In order to write this Satire Series I opened each book and wrote different words to go with each picture. All you need to do is get the original books and read the test, turning over the page in the book as you come to each line.
You do need to get the original MR MEN and LITTLE MISS books for the wording to make sense, as the wording goes with the illustrations in the original books for Children. These can be bought from many places. They make sense this way in the way Ladybird books for grown-ups do!
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STRONG AND MR. MESSY – THE UNOFFICIAL MR. MEN AND LITTLE MISS SATIRE SERIES: Mr Strong was Strong. Mr Strong was Stable. Mr Strong was Strong and Stable. & Mr Messy loved red tape…
MR STRONG
The following text © Clare Kingston
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Mr Strong was Strong.
Mr Strong was Stable.
Mr Strong was Strong and Stable.
Mr Strong was as Strong and Stable as a ballot box out and about in the country in an election, or the despatch box out on the table in parliament. Whatever people decided went In and what they wanted was the came Out of that – regular as clockwork, you could count on it, it was reliable, as was Mr. Strong, to be relied upon.
Mr. Strong preferred not to think outside the box. He loved Remaining in it. The thought of Leaving the box filled Mr Strong with dread. Outside the box were all sorts of irregular unpredictable shapes like clouds in the Blue Sky, Thinking that tied up Mr Strong in knots, not to contemplate that made it all so much more straightforward for him. Mr Strong liked it as it is and did not like change. Change might be good, but it might be bad, it certainly was not stable, and Mr Strong liked stability. He knew what he was dealing with In there.
It’s just not cricket to think that any of this is complex, or cannot be done, he encouraged every chap to be a good sport. He liked cricket, yes he did, well, no he didn’t, he loved cricket. Cricket was a straightforward game which he knew how to play: You have two sides; one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out comes in, and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out the side that’s out comes in, and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get out those coming in. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not outs, the winner is declared…. if there is one. Simple, only a foreigner who is not a member of the Commonwealth would find that complicated.
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Mr Strong sent up a message on a Ball to a little bird. It was to be tweeted by all birds all over the world. The bird said he would do as she was told and other birds retweeted the message saying a little bird told me to tell you this. The message said:
We plan to build a truly Global Britain. We are open for business.
Mr Strong likes circles and rings, like the stars on the European flag, The World, The Football World Cup, Globe Balls, all balls up and down, Mr Strong embraced them all in.
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Mr Strong thought he had nailed this being a leader thing. He was about to hang a picture. A picture is worth a thousand words he thought. Every picture tells a story. Every bus billboard a message.
This picture was going to be one with a reversible image. So to one set of people who liked one viewpoint, say a Landscape that was wide and far-reaching across the waters; to the other a Portrait of tradition, a narrower field of view, limited, constrained and controlled to keep what was out outside, like a tower, a fortress, that sort of thing. When Mr Strong showed people round his house he would display the picture he knew they would prefer – and make sure neither arrived at the same time, because that would convey a very confusing inconsistent view.
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Mr Strong was contemplating a New flag for a New World where Order would reign supreme, not a disorderly, weak chaos of collective, contemplative, discursive, decisions. No some One had to make all the rules up and we must all obey, we would all know where we were that way, Mr Strong thought.
He wanted his flag to be seriously simple so even the ignorant native indigenous nationalist would understand. He loved the European flag, he thought that the reason they did not was that it was so hard to draw. The Spanish flag had a bit of complexity too, perhaps that was the real reason Catalunya wanted separation, as their flag was so simple. He could not quite understand the UKs reasoning on the matter, it somewhat lacked reason as the Union Jack had to be approached with caution to get it correct.
He went for a Global theme. Everyone around the world likes eggs. They are also strong, as they have a strong shell, which contains the sloppy, the weak and the wet, and only when hard-boiled in permanent structure did it not need containment. An egg flag looked like the simple flag of Japan, with its rising Sun theme. So his flag was the same with a yellow sun like the European star, to represent the hot countries and the white, the snow and clouds of the cool ones. He thought his design was cool too.
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Mr Strong obtained further egg inspired inspiration cooked up in the kitchen (if you can’t stand the heat you have to get out of there). He had a neat row of them on the table. He was preparing picnics for his friends from all over, he would give them a lot as the provisions provided came from others Mr Strong had forced to hand to him. He was generous with other people’s money too!
