A KIND OF REVOLUTION

Some peole are worried about what the coming winter will cost in the way of human life. Old folks may freeze to death, and I'm 78...

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Jersey Pondlife, a name he was stuck with because his parents hadn’t a single sensible thought in their heads when they’d had him christened, and that had been a joke, him being christened when all he believed in was himself and his brilliant schemes,, and he had absolutely nothing to do with Christ or christianity.

“What have you got?” asked his wife, Rubella. I know it’s a disease, but she quite liked being called by the abbreviation of Rube. She was a charming woman, kindness itself to birds in the garden and even to birds that weren’t actually in her garden but fluttering around outside it and actually daring to land on the defunct chimney that adorned part of their roof.

“The solution!” he crowed, “I know how we’ll keep warm this winter and I also know how we’ll not starve!”

“I don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with sex, has it?” she asked, knowing in which activities most of his bright ideas might be found.

“Not at all,” he giggled, “you know how we reckon that half the politicions are out of their minds half of their lives by over indulging in cocaine?”

“Of course I know that! You’re always telling me about it and insisting in your-know-all way that although you’ve not actually got any conclusive evidence I’d only have to listen to them to know that it’s obvious?”

Jersey giggled again. “See, it’s proof enough,” he crowed, “and I’m going to catch them at their own game!”

“You are?” she frowned, not liking the idea that something monstrous was about to be launched into the air by the glorious man in her life.

“I am!” he cackled, “and here how it’s going to work…”

“It’s going to work, ii it? That’ll make a change!”

“No need for you to be sarky, beloved! I have some corkers of schemes sometimes, and if they don't all work, well, that’s the chance I take for being brilliant!”

“So what is it this time?”

“I’m going to corner the market in cocaine! I’ll nip to where they produce it and offer them something they can’t refuse for all of it! Then I’ll take every last grain of it, tons and tons of the stuff, and burn it outside their posh homes! Imagine it! The air outside the Prime Minister’s personal residence being full to overflowing with enough cocaine to blow the PM’s mind more than it already seems to be blown!”

“So what will that achieve more than a prime minister being higher than any kite that ever flew anywhere under the sky?”

“I’ll tell you what it will achieve/ The Prime Minister will feel the down-draught inside a head that’s already three sheets short of a full sail, and will need ever more cocaine to sort its crazy thoughts out, and that’s where the clever bit comes in. I’ll have put a little bit of the poison to one side and let it be known that I’ve got it for a price. It’’ll cost them billions to get a sniff of the stuff!”

“Bah! They’ll set MI5 onto you if you try that trick.”

“I doubt it. If the secret service was going to get involved it would have locked the whole bunch of them up before now, for smashing the country to smithereens. And anyway, I’ve got another plan in case that doesn’t work.”

“It won’t. You know how evil the drugs barons are, and if they think you’re up to something they’ll chop your tender bits off and grind them into mince before adding them to a nice pan of stew and feeding it to the monkeys.”

“Then I’ll have to fall back on my second scheme.

“Which I?”

“Make believe I’m James Bond: you know, 007, and knock on the front door of Number Ten Downing Street and arrest everyone in the place! Then I’ll march them all to the Old Bailey and have them prosecuted for treason. Can they still hang you if you’re found guilty of treason?”

“I dunno but I shouldn't think so.”

“Well they ought to. Look at the damage the sods have done, and hardly anyone voted for them! I’ll, bet before this winter’s out there’ll be one big tally of old folks who died in the cold because of them, and you do know what they’re up to, don’t you?”

“I reckon I do, Jersey.”

“Well, just in case you’re not sure I’ll tell you, my love. They’re using our money, yours and mine and everyone else’s, to make the biggest pile of wealth known to man or woman…”

“Best of luck to them then because we haven’t got enough to boast about even though you seem to think you’re rich enough to corner the market in posh drugs!”

“Maybe I didn’t think that scheme through properly. But I have thought the James Bond 007 bit through and it’s a corker, because there isn’t a judge on planet Earth who wouldn’t reckon that what they’re doing is attempted murder!”

“Let’s say you’re right, Jersey, but they won’t see it that way. They’ll say we voted them into office and it’s our fault if they’re mad as two dozen hatters!”

“Now then, Rubella, are you trying to say that you voted for them?”

She shuddered. “Not likely, Jersey! But someone must have, and it’s no doubt their fault if old Mrs Robinson, who’s eighty one you know, her who lives next door, dies of a mixture of starvation and freezing! So what are you going to do about it, you and your schemes, Mr Bond?”

Jersey laughed. “Then I’ll start a revolution,” he said, “like the French had a couple of hundred years ago, with a guillotine and anything else I can get my hands on. Heads will roll, you know. And old Mrs Robinson will stay alive and not find herself, starving and freezing to death. We’ll pile their heads in her back garden and set light to them, and she can warm her hands in front of a healthy blaze and we’ll know it was me who saved her life!”

Rubella frowned. “You know, Jersey, sometimes I think there’s something wrong with the contents of your head,” she sighed.

“Time for a cuddle then, Rube?

“If that’s what’ll keep you warm.”

“Come on then, up the wooden hill to bedfordshire and lurve…”

“and if that’s what’ll shut you up.”

© Peter Rogerson, 29.09.22

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