Mrs French and Cyclops stood on the patriot’s pavement. Private French and the conscripts were gone. They were in the future now. Would they come home again? Mrs French did not know. Did not know if she wanted them too. She was so furious at them leaving.
“Get War Done!” Cyclops shouted. A gust of wind blew a leaf against his face. It stuck there. He giggled.
Mrs French smiled, if a thin drawing out of the lips and breathing through her teeth could be a smile.
“Did you see the way Private French thrust his stick into the air and twirled it like a cheerleader?” Cyclops gushed. “Control British Fish!”
“It was a stirring sight,” Mrs French agreed.
Mark’s marching feet weren’t in time with each other, let alone the lads around him, but the Churchill radios compensated by blasting out a recording of feet that were.
A cold wind blew as the patriots grew small in the distance. A dog howled. A woman was heard weeping quietly. A thousand children cried out as one in terror and then a voice boomed “CUT THE SIGNAL. It’s the wrong track on the radio. CUT THE SIGNAL!” and momentarily the Churchills fell silent.
“It’s not an omen,” Mrs French muttered. “It’s not.”
“They were a rag tag bunch Mrs French,” Cyclops grinned. He was shivering a little. Goosebumps on his scrawny legs. He mocked marching back and forth to warm up. Marched until Mrs French gave him a playful clip around the ear.
“Knock that off or some nosey parker will report you to the secret police,” she advised, pulling him close, into a hug.
“Now, what do you want to do first?” she asked.
“I was going to take first watch on Private French’s barricade.”
“You’re a good boy Cyclops. A good boy.” She gave him a squeeze. “How about we go and thrash the bigger boys for stealing your chocolate instead? Then you and me have a slap up dinner?”
Cyclops wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back as hard as he could. Mrs French wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought she heard him sniffling. Then his little, bony body heaved up and down and she was sure.
“Don’t worry about old Mark. The devil takes care of his own.”
“I’m not worried about Mr French,” Cyclops managed. “I don’t know the last time my mother hugged me.”
“Now. Now. I’m sure that’s not true.”
“How could she hug me?”
“Cyclops! You’re a smashing lad. I’d be proud to call you my own.”
“No. She’s in a re-education camp. She smashed our Churchill up with a brick on Land of Hope and Glory Day. She’s been gone for months.”
“Well, who’s been looking after you?”
“You, most days.”
Mrs French burst into tears. She knelt down on the pavement and fiercely hugged Cyclops.
“You silly boy. If I’d have known…”
“I was told I couldn’t tell anyone or I would be thrown out of Raylee. My mother has shamed us. I’m a rotten egg from a bad hen.”
Mrs French pulled back and cupped his wet face in her slab hands. They looked into one another’s eyes. It was not clear whose tears were fatter.
“I didn’t think Mr French would let me visit if he knew. The only reason it wasn’t in the paper is because my mother once had lunch with the second cousin twice removed of the Propaganda Minister.”
Mrs French shook her head and gave Cyclops another squeeze. She worried if she was in danger herself? To be seen in public with the child of traitors?
“Come on,” she extended her hand. “Let’s get you home and cleaned up. Afterwards we’ll have supper. You can stay with me now.”
Cyclops snorted up his snot and wiped the back of his nose with his torn sleeve. He took Mrs French’s hand with his own. She didn’t care that it was covered in snot.
“I’ve been saving some food in case the war goes badly,” she said in a hush. “I’m going to feed you until you burst.”
“But what about thrashing the bigger boys?”
“We’ll do that tomorrow. It will be cracking sport. They’ll have forgotten all about bullying you and it won’t half come as a surprise!”
They laughed and hurried on. Forgetting that most of the bigger boys were now in the army.
“Can we skip to your house?” Cyclops asked.
“I don’t see why not!”
Mrs French burst into a skip, still holding Cyclop’s hand and pulled him clean off his feet. After, when she had picked him up and dusted him down, they tried skipping again.
“The average human shares 80% of their genes with the average potato. The patriot shares up to 100%.” – The Observations of Prime Minister William Bunsen
The fear of potato shortages was constant during The Great British Potato War. Hunger was always on the menu. The slogan “Get War Done!” kept us going. Three words which roused the mighty British bulldog from his slumber. I saw it as my duty to keep the men’s spirits high when their bellies were aching. There was endless bellyaching.
The soldiers under my command would whisper in the black fondant nights, “When will the proper British potatoes run out?”
I could not answer them. I would crawl between the pickets on our perimeter whispering my mantra, “Get War Done!”.
“What?” they would mouth back.
“Get War Done!”
“Oh. Okay.”
When we marched towards the enemies of the people a different slogan was called for.
“Believe in Great British Potatoes!” I cried it lustily. The men would throw their caps high and cry too! Good men. Men who valued freedom of speech. They would sell their lives dearly. “Trust in Prime Minister William Bunsen!” I encouraged them with that too. “Trust in Billy Burner”.
Of course, no one knew then if it were possible to eat a root vegetable that did not come in a packet with a Union Jack on it. Traitors ate them. We knew that, but they weren’t God’s chosen race sprung fully formed from the soil of this sceptred isle. There were rumours in the dark years (before Parliament lent its sovereignty to the Executive in perpetuity) people did eat all manner of forrin foods. Padron Peppers from Spain, whatever they were. Kalamata Olives from the Peleponnese, ditto. And of course avocados, we all knew what they were, they were heresy! But I did not believe patriots had. Patriots would starve first before they let the green flesh of treason pass their lips.
[Ed. It is possible to eat a non-Union flagged root vegetable, but it results in a psychosomatic digestive disorder called by physicians, The Brussels Cramps.]
“Control British Fish!” was another robust slogan to keep spirits high. Ideologically so pure it glistened. The men responded well to it. Shouting about fish always stiffened spines. It said everything about who we are. A maritime superpower! An industrial powerhouse! A job exporting titan! A country that valued its fish above all else and wanted the world to know it.
When I was far from home, when I was bruised and bloodied, when I was burying my brothers in arms in haste in some sodden Surrey field, knowing we had seized back control of British fish kept me digging graves.
The good women of Raylee and Wick River Crossing*, where my regiment was raised, were loyal and sent us what food they could spare. Stout of frame. Round of hip. Busting of bosom. Rosy cheeked. Women you could rely on to be pregnant year on year when it was time to repopulate Brexitannia. When it was time to leave the office jobs, leave the mills and fulfill a woman’s Great British destiny to produce as many Great Britons as they could.
My wife, Mrs French, was prominent in village circles. There was no scandal, no indiscretion she was unable to ignore. She could patch your torn skin as easily as split trousers. Whenever the Government composed a new song for school children to sing you could be certain she would have the Raylee youth drilled within days.
“Make do and mend,” she’d say to the other women. “Here, let me show you how to make that one sock into two.”
If the traitors ever did breach the defences and capture Raylee you could be certain my wife would lead the resistance.
“Starve yourself so that I may eat,” I ordered her on the day we past out of town, headed for that cesspit of traitors. London. “Victory will see us feast!”
It was late in the afternoon. A glorious day, if you ignored the blowflies, if you shouldered past the dark clouds on the horizon, if you blocked your ears to the cries of the widows and orphans. A godly day. The sun sinking its inflamed buttock into the bank of clouds to the west, but enough rays to reflect off the bakelite buttons on my replica TA Catering Corp uniform. A sight to mist the eyes.
My hearty wife stood twisting a damp dish cloth in her firm hands. I wager it was soaked with her tears. She knew the moment had arrived when she must raise that sodden fabric and wave farewell.
“We will meet again,” I reassured her. “I don’t know where. I don’t know when. But we’ll meet again some sunny day.”
“Get War Done,” she replied, lowering her gaze and shaking her head.
“Control British Fish.”
She nodded. I suspect she could not trust herself to say the words she wanted to.
“Don’t beg me to stay,” I ordered her.
“I won’t,” she replied, her voice cracked. “Control British Fish.”
“I have to go. It’s my duty.”
“Go,” she agreed. “Please go.”
She hid her face in her dish cloth and sobbed.
“You did not fully understand the blazing star I was born under,” I told her. “I will uphold the will of the people.”
“Oh Mark, you fool.”
“Shush now. Only speak in three word sentences while I am away,” I ordered her. I moved in close to hold her hands, but she retreated. She would crumble at my touch.
“I will do,” she whispered. Good woman. God’s own.
“I am going to fulfil the will of the people.” I saluted her.
“Don’t miss me,” she muttered.
“I won’t! I will look after myself.”
I was following my destiny.
Destiny is all.
With courage and Union Flag branded munitions I could not fail.
*Raylee and Wick River Crossing was the birthplace of Private Mark French. In the 2016 EU Referendum it voted 98% to Leave the EU Tyranny. A source of great pride to Mark. A percentage confirmed in the Official Records of Brexitannia.
1.1 In the Land of The Blind
“If an Englishman’s home is his castle, what then is an Englishman’s village?” – from “The Graffiti of Raylee Public Lavatories – Collector’s Edition”, page 34.
I know what an Englishman’s village is. It is impenetrable. Clearly. Castle after castle nestled together like an illustration from a chocolate box lid. But to be truly formidable a castle must have a defensive perimeter that is not just more castles. Stout and sturdy walls built of stone in the traditional English fashion of the late 11th century.
This is why I organised the construction of the defensive barricade around my village of Raylee, before I went to war. It was a simple enough task. The slogan wrote itself, “Get Barricades Done!”, and that’s 99% of any major infrastructure task completed.
To find the necessary materials I just had to go around the town and scavenge. The streets and pavements of Raylee were overflowing with lightwood pallets of the kind used to deliver building supplies for domestic construction. No one knew where all the builders went in 2021 or why, but the supplies they abandoned were put to good use. Mostly by creating new and patriotic recipes. This was an example of the unique ingenuity of the British. There weren’t any tradesmen left who knew what to do with the supplies, but there were plenty of hungry mouths to feed.
“What are you doing Mr French?” one of the local lads asked me.
“Why you carrying that pallet?”
It was Cyclops. He was always popping up when you least expected him. A scrawny pup who lost an eye as an infant.
“It’s well known your father voted against the people.” I didn’t want him hanging about. It was obvious the loss of an eye was God visiting the sins of the father upon the boy.
“He did not. He told me himself he took his own pen into the voting booth and made the best choice for Blighty.” The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled along beside me. “Do you know where he is Mr French?”
“Private French to you Cyclops.”
“But you’re not in the army.”
“Every able bodied man is in the patriot’s army. Except your dad.”
That shut him up. He trailed along, kicking stones stones over the road, hoping to be involved.
“Do you know where my dad is?” Always this. Always.
“In a labour camp I expect. Labouring for redemption under Cardinal Petal. Or perhaps he got lucky and was deported.”
“But he’s a son of Raylee, just like you.”
“Being born in a country doesn’t make you its son. You achieve citizenship by proving yourself mental” – I kicked a raised cobblestone at that point and cut myself short.
“Mental? We don’t use that term anymore Mr French.”
I glared at him for a few moments. The boy clearly had a dose of the woke. I waited for the pain in my foot to subside.
The choice of pallets for the barricade was symbolic. Who doesn’t recognise one and think of the vanished British tradition of house building?
“My mum burns these in our fireplace,” Cyclops said. He took a hold of the pallet so I set it down.
“Keep going,” I ordered.
“Is this a job?”
“Zero hours like all the rest. Carry it to the edge of town and don’t dawdle.”
He nodded and began dragging the pallet along the road, straining his skinny arms, but determined to prove himself to me.
Other residents merely stood and watched as Cyclops struggled to the outskirts of Raylee. I smiled at them and shouted “Get Barricades Done!”.
It took Cyclops many hours but eventually he had enough pallets for me to build the defensive fortification.
The gaps in the pallets made it easy to see through them, take aim and fire. Although this would not be tested in the heat of battle until I was far away, I proved the soundness of my design by organising a drill. This consisted of taking turns to both attack my own barricade and defend it against myself.
My wife came out to watch. She sat herself with her knitting in a fold-up camping chair. Click-clack went her knitting needles. I used that to good effect, imagining them as the sounds of a Lewis Gun.
“Knit faster!” I ordered when attacking myself. “I want the air full of lead!”
I was using a stick as a rifle. I made a show of affixing a make believe bayonet and reloading every so often. Everything had to appear realistic.
Unfortunately realism was all too close to hand when I was injured defending myself against myself. I was rolling over one of the pallets and a large wooden splinter lodged into my left buttock. I went with the pain, rolling off the pallet into the dirt and screaming.
“Medic!” I shouted. I was too immersed in my role play to stop. “Stretcher barriers!”
My wife, dependable soul that she is, rushed over to me.
“Oh dear Mark! You don’t half have a splinter in the buttocks. Lie still now. On your belly. Cut out the playacting. There’s a good fellow. Be still!”
She sat on the small of my back.
“I might need to get my shears and cut away your trousers so I can have a proper butcher’s. I’ve not seen a splinter this large in all my days. Can you walk?”
“No,” I whispered. “Leave me. Carry the fight to the enemy! Tell my wife I loved her.”
“It’s not yet time for all that you silly sausage,” she said. She tried to pull the splinter out but the pain was too much.
“What’s up Mrs French?” Cyclops again.
“Private French has gone and gotten himself a shrapnel wound in the backside,” she replied.
“He’ll be lucky to keep the leg,” Cyclops said, matter of factly, his hands in his patched pockets.
“What do you know about battlefield medicine?” I shot back.
“He almost threaded the eye of the needle!” my wife blurted out and they both laughed. She bounced up and down on top of me so hard I could barely breathe.
“Call a chopper!” I ordered. She bounced again and I farted so loudly it started a nearby cat.
“Grenade!” Cyclops shouted and made a show of ducking for cover.
“Oh Mark. That is atrocious!” my wife was having the time of her life.
“He’s delirious Mrs French. You best get him to the doctor.”
“Right enough Cyclops. Come on. You bring his rifle and I’ll be his crutches.”
“That stick there? Is that the rifle?”
“So it is.”
“It’s a good stick. I couldn’t have chosen better if I was playing army men.”
Suddenly another voice entered the fray.
“What’s up Mrs French?” It was Clarence, the butcher. A fat, red faced, bald man always with his bloody apron on. Behind him waited Ms Finch. As bird like as her name. Her lipstick was smeared across her cheeks. That caught Mrs French’s attention.
“Oi! Where did you get lippy from?”
“I make it myself from red dust and tallow,” Ms Finch replied. But she looked nervous. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hands. I had to groan dramatically to get my so called medical team to focus.
“My Mark has gone and gotten himself a beastly splinter in his backside.” My wife pointed at the splinter. “I think I can see blood coming through his trousers. That’ll be a bugger to get out.”
“Oh dear. Shall I help you get him home?” Ms Finch asked.
“I think we best take him to the doctor. Maybe even Accident and Emergency.” Clarence, the genius.