They were strong soldiers lining up for orders, all prim, all proper, all British, ready to be dipped into. Very obedient. He had cracked the problem this way and provided a calm solution, he was not cracking up, which he would carry on solving. He started playing a game in his mind, he had played this in Maidenhead: Mother May I? You politely and courteously asked “Mother May I?” to take a certain number of steps to come closer to you, you as the person of Mother May, and if she said Yes, you could. Mother May drew everyone into her strong and stable companionship this way. She knew everyone needed friends, and pointed this necessity out of being all in it together.
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However, on the other side of the pond, they took a completely different line. @OSCAR was going to break the old, mouldy mould and be completely different. He smiled a grin so wide no normal toothbrush could fit inside, ever. His smile was the best. He was The Best, others went WOW when they saw him, and responded on Social Media with that emoji to his posts. He was #amazing!
From Burger Bun Boulevard to Sesame Street an all together wilder game was being played out. It was called Oscar do I have to? Oscar the Grouch – who was wild with very wild hair – sat in his trash can – he knew all about rubbish and rubbish people, they were fake, and their newspapers they discarded were full of fake news. Politeness is just virtue signalling and so not real.
Players said “Do I have to !?” to move a number of steps away from him sat in his trash can. And he told them not to be so silly to ask, why not demand it or just do it!? And to be rude not polite, wtf!!!? He exclaimed loudly, replying
“Scram, Beat it!” and “See! That! Wall! ?” “GET OVER IT!” @OSCAR never, ever wrong, ever. He wanted to get rid of people so he could be left alone in peace.
Use your MOAT: Man it, Man up! he emoted across the pond.
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Mr Strong loved freedom of movement. He loved to be welcoming. He thought an open door policy highly practical, even in Winter, when all the wildlife coming in needed all the encouragement to enter as possible.
They could see all the food they could want to eat.
All the sofas green, red and blue, they could sit on so they could tell Mr Strong what to do.
They could play with their boats and inflatables in his bath.
Fill the library with all their children until packed to overflowing we all love to learn freely.
And have easy access to all the beds they needed when they were ill.
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When all the open houses were all full up Mr Strong said “Don’t worry, we can fell all our forests to make way for far more. We can use the timber for the houses, which is great as the materials for the housing will be locally sourced.”
Mr Strong was never wrong. The Greens were never right, they were crazy, and thought other species living in the forests and the fields he planned to build on had more rights that the humans. The Greens were a pain, they clearly had not read Paine’s Rights of Man! The Greens thought Mr Strong speciesist. “What are they on?” he said to himself, angrily and kicked it into the long grass, the very long grass, as trees are effectively that, and no one moans when you mow the lawn do they!?
He went to post this post of a tree that was now history and had become a post itself which dogs now also post on (reduce, reuse, recycle) on social media (smile, like, love) and ranted and raved a lot about little nimbys et cetera. He was up all night.
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Mr Strong wanted to invest in the economy, in transport, in infrastructure. That’s what his manifesto said anyway, and he promised he would. The just in time deliveries would arrive just in time, no congestion due to traffic overflows would occur, no roadworks to mar your way, the traffic lights would work and change fast, all the pot holes would be fixed – we are still waiting to see that one come true, it is just up the road, and other infrastructure projects were on their way, some somewhat delayed due to pot holes. But this was not the government’s fault, but the contracted out agency who was responsible. They had just gone bust, their funds went away, far, far away, they did not know where, honestly, they said. The far right wing press said that they were state owned companies, companies that operated privately here but were owned by other states, they stated. It wasn’t trouble at customs, that stopped goods moving freely, but bad customs of non-free market economy state aid that ruined what genuine private enterprise could fix in a flash. Mr Strong slated them as wrong, and that he was totally, completely and utterly in control. Just then, it was night, all the lights went out.
