The New Beachhutman Blog

A piece of advice comes winging through the ether to Beachhutman from a reader to tell me of a good scheme for anyone planning to go travelling in China after the extended school sports day next month. The basic idea is to avoid all those embarrassing headlines about lost Brits wandering helplessly around the hinterland and causing consternation among folks at home. Honestly, you wouldn't believe how worried peeps get when they don't hear from you when something happens in a aprt of the world which to a casual glance appears to be within a thousand miles of where you were last heard of. A good friend was out in the Gulf during the 90's semi finals of the Gulf War Cup, when nasty ol' Saddam was shooting rockets at Dhahran. Naturally I worried. And naturally, he was fine. And when the recent earthquake hit China, readers got in touch to ask if I was OK. I was flattered. Rather than flattened.

Now I know we all carry a rather uninspired and flimsy EU-standard passport these days, instead of that nice blue book we used to have, the one that you could use as a weapon to defend yourselves in a bar brawl, but inside even this tatty little red book it does actually still say (Her Maj not having yet been totally replaced by an Emperor from Brussels) it does actually that the local chaps at the British High Commission, Embassy or Consulate will generally pull out all the stops to locate you if you get yourself lost or locked up. Assuming they have some idea tat you are there in the first place, natch.

So if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. But not until they've let you into the US. And if you're going to the Beach Volleyball in Chaoyang Park (Come on, you tried for tickets, you know you did) then it makes sense to tell the local Consular chaps at least that you are in China. You can do it here

Otherwise, it could be weeks before someone at the British Embassy reads about your predicament in the China Daily, and then it will only say "A British Tourist was arrested last month in ...."

(You know it makes sense!)