Empire. Well, you know, I mean, the thing is, none of them want to do a thing with the OAU without MuRillo's say so. He is now His Excellency Ex President MuRillo, Ambassador Plenipotentiary for the Anglo-Francophone Interdependence Union. Not sure if anyone knows what that actually is, these bl...people got some great names, eh. Anyway, not even Nigeria is interested unless MuRillo can swing it with their neighbours.”

Starr looked round their faces to see how he was doing with this bunch of chungs.

“The thing is, non of em wants to welcome back the old colonial power with an actual land grant. Sure they all want the money and sure they all want the prestige.

I mean Kenya put up their own satellite from Formosa Bay, on that Italian thing, and they still talk about it. The Uhuru satellite.¹ So the other heads of state are jealous. But non of these Presidents wants to actually sell a us a bit of Africa. They maybe think their mates are going to call em a turncoat and organise an assassination

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