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The next day Mr Strong went for a walk in the country, he needed to calm down and carry on. This really did not help as he met a livid farmer who yelled “Get off my land!” as they are prone to do. To keep peasants or the subsidy paying public off his land he had installed a firewall – they were not falling for the environmental policies of set-aside and fencing off for the fauna and flora as there was more of that in the towns to be fair – so he was resorting to this. He tried everything he could to make them know he did not care for them, for e.g. taking all the green, nutritious outer leaves of all the cabbages, the tops of all the leeks, and discarding all other tax-payer funded food in the fields; then wrapping the light, hollow, pale produce in plastic so that it would go off quicker. He rubbed his hands together in glee at all the money and the pale undernourished peasantry, whom his land once was owned by, as he was so horrible. He planted nettles, spiky sloe trees and brambles on public paths. He employed people from lands far, far away so that they wouldn’t speak to him and so the locals would not feel was their land any more and more. He was similar to Oscar the Grouch only he didn’t live in a trash can, he lived in luxury and went abroad a lot. Europe was his favourite destination. He loved Europe. It had plenty to offer him. Mr Strong and the farmer discussed this at length, and kept a constant eye on things to make sure that anyone disagreeing with them was pilloried, or burnt at the stake. Steak, thought Mr Strong as he viewed the Aberdeen Angus in the field beyond. I’ll have to get in with this farmer chap so I can have my steak and eat it. He was hungry for steak and that firewall would Cook it nicely, according to His Barbeque Book.
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The writing was on the wall for his sort, the people said in their Shed Chat Room. This barn was a mini non selective parliament where everybody all across the land could have their say – unlike the telly when it was only a select few who got chosen time and time again until the viewers were bored and switched channels. Then people in the real, not virtual, parliament, and lawyers who always knew better, said the people were ill informed and needed everything explaining to them really, really simply, like a colouring book for adults, that’s their level they thought.
This made all the little people livid, not just angry. Those who before Shed Chat days were always listened to all the time and so were always right, were seeing they were about to be written in the history books, to be heard Live no more. No one had ever said they disagreed with them, or could get through on the radio to do so, or interrupted their monologues in meetings which were hard to attend as they tended to clash with work, worship, childcare, elder care, their allotments and dog walking – trivial stuff. They loved the sound of their own voices and hated the views that were different to theirs. They decided that they would think up a cunning plan to silence the Shed Chat. They thought of loads of those, they kept on coming, and tried to terrify people into silence.
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Some fell for it, others revolted, they are revolting, thought the leaders and the media. The Peasants are Revolting!
One illustration is that the Lords of the Land wanted to take the people’s will away from them. They knew best as they had a lot of experience both here and abroad, and that experience was highly valuable.
Another is the Commons, or the so-called commons, as once upon a time they had decreed that whatever the people said they wanted, that they would get. Mr Strong, The King of the Commons had said so, and whatever he said went, it was his prerogative. The trumpets sounded, the jousting began, and there was a winner. The winner was announced and the losers started to sulk. They started to scream, and scream until they made themselves and all of us all sick. Mr Strong had had enough so he decided what he said went and that he would ask the little people, the peasants, no more. He decided to take parliament, the people and all the kingdom in his own hands and do what he wanted, even if it wasn’t what they wanted, whoever they were, especially if they thought they were better or more superior than him. He took the Shed Chat away too.
Peace in Our Time, he muttered, decidedly relieved, as he walked off with it all in his hands.
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There were all sorts of land Mr Strong wanted to take back control of. There was land that you could stand on and land under the sea.
In order to demonstrate ‘sea land’ Mr Strong got the barn he had just requisitioned and turned it on his head. The top was now the bottom and the bottom was on the top. He filled it with water and put goldfish in it.
He exclaimed “Now you see the sea is on top of land!” The roof was solid, you see. He said that this applied everywhere where there was water. He declared he would reclaim his Kingdom’s Sea Land and he would float a lot of boats on it to go and grab it back. He said that the pirates should flee, politely thanking him, with the words “so long and thanks for all the fish.” The barn could double up as a boat, he thought, multitasking like a woman, a woman like Thatcher whose family clearly knew about roofs with that sort of name. She would bag all the fish if she was still around.
