Friday, April 23, 2010
A political fantasy
On day 2 of the ash crisis Gordon Brown wakes up at Downing Street. Realises that electoral considerations have to be put aside. He has to save the country. He summons his diary secretary and cancels the tea with house husbands scheduled for later that day at some pre-school operation in Redditch. He summons his personal transport and has himself taken to Lynham for dawn, where he dons flak jacket, gas mask and tin hat. Trudges bravely up the ramp of one of the few remaining Hercules, crewed by volunteers from the Special Air Service. The engines were already turning. The second flight engineer had been flown in from special duties at Karachi. Cabin service was provided by a team from Peterhead who had been promised pardons on successful completion of the mission.
Ramp clangs shut, the Hercules climbs up into the sky and heads for the dust cloud over the North Atlantic. Evil looking whirling mass. Much more scary than one might have thought. Dives into the middle of it and flies around in it for a day and a night and then, tired and dirty but entire, heads for home.
Lands at Lynham, just as the sun is rising once again over the Wiltshire plain. In the meantime, the Lords Mandelson and Campbell have been busy. An honour guard of wounded veterans from Iraq has been assembled to see Gordon off the plane and into the open top Rollers which is to lead the cavalcade into Wootton Bassett. Gordon comes down the ramp, tired but triumphant and steaked with unpleasant looking yellow dust, as is the Hercules. But he holds his peace while he inspects the honour guard and climbs into the waiting Rollers which carries him through the cheering throng until he reaches the Town Hall. He climbs onto the waiting scaffold to proclaim to his patiently waiting friends and fellow countrymen that the skies are open once again. True Britons can get back to Blighty from the Costa del Crime, or, indeed, from wherever else they might have been stranded. Tumultuous cheering. Messrs Cameron and Clegg step forward to shake the hand of the great man and immediately tender their abdications so as to give him the so richly deserved clear run in the upcoming elections, which last had been forgotten about during the great crisis.
Sadly, a fantasy. What actually happened was that Gordon took his porridge and then took the 0913 from Euston to Redditch. He travelled second class.
There is, however, a postscript. Analysis of the dust collected on one of the missions that was actually flown has shown that it is, in combination with spring greens, highly carcinogenic. We now face the prospect of spring green fields across the country being closed down before crop incineration by the territorial army wearing space suits. Spring green prices in the cabbage pit at Frankfurt Anderoder (this bit of business having been filched from Chicago some years ago) have rocketted. Maybe I should try and get my allotments back.
# posted by Jim @ 2:58 AM 