“No good Clarence. Our A&E was closed to teach people to take personal responsibility for their health, remember? And we dare not try and take him to the nearest one over in Ballocks. The wait will be so long he’ll be healed before he’s seen by a doctor. Or the wound will fester. I’m not sure how they amputate a single buttock?”
Suddenly another rubbernecker weighed in. Mrs Formaldyhide, the pharmacist. I would bet my last penny she was showing off in her work clothes too. People with jobs still! Just can’t help themselves.
“What’s wrong with old Mark then?”
“He’s got a splinter in his backside!” My doting wife, Cyclops, Ms Finch and Clarence all said together like some bloody Greek chorus.
“Well. Let’s have him along to the new private infirmary. He can get a spare bed there and if he promises to let them use his story in their online ads. He’ll get a 10% discount and a lower interest rate on the loan repayments to pay for treatment.”
And off we went. The rest is a little blurred, being pain killing medication, some paperwork I had to sign, the bright lights of a surgery and then a painful recovery. I had to lie on my front for a full week. But I remained upbeat throughout my recovery and shook hands with everyone in the infirmary.
1.2 The Divine Potato Brings Hope
The greatest British potato was born and raised in a loamy field located in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, before the war. It was red, white and blue in colour. Not just the skin but the interior too. It was recognised as a miracle by Prime Minister Bunsen and his son, who discovered it while walking late one afternoon.
Prior to the discovery of the holy tuber the field was already a celebrated point on the national map.
“Each time Prime Minister Bunsen celebrates a new marriage with a new child he brings the boy here,” patriotic parents would tell their children in reverent tones, as they walked along the perimeter of the gated field.
“You there! Keep moving!” The private security would bark at lingering pedestrians. They would smile and wave, knowing that it was all for show, in case anyone from Brussels was watching.
The reliable history says the Prime Minister spied the potato plant first next to a stand of English roses. He said to his son, “Look Barnaby! It’s a classic British potato plant! And in a field of English roses too! This is indeed sacred ground.”
At that moment a ray of British sunlight touched on the very spot and the plant’s green leaves “transmuted into gold”.
Barnaby’s intellectual power was noted from birth, and his artistic ability. He released his father’s hand and tottered to the potato plant.
“It a King Edward po-ta-to Pappa,” the boy identified the variety.
He next gripped the plant by the stem with his tiny hand and pulled it from the blessed soil with one heave. Displaying a strength beyond his tender years. Dangling from the exposed roots was the patriotic potato.
Barnaby studied the heavenly tuber and made the immortal declaration, “This…a mir-acle Pappa! A mir-acle! It is Union Flag pattern!”
The Prime Minister is recorded (in his own reliable memoirs) as falling to his knees and hugging both Barnaby and the potato tight.
“Barnaby, this is a sign from God,” he said, raising his eyes to the heavens. “This potato will be a symbol of the divinity of the will of the people from this day and for one thousand years to come.”
The potato was carried home by father and son where both the boy’s mother and the Prime Minister’s next wife were struck “dumb with wonder” at the sight.
The Prime Minister further records the distinct feeling of a divine presence accompanying them on the walk, as if the “Holy Ghost Winston himself had arrived to be our shield and staff”. The potato was later moved to the Tower of London, replacing the replica crown jewels on public display and an annual Spitfire fly past performed to honour the discovery.
“The divine potato is just one of the many reasons we have to invade London,” I would remind my wife daily when we sat down to lunch. “How can we allow the traitors to possess one of the holiest of Brexit relics?”
“It’s terrible my little Churchill,” she would reply. “Now, don’t let the gammon go cold. It will play havoc with your false teeth if it stiffens.”
London. London. London was the source of treason. London with its shining towers of glass paid for by the sweat of the noble men who toiled in the soft fruit fields outside of its walls. London with its flags of Europe hanging from balconies. A city so lost it had once floated an inflatable of the last truly great American, Donald Drumpf, in a nappy over the streets.
“When I get to London I am going to paint the pavements red, white and blue. Just like the holy potato!” I would promise my wife. “You will know that although I am far from home I am beating patriotism into the great Satan.”
She would smile in quiet satisfaction and say something like, “Eat your plum pudding before that blowfly crawls all over it again. It lingered so long last time you got excited I worried it had laid an egg.”
The air was thick with conspiracies in London even before its Unilateral Declaration of Independence and Union with Free Scotland. Before the English Civil War part two. People with European flag badges spoke in dark corners, seeking ways to overturn the overwhelming mandate delivered by the people in 2016. What was the occasional bare supermarket shelf when you have your sovereignty?
“In London they conspire to undermine the will of the people,” I would inform my goodly wife at breakfast. “You can tell who is a spy for Brussels by how tanned their skin is. Who goes to the Continent except for traitors? The British tourism industry needs those pounds, shillings and pence at home!”
“Don’t let your porridge go cold poppet,” she would reply. “You know how disagreeable you find it when it goes all lumpy.”
All bad things began in London. But the war would end there when we razed the glass towers to the ground, praying that the glass was safety glass. The Prime Minister would lead his loyal flock in holy procession from Chequers and back into 10 Downing Street. The patriotic potato would be safe again.
1.3 His Master’s Voice
Christmas 2022 was a wonderful time. The Prime Minister appeared randomly in West Sussex, Essex, Kent, East Sussex, Kent again and Norfolk (Cornwall was ignored due to the strength of the independence movement there). He was dressed as Father Brexit* and the papers said he ensured all of his children got to see him and make a wish in person. He also greeted carol singers in costume from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.
Through the late summer and into the autumn there had been rumours of another turkey shortage. These were dispelled when Mr Bunsen held a press conference. He promised the country “There would be adequate supplies of turkeys! Father Brexit promises it!”
The European Union continued in its ill conceived policy of attempting to blackmail the mighty Great British People into adhering to legally binding, international treaties that we had negotiated and signed in bad faith. They were incapable of understanding what British sovereignty means. A position which has hitherto gained them nothing but lost food exports to the UK. More fool them. We were digging for Britain once more!
Get Digging Done!
Once we had made a big enough hole we could work out what to do next.
“It’s amazing what edible plants you can find in alleyways if you really look,” I recall telling my doting wife, in the days before Christmas.
“Is it dear?” she asked.
“Yes. You should go and look. Take a stout stick with you. You never know what you maybe able to beat out of the long grass along the fence lines.”
I was not looking forward to another meal of limp iceberg lettuce and meat of “**no determinable origin“. My distracted wife was serving up poor fare of late. She blamed the empty supermarket shelves, but I worried it was a lack of patriotic fervour.
“Other chap’s wives manage to claw tins of spam from weaker women,” I admonished her, “and you my burly wife have hands like hams! Put them to good use woman!”
However Christmas would bring both surprise and relief.
The Prime Minister was to make his annual address to the nation and tell us how great everything was going. This year we were to receive it through a special gift from the state. A wireless radio. These had been manufactured in North Korea after Commander Trust agreed a secret free trade deal. But we did not know that yet, as it was an “Official Secret” when the radios arrived with a label saying “Made in Hartlepool“.
How my chest swelled with pride to see further evidence of what a fully sovereign, free trading nation could achieve freed of the shackles of Brussels!
The radios were branded “Churchill”, were Union Flag patterned and arrived tuned to The Great British Patriotic Broadcasting Corporation. The documents accompanying them said it was illegal to change the channel. The only time I ever had a cross word with my dear wife was the day she attempted to break that law. It was a regrettable scene. I had to resist reporting her to the Church of Brexit for apostasy.
I had come home for dinner early and I wager that is why I caught her in the unfortunate act. How many times had she previously tried to change the channel? I can not say. I shiver when I ask myself the question.
“Mrs French, your brave soldier is home,” I announced as I entered through the backdoor. I immediately jammed my fingers into my ears to pretend I couldn’t hear her reply. I wanted her to shout hello at me. I wanted to know she was truly thrilled that I was home.
But I could tell immediately things were not going to go smoothly.
Our dinner was planned in advance as a tin of corned beef scrapings, but it lay intact on the cutting board, by a sink full of dirty dishes. A perfect British onion next to the tin, only slightly mouldy and unmolested. A supreme British carrot lying almost to attention next to the onion. I fancy it would have saluted me if it had arms. Last in the display was the bag of government issued “grain replacement” – 100% ground to dusk English oak. If you had a case of the runs it was certain to cure it. I was convinced across The English Channel the woeful Franks had to hold it in and run when some barbarian meal like raw horse gave them a bad belly. We were sensible in England. We cooked our horses.
“Mrs French?” I continued through the kitchen and into the dining room. That is when I caught her at it. Bent over the wireless attempting to move the dial. Her broad British back to me.
She was so intent on wireless treason she did not hear me enter. My fingers fell from my ears. The GBPBC was playing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. I trembled to hear the song. My blood pulsing so hard I heard my heart beat in my head.
“Mrs Mark French!” I exclaimed. “Are you attempting to undermine the expressed will of the people?”
I felt as if I had been stabbed in my chest. It physically hurt to see her like this.
She froze a moment, but then her hands gripped our Churchill. She raised it over her head and turned to face me. She did not speak. Tears lined the rims of her eyes and her lips pulled back like an angry dog to reveal her teeth. This was a useful reminder to put her on the waiting list for our district’s dentist.
She took a single step towards me. I turned and fled. I ran back through the kitchen and out of the door into the yard. None of this made any sense. Then I heard the backdoor open again and waited for whatever was to happen next.
“Please my lubbly hubby. Please come back inside and let’s talk it over? There’s a good pet.”
Ah. She wished to discuss the terms of her surrender. I stiffened my spine and about faced with military precision. She retreated back into the shadows of the kitchen and I entered my castle again.
She was waiting for me by the kitchen table with our Churchill unplugged before her. Such a serious and stout wireless. Its bakelite frame so proud and British.
“Please Mark, give me a chance to prove myself?” she begged suddenly, bending down to rest on one of her knees. This gesture made me more uncomfortable than I can say, even though I could not tell you why.
“I must report you to Cardinal Bogg. You must undergo an ideological examination,” I informed her. This was now an ecumenical matter.
She paled. She shook her head. Suddenly she flattened herself across the linoleum like I had struck her on the back of the head.
“If you report me to the Church of Brexit who will cook your dinner?”
A good point.
“Who will prepare your lunch?”
Perhaps I was being too harsh. It was a first offence.
“And who will have breakfast waiting for you when you get up in the morning?”
Maybe I could buy a wife at the annual wife sales in the market square? There were rumours that fine tradition was to return. But that still meant many weeks of preparing my own food. A dire circumstance. And I have to confess I still loved her, even in that mad moment.
“If I forgive you will you promise me you will never attempt wireless treason again?”
“Oh yes Private French!” She moved to get up.
“Stay down. We have not finished yet.” Although I was already famished and this event had made it worse.
“This is a secret we must carry to our graves. You must never again attempt to change the station. You know saboteurs whisper on the dark wireless? Agents of Brussels!”
“I’m sorry.” She began to cry. Her hands were shaking again. “Please don’t make an example of me. I don’t want to end up like Ms Finch. Paraded through the streets. Branded on the cheek with the Flag of Europe!”
I pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down.
“You may prepare dinner now.”
“Thank you my devoted husband. Thank you.”
“After dinner I will go to the whitemarket and buy superglue. We will fix our Churchill’s dials to the patriotic spot. We will ensure this horrifying crime can never be repeated.”
She climbed to her feet. Such a lumpy thing she was. All breasts and hips. Thighs and cheeks. She wiped her palms on her apron. Smoothed her greying hair back from her tear streaked cheeks.
“You’re lucky to have me. Mr Finch did not waver yesterday when he caught Ms Finch do just this. But then his sister has always been suspect. Her punishment is to be public. I would prefer your punishments always remained private.”
She nodded and picked up the tin of spam scrapings.
“Now then. Let’s make the lettuce dumplings,” she said and set to work. Once more the proud patriot’s wife.
*Father Brexit is just Father Christmas rebranded, but the people approve. A poll by NoGov showed the approval held steady at 98%.
**Meat of no determinable origin is just as good as meat of determinable origin. To claim otherwise is a thought crime.
1.4 England prepares for war against England
Our Churchill radio was a world beating unit. No other country made wirelesses like them. To have the Prime Minister communicate directly to his subjects? Genius. The system was programmed to raise its own volume if conversation in the room was louder than its setting. There was no escaping the broadcasts.
“Never forget it is London’s fault the war has to be fought!” Mr Bunsen reminded us daily. “England must prepare for war against London. This is not a conflict we seek, but one that is forced upon us. Even now there is still time to keep the dogs of war on their leashes. Mayor Can must withdraw his Universal Declaration of Independence and hand himself in to the legitimate authorities. I promise he will receive a fair trial. If he chooses to stay on the treasonous path then all patriots must be prepared to Get War Done!”
After the message adverts played. The most common ad was for a brand of soup called “Chicken Stock”. The packaging was classic Union Flag pattern, but it came with a set of instructions for how to fold the box so that it became a Saint George Cross. It was riveting. The box disintegrated after a few goes so you had to buy another. Classic British salesmanship. I applauded them. I particularly liked the ad’s jingle which had an inspiring melody patriotically requisitioned from the Beatles’ song ‘Here Comes The Sun’. And great lyrics.
“Here comes the soup, here comes the chicken soup now, here comes the chi-chi-chi-chi-cken soup…”
As the words faded a confident man would inform you that “Chicken Stock chicken soup, it’s the patriot’s soup of choice! Just add one cube to sterilised water and wait for the magic to start“.
“That’s just what we’re having tonight for our supper,” my industrious wife informed me one evening. “Chicken Stock soup and I’ve managed to get a loaf of” But she stopped talking and flushed.
“What dear wife? A loaf of what?” It couldn’t be bread. All flour distribution had been halted for forty eight hours to teach the people to really appreciate flour.
“I don’t want to say. You will think me a liar.”
Silly woman. The only time I had ever thought her false was when she went mad for a moment and said she “didn’t like that Prime Minister Bunsen no more”. But I raised my eyebrow at her and she recovered.
“Just spit it out girl. A loaf of what?”
“Bread!” her voice croaked and she burst into tears. She was given to emotional moments before the war.
I moved to hug her, but didn’t. I was wearing my new uniform and I was certain she would not want to get it wet with her tears. I gave her a lecture instead.
“It’s clear the Remoaners need to have Great British patriotism beaten into them,” I declared, pointing to the Churchill with an imaginary pipe.
“I read daily of the food contraband airdropped in by Great Satan Brussels to Trafalgar Square.”
Often I had to be physically restrained by my wife from charging the capital singlehanded. Now was one of those moments.
“I can just see them. The traitors. Right now with their hands full of croissants. Their children eating bratwurst! The food crimes! I won’t stand for it! Why I bet their bananas are straight. Not like proper Yorkshire grown, *British bananas with patriotic curvature.”
“Not now pet,” she said, resting her hand on my shoulder. “You’ve not had your soup yet. And then there’s dessert.”