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Mr Strong had to deal with enemies he did not like. Mr Far was one, he went far too far with everything. Mr Strong’s colleague agreed with him about this, so decided that on the one occasion the whole country was to make a big decision – which he had in his far out way had suggested should be made by the little people – he was to not be involved in influencing them in any formally agreed way. He was seriously inflammatory. She must put him out. He liked being out. She tried to put him out with the bluest of blue water possible, but he just kept on flaring up, and sparked off with other decisions the little people should make. Mr Strong wanted Mr Far to walk out on a very long plank off the good ship Britannia as he was perfectly capable of steering this ship on a steady strong course on its journey across the world away from its anchor tied to Calais on the continent. Mr Far said he had been there and held the Top Trump card for trade across the water and would he like to hold his hand, he condescendingly said the ship without him at the helm would sink like a yellow submarine, with all aboard.
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Mr Strong had some strong friends. Mr Barn, Mr Junk and Mr Tusk. Mr Barn had a warehouse full of strength, he had a fork lift licence to ship and move strong packages in big and bigger boxes full of strong stuff. Mr Junk recycled weak things and made them strong, he was an expert at that, he made something worth nothing into a valuable object, upcycling is something we all can learn from, he lectured, strongly. Mr Tusk was full of himself, “I’m the Strongest!” Mr Strong could not agree with him, but could not say it to his face, he might trample him, better not to take any risks and agree with a smile. He was the elephant in the room.
Mr Strong liked to talk to his strong friends. He liked to talk to them a lot. He did not want the conversation to ever end. He wanted to always be their friends. They wanted that too. Together they felt stronger. They gave each other strength and other things too that each of them always wanted forever. These friends were in Mr Strong’s IN crowd. Those OUT were losers, even when they won they were losers, he would make sure of that, and keep playing the game, even after the final whistle when the referee had declared the result. Referees are not always right, Mr Strong’s legal team informed correctly.
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These were friends with benefits. Cocked up hens that just kept on laying. The Goose that laid the Golden Eggs, provided that you did not kill the goose, of course. Mr Strong had friends who were friends of his friends and they all were a complete team, like the 3 Musketeers, All For One and One For All!
Mr Strong tried to show people this, and that some egg would trickle down to them. The people were not convinced by this, as this mantra had been spun out before, woven like a basket constantly encompassing. They knew Mr Strong loved eggs and that only his friends would get an omelette, any that tried to whisk it up because they enjoyed to, would be scrambled or fried alive. Mr Strong loved his eggs hard boiled, in their shells, strong and stable, and unlikely to run away with their own ideas. Mr Strong said if everyone puts their eggs in one basket then all would be good. Mr Strong knew, absolutely, that he would get all his eggs in one basket home safely without any one cracking up. Certain publications with unstable and weak swords in the logo designs on their covers disagreed, but hey ho, Mr Strong had a good sense of humour. “Have I Got Eggs For You!?” he said.
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Mr Strong respected democracy. He had a seat in The House of Power. He had the Best Seat. The House of Power was very powerful and had been powerful for a very long time, other houses were not as strong or stable, they were falling apart all around them, THE House of Power would remain constant forever.
There were 2 debating Chambers in The House of Power, the lower house, The House of Chat and the Upper House, The House of Laud. The Lauds were praising constancy as they were the chamber that had been there for the longest, some members even remembered the dinosaurs, they were That old! The Chatterers loves to talk out loud, they loved to talk loudly so much they would talk loudly when others were too, it was a very loud house. They were allowed to be loud unless the Speaker said to “Shut Up” as he wanted his voice to be heard loudest.
They wanted to always have the last say in absolutely everything. Even if they had said to the little normally quieter people that this time they would give them the final say and that they meant it. They weren’t sure of that in the end, and as people had said one thing they decided that the other would be better for them, and they tried to distract these little people like children, with all sorts of smiley stuff and playground gossip for them to spread, and while they were doing that they would reverse the little ones decision saying that is what they really wanted.
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They would then ask the little people again and again what they really wanted. And they would keep on asking the little people the same question, until, like good little boys and girls they would agree that their patronising parents were right all along and do exactly as they were told, obediently. And decide to agree with whatever they said was the right way to go or stay, they knew the way. They, after all knew which way the little ones wanted to go, they could mind read and they could map read so well so they must be trusted.
And that is the truth.
The Strong and Stable Truth.
And in that we trust.
Mr Strong was never wrong.
