The East Midlands is suffering from its biggest disaster since it became the Danelaw in AD 878. The plague is sweeping the region, as helpless officials in London throw up their hands, saying ‘Where the f@*# is the East Midlands anyway?’
Typical of the disaster is the small town of Oadby on the outskirts of English premier league football powerhouse Leicester. Oadby is the scene of unconfirmed devastation today as an outbreak of bubonic plague sweeps like a firestorm through the normally quiet and bucolic streets.
Local peasants have been employed as emergency gravediggers. Normally they enjoy digging up car parks in search of medieval monarchs, much to the irritation of the thousands of impatient BMW drivers, who are then obliged to leave their oversized contraptions on a double yellow line.
The graveyard at St Peters has already overflowed on to the surrounding roads, obliterating the picturesque mini-roundabout.
Next door, at the Art Deco funeral parlour, and one-time cinema, staff are rubbing their hands together in glee, and hoping that not too many fingers drop off.
Residents have been swift to blame the EU. “It’s about time we kicked out the Danes, they started all this nonsense,” asserted Oadby & Wigston mayor Thorvald Magnus Johansson.
Queues outside the local doctors’ surgery are almost as long as the queue to make an emergency appointment by phone. The staff are naturally concerned, but point out that by the time the next appointment becomes available, most of the patients will have already died.
A kind of religious fervour has gripped the few unaffected residents. They have flocked to the local landmarks, Asda in the North of the town, and Sainsburys in the South, to hold a vigil for the dead and dying, and to stock up on cheap baked beans.
Oadby has erected a barrier along the A6, to prevent cross-contamination between the posh side and the not-so-posh side of the town. Official panic really only set in when some of the millionaires in the pastoral idyll of Gartree Road started dropping like rather posh flies.
Oadby’s most famous son, Queen bass player John Deacon, has been petitioned in a desperate attempt to find help. The reclusive Deacon has not thus far responded, but hopes are not high since, after all, this is the man who wrote Another One Bites The Dust.
The government will not help, either. “The fact that people are dying only gives us greater strength in negotiations,” said government wonk Wes Minsterbubble. “The EU will take us seriously now we are letting people die.”