Free Is It Really Too Much to Ask? by Jeremy Clarkson Page A

team number one in world, but every match, referee is biased,’ he thundered. ‘One time, John Terry cut off Albania striker’s head and Albania striker was sent off. In a match against Dutch peoples, we scored nine goals, all disallowed by referee.’
    By this stage, I was eating the inside of my face in an effort to stop myself laughing. And that was before we got to Albania’s crime rate. ‘None,’ he said, bouncing up and down in his seat. ‘There is no crime of any sort. And Christians live side by side with Muslims in perfect harmony.’
    We turned to Albania’s recent past. ‘In communists’ time, there were some things good. Some things bad. Bad things? One man say to government spy that he had no spoon for his sugar and got seventeen years in jail. Another man ask why Corfu harbour have a light when we have no light. He got twenty-five years.’ So what were the good things? ‘Everyone have job and supply of water under control.’
    At this point, we arrived at Butrint. This, it’s said, is where Hector’s missus and a few mates set up shop after the fall of Troy. It was very hot, and the guide there was keen to show us every building and how we could tell which bits had been built by the Greeks, which bits by the Romans and which by the Venetians. It’s exactly what children should do on a summer holiday, this. Learn stuff. Not just drink vodka and snog.
    But I wanted to get back in the van with Fatso and learn more about the glorious nation of Albania. He was waiting in the car park with an Albanian beer. ‘Best in world,’ he said. And it was. But then beer always is when you’re hot and it’s not.
    On the way back to Saranda, I noticed that a sizeable percentage of all the cars had British plates. ‘How come?’ I asked. ‘Ah,’ said Fatso, ‘many Albanians go to England, get job, buy car and come here with it on holiday.’ I see. Another
thing I noticed is that most of the houses had been knocked over. ‘Why’s that?’ I asked. ‘Earthquake,’ he said with an impish smile. ‘Government earthquake. You build house with no permission, special forces come with bulldozers and knock it down.’
    And so there you are. We’d gone to Albania to learn about cement but we’d come away with minds enriched by so much more. We knew how much water is produced every hour by the spring. We knew how many watermelons are produced each year. We knew about planning regulations in Saranda and the Albanian word for ‘cock’.
    That’s the thing about going on holiday with me. It’s so much more fun. I should be a tour operator.
    5 September 2010

Beware – Arabella won’t stop at hay rustling
    Sinister news from the shires.
    After a summer that was too dry and then too wet, the hay harvest has been hopeless, and as a result, the price has reached £6 a bale. That’s more than double the price last year and so it’s now more expensive than marijuana. Yup. Grass will now cost you more than, er, grass. And that’s if you can get hold of it at all.
    One poor girl with a hungry horse rang me a while back to ask whether I was in a position to help since I’m now a farmer.
    So I went to see the man I’d employed to cut my hay and he was perplexed. ‘Let me just get this straight. You want a few bales for your friend?’ he asked incredulously. It was as though I’d asked him if I could watch his wife take a shower. The answer was a big fat no.
    As a result of all this, the nation’s horse enthusiasts are in a state of blind panic. In the coming winter their precious animals may die of starvation, and consequently many have turned to crime. At night there are thousands of middle-aged ladies sneaking around the countryside, stealing bales of hay that have been left in the fields. Farmers all over the country have been targeted and are at a loss.
    Hay can’t be stored indoors, under lock and key, because it has a nasty habit of catching fire, and it’s not possible to shoot the thieves because of