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MR MESSY
The following text © Clare Kingston
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Mr Messy loved red tape.
He loved forms, filling them in, the longer the more convoluted the better.
He <3 ed user names – especially when the simple one you had thought up had already been taken, and your compromise one, and all the others, until you had to really think so it was a massive job to remember what it was every time you tried … and passwords and logging in endlessly.
He liked ID so much he practised fingerprint identification on his own at home. He had his own police fingerprint toy to do this with – as you can see some are successful, others a little blurry and a few are, quite frankly messy. He role played this with himself, telling himself off like a uhum police officer would, in the manner of an old fashioned one like in Gilbert and Sullivan’s day. He really wanted to work in an office where that was the way you got in the door every single day, it was his dream job.
He thought GDPR was brilliant – all those lovely e-mail regulations to comply with, so complex you’d have thought it had originated from the EU.
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Mr Messy wanted to be a farmer, just because he wanted to have to fill out endless forms for agricultural subsidies while his barn was neglected near his growing wheat field.
He wanted to have to notify in meticulous detail every little thing about his cows, his sheep, his pigs, his chickens, his horse – where they came from where they were going. He thought that their journey should be ideally sat naved from start to finish so a tasteful customer could feel so good knowing who they were eating, including their name and preferences et cetera, how pleasant.
He noted the yields in each field, the chemical composition of the soil in each one individually, the crop type that year and the destination of that produce. He was really proud of himself. His barn, in its dilapidated state, due to years of neglect, disagreed, but hay hey ho, that’s the way Mr Messy liked to go.
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Mr Messy was listening to a Brexit debate on the radio in his garden. It really did his head in, literally and actually. He thought the thought of a debate about Europe would be relaxing, as he loved it when they went on about new regulations, how they’d straighten things out – like cucumbers and bananas, and how people who did not like bureaucracy like he did used to get all wound up, it really amused him.
He was just about to lull into a snooze, a kip. When someone, who said they were from UKIP said in a seriously strident voice “We are going to do away with Brussels Bureaucracy in the UK like a new broom sweeping it all away!” “We are going a different way.” “A new way, our own path, not one encumbered by the weeds of officialdom!” If Mr Messy had been eating his Christmas meal he would have choked on his Brussels Sprouts – he saw the ones in his garden from a whole new angle that day.
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Mr Messy was walking in a forest one day, and it inspired him, he saw in there future forms. It made him think, as this walk was healthy, of the NHS. All other organisations had managed to computerise a lot of their stuff, making it easy to view, hard to lose, speedier to work and cheaper to run – but not the NHS. The Doctors thought that as they were so clever, some Consultants were actually brain surgeons so they must have been bright, that they were always right, with everything, including how their organisations were run. They may have specialised in Medicine, but that Dr. bit on the front of their name made it clear that they knew it all about all things. This was a view they expressed threateningly to all, making them feel, acutely, that if they did not give them everything they want, they would die. They threatened the government time and time again, getting more and more of the budget assigned to them – until nothing was left, people could not afford to eat or heat their homes, councils cut everything to the bone – but yet they kept thinking they were being completely reasonable. Mr. Messy agreed with the Dr.s full stop.
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Mr Messy liked to dot the i’s and cross + the t’s. He liked everything to be in order. This building you can see is a local government office, and as you can see the doorknob is dotted, and the sun, in compliance, is also dotted – no clouds cover the sun here! The windows are crossed, in triplicate, on both sides, like a carbon copy. Mr Messy expected absolute accuracy, as did the officials who worked here. You can see the surrounds and see that they are all ship-shape and Bristol fashion. The décor delivers decorum, as it should, everything is in order. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. Mr Messy loved to visit this place so much he stood for the local Council, and got in. He stated on his neat and tidy election leaflets that he would put the borough in order. The Councillor Messy stuck to his word, rigidly. He also delivered on another promise he made – with the proviso that he would do it once all the streets in his areas were cleaned, all the lamps were working, and no road had a pot hole in it – to twin the town with towns in all the rest of Europe, so the twinned town list on the place name signs on the roads approaching the Borough were so very long, that Councillor Messy suggested to have them as subsequent signs after the main place name sign in a long row. He loved all the meetings to prepare for this, and agree to too, that the whole Council had to attend and enjoyed the many votes cast and the local ward gatherings to discuss this, displaying many maps and plentiful powerpoints presented on the subject.
