The pack of snap-happy hacks who hang about the barricade have given up hope for an honest shot of blood and gore <—> The Cabinet minister whose affair with a laptop so captured the headlines has been caught cheating with a young palmtop that flattered its lid-like lashes at the minister one day in the fancy goods section of Harrods.
Your red-top punter at the breakfast table must forego her pint of flesh and her pound of blood and must feast instead on the fine specimens of English manhood holding their billy-sticks erect.
The hack with a nose in the trough at Westminster will have sniffed clean the government’s latest stinker that it wishes to invest 30 English pounds — or 0.000000003 Bitcoin — in a revitalised Springwood. The Chancellor’s Cleaning-Crew uncovering a tin of paint lurking in the broom cupboard at the Treasury.
Shares in Lower Springwood Enterprises PLC have jacked through the roof — the missing section perhaps — with a windfall of offshore cash for the deserving classes.
The Weatherlady whose voluptuous voice so ripples the airwaves has revealed that the End of the World weather is good for the roses.
Good news follows hot on the front of the smoking Weatherlady.
The United States has finally agreed to abide by bits of the Kyoto Agreement with a cut in carbon emissions of 5% by 2090.
The freak outbreak of sunshine is put down to a lowering of standards in the pumping of greenhouse gases.
El Presidenté Bliar is back from his Summer Progress of sucking up to European Heads of State but denies that the blowback sticks at the throat.
Hard men from the Lower Springwood Happy House of Horrors help themselves to handfuls of honest lolly by hawking their hoary tales round the gutters of Fleet Street.
The Kray Twins have vowed to remain on the straight and narrow upon their return to the verdant pastures of the East End and not to demand money with menaces further north than the Brick Lane railway track.
Hard man Dale Winton is back at the BBC running a numbers racket.
Harry the Hamster stars as Chief Rodent in that new blockbuster Harry Potter and the Crock of Shite.
Hans Blix from SPECTRE ghosted to Broadmoor for suggesting the Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq have Made in Maryland stamped on the sides and are fakes.
Bright Spark Electrodes Eddie, awaiting the green light of parole, now works for new Governor Blunkett to offer short sharp electrical breaks in Solitary.
The one hundred and forty-three Accountants slaving over a hot pen await the vacating of the palatial chambers of the Chief Accountant by the little grey mouse from the House Office, Featherstonehaugh-Major. The hatched country-barn hum of straw bedding and sunflower seeds pervades the corridors. And the Cleaning Crew reports lumps of cheese buried in the litter baskets.
We follow this trail of cheese along the tunnels and rat-like runways of the mighty Admin Block and lo! — we find warm-bedded in the high-backed management chair the little grey mouse from the Home Office, Featherstonehaugh-Major, with whiskers twittering to the charge sheet, and vermin-black eyes set approvingly on a mauve smoking jacket, Viking horned hat, sense of old-school fair play, and to the finer qualities of good English grass.
‘My God, Knees! Tell me hiss not twue, woe! Twaitor James smelling of wee-wee?’
‘My dear Fanbelt, higher than an Arsenal fan.’
‘The name’s pwonounced Fanshaw.’
‘Fanbelt.’
‘Fan — shaw. My family goes back generations.’
Grey whiskers of the little grey mouse from the Home Office, Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, the thick wiry badger brush of Chief Constable Colin Dibble, jointly sniff the long lists of managerial faux pas, sniff the one hundred reasons Gerbil James will be restricted to silver salvers of devils-on-horseback for the foreseeable <—> sniff the one hundred reasons the backside of Gerbil James will be exposed to an open fire and used as a toast-rack in the rooms of the head boy <—> sniff the one hundred reasons the very largest radish will be reserved for the very vilest of villains <—> sniff the one hundred reasons Lodge members will be loading radishes into catapults and firing them with the force of cricket balls <—> sniff the one hundred reasons the fangiest dogs in the Force will dine on prime Gerbil flesh <—>
‘Dwunk on duty?’
