Through the good offices of Press Daddy we are starting to get our views into the mainstream (like they say on all good football squad photographs, see inset).
That article is the first in a trilogy, through which we are to unveil our radical centrist views: to have the crucial institutions of state run on an evolving thirty-year plan. The first in the series establishes the idea of the UK as a state hollowed-out by ruinous cuts to public spending over the last fifty years or so. It reinforces one of the key planks of our message: that to run a country on less than the bare minimum of public finances, the ultimate, inevitable consequence, when unforeseen events come along like the pandemic, will always be a catastrophe for the people who can least afford it.
Should we accede to power, under our plans, instead of saying, “Sorry, the public finances must meet this cost,” only to see that interpreted as a reduction in budgets for schools, hospitals and national infrastructure; will change to, “We can’t afford to keep tax at its current levels,, and we can no longer afford to allow private schools to benefit from charitable status.” This be the verse.
We’ve got away with the first in the series, but I think that we need a good reaction to it to get the second and third published. We get the idea that we snook-in on a slow-news day, because when I handed it over to Press Daddy, the reaction was, err… less than warm. In fact, it was more like a real daddy’s reaction: “Is that it?” Like we’d rehashed a tired cliché. On a second reading he seemed to warm to our re-writing of Thatcher’s economic miracle, as an asset stripping exercise that had not only run its course, but had started to eat itself.
When I came out of the meeting, Friend John, as he usually does, asked, “Что случилось?” Sometimes, mostly in fact, he says, “Что происходит?” He uses these expressions so often, that I feel I should explain them to you, then I am free to use them more often in what I say. So, что происходит, means “What’s happening?” or “What’s going on?” and phonetically, in English, sounds like, schto pross haw dit. The way to remember it, is to think of one of those general stores in America in the Wild West, which, behind all the ironmongery, and general provisions, also does a line in prostitutes, who, every now and again, are inspected by the sheriff – store’s pro’s audit. “Do you know what’s happening at the store’s pro’s audit?
Similarly, что случилось means “What happened?” Phonetically, in English, it sounds like, schto sloo chee loss. The way to remember it is to imagine the way dogs pronounce cheese, “chee” and the fact that they love it. You think of the same Wild West scenario, but this time, of a larger town, with many stores, and a local newspaper. Dog’s running free, off their leads, gang up together, and ransack all the stores, targeting mainly their cheese supplies, which, known to the dogs, are kept in the toilets – like the way Donald Trump stores Top Secret documents, and the US nuclear codes. The newspaper runs a headline line the next day which reads, “What happened? Stores’ loos – chee loss.” Really you should pronounce loss, as lass, but that’s a lesson for another day – when we will substitute a female cheese thief in for the gang of dogs.
I was talking to Friend about the awkwardness of encounters with Press Daddy, and how every effort you made to deliver to his requests produced a reaction of such profound indifference that it felt like rejection, to which Friend replied, “Yeah, just like school,” at the same time as I said, “Just like a real daddy.” Friend is an orphan, and he’s got this idea that fathers are hard-wired to love their children. “They mostly are, I think,” I told him.
“But yours wasn’t?” He asked.
“No, mine did love me…”
“… but,” says Friend, recalling all our other chats on this subject.
I sort of switched off, reflecting, not just the similarity between my encounters with Press Daddy, and my own, but a sense of exact of replication. I almost said “But he didn’t like me” but that was wrong too. He did, sometimes.
In the end I said to Friend, that my father’s tragedy was that he did not know how to enjoy me. And as I did, I felt a resonance with the words, as they came out of my mouth. The nuance, from like to enjoy, was unexpectedly informative. It was the first time I’d ever thought about it like that.
Immediately, it seemed to flip my relationship with Press Daddy too. I was reminded of the opening lines of Anna Karenina, about all unhappy families being unhappy in their own way, and for the first time, I saw how wrong they were. Press Daddy has an inability to empathise and encourage which is the exact replica of my father’s, in all of its aspects. It is not that I read a snowflakey-victimhood into the way they deal with me, but rather, a want of connection in them. My father had been raised by a man who was himself an orphan, and did not know how to love. Perhaps Press Daddy had a similar upbringing?
And look at Friend John, he’s never known a parent – maybe he locked on to a kindly guardian at the orphanage who dedicated herself to the project of him and so he lived without that fear of being found out, that so haunts the rest of us. As a result, he became the person that he ought to be. Do most parents not do that for fear of creating a pampered idiot?
“I’ll tell you what.” I tell Friend, “If we ever get the Keynesians ever get back into power as we wish, they need only grant each new born child a mentor and they’d have the problem cracked. They wouldn’t have to be clever, just dedicated.” We talk about that, and how to weave it into our manifesto, and then of people we know who have lived contented and successful lives through the accident of devoted parents, and those of us, who ain’t, and why that might be.
“What doesn’t make sense,” Friend says at the end of it all, “Is that you and your father were both raised by devoted women, and men who did not know how to love, and, yet you obviously feel that you and he, are very different people.”
He doesn’t need to add, “… when in fact you are one and the same.” I shudder to a halt at this new observation, and for a few moments accept as true that I am my father’s mirror. He was also a first born, also a … STOP!
Friend makes his usual nurture over nature argument, which I let wash over me, while I conjure with the devastating news that I am a new he. After a while, he realises, and leaves me to my silent contemplation.
Why… am I… not… what… he is…? This be the verse, and that be the question.
“It is this,” I tell Friend, our mothers. His was devoted, and it created a conflicted child. Mine was a portal to aunties, and a large loving family. I was doted on and became a vessel for culture and nurture. He just got adoration and indifference in equal measures. “Do you know, John,” I say, “My life, to date, has been a mental health research project, and that has ended today.”
“Well, I for one, am glad it’s over,” he says, “I’ve only known you five minutes and it was getting a bit wearing.”
He makes me swear a pact with him, that because we know how to read people, because it comes naturally to us, we are not to despair when they don’t know how to give it back; we expect them to accept who we are, and so we must accept who they are – that they are doing their best, but do not have the capabilities to match our needs; that we forgive them their uselessness as they forgive ours; for ours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, now then, now then, how’s about that then, guys and gals? I have a letter here from little Dickie White what does say, “Dear Jim, now that Boris no longer wants to be King of the World, can I be it please? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that, as it happens is a very big request, but what I do like to see in a young man, is an epiphany, so we have made things happen for our little Dickie, who is most loved.”
“Good,” says Friend at the end of it all, “I am now going into Press Daddy’s tent to check on the pro’s audit, and get our expenses.”
Dickie White's Diary 
I’ll tell you what’s happening brother. Last night I dream a dog bring a piece of cheese to a starving prostitute. This morning, I get up and there’s a about the wild west. Also it’s the weekend JFK got shot. Kno wha Ah saying, tho?
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