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Mr Messy had a friend who worked in London. He was a Civil Servant. Civil servants are civil, because they do everything by the book, and in order – pro forma, a form and then a formal statement and then a consensually agreed decision. His friend was called Mr. Benn. He was a very traditional British gentleman with a Global outlook. He had interests in the global economy, particularly specifically Europe, which he took a keen interest in, as he read the papers and they featured many advertisements for opportunities to work in Brussels (other locations were and are also available) and so he did not want to rock the boat and destroy his own chances of getting one of those. Just think of the perks – things always looked greener on the other side of the hedge, fence or Channel!
Councillor Messy’s friend Mr. Benn often won in the end because the others just wanted to get on with it, he only had to wind them up with all the regulatory hurdles they’d have to overcome and how difficult that would be, for them to fall asleep, go into a coma or completely give up the ghost. They wanted to go home at the end of each meeting at some point so it was far easier to just give in and give him what he wanted. Mr. Messy and Mr. Benn loved to win, even if initially it looked like they lost, they knew they would win this way at the end of the day. Mr. Messy and Mr. Benn remain friends to this day!
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Mr Benn had a friend Mr Poirot, or Monsieur Poirot, I should say. He worked in Brussels. Mr Benn’s department in London had a lot of dealings with Mr Poirot. If Mr Benn wanted something to be done his way Mr Poirot was always on the case. They were inseparable in many ways, like Husband and Wife, Mr Benn in black was very British so he decided to be husband, and Monsieur Poirot in white was much more romantic so he happily accepted the role of wife, and anyway he saw it as his duty to give birth to a whole new giant baby of a country, which he decided to call Europe. Europe would do away with the old democratic teeny tiny states and in the future he would look after, view over and keep watching like a big brother, all in the best interests of its little sister, of course. They were a team. They both had the same goal in mind. They were on a singular mission, like 001 and 100, bonded together, whether they were in the same room or communicating electronically. Mr Poirot loved Brussels, particularly the way it was organised. He thought it wise to have an unelected selected Commission, as everyone selected would stick to the script, none of these off piste politicians from the nations, some he saw were truly off piste, some pissed and some seriously pissed him off – those were the ones that wanted to break free, which he presumed must have been due to something that they had drunk. Mr Poirot loved to travel, it broadened his horizons, and the travel between Brussels and Strasbourg broadened his workload, travel pays, it’s like an investment for the mind, deep dividends can be gained from free movement of people, goods, services and money, Mr Poirot found to his benefit.
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Country after country had referendums to ask its people if they wanted to stay in Europe, and they kept asking the people if they wanted in or out, and kept explaining to the people – as it was very complicated for them – if they voted to leave why this was a very bad idea. Then if they voted incorrectly Europhiles would say why they were wrong and that it was right to stay in. Once they felt they had convinced them, or bored the TV off of the others, they asked them again, until they said they wanted to stay in, neverendums if necessary. Once they’d made the right decision no further discussion was necessary, and the matter was resolved. In the UK campaign buses had slogans on them. Here you can see Mr Benn driving the Stay In bus, with its promotional slogan “NEAT & TIDY.” He hadn’t yet seen the other bus for Leave it Out, as this was the start of the campaign but presumed that it would say “SIMPLE + STUPID” on it.
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The campaign in the UK was quite fraught, in fact it is still fought to this day, as you can see in this photo in a campaign leaflet for Remain, with Mr Benn and Mr Poirot posing convincingly that they are shocked and saddened to see a shed with broken windows, though on the leaflet they claimed it was a house of a very nice person who did a lot of charity work for the world, they were the head of a charitable organisation, and were very good, they wanted to make poverty history, and took the advice of singers who sung that they should look at themselves first and make that change, the charity leader loved change, loose change was the best. Why would anyone not like this person? A person with poor judgement must have done this they said. They knew what was best for these little people and would give it to them, once the more interesting sorts from more exotic locations were sorted first. After all why be boring when you can go on an all time high with your head in the clouds, in an aeroplane on yet another business trip with a little holiday on the side, if you keep in friendship with these people, the others had nothing to offer them but blood, toil, tears and sweat which were far less appealing really.
