"In other news, Sunderland was atomised earlier this morning by some kind of cataclysmic explosion," mumbled the newsreader on the radio in his annoying nasal tone. "The government declined to comment, on the grounds that it had better things to do. The weather today will be fine, with scattered showers, except in the Sunderland area where scientists predict heavy cloud and plagues of locusts."
"This is terrible!" Cecil intoned, throwing his cup of tea at the wall and jumping to his feet.
"What is?" asked Phillip, who hadn't been paying attention.
"Sunderland! Incinerated! Locusts! Scattered showers!" bellowed Cecil, becoming quite agitated.
"But we're not in Sunderland," said Phillip, pouring himself a third bowl of porridge.
"Sunderland is my home town!" screamed Cecil.
Phillip disputed this, pointing out that he had known Cecil for forty-seven years, significantly longer than either of them had been alive, and in all that time Cecil had never once mentioned visiting Sunderland, let alone living there. Cecil retaliated by noting that he had never mentioned NOT being from Sunderland, an argument that Phillip refuted with seventeen dramatic reconstructions of occasions when Cecil had done just that, starring Cliff Richard as Cecil, Diana Dors as Phillip and Samuel L Jackson as the man who came round to mend the gas fire in the middle of one of the conversations.
Critics admired the unusual directorial techniques Phillip had used to stage a sequence of unavoidably repetitive dialogues, but considered the graphic sex scenes an unnecessary distraction from the central thrust of the narrative. A glaring historical inaccuracy involving a dodo wandering past the window in a scene set in 1987 was also considered a failing of the performance. In reply, Phillip protested that he had had to stage the re-enactment at literally a moment's notice, and thought he had done a passable job under the circumstances. He conceded, however, that it was not the highlight of his career, and promised to do a better job next time.
Cecil, meanwhile, had appointed himself Prime Minister, and vowed as the last surviving Sunderlander to put right all the wrongs of the world. Phillip ventured to suggest that even if Cecil had been from Sunderland, surely there would be other survivors of the disaster, especially considering that it was the summer holidays, but Cecil brushed aside any such allegations and laid out a surprisingly intelligent strategy for improving the social services, modernising the entire country and bringing about a perfect socialist utopia. Phillip had to admit that it would make the world a better place in every way, but felt obliged to attempt to stop Cecil anyway, because of his inaccurate claims about his place of birth.
At this point, Samantha, who had overslept as a result of drinking too much absinthe the night before, came downstairs and asked if there was any porridge left. This reminded Phillip not only that he had eaten it all, but that it was time he was leaving for work. He asked Samantha to thwart Cecil's benevolent plans for him, put on his clothes and hurried down to his office. Cecil refrained from filling Samantha in on what had happened, knowing that she would take Phillip's side, and put his economic plans into operation while she was distracted by having to make some more porridge and phone her work to tell them she'd be late in.
Phillip had a tiring morning's work - as a mousecatcher, you can often spend days at a time with no mice to chase, especially in a modern office building like his, but on this particular occasion there was a whole army of extremely large rodents gnawing their way through the payroll department, and Phillip was run off his feet. So it was only when he stopped for a lunch break and looked out of the window that he noticed the sweeping social and economic reforms that Cecil had initiated. With everybody in the entire world now having a more than ample share of the planet's resources and there being no more war, injustice or prejudice of any kind, Phillip worried that a lot of people would sympathise or even agree with Cecil's actions if he didn't do something to stop it immediately.
He phoned Samantha to ask why she hadn't done as he asked, but she replied that she'd got her foot caught in the oven door while making porridge at breakfast time, and hadn't been able to leave the kitchen. Phillip hurried back home, hoping that he could get back to work before the end of his lunch hour, freed Samantha's foot and, pausing only to get dressed again, made all possible speed to the ruins of Sunderland in order to rebuild it and sort out this whole terrible situation.
On the outskirts of Sunderland, they were met by Cecil. Knowing that if Sunderland was rebuilt, he would no longer be able to be Prime Minister and all of his good work would be undone, he attacked Phillip and Samantha with a garden fork, wounding several passers-by before impaling his own foot and sticking himself to the ground. Thankful for Cecil's limited experience of using gardening tools as weapons, Phillip and Samantha quickly put Sunderland back together and hurried back to their respective jobs, putting their clothes back on along the way.
And so the world was saved from a golden age of happiness and unity. Phillip was three minutes late getting back from lunch and was given a formal written warning, Samantha's employers failed to notice that she'd been absent for the whole morning and gave her a lucrative promotion, and Cecil returned to his uneventful life as an escapologist. The end.
Sorry about that. Something might happen tomorrow that I feel like writing about...
No comments:
Post a Comment