I sighed. It wouldn’t do to take on London without supper.
“I better eat first. You’re right.”
“London won’t know what’s hit them when you charge across the barricades on the M25,” she knew how to soothe me. “Now, let’s have our Chicken Stock and then ice cream? It’s just ice, but I’ve managed to save the cream off yesterday’s milk ration to go with it. Then we’ll listen to Mr Bunsen read out another chapter of his Shakespeare on the radio.”
It often went like this. After dessert I would be too sleepy. I would settle in my armchair and listen to the radio. It was a miracle that the Prime Minister found the time to write while leading the fight against the terrorist uprising.
Shortly after I would fall asleep and hope to have my favourite dream. The one in which I am Winston Churchill. Some nights I was lucky. Some mornings I was not so I would lay in bed imagining I had dreamed I was Winston Churchill. Afterwards I would do my push up and go downstairs for breakfast.
There was no need to conscript me of course for the patriot’s army as I volunteered. After I joined up I volunteered again to forge birth certificates so that any boy in Raylee over ten was suddenly eighteen. The exception was Cyclops.
“Private French! Private French!” he called out as I moved along his terrace one fine morning. Doing my duty and informing ten years olds they were in the army now. “I’ve just turned ten that means I’m now eighteen and I can fight!”
He was dressed in a pirate’s costume. Ragged trousers with a plastic musket jammed into an oversized belt. He had an eye patch on too, but for some daft reason he had placed it over his good eye and not the dead one. He had to hold it up to see where he was going. It was an accident waiting to happen.
“You’re disqualified on medical grounds Cyclops. And that musket has no hammer!”
“I can fight as well as any other ten year old!” he shouted. He tripped in a pot hole and fell face first into the road.
I laughed and kept going. There were six boys on this street who needed to report for basic training. And it was very basic training.
“Who will man the defensive perimeter when you are away?” my wife asked one evening, while stirring a pot of potato soup in our humble kitchen. It was a special recipe that only required one potato and yesterday’s dish water.
“I have been thinking about that,” I lied. “I’ve heard a rumour that Great British Ladies [Raylee’s women’s fashion retailer] is going out of business. Brussels is to blame. That much is obvious. I am going to commandeer the mannequins. They will work like scarecrows in a field of corn.”
My dearly beloved stopped stirring the soup a moment, resting the wooden ladle across the pot. She considered me. She shook her head and returned to stirring. I often surprised her with my genius and she didn’t like to show it.
“What is it humble wife?” I admit I wanted the praise.
“It’s just if you do get the mannequins…”
“Yes?”
“Might I have one to keep me company when you’re gone?”
She was a sentimental sod!
“As long as I have enough to fully man the barricade I don’t see why not.”
She smiled and picked up the ladle.
“You need to repair the barricade,” she said. “Some of the local lads are taking pallets off to burn an effigy of that Michel Barnier.”
*Yorkshire grown British Bananas are green in colour and textured like a courgette. The taste is exactly like a courgette. It is advisable to cook them before eating. Preferably fried in oil. But don’t use garlic for flavour as that is French.
1.5 Patriotism is forged
Ms Finch was branded on her right cheek in the yard outside “Ye Olde Great British Blacksmith’s Forge” at midday on summer solstice 2023. The forge was built in the 14th century. A squat and sturdy structure, it was famous for only having burned down once every one hundred years since its initial construction. And of those times only three had “caused a greater conflagration so as to imperil the village.”*
The current owner we all called “The Blacksmith”, even though his real name was Gary.
Gary was muscled and slow on any uptake, but he could beat a piece of iron all day without complaint. All his hair had long singed off in the heat of the furnace. His wife painted his eyebrows on each morning, but no one was impolite enough to mention it. We just treated him as he was, a patriot.
Ms Finch was branded on a perfect English summer day. Far superior to the over baked days they were rumoured to favour on the Continent. The sky blue forever with the sun just hot enough to make people complain, but you still had to work to get burnt. A soft breeze flowed through the village and children chased a puppy along the high road. At the time meat was only included in the rations once a week.
The mood in Raylee had been building to a fever all week. Bus stops were plastered with posters announcing the branding, time and place, and urging “All to come and join in the celebration of patriotism. Be sure to bring your children along!”. Schools closed for the day. It was a very local public holiday.
Our Churchill even carried the news in a daily segment just after “Patriotic Thought for the Day”. I smacked my lips in satisfaction when I heard our noble little village get its mention.
“And now…The Branding, Shaming and Marriage News. The following public shamings will take place in town squares, or other named places, in the following places today. Bucketforth, three local residents to be publicly shaved for heresy. Mincehead, one local suspected of spying for Brussels to fight a pig. Enema, five forced marriages to occur simultaneously alongside the cow insemination ceremony in the larger field…Raylee, one resident to be branded on the cheek for Wireless Crime…and now the national anthem sung by the Children’s Choir of Spitmore.“
Ms Finch’s branding itself wasn’t pitch perfect. Some joker had scrawled “ry” onto the end of “Forge” on the sign over the Blacksmith’s and it detracted from the solemnity of Ms Finch screaming.
“This is a crying shame,” I said to my rosy cheeked wife as we waited for the event. “This branding is supposed to be the highlight of the day. Ms Finch has been in solitary confinement preparing all week.”
Ms Finch was led out all the same by a well turned out squad of Brexit Youth.
“Don’t they look full of purpose in their brown shorts,” my wife noted. Shorts was a little generous. Due to a shortage of cotton, linen, denim and polyester the shorts were made locally out of hessian sacks. The children of the Brexit Youth knew better than to complain. They wanted dinner.
The youth tied Ms Finch to a stout, oak stake driven into the earth just outside the forge.
“I wager if Prime Minister Johnson hadn’t got Brexit done we could not have done this,” I commented. “Some nanny red tape from Brussels would have forbidden sovereign Englishmen from tying traitors to stakes in village squares.”
There was a card table set up close by the staked Ms Finch. The Food Ministry had allowed a special allocation of baking rations for the village to prepare tea and cakes. No one was going home without getting their hands on something.
There were formalities to observe first though. Ms Finch was photographed by anyone who still had a working smartphone. She did herself proud here, scowling like a traitor at everyone who stepped up to photograph her.
Next a poem about Great British Potatoes was recited by Clarence, the butcher.
“On the continent their potatoes cause incontinence,
But a Great British Potato will see you through,
With its red, white and blue...”
Then the pharmacist Ms Formaldyhide held up a black cat before Ms Finch’s face. If it failed to hiss the branding would be called off. At first the feline seemed reluctant, but a quick jerk of its tail and it passed judgement.
“Now it’s time for Gary to shine,” I whispered.
The Blacksmith took the hot iron from the coals. We could see its light in the shadows of his forge. Silence. Anticipation.
Gary’s wife had painted eyebrows on that curved up. As he walked out of the shadows holding the white iron he looked permanently surprised. I suspect it was his wife’s little joke. Mrs Gary and Ms Finch weren’t close, even before we reclaimed our sovereignty.
“No. No. No. Please no!” Ms Finch screamed. She had learned the lines on the script given to her. I clapped and others followed suit.
“You people are fucking animals!” Ms Finch bellowed, as the sizzling iron neared her face. This was off script. The crowd muttered disapprovingly.
“Watch it or you’ll be voted off and you won’t be on next week’s show!” I shouted at her. Everyone laughed.
“Well if you don’t like it here why don’t you go and live in Europe!” Clarence the Butcher bellowed. Slapping his aproned thighs and laughing. He got less response than me. I would later revise down my estimation of his poetry.
My watchful wife whispered an observation to me but between Ms Finch making a racket and Clarence laughing himself silly I couldn’t catch it.
“What’s that?” I shouted back.
She whispered again but I still couldn’t hear her.
Louder woman. Louder. I motioned with my hands.
Suddenly Ms Finch went quiet, the branding iron held theatrically inches from her face, and Clarence shut up too.
“I DON’T KNOW WHY CLARENCE WEARS THAT APRON STILL! HE HASN’T HAD A CARCASS TO BUTCHER”
I clamped my hand over Mrs French’s mouth. To comment publicly on food shortages was treason.
Everyone turned to glare at her, except The Blacksmith. He chose then to press the iron into Ms Finch’s face. She got back on script immediately. She screamed for all she was worth. Everyone was so distracted they forgot my foolish wife. It was a lucky escape.
The brand itself was a gem. It had been cast from steel recycled from the fuselage of a Spitfire dug up in a field outside of town. It was found by some treasure hunters days before they were drafted into the army to serve as bomb disposal and mine clearance. The brand’s design came direct from 10 Downing Street. Legend said it was designed by one of Prime Minister Bunsen’s infant children. His artistic flair was prodigious the moment he left the womb. The papers regularly carried reproductions of his work to keep morale high.
The design was the Flag of Europe, minus one star.
All who saw a branded face knew where their loyalties lay. After today Ms Finch would be an outcast.
The Blacksmith stepped back and admired his handiwork. He would have had an easier time of that if Ms Finch wasn’t thrashing and complaining. She lacked Blitz Spirit, there was no denying it. I could smell her burnt flesh and I wasn’t complaining, and it was a terrible smell. One wondered at her diet.
“Hang on,” Gary said. He stepped back up. He held Ms Finch’s head still with one of his giant hands and carefully pressed the brand back into the same spot. Harder this time.
“CLARENCE!” she shouted out. “CLARENCE!”
People looked at the butcher. He just shrugged and circled his finger around his temple to signal she was mad.
My wife poked me in the ribs. This was my moment. I stepped up to Ms Finch and turned to the crowd.
“From this day forth Ms Finch is outcast from all full time employment. From now on she can only seek minimum wage work in fruit picking, social care, hospitality, medicine, auto-manufacturing or any other of the sectors that were betrayed by EU workers during Cardinal Patel’s long and glorious reign.”
The crowd nodded in approval.
“None are to give her comfort. She is to find no shelter from the storm. None may lay a hand on her. None may consort with her carnally or in conversation about politics. She must be ready to work in the digital economy and not complain if her shift is terminated early. When visiting any hospital to work she must pay full car parking charges regardless of whether she has driven to work or not. When you see the stars branded onto her cheek you know she was caught attempting to change the channel on her Churchill wireless!”
Just then the puppy ran into the circle, interrupting my speech. The gaggle of children burst in after it, led by Cyclops. The wretched puppy made straight for Ms Finch and climbed onto her feet, whimpering and cringing there. A poor choice of sanctuary.
“Do you want me to brand the puppy too?” The Blacksmith asked. “Won’t take but a moment to heat the iron back up.”
“It does look a foreign breed,” I replied. “Let’s put it to a referendum?”
“I’ll get some papers and we can write our votes on them,” Ms Formaldyhide offered and went off at speed shouting “The will of the people!” in excitement.
“Shall we have the tea and cakes while we wait?” my generous wife asked, pointing to the card table.
The Blacksmith shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed the food. Great!” He went into his forge just long enough to put the iron back in the fire and then made straight for the table. That started a rush. He was famous for his appetite.
Clarence was the only one who stood still. He didn’t see that I saw, but his eyes were fixed to Ms Finch, a single fat tear rolling slower than time itself down his cheek.
*Chapter Five, page 14, “The Lives and Times of Raylee – A Very British Village”, published by anon.
1.6 A Sight For Sore Eyes
Great British Ladies went out of business just when I needed them to fail. This is the luck of the patriot and I am a patriot.
You see the postman had delivered a letter that morning from The Ministry of War informing me that they were rebranding as ‘The Ministry of Peace’. Policies, staff and the objective of a total and crushing victory over the internal enemy remained unchanged.
Five minutes later a second postman appeared to deliver a second letter, this one from The Ministry of Peace. I was now in charge of “Seizing whatever retail goods I deemed expedient to the war effort“.
I can not recall a prouder morning in all my life. The envelope was of exceptional British quality. The paper thick and velvety. I held it for a minute, not wanting to damage its perfection. Its completeness.
“Open it Mark,” my wife urged, “don’t just stand there, gaping like a goldfish.”
“I’m not gaping woman,” I gasped. “I’m controlling my breathing. It’s a well known special services technique.”
“Would you like me to open it for you?” she offered her hand.
I handed the envelope to her. It would do our marriage good for her to see that right at the beginning of my service I was already advancing. Would she be able to cope with my meteoritic rise? Time would tell.
“It’s a lovely envelope,” she cooed. “It feels like velvet. Oh look it says ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ at the top and there’s a little drawing of the Prime Minister’s current wife. That’s a nice touch.”
The Churchill radio burst into music. Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1‘. A better choice of song for the ceremony I could not have chosen.
“Open it,” I whispered.
My wife nodded and picked up a paring knife to cut open the envelope.
“Carefully.”
“Oh, I’ll be ever so careful,” she said with a mad grin. “I don’t want to cut myself in the excitement.”
“No! Be careful not to damage the letter! You will heal. The letter can’t.”
She furrowed her brow a moment and made a little slashing motion through the air. The Churchill got louder.
Then she cut the envelope’s throat in a single swipe. I gasped. If the letter had been hurt I did’t know what I would do.
I took the envelope from her.
“Oi! Don’t snatch! I could have had your finger off!”
I slipped the letter out of its sleeve and held it, still folded over.
“Would you like me to read it for you?”
I handed it over and she unfolded it. It was like a light shone from the paper across her face.
“There’s gold lettering at the top. Look.”
I could not look. I closed my eyes and listened to Elgar. In the distance I could hear a dog yelping. Nearby a window smashed and a woman began screaming obscenities. The Churchill raised its voice again to compensate. The choir was starting in with ‘Land of hope and glory…‘. I was ecstatic. I felt I was vibrating. It was as if a battalion of angels in Union Flag waistcoats had arrived to sing.
It meant my wife had to shout out the letter’s contents.
“Private Martin French,” she bellowed, “you are empowered by The People’s Government to take what you want from [enter town name here] shops at will.”
She paused. I presumed because she was also carried away by Elgar. I looked at her heaving bosom and imagined…
“Just imagine it,” she shouted. “They couldn’t even get your name right.”
I confess I felt powerful and no minor clerical error would deflate me.
“I wonder why they didn’t write Raylee in the letter too? Just enter town name here?”
I took the letter and placed it on the kitchen table. I would not hear another word against it.
“Won’t the shopkeepers be left out of pocket?” my wife wondered.
“I will issue them with official receipts,” I hollered.
“What? I can’t hear you over Churchill!”
“When the enemy is defeated,” I shouted as loud as I could, “I am sure the shopkeepers will be rewarded for their contributions!”
“But most of the shops barely have anything to sell as it is!” She was red in the fact with the effort to be heard.
Our Churchill’s volume increased again and again. We were now in a shouting match with the wireless we would never win. I put my finger to my lips and shushed my wife. Once we had been quiet for a bit the Churchill calmed down.
“Then they won’t notice much difference, will they?” I whispered. She frowned and gave me one of those lingering looks that looked judgemental, but was obviously not.
