DECKCHAIRS, ICEBERGS AND FARCE

Maybe I’m tired or maybe the world really is falling apart. My day had started badly. I’d read the papers and the name Trump was getting me down.

He loves breaking eggs but does he know how to make omelettes? And with omelettes in my mind I started worrying about France. Marine Le Pen? They can’t, they won’t … will they? According to comedian Andy Hamilton they won’t because she’s a fake. Never served in the armed forces and has certainly never been a marine. Truth will out. But I’m no longer sure of that
   

Life is all smoke and mirrors. Take this morning. I bounded happily from the house and clicked my key at my silver, shining beast of a car expecting that welcoming beep, flash of lights and wing mirrors opening like a butterfly’s wings. But nothing happened. I tried again. Peering in I saw the lights had been left in the ‘on’ position. Flat battery. A vivid torrent of language flowed from my lips. First Trump and then this. Fate had taken advantage of me once too often, once too often. This was payback time. I kicked the car’s tyres and vowed vengeance. I called Jaguar and shouted a bit. And then I sulked. After a while bored with sulking I went out to whack my car again. And when I got to it I realised it wasn’t …my car that is. The same make, the same colour, the same interior but different number plate. Looking up I saw my own car further down the road. My blameless silver beast.

Laughing at myself my mood lifted. I thought about grandchildren and great nieces with whom everything seems so much simpler. Their games are more fun. I’d played shops with my two year old granddaughter whose pricing concepts are strikingly at odds with dynamic pricing. Everything seemed to cost £30 although everything my wife bought seemed to be cheaper. Tea, wine, Eurostar rail tickets all £30 until I trumped (sic) her strategy by asking “do you sell trumpets?” She gazed at me saying “I think I have one - can you ask your friend there what the price is?” My wife chipped in with a price “£12.50 will do” and so off I trotted with an imaginary bargain trumpet.  This interlude compared favourably with our grown up world.

Donald has a certain bully-in-the-playground, childlike quality as have virtually all our politicians. Last week they meekly voted “yes” despite most of them strongly disagreeing with it, to the motion to action the Brexit article 50. Jazz fan, portly, Tory Kenneth Clarke stood alone in saying “No” and therefore representing the 16,000,000 who voted remain. First past the post referendum politics has served us very badly.

Yet the country’s economy is outstripping expectation. So all is well then? Not exactly, no. However fast we go there’s still an iceberg ahead. And there’s a farcical belief that we can avoid it. As our granddaughter would say “oopsy.”