The exciting novel, Two Enclaves, continues.
The small call-centre in Mumbai was staffed by one undersized, lowly qualified, Indian gentleman by the name of Panjandrum Singh, who presided over a small bank of Artificial Intelligence (AI) droids and a large number of Artificial Stupidity (AS) bots.
The AI and AS programs had been designed in their entirety by Panjandrum and were programmed to mimic the full range of processes formerly on offer by the EU.
It was with this establishment that Bonson was to communicate on the befuddled matter of Brexit. Conveniently, negotiations could be conducted entirely by phone. Inconveniently, Bonson’s phone was out of credit, out of juice and out of range. Without hesitation, he scooped up Igor’s phone which was on the hall table, legged it to the front door and grabbed his bike for the short ride to the ruined site of The Houses of Parliament, which was the nearest place where it would be possible to pick up a signal. Just as he was about to open the door, a magazine popped through the letterbox. This triggered an undignified scuffle, as Igor and Grease Bog fought their way down the stairs, vying to be first to get to the latest edition of Hansard.
Over the years, Hansard had changed significantly and was now published as a comic strip and delivered on a fortnightly basis. Alongside parliamentary matters (which were few) it featured golden-oldies comic strips such as: ‘Dennis the Menace’ ‘Thaggie Matcher School milk Snatcher’ ‘Depredations of The Beast of Bolsover.’ ‘The Villainies of The Wicked Witch of Widdicombe’ and many other riveting tales of derring-do .
Joris Bonson moodily jostled his way past the other two, ensuring that the bike ran over Igor’s foot and clipped Grease Bog on the left buttock.
‘Nincompoops’ he muttered, as he cycled through the door.
There was a great deal of hustle and bustle amidst the ruins of Parliament. There were upward of 40 honourable members, who were juggling their mobile phones and bumping into their compatriots as they petulantly sought a signal. There was also the usual coterie of demoralised, disgruntled or deranged statesmen and women endlessly crossing the floor.
Speakers’ Corner, which had once been located in Hyde Park, now operated from a platform of rubble on the east side of the house. It attracted a variety of speakers, including – Grease Bog who visited at least twice a day, often dressed in a toga, with a laurel wreath on his head. Nobody at all had the slightest idea as to what sort of dogma he was spewing forth because, in addition to the ‘speaking only in Latin’ thing, GB had, in the style of the great orator, Demosthenes, taken to declaiming with pebbles in his mouth. Like Demosthenes, he hoped that this would improve his delivery of the spoken word. Unlike Demosthenes, it did not.
Bonson had finally secured a phone signal and set about the laborious task of connecting with the EU. He had dialled the 32 digit number three times, before the distinctive tones of Panjandrum Singh, launched into the usual claptrap.
“Honourable ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most glorious European Union. We respectfully request that you employ the simplest of tactics in addressing your required assignment for the day, by depressing on your keyboard one of the following numbers:”
With that, he reeled off about a hundred and thirty numbers, together with the associated activities that they represented. This operation took about 40 minutes , during which time, most people had dozed off, only to be awakened by the thuderous rendering in muzak at maximum volume, of not only the EU anthem, ‘Beethoven’s Ode to Joy’ but his entire 9th Symphony.
Thirty five minutes later, another click and instructions to press ‘1’ for EU opening times – and so it went on.
Finally, after three hours and twenty three minutes, by which time, those who were still hanging on, had lost the will to live, they were almost there:”
“ …………. In the event that Brexit has triggered a General Election please press ……..
This last instruction tipped Bonson into an extreme state of agitation. He turned as white as a polar bear and started to tremble.
“SHIT”, he screamed.
He had suddenly remembered that in October he had called a General Election for the 12th of December – and today was ? Today was
“SHIT”
Today was the 11th of December
Panic stricken, Bonson pressed a few random buttons on Igor’s phone; terminated the call, mounted his bike and streaked off as fast as he could, back to Clowning Street.
“Shit, shit, shit.” he muttered as he mentally ran through the Herculean task with which he was faced and the vast number of things that would have to be put in place when he got home. He pedalled furiously.
“Cripes!” His head reeled, as he calculated that it would be eight months of work condensed into 8 hours.
Arriving home, he barrelled through the front door, crashed up the stairs and tore into the small conference room. There, he found Igor and Grease Bog, hurling insults at each other over a game of snakes and ladders, each accusing the other of cheating. In point of fact, both of them were cheating - outrageously. Igor was going up the snakes as well as the ladders, whilst G.B was deliberately side-stepping the squares which depicted a snake’s head.
Bonson harrumphed loudly and thumped his fist on the conference room table, upsetting the board and scattering dice and counters across the room.
“Come on you two, dunderheads, lickety split. We’ve got a general election to win, there’s no time for shilly-shallying."
“Facta non verba,” muttered G.B peevishly. (Deeds not words)
This did not impact on Bonson, who appeared to have lapsed into some kind of reverie, acting as though he was in a far distant land. He was, in fact, revelling in the sweet dreams of yester year when, in the winter of 2019, he Joris Bonson, had exploded into Parliament, with an absolutely whopping majority of 659. This was all the more remarkable given that there were, in total, only 650 seats.
In his trance-like state, he was no longer the tired, aging politician of latter years. He was the mighty Joris Bonson from the golden age of politics and he had orders to issue because he’d just devised an absolutely brilliant plan for the future, the core strategy of which would be based entirely on falsehood.
From the way in which he puffed out his chest, pulled in his stomach and raked his fingers through his hair, it was quite clear that he was regaining his equanimity.
He turned to Grease Bog.
“ I want you, Egg Head, to produce a manifesto, pronto. So get cutting and pasting. I don’t care from whom you filch it, and I’m not bothered how many extravagant promises you make but it’s got to be a real show-stopper, one that jumps off the page, smacks you in the eye and belts you in the mush. One that can fool all the people all the time."!
Grease Bog seemed quite animated by the prospect of taking on this task. He could feel his creative juices flowing and was already mentally constructing page after page of extreme right-wing drivelling doublespeak. He shot off to his room to seek out his fountain pen.
Turning next to Igor, Bonson gesticulated wildly and screamed:
“Rotten boroughs. Go find me some, NOW ... Oh, and if you have a spare moment, be a good chap and bung together some lealets."
(To be continued…)
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