“Let’s have our breakfast and after I’ll take you to window shop at Great British Ladies. You might see something you fancy inside?”
She nodded and we set about breakfast, the letter in the middle of the table, beaming its approval at my military career.
Breakfast finished I took Mrs French to Great British Ladies. Mr Jelly was inside, surrounded by the failure Brussels had forced on him. A regiment of naked plastic mannequins stood about him. Their morale evaporated. Heads missing or downcast. Arms hanging at their sides. It was no wonder the wily Continentals were able to undermine the enterprise.
“Why isn’t Mr Jelly having a closing down sale?” my naive wife asked.
Mr Jelly began to sob, all wobbly jowls and heaving chest. He had combed his hair over but it was now so thin his beetroot dome was pulsating. He held a clothes hanger and abruptly began to beat it against his forehead.
“Oh dear. Should we do something?”
“He can beat himself without our help,” I replied. Although I was of a mind to go inside and give him assistance.
He wasn’t half giving himself a proper thrashing.
“This is not patriotic behaviour,” I muttered.
“Please don’t report him.”
My wife cast about anxiously, but there was no one else watching. A few people were coming this way, but Mr Jelly was making such a racket now they smartly about faced or veered off in various directions. He was fortunate. He was almost certainly in the act of committing a crime. Blitz spirit must be on display in times of adversary. And it was a time of adversary all the time.
“A closing down sale would cheer him up,” my wife said. “Let’s go in and buy something.”
“There’s no need for that. We can just take whatever we want on behalf of The Ministry of Peace. I’ll be having those mannequins.”
“You mean the Ministry of War.”
“No. They’ve had a rebrand. Remember the letter?”
“How could I forget? They got your name wrong!”
I had a sudden urge to pinch her hard. It took a lot of effort to resist. I didn’t want to make a show of things in public.
We carried on watching Mr Jelly. He flung the coat hanger away and began to slap himself. He was a suspiciously plump man. His jowls wobbled hilariously as he beat himself.
“It is against the law for small businesses to advertise failure,” I reminded my wife. “Great British businesses do not fail.”
“Get Business Done!” I shouted in exasperation. It did not help. I wondered if Mr Jelly would soon find himself publicly shamed?
Then Mrs French did the maddest thing. She stepped up to the windows and rapped on them with her knuckles.
“Mr Jelly!”
He didn’t notice so she knocked even harder. Inside the store he paused and slowly turned to look at us. Such a face on him. He was quite mad. But my insane wife just waved and smiled. He returned her smile, but I can’t say it was a convincing grin.
“The least he could do is stand up straight,” I said. If this was the measure of the average man in Brexitannia we would have an uphill slog in the war.
“I went to school with old Jelly,” she said.
“He was a right little monkey. He loved nothing better than to serenade the girls. He can’t sing to save himself. But he does a good impersonation of an opera singer. Once he fell to his knees at my feet and”
“That’s enough of that,” I silenced her. Mr Jelly was clearly a subversive from a young age. I wouldn’t have rumours spreading that my wife kept his company. “Someone may hear.”
My nutty missus now started waving at him. I was at a loss to know which of them was madder.
“I think we need to keep moving,” I took Mrs French by the elbow and urged her away.
“Perhaps we should ask him back for dinner? He’s looking awfully skinny for him. I wonder if Mrs Jelly is feeding him right?”
“I saw her foraging for wild potatoes and garlic in Batters Lane just this morning,” I lied.
“That’s funny. She’s allergic to garlic. Allergic to all the alliums.”
“She was wearing gardening gloves.”
“Goodness. Where would they have come by such an extravagance as gardening gloves? You wore out my last pair building the barricade and Mrs Jelly is swanning about Raylee with her own still? I don’t recall seeing her drilling the school children in the latest patriotic songs. Well.”
That was more like it.
“Do you know I am going to get another new uniform?” I changed the subject.
“Next you will be telling me Mrs Jelly’s got hold of a piglet. Some people get all the luck!”
“Cardinal Bogg discovered an entire warehouse of TA catering corp uniforms. Good as new. The People’s Army is to wear them with pride. Raylee will get its share.”
“But you’re not in the catering corp? You said you were drafted into counter intelligence on account of your IQ? But you’d be serving with the regulars because you were on a secret mission and needed to disguise yourself in the field.”
“It’s all true.” I walked a little faster.
“I’ve been saving some scrap material to patch my best knickers. I’ll make you a real army badge for you to celebrate your importance.”
We passed a billboard next that was receiving a bold new poster.
“The High Street is Strong!” It proclaimed and, “Small and Medium Sized Great British Businesses are BOOMING!”
“Look at that!” I cried. “Well done boys! Keep morale high!”
My wife looked at it, and appeared confused.
“Why don’t you ever see any adverts for actual businesses these days?” she wondered OUT LOUD.
“I think it’s time we queued at the food market and hurried home for lunch” I replied, urging her forward at greater speed. I often wondered if she was off her rocker. Today was one of those days.
At the food market we secured a turnip. It was a beast. We would roast half and boil half and make a meal of it.
Later that evening, after we had eaten our dinner, I said I needed to “walk off the turnip” and snuck back to look again at ‘Great British Ladies’. The ladies of Raylee may have no more use for Great British Ladies, but I did. Especially the plastic ones.
Behind the windows the next recruits for the war effort waited in the same positions as earlier. Right now they were just mannequins, but soon they would be transformed into the Patriotic Raylee Civilian Defence Militia. They would stand guard on the defensive barricade when I was gone.
I slept well that night.
“I will handpick the sentries myself,” I told my wife the next morning, as we broke our fast on a tin of baked bins. Baked beans! Who would have thought it? I wanted to count every bean.
“Aren’t we lucky Mark?” my wife said as she heated the tin up. “Mrs Jelly left them with a note this morning asking us not to tell anyone about Mr Jelly beating himself in public.”
“We are indeed fortunate. It’s a funny old world isn’t it?”
I bet the Jelly’s had a stash of tinned goods was under a loose floorboard, under a rug, in their living room. Imperishable goods squirrelled away. They had lacked belief in British sovereignty. Well they believed now!
“I’ll pick the cream of the crop from Great British Ladies,” I promised, as the smell of beans filled the air. My mouth was watering. “No amputees. No headless ones. Just the able bodied plastic patriots.”
My wife stopped stirring the beans for a moment and gave me a searching look.
“Yes my love, I’ll bring one home for you. As promised.”
The mannequins would be dressed out like soldiers. They would protect Raylee when the men of the town marched to war. Anyone looking at the town from a distance would see a company of men on guard and assume hundreds more were stationed in the town. That would show Brussels!
“When are you marching again?”
“In forty eight hours.”
Finally the hour was drawing near. London would fall. We had orders to join up with several other regiments in Surrey and await the arrival of Field Marshall Gave.
“I am marching to greatness,” I whispered.
“We can put the last of the Worcestershire Sauce Substitute on the beans if you like?”
I had no doubts about my destiny.
“Here we go,” my loyal wife set the plates of beans on the table. “You’ll need your strength.”
Our Churchill crackled into life as we ate. It was ‘Thought for the Day’. The Prime Minister or one of his ministers always had something to say.
“Great Britain has concluded the latest rounds of negotiations on the Australian trade deal!” Ah, it was Captain Trust today.
“Soon we will receive the first shipments of Vegemite and Tim Tams! Which is funny in a way. Many used to scoff at the thought of eating Vegemite, but now is the perfect time to start. You might not always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need.”
As she finished talking The Rolling Stones’ song with those words started to play.
“Shouldn’t they be playing an Australian song?” my innocent wife asked.
“It is a Great British trade deal so an indigenous British song is more appropriate,” I replied. “I’ve lost count of the number of times the Australian Trade Deal has been announced. It always makes me smile.”
After breakfast I went to Great British Ladies and informed Mr Jelly I was enlisting the mannequins.
“Any ones I want I will raise the right arm of with a flat palmed salute. You will deliver them to the barricade.”
He just looked at me forlornly and said, “I was hoping to exchange them for some rice.”
I bet he was. As if it wasn’t enough for him to fail his country in business now he was trying to hold back supplies vital to the war effort.
“Perhaps you’d fancy a big EU flag brand on your cheek?” I asked, with a smile.
Then he smiled quietly (heaven only knows why!) at some private musing, clicked his heels together and saluted with a raised and flattened palm.
“Don’t get shot old boy,” he said.
“You’re a dummy.” I hit back so fast he was lost for words.
He just collapsed into giggles. It was little wonder Mr Jelly had failed at business.
1.7 Passing out, after breakfast
The day I marched to war I had a kipper for breakfast. The packaging was Union Flag pattern so you knew just eating it you were strengthened magically. Good old fashioned greased paper too. Not that plastic rubbish they had on the Continent. I didn’t know what Mrs French had done to obtain the magic fish. I still don’t.
“It’s real,” she said with reverence. “It’s not a plywood substitute.”
No one in our village had eaten a real kipper since the blockade of British Sovereign waters by the American Navy had become permanent in 2022. No one in our village mentioned the blockade since it was listed as an official secret. We all just blamed France.
This kipper was a gift horse I was not looking in the mouth. My only concern was my wife may try and share it with me? I was to march five miles that day and I needed the protein myself.
“Don’t worry,” she smiled. “You don’t have to share it.”
She unwrapped the kipper and placed it in a patch of sun to warm up. “The gas is off. But the sun will do a good enough job of heating it. It’s all for you. You’ll need all your strength today.”
“What will you have for breakfast?”
“Pride,” she beamed and she picked up the wrapping and licked it. “Mmm. It tastes like sovereignty!”
We even had coffee too. That was a shock. I believed we’d run out weeks ago.
“I been saving a spoonful of ‘English Replica Instant’ for just this event,” she whispered as she placed the steaming mug in front of me. “Don’t rush it. You don’t know when you’ll next get another mug.”
I did. The army had a warehouse full of actual coffee after the successful capture of an EU relief drop fell outside of the M25 by accident.
The kipper was a wonder. You could tell it had been caught in British waters by the sheen on its sides. If you turned it to the right in the light it lit up red, white and blue. I fancy its mouth even smiled.
There had been rumours for weeks that a sort of superhero was visiting houses in the night and leaving kippers in kitchen sinks with a note that said “British Fish Are Sovereign Fish”. He had only ever been glimpsed making good his escape.
“Did you find it in our fireplace this morning?” I asked.
“No. Don’t ask me how I got it.” It was then I noticed her right cheek was speckled with blood.
“I can barely believe it’s real,” I said as I cut away the first mouthful. “I could take London singlehanded if I had a kipper for breakfast every day.”
“It’s out of date but I fancied it was still good to eat,” my enamoured wife commented. “Mrs Formaldyhide…”
I looked up sharply and she fell silent. She took the dish cloth out of the sink and wiped at the blood.
“La la la la!” she sang. This woke up our Churchill. The Dumbusters’ theme song took up where she left off.
Suddenly the backdoor burst open and Cyclops entered. He was flushed and panting. He eye swivelling. He was holding some variety of chocolate bar. It was impossible to tell which at first.
“I won this month’s county raffle!” he exclaimed.
“Oh poppet that’s marvellous!” my kind wife shouted. “You better eat it fast before one of the bigger boys mugs you of it. Which one is it? Mars or Snickers?”
“I’ve been too excited to check,” Cyclops grinned, little fool that he was. “If only my dad where here to see it.”
“Let me see,” I invited. “I’m an expert on these matters. In a moment I’ll be able to tell you if it’s from a box of Celebrations or a regular one made small by shrinkflation.”
“It must be a regular one. We had a box of Celebrations at school and Miss had to get the microscope out to show us the contents.”
Cyclops went to hand it to me but Mrs French charged around the table and stood between us.
“Cyclops you little muppet,” she laughed, “you give that to my Mark and he’ll eat it.”
Before I could protest my innocence there was a great calamity in the backyard. The sound of half a dozen teenagers all shouting and hollering for Cyclops. Our Churchill was not best pleased. It became so loud the speaker vibrated.
“Come out freak! Come out and hand it over!”
Cyclops paled. He looked at me to save him. I busied myself with the kipper. It was going down a treat.
“Well?” my impatient wife looked at me. I avoided her eyes.
“This kipper is excellent. Well done.”
The boys continued their taunting. “Remoaner! Remoaner!”
The back door creaked open an inch. Cyclops yelped and dived under the table, clinging to one of my legs. I gave it a determined shake but he just held on tighter.
“Come out little piggy!” a boys whispered from just outside. “Or we’ll huff and puff your little house down.”
“He doesn’t live here!” I shouted back.
The kipper really was the best. If only it was bigger I would have stayed at breakfast forever.
“Are you going to do something?” my silly wife demanded, her hands on her hips.
“I’ve got to march at least five miles today,” I replied. “Maybe even six.”
She muttered something and opened the kitchen drawer. I could see from the corner of my eye she was now holding the rolling pin.
“You stay here Cyclops,” she ordered the trembling pup. “I’ll see to this.”
And out the back door she went. I pushed back my chair and went to follow but Cyclops clung on for dear life. I had to drag him across the floor to make any progress. It was useless.
“What you going to do you silly old milf?” one of the boys taunted.
“You ginger prick!” I heard my wife shout. “And you’re in uniform too. Your a disc race!”
Next was the sound of a rolling pin hitting a face. Thunk.
There was another crack. And another. A pandemonium of weeping boys that even Churchill couldn’t overcome.
“If I hear you’ve laid a hair on Cylop’s head you’ll get another thrashing! Now scram!”
A moment later she returned and moved as calm as you like to wash blood off the rolling pin.
“It’s alright Cyclops,” I told the boy. “You’re safe. Now if you don’t mind please let go of my leg.”
He released me and hugged my wife around her ample, childbearing hips.
“Thank you Mrs French. My mother has a proper potato stashed at home. I’m going to get it to you.”
“It’s alright Cyclops,” she said, without turning around. “You can give it to Private French. He’s to march five miles today, maybe even six. He’ll need all of his strength.”
I popped the last bite of kipper into my mouth.
“You’re going to war?” Cyclops asked, wide eyed.
“This very day,” I replied proudly. I chewed on the fish but Cyclops was so impressed her released my wife and rushed me. Almost jumping into my lap in his admiration. I was swallowing in that moment and the fish became stuck in my throat.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Help!” I gasped. But Mrs French thought I wanted her to get Cyclops off me and just laughed.
It wasn’t until I fell face first onto my empty plate that she realised I was in earnest. The world was growing black around me. The Dumbusters’ tune was fading out. I was going to be a martyr before my time! For a few seconds I passed out.
“Use the Heinrich manoeuvre!” Cyclops screamed. The last thing I thought I would ever hear. Little traitor. I wouldn’t be saved by a German action!
Happily Mrs French grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me back against the chair and whacked me with her flat hand on my back.
The little bite of fish flew straight out of my mouth and I was saved.
