Metamorphosis

Tags

Big Ben, Chief Whip, election, EU, Kafka, millipede

Ed awoke on the morning of the election from uneasy dreams

and found himself transformed into a gigantic millipede.

His wife said:  Hadn’t you better get up?

He could hear his voice reverberating, but destroying the sense

of his words.  He suspected that his delusions were about to

evaporate.

Ed!  The Chief Whip’s here!

The Chief Whip had been encouraging him to explain why he was

not facing up to the deficit.

Your position in the firm is not unassailable, he had warned.

It’s not going as well as I had hoped, Ed had admitted.  But just give

me another chance.  The voters just need to be soothed, persuaded

and won over.

He was finding it difficult to make a U-turn.

In the crowd who awaited his levee was a small businessman

who opened a file which he claimed had details of his complete state

of despair.  He complained that Ed and his friends had borrowed so

much that although households had been kept afloat, everyone had

become complacent about the cash flow.

A music student presented herself and said that she could not afford

to study at the conservatoire.  Ed felt sympathy for her plight, but knew

student fees would have to be budgeted for in other ways.

There was a lot of grumbling from older folks about dividends being all

very well, but money needing to be kept for rainy days.  The aged and

disabled could not be expected to make a contribution.

The hospital across the road was beyond his field of vision.  The view

from his window was of a gray land under a gray sky.

The ordinary family were now so over-worked that they had no time to

think about Ed.  Circumstances had conspired to make it impossible to

downsize from their apartment, as they had had to take in lodgers

to avoid bedroom tax.

Ed had felt guilty in the past that he had not helped enough and so

he had decided to put in an appearance.  He would show himself to

the masses now!

Delegates from the EU were appalled at the thought of having such a

creature in the same chamber.  They refused to pay a penny towards

their keep.  Rather, they demanded compensation.  Ed feared that the

general tension would discharge against him.

It was agreed by one and all that they would have to rid themselves

of this creature.  He would be the death of them all.

If only he would understand us, sighed a poor old man, who had

worked for a bank at one time.

The music student hissed:  He’s just like Clegg.  Another unpleasant insect.

We believed in him for so long and in what he pledged regarding fees. 

They all weaken our borders and want the apartment to themselves!

Ed remained still until Big Ben chimed.  Then he realised that he had not

the ghost of a chance of survival.

The parasites dispersed.  They left a note confirming that the finances

were not hopeful.  He crawled back under his bed.

But then the electorate went out into the Spring sunshine and discussed

their prospects without him. They weren’t too bad after all, because

they all had jobs which were quite promising and which could lead to

better things.

Maybe the future wasn’t so Kafkaesque after all!