THE BIG BLUE LORRY

A big blue lorry or a red bus?

Joe Anyone stared at the big blue lorry that had appeared in the Supermarket car-park over night, and wondered what it was.

“What is it?” he asked a stranger.

“Hadn’t you heard? That bloke in politics, what’s his name, Wannabe Pee-emm, and whoever heard of an odder name than that, is coming to address what he calls a hustings. That’s a political meeting to you and me.”

“Then I’ll have to see what he’s got to say,” nodded Joe.

When Wannabe arrived to a discordant note from a child’s recorder blown by a toddler he unveiled a message painted in lurid yellow on the side of the big blue lorry.

TAKE A WALK DOWN CHANCERY ROW AND SAVE YOUR TOWN’S HOSPITAL it read in writing so big and bold it actually seemed to crawl into Joe’s head. And then Mr Pee-emm appeared on a tiny stage erected on the tailgate of the lorry. He waved and bobbed around a bit, his blond wig almost blowing off in a gust of wind.

“It’s true,” he said proudly, “if we walk down Chancery Row enjoying a charity walk there’s a gnome at the far end who’ll put a pile of money in a bank account for us, and when there’s enough we’ll build a brand new hospital and fill it with nurses.”

The stranger nudged Joe and sniggered. “I like nurses,” he said in the most perverted voice since a well known television personality promised to fix it.

“If it says it on the lorry it must be true,” thought Joe, “and I broke my toe just now and need a plaster...”

After a while, when the lorry had been driven off, a large group of people gathered together and Joe decided to address them because, tell the truth, he was worried.

“Friends,” he began (though most of them weren’t friends of his, but total strangers of a certain age), “friends, this news of a new hospital is really good. I need a plaster on my toe and my lady’s got a brain tumour.”

There was a clatter of people all explaining they had this or that perfectly good reason for wanting there to be a new hospital in the town, largely because the existing one was a Nissen hut left over from a long forgotten war and it was infested with rats, and anyway they were mostly elderly and needed the comfort of knowing there’d be a nice bed for them to die in when their time was up.

Not everyone agreed, though. There was an element there who thought that the existence of a cash-collecting gnome to be a fairy story because, they reasoned, all gnomes they’d ever met were garden ornaments with no fondness for crisp tenners of clinking coins at all, and anyway, wasn’t the PM well known for his exaggerations?

In fact, the random group of strangers was quite divided, and a fight broke out like fights do.

Joe Anyone, though, had more sense than to stay and scuttled off back home going a back way to keep out of sight, leaving the rag-tag of divided public to fight it out until they were so weary of getting bruises and cuts and broken limbs and severed arteries that they had a truce of sorts, though they still disagreed.

Eventually a day was decided for a walk down Chancery Row because the roof of the old hospital had rusted through and let the rain in, and it always seemed to be raining. Anyway, the Government, led by Mrs April who was turning out to be the most horrendous prime minister under the known sky, had sacked three quarters of the nurses and all but one of the doctors, meaning there was little professional help when folks found themselves dying, and there was most obviously a need for something to be done.

A few weeks or months passed, and the day for the mass charity walk came.

Nobody knew where Chancery Row actually went. It was an inconspicuous little road with French and Spanish restaurants on both sides to start with, and the odd bierkeller when people liked to get drunk. But nobody knew what happened beyond the gastronomic sector. It might have led anywhere, though there were some who suspected it went nowhere.

But the walk began. Everyone, it was decided once the injured had been patched up, should go. Even Joe Anyone, a sober individual if there ever was one, and a man who thought deeply about everything including in-growing toe nails, found himself joining the throng.

By the time they set out the honourable Wannabe Pee-emm had actually become Prime Minister and gained a considerable reputation for exaggeration. Not that it mattered. He had enough fans to support him, fans who believed every exaggeration he told them and even some who were reluctant to question out-and-out lies. And he joined our group of strangers to wish them well, a buffoon to the end as he waved them off explaining that he would have walked with them but he had other important matters to attend to in court. Anyway, happy that they had the support of the big white chief in Downing Street, they set off.

The road was easy to start with, but after the last bierkeller was nothing but a fading memory and there was no sign of a restaurant of any European hue anywhere near them things started to get difficult. And it rained. Suddenly, from a sky that was more overcast above them than any sky has any right to be, yet blue and dry above the road behind them, it poured down.

Then it started to snow. I ask you: in Summer! And when the snows stopped a shop selling skis and long poles opened in front of them, and they all dug deeply in their pockets and bought warm clothing, a pair of skis each and even a long wooden pole to help them balance as they careered down a slope that was what Chancery Row had somehow morphed into.

Joe Anyone was unhappy. It was almost as if he’d foreseen this turn of events. But he was with the rest and he had to carry on or someone might call him a scaredy cat.

“Where’s this gnome, then?” asked the pervert who relished nurses, “the one who’s collecting a fortune for our hospital and all those sexy nurses?”

But there was no gnome anywhere.

Instead, there was a sudden chasm that dropped endlessly down, down, down, and into it they all tumbled because it’s almost impossible to stop when you’re a novice on skis.

And not one of them knew any more. They were either banged on the head to unconsciousness by the chances that might occur in alpine accidents or had their hearts stopped in any one of a multitude of coincidences involved tons of ice and snow become an avalanche, and not one of them survived. It would have been called a tragedy had anyone known about it.

Though, spookily, the Prime Minister did. He sat on a stool disguised as a gnome and happily received an insurance payout for everyone who died, whilst back home Joe Anyone’s good lady died of her tumour because there still wasn’t a new hospital, and the chances were there’d never be one.

© Peter Rogerson 10.10.19