“Good work Mrs French. Mark has to die for his country not his breakfast.” Cyclops said and they both laughed. I would remember that.
1.8 Finally, I pass out on my feet
Mrs French and I had a quiet moment together before I left. I was dressed for war. We stood facing one another in our humble kitchen, my wife twisting the dish cloth in her hands tighter and tighter.
“I have never left for war before,” I told her directly, looking her in the eyes. “I’m sure what to do except to tell you I will be brave and I will fight to defend our home against Brussels.”
She gave the cloth another twist. Water was starting to pool at her feet.
“Do you want to kiss me goodbye?” she asked and we both blushed.
I thought she might cry so I tried to take the dish cloth but she held on for dear life.
“Give it to me,” I ordered, but she shook her head.
“I’m not going to do the dishes you silly old thing. That’s your job.”
She relented. I took the cloth and dabbed at a fat tear on her cheek.
“Don’t cry.”
“Oh Mark, I may not have much choice on that.”
I was not going to cry. I was convinced of it. But suddenly a giant blub exploded from me and I snorted a snot bubble out trying to hold it in.
“You’ve set me off!” I said. She took the cloth back and wiped my nose.
Our Churchill started up. It was a recording of a man singing “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”.
We stood for a while, each sobbing away. Then we embraced as John McCormack was joined by the backing singers. How could we lose with songs like this to sing as we marched?
“You will send me back food? From the front? When you write to me,” my wife asked.
That sounded like treason. To even suggest the good women of patriotic English towns would not receive their rations? It must have been the anxiety of my leaving. I decided to let it slide.
“Victory will see us feast!” I said. I stepped back and stiffened my lip.
“I’ll starve myself so that you may eat!” she sobbed, which was much more like it.
“Now I must be off. The men will be waiting on the high road for me.”
“Take care of them. Most of them don’t even have bum fluff on their top lip yet.”
I had to leave. Anymore of this and I would not be able to walk without a second breakfast to regain my strength.
“Don’t forget your rifle,” she said, pointing to the stout stick resting by the back door.
I collected it and opened the door, pausing to look back one last time.
“Don’t cook a breakfast for another man while I’m away.”
She nodded. Shaking the dish cloth at me and shaking her head.
“Don’t prepare a lunch for another man while I’m at war.”
She shook her head in wonder. She looked a little cranky.
“Don’t even think about inviting a stray chap to dinner.”
She turned the dish cloth in her hands so tightly the final drops of water wrung out. Then she whipped me with it hard and fast across my butt cheeks.
“That’s more like it! Now come and wave goodbye.”
“It’s wave goodbye or wring your neck!”
I put my rifle on my shoulder and stepped outside. My devoted wife followed behind me.
It was a glorious day. Churchills were playing stirring anthems all up and down the street. A patriotic day. I marched out of our yard sure the plastic buttons on my uniform were gleaming.
“We will meet again,” I reassured my wife, as we followed me to the High Road. “I don’t know where. I don’t know when. But we’ll meet again some sunny day. And when we do I will be covered in medals!”
“Get War Done,” she shouted.
“Control British Fish!”
“British fish are sovereign fish!”
That’s the spirit!
“Don’t beg me to stay. I have to fight.”
“I won’t,” she replied, her voice cracking. “You have to face the enemies of the people.”
“It’s my duty.”
“Go faster,” she urged suddenly. “Please go faster. You don’t want to be left behind.”
We walked along a row of houses with large hedges lining the pavement and just at that moment a dark shape burst from the hedges and ran at me.
I was not alarmed. I immediately lay down and covered my head with my hands.
“Private French! Private French!”
I remained motionless. Perfectly demonstrating the art of battlefield camouflage.
“Mark French!”
“What do you want to be bothering my Mark for now Cyclops?” my wife demanded. “You can see he’s off to war.”
“I can see he’s still got a stick and no rifle,” Cyclops said, and giggled. Little traitor.
He grabbed my elbow and shook it.
“Private French? Get up. It’s me Cyclops. Why don’t you talk to me? Why are you shivering?”
“I’m not shivering Cyclops,” I said as I sat up. “I am perfectly mimicking the vibrations of hundreds of marching feet as I disguise myself as the pavement.”
My wife burst out laughing. The tears now banished. But I was too focused on Cyclops to see what it was that amused her.
“Gosh. Did you learn that in basic training?”
“He learned how to tremble like a leaf all on his own,” my wife declared. Was she losing her wits in the emotion of it all?
In the distance we heard a bugle sound. Or was it a cat howling? The bugler was new to the instrument.
“You’ve got to move it Mr French or you’ll miss the war,” Cyclops, the little idiot.
“Come on then. Let’s get a wriggle on,” my wife offered me a hand up and Cyclops handed me my rifle.
“You look smashing Mrs French,” Cyclops said to my wife. “Why so many Union Flags in one dress.”
She hid her face in her dish cloth and sobbed in heaves.
“Now you’ve set her off again Cyclops!” I chided him. Little rat. “I will prove myself dear. I will uphold the will of the people. I was born under a blazing star.”
“Oh Mark, you fool.”
“Shush now. Only speak in three word sentences while I am away,” I ordered her. I moved in close and went to hold her hands, but she retreated. She would crumble to dust at my touch. As it was her heel caught in the pavement and she would have fallen over backwards if Cyclops hadn’t grabbed her.
“I am going to fulfil the will of the people.” I saluted her.
“Don’t miss me,” she muttered, hugging Cyclops to her waist.
“I won’t! I will look after myself.”
I was following my destiny.
Destiny is all.
With courage and Union Flag branded munitions I could not fail.
It was the perfect moment to march away, just the right beat, but Cyclops buggered it up by snapping to attention and saluting me.
“Private Mark Aurelius French,” he said solemnly. “I want you to take my lucky potato with you to war. It was given me by my godmother on the day of my birth and we have kept it frozen all these years. But today it defrosts in your honour. May it bring you luck as it has done for me.”
He thrust the cold vegetable at me.
“But what will you do without it?” my wife asked. Who cared?
“I will wait for the new potatoes to arrive,” he replied. “I heard on the radio this morning that Field Marshall Wetherspoons has sent to Jersey for a convoy of potatoes. They will arrive any day now. No blockade can keep a potato from the chosen land. If we just believe hard enough. I we ignore the gloomsters. That’s what our Churchill said.”
I took the potato. The bugle sounded again, although I was certain it was a cat this time. I forgot myself and ruffled Cyclop’s hair. Tucked the potato inside my coat and marched onwards.
“Crush a fifth columnist, liberal elite, snowflake saboteur for me!” Cyclops shouted.
“What happened to your tooth?” I could hear my wife ask him as I joined the growing stream of men heading up the road.
“I lost it fighting the big boys for my chocolate.”
“Well, we’ll go directly to mine and get my rolling pin and then we’ll go see those big boys. Would you like that?”
“Are you going to thrash six types of shit out of them?”
“It will be my pleasure.”
It was clear they weren’t watching me anymore. For Heaven’s Sake! Anyone would think we had adopted the boy.
“Get War Done!” I bellowed, as a chap fell into step beside me. He was wearing a Scout’s uniform, badges and all and he carried what looked like an actual rifle. The big show off! The uniform was so tight I’d wager it was a child’s.
“Believe In Great British Potatoes!” he replied. I decided to ignore his attempt to upstage me. He could tell I had a full lucky potato in my pocket. I was certain. I wasn’t go mad in the emotion of the moment.
And we marched on together. Brothers in arms with a war to win.
Mrs French and I had a quiet moment together before I left. I was dressed for war. We stood facing one another in our humble kitchen, my wife twisting the dish cloth in her hands tighter and tighter.
“I have never left for war before,” I told her directly, looking her in the eyes. “I’m sure what to do except to tell you I will be brave and I will fight to defend our home against Brussels.”
She gave the cloth another twist. Water was starting to pool at her feet.
“Do you want to kiss me goodbye?” she asked and we both blushed.
I thought she might cry so I tried to take the dish cloth but she held on for dear life.
“Give it to me,” I ordered, but she shook her head.
“I’m not going to do the dishes you silly old thing. That’s your job.”
She relented. I took the cloth and dabbed at a fat tear on her cheek.
“Don’t cry.”
“Oh Mark, I may not have much choice on that.”
I was not going to cry. I was convinced of it. But suddenly a giant blub exploded from me and I snorted a snot bubble out trying to hold it in.
“You’ve set me off!” I said. She took the cloth back and wiped my nose.
Our Churchill started up. It was a recording of a man singing “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”.
We stood for a while, each sobbing away. Then we embraced as John McCormack was joined by the backing singers. How could we lose with songs like this to sing as we marched?
“You will send me back food? From the front? When you write to me,” my wife asked.
That sounded like treason. To even suggest the good women of patriotic English towns would not receive their rations? It must have been the anxiety of my leaving. I decided to let it slide.
“Victory will see us feast!” I said. I stepped back and stiffened my lip.
“I’ll starve myself so that you may eat!” she sobbed, which was much more like it.
“Now I must be off. The men will be waiting on the high road for me.”
“Take care of them. Most of them don’t even have bum fluff on their top lip yet.”
I had to leave. Anymore of this and I would not be able to walk without a second breakfast to regain my strength.
“Don’t forget your rifle,” she said, pointing to the stout stick resting by the back door.
I collected it and opened the door, pausing to look back one last time.
“Don’t cook a breakfast for another man while I’m away.”
She nodded. Shaking the dish cloth at me and shaking her head.
“Don’t prepare a lunch for another man while I’m at war.”
She shook her head in wonder. She looked a little cranky.
“Don’t even think about inviting a stray chap to dinner.”
She turned the dish cloth in her hands so tightly the final drops of water wrung out. Then she whipped me with it hard and fast across my butt cheeks.
“That’s more like it! Now come and wave goodbye.”
“It’s wave goodbye or wring your neck!”
I put my rifle on my shoulder and stepped outside. My devoted wife followed behind me.
It was a glorious day. Churchills were playing stirring anthems all up and down the street. A patriotic day. I marched out of our yard sure the plastic buttons on my uniform were gleaming.
“We will meet again,” I reassured my wife, as we followed me to the High Road. “I don’t know where. I don’t know when. But we’ll meet again some sunny day. And when we do I will be covered in medals!”
“Get War Done,” she shouted.
“Control British Fish!”
“British fish are sovereign fish!”
That’s the spirit!
“Don’t beg me to stay. I have to fight.”
“I won’t,” she replied, her voice cracking. “You have to face the enemies of the people.”
“It’s my duty.”
“Go faster,” she urged suddenly. “Please go faster. You don’t want to be left behind.”
We walked along a row of houses with large hedges lining the pavement and just at that moment a dark shape burst from the hedges and ran at me.
I was not alarmed. I immediately lay down and covered my head with my hands.
“Private French! Private French!”
I remained motionless. Perfectly demonstrating the art of battlefield camouflage.
“Mark French!”
“What do you want to be bothering my Mark for now Cyclops?” my wife demanded. “You can see he’s off to war.”
“I can see he’s still got a stick and no rifle,” Cyclops said, and giggled. Little traitor.
He grabbed my elbow and shook it.
“Private French? Get up. It’s me Cyclops. Why don’t you talk to me? Why are you shivering?”
“I’m not shivering Cyclops,” I said as I sat up. “I am perfectly mimicking the vibrations of hundreds of marching feet as I disguise myself as the pavement.”
My wife burst out laughing. The tears now banished. But I was too focused on Cyclops to see what it was that amused her.
“Gosh. Did you learn that in basic training?”
“He learned how to tremble like a leaf all on his own,” my wife declared. Was she losing her wits in the emotion of it all?
In the distance we heard a bugle sound. Or was it a cat howling? The bugler was new to the instrument.
“You’ve got to move it Mr French or you’ll miss the war,” Cyclops, the little idiot.
“Come on then. Let’s get a wriggle on,” my wife offered me a hand up and Cyclops handed me my rifle.
“You look smashing Mrs French,” Cyclops said to my wife. “Why so many Union Flags in one dress.”
She hid her face in her dish cloth and sobbed in heaves.
“Now you’ve set her off again Cyclops!” I chided him. Little rat. “I will prove myself dear. I will uphold the will of the people. I was born under a blazing star.”
“Oh Mark, you fool.”
“Shush now. Only speak in three word sentences while I am away,” I ordered her. I moved in close and went to hold her hands, but she retreated. She would crumble to dust at my touch. As it was her heel caught in the pavement and she would have fallen over backwards if Cyclops hadn’t grabbed her.
“I am going to fulfil the will of the people.” I saluted her.
“Don’t miss me,” she muttered, hugging Cyclops to her waist.
“I won’t! I will look after myself.”
I was following my destiny.
Destiny is all.
With courage and Union Flag branded munitions I could not fail.
It was the perfect moment to march away, just the right beat, but Cyclops buggered it up by snapping to attention and saluting me.
“Private Mark Aurelius French,” he said solemnly. “I want you to take my lucky potato with you to war. It was given me by my godmother on the day of my birth and we have kept it frozen all these years. But today it defrosts in your honour. May it bring you luck as it has done for me.”
He thrust the cold vegetable at me.
“But what will you do without it?” my wife asked. Who cared?
“I will wait for the new potatoes to arrive,” he replied. “I heard on the radio this morning that Field Marshall Wetherspoons has sent to Jersey for a convoy of potatoes. They will arrive any day now. No blockade can keep a potato from the chosen land. If we just believe hard enough. I we ignore the gloomsters. That’s what our Churchill said.”
I took the potato. The bugle sounded again, although I was certain it was a cat this time. I forgot myself and ruffled Cyclop’s hair. Tucked the potato inside my coat and marched onwards.
“Crush a fifth columnist, liberal elite, snowflake saboteur for me!” Cyclops shouted.
“What happened to your tooth?” I could hear my wife ask him as I joined the growing stream of men heading up the road.
“I lost it fighting the big boys for my chocolate.”
“Well, we’ll go directly to mine and get my rolling pin and then we’ll go see those big boys. Would you like that?”
“Are you going to thrash six types of shit out of them?”
“It will be my pleasure.”
It was clear they weren’t watching me anymore. For Heaven’s Sake! Anyone would think we had adopted the boy.
“Get War Done!” I bellowed, as a chap fell into step beside me. He was wearing a Scout’s uniform, badges and all and he carried what looked like an actual rifle. The big show off! The uniform was so tight I’d wager it was a child’s.
“Believe In Great British Potatoes!” he replied. I decided to ignore his attempt to upstage me. He could tell I had a full lucky potato in my pocket. I was certain. I wasn’t go mad in the emotion of the moment.
And we marched on together. Brothers in arms with a war to win.
The day I marched to war I had a kipper for breakfast. The packaging was Union Flag pattern so you knew just eating it you were strengthened magically. Good old fashioned greased paper too. Not that plastic rubbish they had on the Continent. I didn’t know what Mrs French had done to obtain the magic fish. I still don’t.
