GRISELDA FLIES WEST

We become enlightened by about the gift sent to Swanspottle by the American President. Not to be taken seriously!

The force of several gravities squashed Bumptious Tiddles against the shaft of the broomstick as it leapt into the air with the sound that reminded him very much of the row that a vacuum cleaner makes when it’s sucking up a sock.

“Oh mercy me,” he gabbled, and a knot-hole in the broomstick started to play havoc with his left cheek.

Griselda looked over her shoulder, quite clearly taking her eyes off where they were going at a speed that generated terror in the parish councillor’s heart, and grinned.

“You should be wearing your summer shorts,” she said, an evil glint in her eyes. “It’s a lovely day in Washington.”

“Sh-shorts … wh-why?” he asked in a querulous voice.

“It ought to be warm where we’re going,” she shouted. She had to shout against the aforementioned vacuum-cleaner sock-sucking clamour, but Bumpy heard her and shuddered.

“It’s cold in this wind!” he complained. “If I was wearing my shorts then my poor little knees would start trembling!”

“I like a good knee-tremble on a man!” she cackled. “It warms my ancient heart and helps me recall better days when I was a nipper and men’s knees always trembled!”

“Well I don’t like it!” he snapped back, though not as truthfully as he might have. He quite admired Sailor John’s knees when they trembled. Or rather had. Sailor John and he were no longer what was euphemistically called “an item”, though Bumpy harboured hopes that he would return one day, bringing with him a nice bunch of flowers and a poem or two.

Sailor John was quite the poet on the quiet and he knew beautifully exquisite rhymes for a wide range of dubious words.

“Now hold on tight!” screeched Griselda, “and we’ll speed up a bit. We’re going nowhere slowly at the moment and time’s precious!”

“Broomsticks can’t...” he warbled, convinced in his mind that just as cars had to observe speed limits so should old women on broomsticks. The trouble was, and as a politician he should have known this, nobody had yet had the foresight of imposing such legal limits. There wasn’t a scrap of legislation anywhere imposing an upper speed limit on broomsticks unless they were being carted about in a vehicle on public highways.

And this broomstick was neither in a vehicle or an a public highway. It was high in the sky, and it was being controlled by the knobbly bottom of a geriatric woman who was in possession of a bit of good honest country wisdom, like how to fly broomsticks and cast spells on the unwary. And, in addition, she was hardly keeping her eyes on where they were going, which upset a flock of starlings and troubled Bumpy.

“Where are we supposed to be going?” he begged into Griselda’s ear, shouting at the top of his voice in the best authoritarian way a politician might develop after years of deceiving the electorate with a fine assortment of well-rehearsed lies. She heard and grinned when she recognised the tone of his voice.

“The good old U.S of A!” she exclaimed back, and when she detected a soupçon of unwillingness in the way he slumped against her back, added in a more kindly voice, “but in stages. It’s too far to fly in one go. I could manage it, of course, but with the extra load of your good self on board I doubt this stick would, even though it is my shining best and Mark 1 of its model.”

“Why do you want to go there?” he asked, knowing part of the answer but not believing it.

“To see the President of course!” she laughed, contriving to sound almost girly. “A year or two ago, when he was on television a lot in the U.S of A I flew over there to give him some well-intentioned advice about the use of fake tan and how it might be to his own advantage if he let more of his natural colour shine through, and he was so grateful for what I had to tell him that he fell in love with me.”

“What? The American President did?” asked an unbelieving Bumpy.

“He had an unusual idea of what love might be,” she sighed, “It was before he was president, you understand,” she went on to explain, the wind almost whipping her words to shreds. “He was still pretending he was a television star back then and I meant well, but he didn’t know what I meant when I said natural colour and the moment he became President he had me locked up in Guatamala because he thought I was calling him coloured! I mean, he was coloured, of course, a bright orange colour, but he didn’t think that I meant that! Anyway, I didn’t think too much of Guatamala and so I escaped, of course. I used an officer’s oversized rifle, one of those sub-machine models with a really long barrel, and pretending it was a makeshift broomstick I hurtled went straight back to the man and gave him a piece of my mind. He was so grateful that he told me that come Valentine’s day, I think that’s when he said, I would receive a parcel in the post that would knock me out, and what was my post code!”

“I thought you said it was a token of his love for you!” demanded Bumptious.

“It was,” grinned Griselda, still not looking where she was going and narrowly avoiding a collision with an electricity pylon, “but as I said, his idea of love is very different from yours or mine, though when I introduced my niece to him he almost flipped and tried to kiss her. Poor niecy! She wasn’t ready for that sloppy tongue of his even though he was an important guy. So she kneed him in the you-know-whats and got away before he could do anything more outrageous.”

“And so his affection for you demolished a row of old cottages in Swanspottle and killed half a dozen residents?” asked Bumptious. “I don’t know how he can live with himself knowing he’s done that!”

“Oh yes you do,” laughed Griselda, “you’re a politician of sorts as well. You know full well the depths to which that breed of humanity will sink. Now be quiet for a moment while I check direction, wind power and storms at sea.”

“Storms at sea?” he muttered, quivering.

“Of course! We’re headed west and there are always storms when you head west on a broomstick. It’s like a natural law, like men always like women with huge boobies and babies always cry for milk. Now be quiet!”

They were still, of course, over land but Bumpy’s heart was filled with a dreadful foreboding as they raced like demons in the sky, ever going westward.

“Oh crikey me,” he muttered, and promised to himself and any gods that might be listening that he would never tell a lie again or do anything remotely reprehensible even though he was a politician. It would be a big ask, but for the moment he was determined.

If he survived, that was.

He rather thought his chances of survival were on the slender side and getting slenderer.

Meanwhile Griselda, in a cracked contralto, sang her own unique version of Go West.

© Peter Rogerson 02.02.18