I realize that this place is at the centre of very serious current events in Mali but it triggered a trivial memory from my childhood. When I was growing up "Timbuktu" was used metaphorically as a reference to the most remote and inaccessible place imaginable. It was what my mother would have called "The back of beyond and a little bit further". I distantly remember a Tintin series of cartoons where he has to travel to Timbuktwo and also to Timbukthree and Timbukfour.
So my question to you youngsters is - was this metaphor temporary, limited to my childhood in the 1950s, or did it survive into later generations?