“It’s real,” she said with reverence. “It’s not a plywood substitute.”
No one in our village had eaten a real kipper since the blockade of British Sovereign waters by the American Navy had become permanent in 2022. No one in our village mentioned the blockade since it was listed as an official secret. We all just blamed France.
This kipper was a gift horse I was not looking in the mouth. My only concern was my wife may try and share it with me? I was to march five miles that day and I needed the protein myself.
“Don’t worry,” she smiled. “You don’t have to share it.”
She unwrapped the kipper and placed it in a patch of sun to warm up. “The gas is off. But the sun will do a good enough job of heating it. It’s all for you. You’ll need all your strength today.”
“What will you have for breakfast?”
“Pride,” she beamed and she picked up the wrapping and licked it. “Mmm. It tastes like sovereignty!”
We even had coffee too. That was a shock. I believed we’d run out weeks ago.
“I been saving a spoonful of ‘English Replica Instant’ for just this event,” she whispered as she placed the steaming mug in front of me. “Don’t rush it. You don’t know when you’ll next get another mug.”
I did. The army had a warehouse full of actual coffee after the successful capture of an EU relief drop fell outside of the M25 by accident.
The kipper was a wonder. You could tell it had been caught in British waters by the sheen on its sides. If you turned it to the right in the light it lit up red, white and blue. I fancy its mouth even smiled.
There had been rumours for weeks that a sort of superhero was visiting houses in the night and leaving kippers in kitchen sinks with a note that said “British Fish Are Sovereign Fish”. He had only ever been glimpsed making good his escape.
“Did you find it in our fireplace this morning?” I asked.
“No. Don’t ask me how I got it.” It was then I noticed her right cheek was speckled with blood.
“I can barely believe it’s real,” I said as I cut away the first mouthful. “I could take London singlehanded if I had a kipper for breakfast every day.”
“It’s out of date but I fancied it was still good to eat,” my enamoured wife commented. “Mrs Formaldyhide…”
I looked up sharply and she fell silent. She took the dish cloth out of the sink and wiped at the blood.
“La la la la!” she sang. This woke up our Churchill. The Dumbusters’ theme song took up where she left off.
Suddenly the backdoor burst open and Cyclops entered. He was flushed and panting. He eye swivelling. He was holding some variety of chocolate bar. It was impossible to tell which at first.
“I won this month’s county raffle!” he exclaimed.
“Oh poppet that’s marvellous!” my kind wife shouted. “You better eat it fast before one of the bigger boys mugs you of it. Which one is it? Mars or Snickers?”
“I’ve been too excited to check,” Cyclops grinned, little fool that he was. “If only my dad where here to see it.”
“Let me see,” I invited. “I’m an expert on these matters. In a moment I’ll be able to tell you if it’s from a box of Celebrations or a regular one made small by shrinkflation.”
“It must be a regular one. We had a box of Celebrations at school and Miss had to get the microscope out to show us the contents.”
Cyclops went to hand it to me but Mrs French charged around the table and stood between us.
“Cyclops you little muppet,” she laughed, “you give that to my Mark and he’ll eat it.”
Before I could protest my innocence there was a great calamity in the backyard. The sound of half a dozen teenagers all shouting and hollering for Cyclops. Our Churchill was not best pleased. It became so loud the speaker vibrated.
“Come out freak! Come out and hand it over!”
Cyclops paled. He looked at me to save him. I busied myself with the kipper. It was going down a treat.
“Well?” my impatient wife looked at me. I avoided her eyes.
“This kipper is excellent. Well done.”
The boys continued their taunting. “Remoaner! Remoaner!”
The back door creaked open an inch. Cyclops yelped and dived under the table, clinging to one of my legs. I gave it a determined shake but he just held on tighter.
“Come out little piggy!” a boys whispered from just outside. “Or we’ll huff and puff your little house down.”
“He doesn’t live here!” I shouted back.
The kipper really was the best. If only it was bigger I would have stayed at breakfast forever.
“Are you going to do something?” my silly wife demanded, her hands on her hips.
“I’ve got to march at least five miles today,” I replied. “Maybe even six.”
She muttered something and opened the kitchen drawer. I could see from the corner of my eye she was now holding the rolling pin.
“You stay here Cyclops,” she ordered the trembling pup. “I’ll see to this.”
And out the back door she went. I pushed back my chair and went to follow but Cyclops clung on for dear life. I had to drag him across the floor to make any progress. It was useless.
“What you going to do you silly old milf?” one of the boys taunted.
“You ginger prick!” I heard my wife shout. “And you’re in uniform too. Your a disc race!”
Next was the sound of a rolling pin hitting a face. Thunk.
There was another crack. And another. A pandemonium of weeping boys that even Churchill couldn’t overcome.
“If I hear you’ve laid a hair on Cylop’s head you’ll get another thrashing! Now scram!”
A moment later she returned and moved as calm as you like to wash blood off the rolling pin.
“It’s alright Cyclops,” I told the boy. “You’re safe. Now if you don’t mind please let go of my leg.”
He released me and hugged my wife around her ample, childbearing hips.
“Thank you Mrs French. My mother has a proper potato stashed at home. I’m going to get it to you.”
“It’s alright Cyclops,” she said, without turning around. “You can give it to Private French. He’s to march five miles today, maybe even six. He’ll need all of his strength.”
I popped the last bite of kipper into my mouth.
“You’re going to war?” Cyclops asked, wide eyed.
“This very day,” I replied proudly. I chewed on the fish but Cyclops was so impressed her released my wife and rushed me. Almost jumping into my lap in his admiration. I was swallowing in that moment and the fish became stuck in my throat.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Help!” I gasped. But Mrs French thought I wanted her to get Cyclops off me and just laughed.
It wasn’t until I fell face first onto my empty plate that she realised I was in earnest. The world was growing black around me. The Dumbusters’ tune was fading out. I was going to be a martyr before my time! For a few seconds I passed out.
“Use the Heinrich manoeuvre!” Cyclops screamed. The last thing I thought I would ever hear. Little traitor. I wouldn’t be saved by a German action!
Happily Mrs French grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me back against the chair and whacked me with her flat hand on my back.
The little bite of fish flew straight out of my mouth and I was saved.
“Good work Mrs French. Mark has to die for his country not his breakfast.” Cyclops said and they both laughed. I would remember that.
Great British Ladies went out of business just when I needed them to fail. This is the luck of the patriot and I am a patriot.
You see the postman had delivered a letter that morning from The Ministry of War informing me that they were rebranding as ‘The Ministry of Peace’. Policies, staff and the objective of a total and crushing victory over the internal enemy remained unchanged.
Five minutes later a second postman appeared to deliver a second letter, this one from The Ministry of Peace. I was now in charge of “Seizing whatever retail goods I deemed expedient to the war effort“.
I can not recall a prouder morning in all my life. The envelope was of exceptional British quality. The paper thick and velvety. I held it for a minute, not wanting to damage its perfection. Its completeness.
“Open it Mark,” my wife urged, “don’t just stand there, gaping like a goldfish.”
“I’m not gaping woman,” I gasped. “I’m controlling my breathing. It’s a well known special services technique.”
“Would you like me to open it for you?” she offered her hand.
I handed the envelope to her. It would do our marriage good for her to see that right at the beginning of my service I was already advancing. Would she be able to cope with my meteoritic rise? Time would tell.
“It’s a lovely envelope,” she cooed. “It feels like velvet. Oh look it says ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ at the top and there’s a little drawing of the Prime Minister’s current wife. That’s a nice touch.”
The Churchill radio burst into music. Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1‘. A better choice of song for the ceremony I could not have chosen.
“Open it,” I whispered.
My wife nodded and picked up a paring knife to cut open the envelope.
“Carefully.”
“Oh, I’ll be ever so careful,” she said with a mad grin. “I don’t want to cut myself in the excitement.”
“No! Be careful not to damage the letter! You will heal. The letter can’t.”
She furrowed her brow a moment and made a little slashing motion through the air. The Churchill got louder.
Then she cut the envelope’s throat in a single swipe. I gasped. If the letter had been hurt I did’t know what I would do.
I took the envelope from her.
“Oi! Don’t snatch! I could have had your finger off!”
I slipped the letter out of its sleeve and held it, still folded over.
“Would you like me to read it for you?”
I handed it over and she unfolded it. It was like a light shone from the paper across her face.
“There’s gold lettering at the top. Look.”
I could not look. I closed my eyes and listened to Elgar. In the distance I could hear a dog yelping. Nearby a window smashed and a woman began screaming obscenities. The Churchill raised its voice again to compensate. The choir was starting in with ‘Land of hope and glory…‘. I was ecstatic. I felt I was vibrating. It was as if a battalion of angels in Union Flag waistcoats had arrived to sing.
It meant my wife had to shout out the letter’s contents.
“Private Martin French,” she bellowed, “you are empowered by The People’s Government to take what you want from [enter town name here] shops at will.”
She paused. I presumed because she was also carried away by Elgar. I looked at her heaving bosom and imagined…
“Just imagine it,” she shouted. “They couldn’t even get your name right.”
I confess I felt powerful and no minor clerical error would deflate me.
“I wonder why they didn’t write Raylee in the letter too? Just enter town name here?”
I took the letter and placed it on the kitchen table. I would not hear another word against it.
“Won’t the shopkeepers be left out of pocket?” my wife wondered.
“I will issue them with official receipts,” I hollered.
“What? I can’t hear you over Churchill!”
“When the enemy is defeated,” I shouted as loud as I could, “I am sure the shopkeepers will be rewarded for their contributions!”
“But most of the shops barely have anything to sell as it is!” She was red in the fact with the effort to be heard.
Our Churchill’s volume increased again and again. We were now in a shouting match with the wireless we would never win. I put my finger to my lips and shushed my wife. Once we had been quiet for a bit the Churchill calmed down.
“Then they won’t notice much difference, will they?” I whispered. She frowned and gave me one of those lingering looks that looked judgemental, but was obviously not.
“Let’s have our breakfast and after I’ll take you to window shop at Great British Ladies. You might see something you fancy inside?”
She nodded and we set about breakfast, the letter in the middle of the table, beaming its approval at my military career.
Breakfast finished I took Mrs French to Great British Ladies. Mr Jelly was inside, surrounded by the failure Brussels had forced on him. A regiment of naked plastic mannequins stood about him. Their morale evaporated. Heads missing or downcast. Arms hanging at their sides. It was no wonder the wily Continentals were able to undermine the enterprise.
“Why isn’t Mr Jelly having a closing down sale?” my naive wife asked.
Mr Jelly began to sob, all wobbly jowls and heaving chest. He had combed his hair over but it was now so thin his beetroot dome was pulsating. He held a clothes hanger and abruptly began to beat it against his forehead.
“Oh dear. Should we do something?”
“He can beat himself without our help,” I replied. Although I was of a mind to go inside and give him assistance.
He wasn’t half giving himself a proper thrashing.
“This is not patriotic behaviour,” I muttered.
“Please don’t report him.”
My wife cast about anxiously, but there was no one else watching. A few people were coming this way, but Mr Jelly was making such a racket now they smartly about faced or veered off in various directions. He was fortunate. He was almost certainly in the act of committing a crime. Blitz spirit must be on display in times of adversary. And it was a time of adversary all the time.
“A closing down sale would cheer him up,” my wife said. “Let’s go in and buy something.”
“There’s no need for that. We can just take whatever we want on behalf of The Ministry of Peace. I’ll be having those mannequins.”
“You mean the Ministry of War.”
“No. They’ve had a rebrand. Remember the letter?”
“How could I forget? They got your name wrong!”
I had a sudden urge to pinch her hard. It took a lot of effort to resist. I didn’t want to make a show of things in public.
We carried on watching Mr Jelly. He flung the coat hanger away and began to slap himself. He was a suspiciously plump man. His jowls wobbled hilariously as he beat himself.
“It is against the law for small businesses to advertise failure,” I reminded my wife. “Great British businesses do not fail.”
“Get Business Done!” I shouted in exasperation. It did not help. I wondered if Mr Jelly would soon find himself publicly shamed?
Then Mrs French did the maddest thing. She stepped up to the windows and rapped on them with her knuckles.
“Mr Jelly!”
He didn’t notice so she knocked even harder. Inside the store he paused and slowly turned to look at us. Such a face on him. He was quite mad. But my insane wife just waved and smiled. He returned her smile, but I can’t say it was a convincing grin.
“The least he could do is stand up straight,” I said. If this was the measure of the average man in Brexitannia we would have an uphill slog in the war.
“I went to school with old Jelly,” she said.
“He was a right little monkey. He loved nothing better than to serenade the girls. He can’t sing to save himself. But he does a good impersonation of an opera singer. Once he fell to his knees at my feet and”
“That’s enough of that,” I silenced her. Mr Jelly was clearly a subversive from a young age. I wouldn’t have rumours spreading that my wife kept his company. “Someone may hear.”
My nutty missus now started waving at him. I was at a loss to know which of them was madder.
“I think we need to keep moving,” I took Mrs French by the elbow and urged her away.
“Perhaps we should ask him back for dinner? He’s looking awfully skinny for him. I wonder if Mrs Jelly is feeding him right?”
“I saw her foraging for wild potatoes and garlic in Batters Lane just this morning,” I lied.
“That’s funny. She’s allergic to garlic. Allergic to all the alliums.”
“She was wearing gardening gloves.”
“Goodness. Where would they have come by such an extravagance as gardening gloves? You wore out my last pair building the barricade and Mrs Jelly is swanning about Raylee with her own still? I don’t recall seeing her drilling the school children in the latest patriotic songs. Well.”
That was more like it.
“Do you know I am going to get another new uniform?” I changed the subject.
“Next you will be telling me Mrs Jelly’s got hold of a piglet. Some people get all the luck!”
“Cardinal Bogg discovered an entire warehouse of TA catering corp uniforms. Good as new. The People’s Army is to wear them with pride. Raylee will get its share.”
“But you’re not in the catering corp? You said you were drafted into counter intelligence on account of your IQ? But you’d be serving with the regulars because you were on a secret mission and needed to disguise yourself in the field.”
“It’s all true.” I walked a little faster.
“I’ve been saving some scrap material to patch my best knickers. I’ll make you a real army badge for you to celebrate your importance.”
We passed a billboard next that was receiving a bold new poster.
“The High Street is Strong!” It proclaimed and, “Small and Medium Sized Great British Businesses are BOOMING!”
“Look at that!” I cried. “Well done boys! Keep morale high!”
My wife looked at it, and appeared confused.
“Why don’t you ever see any adverts for actual businesses these days?” she wondered OUT LOUD.
“I think it’s time we queued at the food market and hurried home for lunch” I replied, urging her forward at greater speed. I often wondered if she was off her rocker. Today was one of those days.
At the food market we secured a turnip. It was a beast. We would roast half and boil half and make a meal of it.
