US diary: In George W Bush's bubble

By Matt Frei BBC Washington correspondent

The cicadas are gone for 17 years. What will the world look like then?

Brood X has gone. The skull-throbbing hum of the cicadas - a noise as loud as a lawnmower - has been silenced.

Their tiny, translucent carcasses, which have turned our garden into a mass grave, are slowly seeping into the clammy soil.

All over Washington, the tips of branches have turned brown where the cicadas have laid their eggs, killing off the leaves.

The dense forests have been given an early sprinkling of autumn.

Meanwhile, the cicada eggs are busy burrowing into the ground for another 17-year-long period of gestation and preparation.

All for a few weeks of frolicking... in the year 2021! Even in the insect world, this has to be a lousy deal.

Pondering the future

I wonder what kind of America Brood X will find when it next bursts onto the scene from its pitch black home in the ground?

Will the 75-year-old George W Bush still be justifying his decision to invade Iraq?

Will he be hailed as a visionary leader who helped to transform the Middle East into a region of democracies, or reviled as the impatient one-term president who triggered a chain reaction of civil strife and another oil crisis?

Will this forthcoming election be remembered as a crucial junction in the evolution of America, or forgotten amidst a welter of more dramatic events?

Will Janet Jackson's daughter be allowed to bare her boobs on network TV without causing a storm of outrage?

The cicada game is as tantalising as it is meaningless.

The only point, I guess, is that nowadays one can take very little for granted, apart, of course, from the fact that in 17 years, the furious beating of tiny wings will return to Washington.

'The Bubble'

I got a taste of the cicada life - in the subterranean cocoon stage, that is - when I travelled with the president the other week to Ireland and Turkey.

The White House press corps refers to itself as "the bubble".

When it works in the West Wing, the grandees of American journalism are penned together in cramped airless conditions that would give a battery hen claustrophobia.

George Bush and his press entourage travel in their own world

When the bubble travels, it is cosseted and cradled like a Faberge egg.

The comfort is splendid. Every act of journalism involves a meal.

Whenever there is a briefing, a presidential event that involves more than a 10-minute wait, whenever, in fact we stand still, a tempting buffet appears like some vision out of the Arabian Nights.

I must have put on a stone in five days.

The bubble travels in its own chartered jumbo. Since the journalists have chartered the jet, they own it, or think they do.

It is the only flight I know where you can pour yourself a glass of red wine from the bar, while the jumbo is hurtling down the runway.

No-one tells you to put your seat upright or fold your tray away. But the freedom to misbehave - relatively speaking, that is - on the flight is a diversion from our actual state of journalistic captivity.

Bargaining in the bubble

In Istanbul the entire centre of the city was cordoned off to keep thousands of demonstrators at bay and to keep us as far removed from the real Turkey - and journalists and politicians from other nations - as possible.

The press couldn't see Istanbul, so our handlers brought Istanbul to us

"We want to go to the Grand Bazaar and the Blue Mosque!" a few intrepid souls demanded.

"You may be kidnapped, followed by the security agents of a foreign government or get attacked," came the response. "We will bring the bazaar to you!"

And so they did. The press filing centre, the central feeding station for the bubble, was strewn with rugs.

Garish copperware was piled high in the corners and traders, who couldn't believe the luck of having a captive audience, grinned and preened over vastly inflated prices.

"No bargaining and haggling allowed!" a curt woman from the state department ordered. "These are fixed prices!"

But as the trip came to an end, the bubble's buses prepared to leave for the airport and the traders prepared to say "Adieu" to their consumers, even the priciest rugs were trapped in a vortex of deflation.

"Now you pay me $1,500 for Kilim", the man shouted as I wheeled my bag out of the hotel. It had cost $2,500 just 10 minutes earlier.

"No! $1,200," he corrected himself, as the bus door whooshed shut and his shrill voice was cut off.

Perhaps I should have got off the bus and bought my carpet. But that would have meant leaving the bubble.