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Mr Poirot illustrated his thinking with a gardening metaphor. He went to the trouble of bringing that metaphor alive, particularly for the outdoor sorts, he preferred to be inside on the other side of a desk to be frank, but in order to easily explain to those who needed it spelling out to them pictorially and interactively in a lively manner, he did this. He said the flowers represented the stars of the European flag, and that Europe represented growth, these flowers were blooming mirroring the booming growth of the continent. There was fence in the distance with clouds looming over the horizon. The grass was greener on this side of the fence, and there was lots of it, so that when everything – if ever it would, never ever he thought – was lost and the bread and cake were sold out at least the people really could eat grass. Mr Poirot was planting the seeds of recovery right now, as you can see.
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Mr Benn visiting Number 10 with an illustration of the kind of Europe he wanted. A ladder of opportunity he said. It also represented a bridge business would like to have over the Channel, quipping that there was light at the end of this very dark tunnel which he could see. On a negative note he said that if unity was taken away then the rungs would represent the levels of bureaucracy businesses would have to go through to trade their goods. He smiled at that thought as that was the field he was in, more work for him, more contracts, more money. His lawyers disagreed with this sentiment as they found being in union lucrative. You win some, lose others. Mr Benn was determined to win whatever the result!
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Mr Benn went into Number 10. He had an idea, quite a bright one. He explained, as it really did need explaining, as this was all very complex and could be even more complex if he could make it so, he liked complexity. Mr Messy loved complexity like a tangled ball of wool impossible to unravel, he loved strings attached to everything, so even if you could unravel the wool you would then have to detach the strings from the wool, which would take years and years, going on unto infinity and beyond. He, Mr Benn, and, in the background, he employed his friend Mr Messy temporarily for the purpose to back him up, drew his lines of argument that he would not cross, the hurdles that had to be gone through, the attributes which must be met for it to be watertight and legitimate (you could not leave this sort of stuff to the ignoramuses, he mused over their musings and laughed, they were so simple and straightforward – that just would not do. Mr Messy also had a lot of red lines and pink lines and all sorts of coloured lines to suit all sorts of people of all sorts of political persuasions so that they would believe him when he said we had to do this or that or the other before we could do anything else at all, ever. As he had lots, all of them agreed this would take a very long time and would need different types of periods to describe zones of differentiation so people would feel and experience it as change, at least superficially, they would bore them silly so the little people would either turn off politics or make themselves look like right twats so nobody would want to associate with their thinking and come to their senses and fit it with what the elites, who knew best, after all they were at the top for a reason, and agree that this was what they wanted all along.
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Mr Messy had just watched Mr Poirot and Mr Benn at a Remainer Remoaner event – as the press had labelled it, quite unfairly. The event was actually called “We’re all in this together” as was attended and seminars hosted by the great and the good. One chap said we were all getting ourselves into a pickle, a virgin olive oil pickle. Another said that there were still plenty of fish in the sea to feed the whole world so allowing Europe to have most of them was perfectly reasonable. Others were noble gentlemen who were commission bound to agree, they really did agree, and were quite content to do so, they said smugly. Some said “Why wake up from a dream into a nightmare, OMG OMG …” They liked kipping but did not like you kipping. The two pals were congratulating each other on their bright, intelligent, well informed speeches each had just made. They both agreed that the contents and arguments would be unintelligible to working class sorts as they did not have the time or energy to read, they said after a hard day’s work, and needed a good hot bath, a calorific supper, easy telly and bed. Whereas although both Mr Benn and Monsieur Poirot worked hard, really hard, they took the effort to take at least three hours of their time in each day to reading, researching and watching BBC 4 standard documentaries, you have to put the work in to understand this sort of stuff. They were all at the conference grateful for people who said the people did not have the final say in a referendum, but their representatives should speak for them, as like nannies, they knew best.