Later that evening, after we had eaten our dinner, I said I needed to “walk off the turnip” and snuck back to look again at ‘Great British Ladies’. The ladies of Raylee may have no more use for Great British Ladies, but I did. Especially the plastic ones.
Behind the windows the next recruits for the war effort waited in the same positions as earlier. Right now they were just mannequins, but soon they would be transformed into the Patriotic Raylee Civilian Defence Militia. They would stand guard on the defensive barricade when I was gone.
I slept well that night.
“I will handpick the sentries myself,” I told my wife the next morning, as we broke our fast on a tin of baked bins. Baked beans! Who would have thought it? I wanted to count every bean.
“Aren’t we lucky Mark?” my wife said as she heated the tin up. “Mrs Jelly left them with a note this morning asking us not to tell anyone about Mr Jelly beating himself in public.”
“We are indeed fortunate. It’s a funny old world isn’t it?”
I bet the Jelly’s had a stash of tinned goods was under a loose floorboard, under a rug, in their living room. Imperishable goods squirrelled away. They had lacked belief in British sovereignty. Well they believed now!
“I’ll pick the cream of the crop from Great British Ladies,” I promised, as the smell of beans filled the air. My mouth was watering. “No amputees. No headless ones. Just the able bodied plastic patriots.”
My wife stopped stirring the beans for a moment and gave me a searching look.
“Yes my love, I’ll bring one home for you. As promised.”
The mannequins would be dressed out like soldiers. They would protect Raylee when the men of the town marched to war. Anyone looking at the town from a distance would see a company of men on guard and assume hundreds more were stationed in the town. That would show Brussels!
“When are you marching again?”
“In forty eight hours.”
Finally the hour was drawing near. London would fall. We had orders to join up with several other regiments in Surrey and await the arrival of Field Marshall Gave.
“I am marching to greatness,” I whispered.
“We can put the last of the Worcestershire Sauce Substitute on the beans if you like?”
I had no doubts about my destiny.
“Here we go,” my loyal wife set the plates of beans on the table. “You’ll need your strength.”
Our Churchill crackled into life as we ate. It was ‘Thought for the Day’. The Prime Minister or one of his ministers always had something to say.
“Great Britain has concluded the latest rounds of negotiations on the Australian trade deal!” Ah, it was Captain Trust today.
“Soon we will receive the first shipments of Vegemite and Tim Tams! Which is funny in a way. Many used to scoff at the thought of eating Vegemite, but now is the perfect time to start. You might not always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need.”
As she finished talking The Rolling Stones’ song with those words started to play.
“Shouldn’t they be playing an Australian song?” my innocent wife asked.
“It is a Great British trade deal so an indigenous British song is more appropriate,” I replied. “I’ve lost count of the number of times the Australian Trade Deal has been announced. It always makes me smile.”
After breakfast I went to Great British Ladies and informed Mr Jelly I was enlisting the mannequins.
“Any ones I want I will raise the right arm of with a flat palmed salute. You will deliver them to the barricade.”
He just looked at me forlornly and said, “I was hoping to exchange them for some rice.”
I bet he was. As if it wasn’t enough for him to fail his country in business now he was trying to hold back supplies vital to the war effort.
“Perhaps you’d fancy a big EU flag brand on your cheek?” I asked, with a smile.
Then he smiled quietly (heaven only knows why!) at some private musing, clicked his heels together and saluted with a raised and flattened palm.
“Don’t get shot old boy,” he said.
“You’re a dummy.” I hit back so fast he was lost for words.
He just collapsed into giggles. It was little wonder Mr Jelly had failed at business.
Ms Finch was branded on her right cheek in the yard outside “Ye Olde Great British Blacksmith’s Forge” at midday on summer solstice 2023. The forge was built in the 14th century. A squat and sturdy structure, it was famous for only having burned down once every one hundred years since its initial construction. And of those times only three had “caused a greater conflagration so as to imperil the village.”*
The current owner we all called “The Blacksmith”, even though his real name was Gary.
Gary was muscled and slow on any uptake, but he could beat a piece of iron all day without complaint. All his hair had long singed off in the heat of the furnace. His wife painted his eyebrows on each morning, but no one was impolite enough to mention it. We just treated him as he was, a patriot.
Ms Finch was branded on a perfect English summer day. Far superior to the over baked days they were rumoured to favour on the Continent. The sky blue forever with the sun just hot enough to make people complain, but you still had to work to get burnt. A soft breeze flowed through the village and children chased a puppy along the high road. At the time meat was only included in the rations once a week.
The mood in Raylee had been building to a fever all week. Bus stops were plastered with posters announcing the branding, time and place, and urging “All to come and join in the celebration of patriotism. Be sure to bring your children along!”. Schools closed for the day. It was a very local public holiday.
Our Churchill even carried the news in a daily segment just after “Patriotic Thought for the Day”. I smacked my lips in satisfaction when I heard our noble little village get its mention.
“And now…The Branding, Shaming and Marriage News. The following public shamings will take place in town squares, or other named places, in the following places today. Bucketforth, three local residents to be publicly shaved for heresy. Mincehead, one local suspected of spying for Brussels to fight a pig. Enema, five forced marriages to occur simultaneously alongside the cow insemination ceremony in the larger field…Raylee, one resident to be branded on the cheek for Wireless Crime…and now the national anthem sung by the Children’s Choir of Spitmore.“
Ms Finch’s branding itself wasn’t pitch perfect. Some joker had scrawled “ry” onto the end of “Forge” on the sign over the Blacksmith’s and it detracted from the solemnity of Ms Finch screaming.
“This is a crying shame,” I said to my rosy cheeked wife as we waited for the event. “This branding is supposed to be the highlight of the day. Ms Finch has been in solitary confinement preparing all week.”
Ms Finch was led out all the same by a well turned out squad of Brexit Youth.
“Don’t they look full of purpose in their brown shorts,” my wife noted. Shorts was a little generous. Due to a shortage of cotton, linen, denim and polyester the shorts were made locally out of hessian sacks. The children of the Brexit Youth knew better than to complain. They wanted dinner.
The youth tied Ms Finch to a stout, oak stake driven into the earth just outside the forge.
“I wager if Prime Minister Johnson hadn’t got Brexit done we could not have done this,” I commented. “Some nanny red tape from Brussels would have forbidden sovereign Englishmen from tying traitors to stakes in village squares.”
There was a card table set up close by the staked Ms Finch. The Food Ministry had allowed a special allocation of baking rations for the village to prepare tea and cakes. No one was going home without getting their hands on something.
There were formalities to observe first though. Ms Finch was photographed by anyone who still had a working smartphone. She did herself proud here, scowling like a traitor at everyone who stepped up to photograph her.
Next a poem about Great British Potatoes was recited by Clarence, the butcher.
“On the continent their potatoes cause incontinence,
But a Great British Potato will see you through,
With its red, white and blue...”
Then the pharmacist Ms Formaldyhide held up a black cat before Ms Finch’s face. If it failed to hiss the branding would be called off. At first the feline seemed reluctant, but a quick jerk of its tail and it passed judgement.
“Now it’s time for Gary to shine,” I whispered.
The Blacksmith took the hot iron from the coals. We could see its light in the shadows of his forge. Silence. Anticipation.
Gary’s wife had painted eyebrows on that curved up. As he walked out of the shadows holding the white iron he looked permanently surprised. I suspect it was his wife’s little joke. Mrs Gary and Ms Finch weren’t close, even before we reclaimed our sovereignty.
“No. No. No. Please no!” Ms Finch screamed. She had learned the lines on the script given to her. I clapped and others followed suit.
“You people are fucking animals!” Ms Finch bellowed, as the sizzling iron neared her face. This was off script. The crowd muttered disapprovingly.
“Watch it or you’ll be voted off and you won’t be on next week’s show!” I shouted at her. Everyone laughed.
“Well if you don’t like it here why don’t you go and live in Europe!” Clarence the Butcher bellowed. Slapping his aproned thighs and laughing. He got less response than me. I would later revise down my estimation of his poetry.
My watchful wife whispered an observation to me but between Ms Finch making a racket and Clarence laughing himself silly I couldn’t catch it.
“What’s that?” I shouted back.
She whispered again but I still couldn’t hear her.
Louder woman. Louder. I motioned with my hands.
Suddenly Ms Finch went quiet, the branding iron held theatrically inches from her face, and Clarence shut up too.
“I DON’T KNOW WHY CLARENCE WEARS THAT APRON STILL! HE HASN’T HAD A CARCASS TO BUTCHER”
I clamped my hand over Mrs French’s mouth. To comment publicly on food shortages was treason.
Everyone turned to glare at her, except The Blacksmith. He chose then to press the iron into Ms Finch’s face. She got back on script immediately. She screamed for all she was worth. Everyone was so distracted they forgot my foolish wife. It was a lucky escape.
The brand itself was a gem. It had been cast from steel recycled from the fuselage of a Spitfire dug up in a field outside of town. It was found by some treasure hunters days before they were drafted into the army to serve as bomb disposal and mine clearance. The brand’s design came direct from 10 Downing Street. Legend said it was designed by one of Prime Minister Bunsen’s infant children. His artistic flair was prodigious the moment he left the womb. The papers regularly carried reproductions of his work to keep morale high.
The design was the Flag of Europe, minus one star.
All who saw a branded face knew where their loyalties lay. After today Ms Finch would be an outcast.
The Blacksmith stepped back and admired his handiwork. He would have had an easier time of that if Ms Finch wasn’t thrashing and complaining. She lacked Blitz Spirit, there was no denying it. I could smell her burnt flesh and I wasn’t complaining, and it was a terrible smell. One wondered at her diet.
“Hang on,” Gary said. He stepped back up. He held Ms Finch’s head still with one of his giant hands and carefully pressed the brand back into the same spot. Harder this time.
“CLARENCE!” she shouted out. “CLARENCE!”
People looked at the butcher. He just shrugged and circled his finger around his temple to signal she was mad.
My wife poked me in the ribs. This was my moment. I stepped up to Ms Finch and turned to the crowd.
“From this day forth Ms Finch is outcast from all full time employment. From now on she can only seek minimum wage work in fruit picking, social care, hospitality, medicine, auto-manufacturing or any other of the sectors that were betrayed by EU workers during Cardinal Patel’s long and glorious reign.”
The crowd nodded in approval.
“None are to give her comfort. She is to find no shelter from the storm. None may lay a hand on her. None may consort with her carnally or in conversation about politics. She must be ready to work in the digital economy and not complain if her shift is terminated early. When visiting any hospital to work she must pay full car parking charges regardless of whether she has driven to work or not. When you see the stars branded onto her cheek you know she was caught attempting to change the channel on her Churchill wireless!”
Just then the puppy ran into the circle, interrupting my speech. The gaggle of children burst in after it, led by Cyclops. The wretched puppy made straight for Ms Finch and climbed onto her feet, whimpering and cringing there. A poor choice of sanctuary.
“Do you want me to brand the puppy too?” The Blacksmith asked. “Won’t take but a moment to heat the iron back up.”
“It does look a foreign breed,” I replied. “Let’s put it to a referendum?”
“I’ll get some papers and we can write our votes on them,” Ms Formaldyhide offered and went off at speed shouting “The will of the people!” in excitement.
“Shall we have the tea and cakes while we wait?” my generous wife asked, pointing to the card table.
The Blacksmith shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed the food. Great!” He went into his forge just long enough to put the iron back in the fire and then made straight for the table. That started a rush. He was famous for his appetite.
Clarence was the only one who stood still. He didn’t see that I saw, but his eyes were fixed to Ms Finch, a single fat tear rolling slower than time itself down his cheek.
*Chapter Five, page 14, “The Lives and Times of Raylee – A Very British Village”, published by anon.
Christmas 2022 was a wonderful time. The Prime Minister appeared randomly in West Sussex, Essex, Kent, East Sussex, Kent again and Norfolk (Cornwall was ignored due to the strength of the independence movement there). He was dressed as Father Brexit* and the papers said he ensured all of his children got to see him and make a wish in person. He also greeted carol singers in costume from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.
Through the late summer and into the autumn there had been rumours of another turkey shortage. These were dispelled when Mr Bunsen held a press conference. He promised the country “There would be adequate supplies of turkeys! Father Brexit promises it!”
The European Union continued in its ill conceived policy of attempting to blackmail the mighty Great British People into adhering to legally binding, international treaties that we had negotiated and signed in bad faith. They were incapable of understanding what British sovereignty means. A position which has hitherto gained them nothing but lost food exports to the UK. More fool them. We were digging for Britain once more!
Get Digging Done!
Once we had made a big enough hole we could work out what to do next.
“It’s amazing what edible plants you can find in alleyways if you really look,” I recall telling my doting wife, in the days before Christmas.
“Is it dear?” she asked.
“Yes. You should go and look. Take a stout stick with you. You never know what you maybe able to beat out of the long grass along the fence lines.”
I was not looking forward to another meal of limp iceberg lettuce and meat of “**no determinable origin“. My distracted wife was serving up poor fare of late. She blamed the empty supermarket shelves, but I worried it was a lack of patriotic fervour.
“Other chap’s wives manage to claw tins of spam from weaker women,” I admonished her, “and you my burly wife have hands like hams! Put them to good use woman!”
However Christmas would bring both surprise and relief.
The Prime Minister was to make his annual address to the nation and tell us how great everything was going. This year we were to receive it through a special gift from the state. A wireless radio. These had been manufactured in North Korea after Commander Trust agreed a secret free trade deal. But we did not know that yet, as it was an “Official Secret” when the radios arrived with a label saying “Made in Hartlepool“.
How my chest swelled with pride to see further evidence of what a fully sovereign, free trading nation could achieve freed of the shackles of Brussels!
The radios were branded “Churchill”, were Union Flag patterned and arrived tuned to The Great British Patriotic Broadcasting Corporation. The documents accompanying them said it was illegal to change the channel. The only time I ever had a cross word with my dear wife was the day she attempted to break that law. It was a regrettable scene. I had to resist reporting her to the Church of Brexit for apostasy.
I had come home for dinner early and I wager that is why I caught her in the unfortunate act. How many times had she previously tried to change the channel? I can not say. I shiver when I ask myself the question.
“Mrs French, your brave soldier is home,” I announced as I entered through the backdoor. I immediately jammed my fingers into my ears to pretend I couldn’t hear her reply. I wanted her to shout hello at me. I wanted to know she was truly thrilled that I was home.
But I could tell immediately things were not going to go smoothly.
Our dinner was planned in advance as a tin of corned beef scrapings, but it lay intact on the cutting board, by a sink full of dirty dishes. A perfect British onion next to the tin, only slightly mouldy and unmolested. A supreme British carrot lying almost to attention next to the onion. I fancy it would have saluted me if it had arms. Last in the display was the bag of government issued “grain replacement” – 100% ground to dusk English oak. If you had a case of the runs it was certain to cure it. I was convinced across The English Channel the woeful Franks had to hold it in and run when some barbarian meal like raw horse gave them a bad belly. We were sensible in England. We cooked our horses.
