Now that a raucous regional situation is being joined to a raucous American election season (where no issue is excluded from the political arena), the task of assembling these components will be even more difficult.

Lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, funeral ceremonies are a raucous affair, where commemorating someone who's died is not so much a private sadness but more of a publicly shared transition.

The closest anyone has come to putting some international fizz into the campaign was when US President Barack Obama fired a couple of warning shots across the UK s bow. The Obama administration seems bent on proving that the so called special relationship goes beyond raucous backslapping.

And so, if you'll put up with this, I would like to enlist your help with a first experiment today. The experiment is and I notice, by the way, that when you applauded, that you did it in a typical North American way, that is, you were raucous and incoherent.