One thing puzzled me in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings. Media reports, presumeably sourced from police accounts, claimed that the CCTV footage of the bombers at King’s Cross station showed them laughing and joshing as they went to their deaths.

Now, even allowing for the fact that Islamic fundamentalists allegedly believe that 77 vestal virgins and other delights await them after martyrdom, this seemed a bit odd. It contrasted sharply, for example, with the CCTV footage of the 9/11 hijackers, most of whom looked sombre, or at least serious, as they queued to board the planes.

I had no way of knowing whether the London media reports about the King’s Cross footage were accurate, but was left with the thought: what if these guys were just monkeys who were unaware that their organ-grinder(s) had set them up for involuntary martyrdom?

Now comes an interesting report in the New York Times raising much the same question. Excerpt:

LONDON, July 26 – Within hours of the July 7 attacks here, many British police and intelligence officials assumed that the four bombers had intended to die with their bombs.

But in recent days, some police officials are increasingly considering the possibility that the men did not plan to commit suicide and were duped into dying.

Investigators raising doubts about the suicide assumption have cited evidence to support this theory. Each of the four men who died in the July 7 attacks purchased round-trip railway tickets from Luton to London. Germaine Lindsay’s rented car left in Luton had a seven-day parking sticker on the dashboard.

A large quantity of explosives were stored in the trunk of that car, perhaps for another attack. Another bomber had just spent a large sum to repair his car. The men carried driver’s licenses and other ID cards with them to their deaths, unusual for suicide bombers.

In addition, none left behind a note, videotape or Internet trail as suicide bombers have done in the past. And the bombers’ families were baffled by what seemed to be their decisions to kill themselves.

While some of these clues could be seen as the work of men intent on covering their trail, some investigators increasingly believe that the men may have been conned into carrying the bombs onto the trains and leaving them, thinking they were going to explode minutes later.

There remains some evidence suggesting that these were suicide bombers, beyond the fact that all died in the blasts. Their bodies, all of which were recovered, were positioned in a way that led investigators to make a preliminary determination that these may have been suicide attacks.

One of the remaining mysteries that neither camp can explain away is that the attacker on the bus died 57 minutes after the blasts on the trains; witnesses saw him putting his hand in the backpack. The bus bomber could support either theory.

To further complicate the matter, there are conflicting witness accounts of the behavior of the July 21 attackers. Some fled after the bombs failed to explode; at least one, on the bus, was said to have left the scene before the failed detonation.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office is advertising a cushy job in this week’s Economist. It’s the post of HM Ambassador to the Holy See (aka the Vatican). “The Holy See”, says the blurb,

has the status of a csovereign state. It plays an important role on international issues of importance to HMG such as Africa, development and the fight against poverty. As Ambassador, you will act on instructions from the UK Government, report on the Holy See’s response, advance HMG’s overseas priorities, and represent the UK at official functions and ceremonial events (including religious ceremonies).

Hmmm… nice work if you can get it. Wonder if they are open to Muslim applicants. But wait — the salary is a pittance — in the range £42,640 – £60,405 pa, which seems a trifle mean for such an important post — even if it is “supplemented by a fully furnished residence, allowances, and an accountable entertainment allowance of up to £6,000 per annum”.

Er, could it be that HMG doesn’t really think that the Vatican is all that important? Answer, yes: a friend who knows about these things says that the Holy See post is really just a step up from a consulate. So this is really an ad for an Ambassador-Lite.

Just to make sure we understood that we were no longer in Charentes-Maritime, Cambridge laid on a splendid display of vertically-delivered water today.

New York Times discovers Podcasting. Time to move on to the Next Big Thing, I fear. Sigh.

Edward Heath, forever known to Private Eye readers as “Grocer Heath” has died at the ripe old age of 89.

I spent a day with him once, during a general election campaign. He was then very much out of favour with a Tory party dominated by “that woman”, as he habitually referred to Margaret Thatcher, so Central Office tried to keep him out of the campaign. But he decided that he would go round the country on his own, supporting candidates of whom he approved. On the day I travelled with him, we visited seats in the North of England. At each venue, the routine was the same. There would be a press conference plus ‘photo opportunity’ for the local candidate, so that he could be pictured standing next to the Great Man. To enliven proceedings (because the press conferences were dire) I began asking the same question of each candidate. Did he, I wondered, consider himself as “belonging to the Heathite wing or the Thatcherite wing” of the Party?

The wriggling discomfiture of the candidates was hilarious to behold. On the one hand, they did not wish to embarrass the Great Man. On the other, they were terrified of upsetting Central Office. After I’d done this a couple of times, I noticed that the Grocer was enjoying the joke almost as much as I was. On the third occasion he muttered to me “You’re a sadist!”

Greetings from a parallel universe. I refer, of course, to rural France, to which the Naughtons have temporarily decamped. I’m writing this sitting in front of the house we are renting from friends, after a modest lunch of baguettes, tomato and brie washed down with chilled white wine.

This is the view through our front gate.

The second pair of gates, over the road, leads into the garden that goes with the house. The only sounds are those of birds and, somewhere in the distance, the crowing of a cockerel (or should that be a coq?) Behind the house, the kids are swimming in the pool, or playing ping-pong, or feeding the pet sheep which come with the place. It’s unbelievably peaceful, and quite, quite beautiful. But it also has wireless broadband, via a satellite link, so the Middle Ages it ain’t.

Someone said once that the English middle classes regard France as one giant delicatessen. Well, I’m not English, so that lets me off the hook. But I love rural France, and the way the society takes food seriously. This morning we went to the market in Aulnay, and gaped — as we always do in French markets — at the quality and abundance of the fruit and vegetables on sale. Last night we ate Charente melons and drank champagne and a beautiful liqueur called Pineau which comes from a cave just down the road.

I love France because it allows one to escape the suffocating Anglo-American bubble in which Blair’s Britain now finds itself trapped. What annoys me most about that is the way its ideologues arrogantly maintain that there is no other reality — that American-style liberal capitalism is now the only possible reality.

Of course France has its problems, and the rural France that the Naughtons love is no doubt partly sustained by the European subsidies so anathema to Thatcher and Blair, but it seems to me that, as a society, the French strike a better balance between life and work. They are better tuned to the demands of nature and the weather. They are more civilised. In that sense, France genuinely resides in a parallel universe — as part of what Don ‘War Lite’ Rumsfeld sneeringly called ‘Old Europe’. Long may it continue that way.

I’ve been working in London over the last few days. Although there are still lots of signs of the bombing, what’s impressive is the sense of normality. Life goes on.

Andrew Brown had one of those lovely moments today when two parallel universes are brought together by Google technology.

He’s also very impressed by Google Earth, but that’s no good to me because (like that other great Google offering, Picasa) it requires a Windows client.