THE SOPWITH VOTER

A man who ought to be red wants to be blue...

Anton Sopwith sat picking his nose and trying to read, through his tears, the latest propaganda from the political world, this time concerning the efforts being made by his life-long heroes concerning the refilling of bankers’ pockets following a nasty financial crash brought about by speculating bankers.

Emerald watched him, frowning. She had been his wife for an eternity and in between the nose-picking and weeping she knew him to be a sensitive man who had fallen in love with another woman many years earlier. The problem had been that the other woman was well beyond his reach, being virtually the queen in her own right (or would have been had there been a vacancy and the current Royal family resigned and gone to live in Droitwich with their pet dogs and a Greek), and on top of that she had been a marvellously (now sadly deceased) political heavyweight.

It was when she had said, with that hawkish smile hovering around the corners of her lips, that we are a grandmother that he had known true bliss. He had even had to pop into the downstairs toilet and weep into a pile of tinted tissues. But now she was dead and buried and that had to be that, even though his pulsing heart still beat nineteen to the dozen whenever he thought her name.

“It’s not fair, Emma,” he grumbled.

Emerald stirred her tea. “What isn’t, sweet man of mine,” she asked.

“Our lords in Parliament want to cut our pensions to only pennies and do other stuff that will render us bankrupt,” he whined. He was good at whining because he’d always done it quite a lot, though it had never been one of his more endearing qualities.

“Well, you gave them permission when you voted for them,” smiled Emerald, “and you must see how they need the money. I mean, that expensive pair of leather trousers the new woman wore when she was deciding by how much to cut invalidity benefit for the over twos. And did you see the diamond studded shoes she wore when she suggested that there ought to be a tax on dreams? People have far too much fun when they’re dreaming, you know, and it ought to be taxable. That’s what she said, and she meant it.”

“I don’t have fun when I’m dreaming, not now that my heart’s desire is dead and buried,” he grumbled.

“You did last night,” pointed out Emma (that was his nickname for her and sometimes she liked it whilst at other times she didn’t), “You even woke me up shouting for more as if you didn’t already have enough! More what, I’d like to know. I never dream of wanting more and I don’t see why you should be allowed to and not be taxed for it.”

“Guns,” he told her, “I was dreaming about guns. Lots and lots of lovely guns all aimed at my vicious enemies, those who would diminish me and make me look silly. I’d shoot the lot of them, take aim and bang, bang, bang, they’re all dead and gone!”

“It wasn’t guns,” she wisely told him, “unless guns are what you keep inside your soiled underpants.”

“They’re not soiled!”

“They will be when your political friends put an extra tax on detergent,” she explained. “They’ll say it’s for the environment but really it’s a creamy top-up for the fat cats’ milk, you know, the sleazy suited bods who pass little brown envelops full of dosh in their direction. Ergo you’ll have soiled underpants because they’ll only get washed once a month!”

“Anyway, I was dreaming about guns,” he whined.

Then he sat bolt upright. “Look at what the leader of the loony left is saying!” he bellowed.

“And what’s that?” asked Emerald sweetly.

“That we shouldn’t go to war!” he fumed, “what’s the good of being strong and powerful and rich as Croesus if we can’t fight the odd battle against the vicious barbarians who are constantly at our gates! But that moron says we should talk! Who ever won a war by talking, I ask you? It’s arrant nonsense and he ought to be hanged as a traitor, or worse!”

“But you’re not soldier material,” sighed Emma, “you’re just a little inconsequential man with a small-town mentality. You wouldn’t fight.”

“Ah, but I’d send brave boys to do it for me,” he whined.

“I know. Brave boys to bleed into foreign soils, sweet sons to lie moaning their last breaths into alien foggy air, you’d send them just like politicians do.”

“Maybe,” he acknowledged, guardedly. “Maybe I should have gone into politics,” he added.

“Which is why they’re going to take your pension away,” she smiled lovingly. “To pay for the bullets and the bombs,” she added, “weapons cost money, you know, quite a lot of money.”

“It’s not bloody fair!” he shouted, “not bloody fair at all!”

“What is in politics?” she asked, soothingly. “Now do the crossword like a good boy while I have a little nap before they tax sleep.”

© Peter Rogerson 26.05.17