‘The long and the short of it.’
‘False impwisonment?’
‘In a nutshell.’
‘Starving the twoops to death?’
‘Of course.’
‘Cowwuption?’
‘Mea Culpa.’
‘I must say, Knees, it’s a wum state of affairs when the Captain can’t cawwy a stwaight bat for the team. Dear Boycott!’
‘So we have a deal?’ growls the Chief Constable and bearing battle-gnashers like bear’s fangs.
‘Throw in a cucumber sandwich and we’re smoking googlies,’ puffs Professor Knees meditatively a peace-pipe.
The Chief Constables glares with hardened prune eyes at the tippety-toast of the nation’s egghead-celebs. ‘You and your three chum sign statements to say the wildlife have been well fed and well looked after. And we release your three chums on parole for heroic action in the face of an enemy uprising. Deal? …’
‘Can you cawwy a stwaight bat for the team, Knees?’ appeals the little grey mouse from the Home Office, Featherstonehaugh-Major, with whiskers twitching. ‘Can you?’
The Professor raises a licked forefinger — ‘Cloud cover is low, the wicket is taking to spin, and we’re set to make a declaration.’
‘Splendid. Splendid.’
The Chief Constable tosses down the pitch a devil’s googly of paperwork. ‘ … And you’ll each have to sign the Official Secrets Act.’
‘I was a number twos once.’
‘Was you, dear boy?’ The whiskers of the little grey mouse from the Home Office, Featherstonehaugh-Major, twitch with pleasure at an honest, hard working, highly sought, good old-fashioned homicidal British hippy holding his end up for the good of the team — ‘Wotten wun of play when Matwon has to cawwy a chap’s box and balls. What what!’
‘But,’ rebuts the Chief Constable and brows brunching a devilled prune, ‘not even Donald Trump can absolve you from the Proceeds of Crime Act. So take note — twenty-eight days to hand back the Dean’s expense account money or you’re back to the pavilion for another birdy holiday.’
‘What’s your plans then,’ pries politely Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, little grey mouse from the Home Office, starry-eyed, ‘once you’re out at the cwease?’
‘Oh a nice safe bank job I should expect.’
‘Well take a tip from me — keep your eye out for gwammar-school boys …’
‘As good as a wink to a blind goat.’
‘... and libewals.’
‘Yes, my lifestyle guru Gonzalez keeps telling me I should get out more.’
***
Having laid bare the ins and out of the Cabinet minister’s affair with a cheeky young palmtop from the fancy goods section of Harrods, the pack of hacks are back at the barricade to snap the release of the country’s favourite string-head academic. And to record the birth of the season’s new fashion for mauve smoking jackets and Viking horned hats. And to record the battle between supporters of neo-Nazi rights and protesters of the fitting up of Professor Knees by the Dean and his university board of fascist gangstas. And to record Professor Knees’ public appeal for a charitable donation of £1.75 million to avoid another miscarriage of justice, thus leaving the Professor free to spend his release allowance of £55.50 on the green herbal gifts of mother nature. And to record the Professor being led away by daughter Persephones Knees through a sweaty throng of groping fans along Lower Springwood High Street.
The sun shines and the dickies chirp. A glorious London summer’s day. Just the day for popping in and out of the shops with your nearest and dearest. The butcher’s. The baker’s. The magic-mushroom-maker’s. Something that normal common people do every day of their lives.
The unholy shrine of a hole-in-the-wall cashpoint flashes on screen in luminescent green £126.93.
The taxicab speeds uptown over the Ballard Flyover, the driver gazing into the back seat, and who can blame him? The gutter-press have overplayed their hand with rumours of an IQ out of control. And drug dealing on a vast scale (when it was Clarke all along). A Sodom & Gomorrah of permanent road works, all-night hypermarkets, infant bingo halls, loan-sharking shops and closed libraries.