“Mrs French?” I continued through the kitchen and into the dining room. That is when I caught her at it. Bent over the wireless attempting to move the dial. Her broad British back to me.
She was so intent on wireless treason she did not hear me enter. My fingers fell from my ears. The GBPBC was playing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. I trembled to hear the song. My blood pulsing so hard I heard my heart beat in my head.
“Mrs Mark French!” I exclaimed. “Are you attempting to undermine the expressed will of the people?”
I felt as if I had been stabbed in my chest. It physically hurt to see her like this.
She froze a moment, but then her hands gripped our Churchill. She raised it over her head and turned to face me. She did not speak. Tears lined the rims of her eyes and her lips pulled back like an angry dog to reveal her teeth. This was a useful reminder to put her on the waiting list for our district’s dentist.
She took a single step towards me. I turned and fled. I ran back through the kitchen and out of the door into the yard. None of this made any sense. Then I heard the backdoor open again and waited for whatever was to happen next.
“Please my lubbly hubby. Please come back inside and let’s talk it over? There’s a good pet.”
Ah. She wished to discuss the terms of her surrender. I stiffened my spine and about faced with military precision. She retreated back into the shadows of the kitchen and I entered my castle again.
She was waiting for me by the kitchen table with our Churchill unplugged before her. Such a serious and stout wireless. Its bakelite frame so proud and British.
“Please Mark, give me a chance to prove myself?” she begged suddenly, bending down to rest on one of her knees. This gesture made me more uncomfortable than I can say, even though I could not tell you why.
“I must report you to Cardinal Bogg. You must undergo an ideological examination,” I informed her. This was now an ecumenical matter.
She paled. She shook her head. Suddenly she flattened herself across the linoleum like I had struck her on the back of the head.
“If you report me to the Church of Brexit who will cook your dinner?”
A good point.
“Who will prepare your lunch?”
Perhaps I was being too harsh. It was a first offence.
“And who will have breakfast waiting for you when you get up in the morning?”
Maybe I could buy a wife at the annual wife sales in the market square? There were rumours that fine tradition was to return. But that still meant many weeks of preparing my own food. A dire circumstance. And I have to confess I still loved her, even in that mad moment.
“If I forgive you will you promise me you will never attempt wireless treason again?”
“Oh yes Private French!” She moved to get up.
“Stay down. We have not finished yet.” Although I was already famished and this event had made it worse.
“This is a secret we must carry to our graves. You must never again attempt to change the station. You know saboteurs whisper on the dark wireless? Agents of Brussels!”
“I’m sorry.” She began to cry. Her hands were shaking again. “Please don’t make an example of me. I don’t want to end up like Ms Finch. Paraded through the streets. Branded on the cheek with the Flag of Europe!”
I pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down.
“You may prepare dinner now.”
“Thank you my devoted husband. Thank you.”
“After dinner I will go to the whitemarket and buy superglue. We will fix our Churchill’s dials to the patriotic spot. We will ensure this horrifying crime can never be repeated.”
She climbed to her feet. Such a lumpy thing she was. All breasts and hips. Thighs and cheeks. She wiped her palms on her apron. Smoothed her greying hair back from her tear streaked cheeks.
“You’re lucky to have me. Mr Finch did not waver yesterday when he caught Ms Finch do just this. But then his sister has always been suspect. Her punishment is to be public. I would prefer your punishments always remained private.”
She nodded and picked up the tin of spam scrapings.
“Now then. Let’s make the lettuce dumplings,” she said and set to work. Once more the proud patriot’s wife.
*Father Brexit is just Father Christmas rebranded, but the people approve. A poll by NoGov showed the approval held steady at 98%.
**Meat of no determinable origin is just as good as meat of determinable origin. To claim otherwise is a thought crime.
The greatest British potato was born and raised in a loamy field located in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, before the war. It was red, white and blue in colour. Not just the skin but the interior too. It was recognised as a miracle by Prime Minister Bunsen and his son, who discovered it while walking late one afternoon.
Prior to the discovery of the holy tuber the field was already a celebrated point on the national map.
“Each time Prime Minister Bunsen celebrates a new marriage with a new child he brings the boy here,” patriotic parents would tell their children in reverent tones, as they walked along the perimeter of the gated field.
“You there! Keep moving!” The private security would bark at lingering pedestrians. They would smile and wave, knowing that it was all for show, in case anyone from Brussels was watching.
The reliable history says the Prime Minister spied the potato plant first next to a stand of English roses. He said to his son, “Look Barnaby! It’s a classic British potato plant! And in a field of English roses too! This is indeed sacred ground.”
At that moment a ray of British sunlight touched on the very spot and the plant’s green leaves “transmuted into gold”.
Barnaby’s intellectual power was noted from birth, and his artistic ability. He released his father’s hand and tottered to the potato plant.
“It a King Edward po-ta-to Pappa,” the boy identified the variety.
He next gripped the plant by the stem with his tiny hand and pulled it from the blessed soil with one heave. Displaying a strength beyond his tender years. Dangling from the exposed roots was the patriotic potato.
Barnaby studied the heavenly tuber and made the immortal declaration, “This…a mir-acle Pappa! A mir-acle! It is Union Flag pattern!”
The Prime Minister is recorded (in his own reliable memoirs) as falling to his knees and hugging both Barnaby and the potato tight.
“Barnaby, this is a sign from God,” he said, raising his eyes to the heavens. “This potato will be a symbol of the divinity of the will of the people from this day and for one thousand years to come.”
The potato was carried home by father and son where both the boy’s mother and the Prime Minister’s next wife were struck “dumb with wonder” at the sight.
The Prime Minister further records the distinct feeling of a divine presence accompanying them on the walk, as if the “Holy Ghost Winston himself had arrived to be our shield and staff”. The potato was later moved to the Tower of London, replacing the replica crown jewels on public display and an annual Spitfire fly past performed to honour the discovery.
“The divine potato is just one of the many reasons we have to invade London,” I would remind my wife daily when we sat down to lunch. “How can we allow the traitors to possess one of the holiest of Brexit relics?”
“It’s terrible my little Churchill,” she would reply. “Now, don’t let the gammon go cold. It will play havoc with your false teeth if it stiffens.”
London. London. London was the source of treason. London with its shining towers of glass paid for by the sweat of the noble men who toiled in the soft fruit fields outside of its walls. London with its flags of Europe hanging from balconies. A city so lost it had once floated an inflatable of the last truly great American, Donald Drumpf, in a nappy over the streets.
“When I get to London I am going to paint the pavements red, white and blue. Just like the holy potato!” I would promise my wife. “You will know that although I am far from home I am beating patriotism into the great Satan.”
She would smile in quiet satisfaction and say something like, “Eat your plum pudding before that blowfly crawls all over it again. It lingered so long last time you got excited I worried it had laid an egg.”
The air was thick with conspiracies in London even before its Unilateral Declaration of Independence and Union with Free Scotland. Before the English Civil War part two. People with European flag badges spoke in dark corners, seeking ways to overturn the overwhelming mandate delivered by the people in 2016. What was the occasional bare supermarket shelf when you have your sovereignty?
“In London they conspire to undermine the will of the people,” I would inform my goodly wife at breakfast. “You can tell who is a spy for Brussels by how tanned their skin is. Who goes to the Continent except for traitors? The British tourism industry needs those pounds, shillings and pence at home!”
“Don’t let your porridge go cold poppet,” she would reply. “You know how disagreeable you find it when it goes all lumpy.”
All bad things began in London. But the war would end there when we razed the glass towers to the ground, praying that the glass was safety glass. The Prime Minister would lead his loyal flock in holy procession from Chequers and back into 10 Downing Street. The patriotic potato would be safe again.
The Great British Potato War – 1.1 In the Land of The Blind
“If an Englishman’s home is his castle, what then is an Englishman’s village?” – from “The Graffiti of Raylee Public Lavatories – Collector’s Edition”, page 34.
I know what an Englishman’s village is. It is impenetrable. Clearly. Castle after castle nestled together like an illustration from a chocolate box lid. But to be truly formidable a castle must have a defensive perimeter that is not just more castles. Stout and sturdy walls built of stone in the traditional English fashion of the late 11th century.
This is why I organised the construction of the defensive barricade around my village of Raylee, before I went to war. It was a simple enough task. The slogan wrote itself, “Get Barricades Done!”, and that’s 99% of any major infrastructure task completed.
To find the necessary materials I just had to go around the town and scavenge. The streets and pavements of Raylee were overflowing with lightwood pallets of the kind used to deliver building supplies for domestic construction. No one knew where all the builders went in 2021 or why, but the supplies they abandoned were put to good use. Mostly by creating new and patriotic recipes. This was an example of the unique ingenuity of the British. There weren’t any tradesmen left who knew what to do with the supplies, but there were plenty of hungry mouths to feed.
“What are you doing Mr French?” one of the local lads asked me.
“Why you carrying that pallet?”
It was Cyclops. He was always popping up when you least expected him. A scrawny pup who lost an eye as an infant.
“It’s well known your father voted against the people.” I didn’t want him hanging about. It was obvious the loss of an eye was God visiting the sins of the father upon the boy.
“He did not. He told me himself he took his own pen into the voting booth and made the best choice for Blighty.” The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled along beside me. “Do you know where he is Mr French?”
“Private French to you Cyclops.”
“But you’re not in the army.”
“Every able bodied man is in the patriot’s army. Except your dad.”
That shut him up. He trailed along, kicking stones stones over the road, hoping to be involved.
“Do you know where my dad is?” Always this. Always.
“In a labour camp I expect. Labouring for redemption under Cardinal Petal. Or perhaps he got lucky and was deported.”
“But he’s a son of Raylee, just like you.”
“Being born in a country doesn’t make you its son. You achieve citizenship by proving yourself mental” – I kicked a raised cobblestone at that point and cut myself short.
“Mental? We don’t use that term anymore Mr French.”
I glared at him for a few moments. The boy clearly had a dose of the woke. I waited for the pain in my foot to subside.
The choice of pallets for the barricade was symbolic. Who doesn’t recognise one and think of the vanished British tradition of house building?
“My mum burns these in our fireplace,” Cyclops said. He took a hold of the pallet so I set it down.
“Keep going,” I ordered.
“Is this a job?”
“Zero hours like all the rest. Carry it to the edge of town and don’t dawdle.”
He nodded and began dragging the pallet along the road, straining his skinny arms, but determined to prove himself to me.
Other residents merely stood and watched as Cyclops struggled to the outskirts of Raylee. I smiled at them and shouted “Get Barricades Done!”.
It took Cyclops many hours but eventually he had enough pallets for me to build the defensive fortification.
The gaps in the pallets made it easy to see through them, take aim and fire. Although this would not be tested in the heat of battle until I was far away, I proved the soundness of my design by organising a drill. This consisted of taking turns to both attack my own barricade and defend it against myself.
My wife came out to watch. She sat herself with her knitting in a fold-up camping chair. Click-clack went her knitting needles. I used that to good effect, imagining them as the sounds of a Lewis Gun.
“Knit faster!” I ordered when attacking myself. “I want the air full of lead!”
I was using a stick as a rifle. I made a show of affixing a make believe bayonet and reloading every so often. Everything had to appear realistic.
Unfortunately realism was all too close to hand when I was injured defending myself against myself. I was rolling over one of the pallets and a large wooden splinter lodged into my left buttock. I went with the pain, rolling off the pallet into the dirt and screaming.
“Medic!” I shouted. I was too immersed in my role play to stop. “Stretcher barriers!”
My wife, dependable soul that she is, rushed over to me.
“Oh dear Mark! You don’t half have a splinter in the buttocks. Lie still now. On your belly. Cut out the playacting. There’s a good fellow. Be still!”
She sat on the small of my back.
“I might need to get my shears and cut away your trousers so I can have a proper butcher’s. I’ve not seen a splinter this large in all my days. Can you walk?”
“No,” I whispered. “Leave me. Carry the fight to the enemy! Tell my wife I loved her.”
“It’s not yet time for all that you silly sausage,” she said. She tried to pull the splinter out but the pain was too much.
“What’s up Mrs French?” Cyclops again.
“Private French has gone and gotten himself a shrapnel wound in the backside,” she replied.
“He’ll be lucky to keep the leg,” Cyclops said, matter of factly, his hands in his patched pockets.
“What do you know about battlefield medicine?” I shot back.
“He almost threaded the eye of the needle!” my wife blurted out and they both laughed. She bounced up and down on top of me so hard I could barely breathe.
“Call a chopper!” I ordered. She bounced again and I farted so loudly it started a nearby cat.
“Grenade!” Cyclops shouted and made a show of ducking for cover.
“Oh Mark. That is atrocious!” my wife was having the time of her life.
“He’s delirious Mrs French. You best get him to the doctor.”
“Right enough Cyclops. Come on. You bring his rifle and I’ll be his crutches.”
“That stick there? Is that the rifle?”
“So it is.”
“It’s a good stick. I couldn’t have chosen better if I was playing army men.”
Suddenly another voice entered the fray.
“What’s up Mrs French?” It was Clarence, the butcher. A fat, red faced, bald man always with his bloody apron on. Behind him waited Ms Finch. As bird like as her name. Her lipstick was smeared across her cheeks. That caught Mrs French’s attention.
“Oi! Where did you get lippy from?”
“I make it myself from red dust and tallow,” Ms Finch replied. But she looked nervous. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hands. I had to groan dramatically to get my so called medical team to focus.
“My Mark has gone and gotten himself a beastly splinter in his backside.” My wife pointed at the splinter. I” think I can see blood coming through his trousers. That’ll be a bugger to get out.”
“Oh dear. Shall I help you get him home?” Ms Finch asked.
“I think we best take him to the doctor. Maybe even Accident and Emergency.” Clarence, the genius.
“No good Clarence. Our A&E was closed to teach people to take personal responsibility for their health, remember? And we dare not try and take him to the nearest one over in Ballocks. The wait will be so long he’ll be healed before he’s seen by a doctor. Or the wound will fester. I’m not sure how they amputate a single buttock?”
Suddenly another rubbernecker weighed in. Mrs Formaldyhide, the pharmacist. I would bet my last penny she was showing off in her work clothes too. People with jobs still! Just can’t help themselves.
“What’s wrong with old Mark then?”
“He’s got a splinter in his backside!” My doting wife, Cyclops, Ms Finch and Clarence all said together like some bloody Greek chorus.
“Well. Let’s have him along to the new private infirmary. He can get a spare bed there and if he promises to let them use his story in their online ads. He’ll get a 10% discount and a lower interest rate on the loan repayments to pay for treatment.”
And off we went. The rest is a little blurred, being pain killing medication, some paperwork I had to sign, the bright lights of a surgery and then a painful recovery. I had to lie on my front for a full week. But I remained upbeat throughout my recovery and shook hands with everyone in the infirmary.
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