in the Land of Ifonly….

News!

Happy to report I have been appointed Co-Ordinator of the Hounslow Green Party. From now on every tweet, every Blog, every Facebook post, every Instagram moment is likely to be searched out by a stranger and used for blackmail. Hah. The price of being in politics. Luckily for me, my principle has always been ‘never post anything Granny would not approve of!’ So trolls and blackmailers, scourers of the Interweb, scour away!

This is Conference Week (well, 10 days actually) so I thought I’d take a break from Conference and write a little story for you. Is that ok? Just a short one, dear butterfly.

IN THE LAND OF IFONLY

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A SMALL PROFESSOR who lived in a far away land, the land of Ifonly. Here every wish came true. Not only was the sky blue all the time, (well tbh it was any colour any member of the population wished for), but everybody was nice to each-other. There was general agreement that in order to get along, it would be much better not to murder your best friend. Or even, rape them or steal from them. As every member of the population was your best friend, this made for a very dull country indeed, in which the police spent their time playing chess, or making graffiti on the walls of parliament.

Now the Professor, being an academic of no mean achievement (meanness was banned after all) was determined to experiment and to gain fame for his brave new ideas. And so, being a man of fortitude, he went to see the Queen.

Now the Queen of Ifonly, being the wisest of the wise and having no political power whatsoever, was sitting on her dog Spot weaving patterns in the lawn.

‘Yo Maj,’ the prof said, approaching her on his knees (he had no legs), ‘I want the legal right to make changes to the Kingdom.’

‘Well,’ said Maj, ‘as this is the Kingdom of Ifonly (and also a wholly Anarchistic Democratic Matriarchy with Oligarchical roots and no rules whatsoever, the people being entirely responsible for themselves and each-other) you may do whatsoever you wish.’

And so the Professor as an experiment went into his laboratory and invented Greed and sat back to watch what happened. And lo! Capitalism, oligarchs, consumerism, crime, trump, war and starvation followed gradually, evolving as does a drop of snot on my nose in cold weather. And it wasn’t long before the sun, delighted by all the smog and carbon and sweat and blood, began to scorch the Earth. Flood, fire and famine followed. People were even dying, unheard of previously in Ifonly.

Summoned to the Palace (under the new dispensation Maj had to become a dictator, for she too suffered from the Greed Disease) the Prof arrived in his brand new diesel-powered Lamerover drawn by hundreds of peasants, for the motor just wasn’t powerful enough. Dismounting from the vehicle he picked himself up and crawled into the presence of the Monarch escorted by a phalanx of psychopaths armed to the teeth.

‘Maj,’ he said –

‘That’s Sir Maj to you, speck of snot adhering to the bottom of my bottom,’ she said. ‘I hath summoned you to account for myself. Why, if you’re so clever at inventing Greed and so on, can you not do something more for me?’

‘More?’ quoth Prof. ‘More what, your greatitudinous lump of Majesty? You hath lands and factories and oligarchs, you have peasants desperate to do anything for their minimum wage, you have dead people grateful for their share of virus, what more can your fatness require?’

‘You have a point,’ Maj said, thoughtfully. Then, having considered the matter for an hour or two she said, ‘It’s just – it’s just I’m just a teensy bit concerned? And I do have to admit, it’s getting just a tad too hot. And you know what?’

‘What, oh superabundant fatitude, what more grossness do you require?

‘Well, prof, dear Prof, dear munchkin I could eat as a snack before my next banquet, I need to ask you a question. If – I say if – ‘

‘If? Great poem that. If = ‘

‘Shut up! If all this heat and flood and suffocation and trumps and virus carries on, how will I find the peasants for my factories, the food for my mouths, the gold for my galleons? Just a thought…’

‘I have been having the same thought, oh wisest of demagogues. But the only idea I have had is, the only way to do that is to cancel Greed!’

‘Oh Noooooo!’ the Maj shouted. ‘No no no no a thousand times NO! I love all my fluff and nonsense, my sweeties and sicklies, my psychopaths and sycophants. I adore my banquets and bangles, my bubble baths and bojangles, my yachts and my rolls and my farcical polls! Even my trolls!’

‘I see.’ The Professor said. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I am going to have to think about it.’

And so he did. It was a great dilemma. Cancelling Greed was patently impossible. And yet it was the only way to make things whole again, to restore sweetness and light, to save the shreds of what had once been the Kingdom of Ifonly, the full title of which, he began to realise, was Ifonly there was No Greed.

And then on Monday he had an epiphany. What if, he thought, what if he could go to Maj and put it this way: Choose! Lose your Kingdom as it rots and rolls, roils, drowns. OR: Change the name of the Kingdom to Whatif. The full title of which is, Whatif We Can Do it Better. And to say to Majister Ludicrous, look: if you want to keep Greed, keep greed for all of us. Be greedy for good clean air. Greedy for good food, good climate, good energy, good people, good goods! Greedy for the joy and freedom of everybody, equality fraternity and all humanity!

‘All we need to do,’ he said, as he confronted the Lady with the Lump on Tuesday, ‘All we need to do to make it come about is change the spelling!’

‘The spelling???’ she said, picking the pheasant out of her teeth with a peasant.

‘Yes!’ he said excitedly. ‘Let’s work for the Good! Change the spelling of G R E E D to G R E E N! Substitute the D for a N and the new kingdom, or democracy rather (Proportionally voted of course) of Whatif can start tomorrow!

And so it could be, dear fellow people, and so it could be.

I love you all.