“Why do you bother with foreign correspondents, old chap, such a waste of money?”

” Oh, I don’t know, they fill the gap between advertisements”

“What about that fat bloke in Berlin, he’s been around for ever.Time to get rid of him, surely?”

“Not just yet,” he might reply,” but you’re right– middle-aged reporters are bad for our image. We need fit young things in jungle jackets.”

 

So, as night follows day, the phone rings in Berlin. Pack your bags for a week’s training with an ex-SAS team of instructors. SAS, sadly, does not stand for a Scandinavian airline with well-scrubbed  blonde stewardesses who lean over you to check on your safety belt. It is Special Air Squadron, something like that; commandos who kill for Britain. On the whole it is better to avoid them. An email tells me to bring a sleeping bag, hiking boots, long underwear, a torch that can be strapped around the head like a coal miner, a hunting knife, a compass and a cigarette lighter. Naturally all I had was the lighter.

 

The point of the course, it is explained to me, is that foreign correspondents should no longer eat in restaurants. They have to be mobile, Kosovo one day, Hindu Kush the next. But we have to be insured in case we lose a leg and the insurance premiums are higher if you are not trained to survive in the desert and the jungle. If one doesn’t like the arrangement one can always return to London and become gardening correspondent. After a few days of cross-country adventures and fake kidnapping, writing about hortensia and winter roses seemed very attractive.

 

Here is what I learned. 

 

If someone waves a pistol at you and you are in a car, reverse fast. He will probably miss you since accuracy is around 30 metres. Even better sit in the back seat so that the man in the front stops the bullet. Lock your car doors. If you see someone in a car crash always approach from the front, saying “How are you?”( English small talk). If you come from behind, the injured driver could turn and break his neck.Not good. Also, if somebody is shooting at you, take cover behind the engine of your car since that will stop bullets. A few more tips like this and you will not have to see Bernd Eichinger’s dreadful Baader-Meinhoff film. My suffering will not have been in vain.

 

Journalists, says my instructor Tom, do not usually die from bullets. They die in car crashes, of being bitten by the wrong kind of mosquito(take your own net, don’t wear red shirts) and by using the toilets on long haul aircraft which are great transmitters of exotic diseases. That’s it. Oh, and if you drop your Handy into the toilet, fish it out and lay it on a bed of dry rice for a few hours. The rice soaks up all the moisture.

 

Somehow the world seemed a less dangerous place with this instruction. Hellersdorf began to feel a bit safer.

 

But I had reckoned without German Angst which always manages to find some kind of monster under the bed.

 

Here is the Bild zeitung this week: Was tun wenn die Wildsau kommt? Zecken-Alarm! Wolves are back(Bild advice: Rufen Sie laut und schrill um den Wolf zu verjagen). And: Bilsenkraut! Enthaelt hochgiftige Samen!

 

None of this was covered in my course. I rang Tom who was on his way to Basra.

 

“Stay calm,” he said. “If you panic, just breathe into a brown paper bag.”

 

So I went to the baker to get a few bags and put them on the sofa, next to the television. You cannot be too careful.