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Mr Messy was cross. He was watching Eurovision. Britain hadn’t won again. He thought “it must be Brexit!” But then he looked online for previous results and found that despite Britain paying a lot for it they hadn’t won when we all were Europhiles. Perhaps that’s why people voted as they did, he pondered, no-one would like to keep paying for a party and then keep getting laughed at whilst those that hadn’t paid won all the prizes in the raffle without even having to pay for a ticket, you’d want to leave and go to another party where people shared the costs of it and you got to win a few times too. Mr Messy, however, did like the system of voting for the winner. It took ages, longer than the actual songs, Mr Messy wasn’t fussed about the songs, or the unity, he didn’t stay up all night for that. No, he enjoyed the endless formulaic scripted answers from the juries and people from all over Europe. He was thrilled when they added heats into the mix, as this meant two more days of voting, well one for the UK, so they got to express their opinion for 50% of the non-contributor entrants, which he thought was perfectly fair when one had foot – not feet, which foot is 50% of – the majority of the bill.
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An individual who shall not be named, for clearly obvious reasons, said that the two – he loved Europe for this, duplicate copies of absolutely Everything – European parliamentary chambers could be chambers of music, music venues and that they could hold Eurovision at one or the other, a classical unus and a popular one. Someone else completely daft once suggested that it would be good to start an hour earlier, to have everyone singing on one night in union together, so it would be a singalong-a-marathon kind of thing. And then, even more ludicrously had the notion of allowing everyone to vote – not juries, “What were they thinking!?” – for every song they wanted to even their own (they said that it was not fair for the UK to never win as the whole of Europe came here to work and vote for themselves but as there was work in the UK, United Kingdom could not be abroad to vote for itself, they said it was rigged against us) And as people phoned in (which would pay for it all rather than the UK all the bloody time) the results would show real time, to encourage more phone calls, more money for those that staged it, they said that would be fun. And in the 12 minutes that was happening there could be a little fun show. Mr Messy thought that would take all the fun out for him, leaving only the boring bits.
Why were people always trying to rock the boat as it were, to clean up and streamline systems and processes that worked perfectly well, and had done so for years. Trying to relax in the bath, he needed that after Eurovision and hearing the suggestion repeated, again, on the News, he thought on those throughout history who had lost their Administrative Positions due to new technology, from Scribes when the Printing Press came in to now where paper is being replaced by screens.
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He thought about it a lot. Then he thought “I suppose I’ll have to upgrade and go along with it,” reluctantly. He wanted to scream before but now he was depressingly accepting the situation, and had nothing to say on the matter. He loved handwriting, the scrawl of it all across the page, now it would be text on-line on a bland screen, with pixels and points and dots. He stared at his screen gormlessly, as people do, he had noted, he had joined their club as a rather shocked emoji. After a bit of use of this computer thing he did however cheer up. You may be wondering why he did. Well, while on the World Wide Web or www for short, he realised that:
- http stood for hyper text transfer protocol – he loved protocol, formal formulas for how people, things and text should behave – wow that thrilled him!
- he was always filling in forms to get stuff done online, including these demanding; your name, your address, date of birth, shoe size, favourite sweet, et cetera etc. ?
- He now saw the point of it all. He became the point as he upgraded from a handwritten script person to a screen smiley sort. 🙂
- + on the plus side just in order to get to a particular page you had to go through several pop-up windows to agree to this, that or the other, which no-one but Mr Messy ever read, he relished them like he had loved filling in one form to get to another and more to get to the one you actually needed back in the day. { [ ( = ) ] }
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He went to see his friends to tell them about all of this. Britain may be Brexiting, Italy may be thinking of Italexiting, but they had a cunning plan to electronicize everything. It may look on the surface – as all the paper had now gone – that they were forgoing forms, but the internet technology could become, to everyone who hated bureaucracy, their greatest nightmare, Game of Groans. They were all going to say “Yes, we agree we should all make accessing government services more accessible. We will do that for you. We show here that we really do listen to you and what you want and will put that into practice.” Then, sneakily, in the background – horses for courses as they say – they would return with this gift of a maze of hoops to go through, a never-ending maze, like a social media game that never reaches its end. And they would all look on and laugh at the complaints and angst online all over the EU, everyone fighting just to get simple stuff done.
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After all that was why the European Union was founded, so that we could continue to fight with one another. World War III here we come!
Things are going to get very, very, very Messy.