The Darkest of Days

Someone sucked all the humour out of life. The lights were switched off. The doors were locked and barred. The windows were boarded up. Men stayed huddled near their own fire at home.

The darkness of night rules the land.

Paddy Cuminski said that was how he felt when he heard the news of Donny Trump winning the USA election. Peter Gatherstone said his cousin who lived somewhere in Ohio had written of his delight that he could now shoot people he did not like and be rewarded for it.

We told them both to shut up. We were talking about the ten days the village pub was closed after the landlord left and emigrated to Wales. Like the USA election result, it did feel like someone had sucked the goodness and humour out of the village.

Mr Kumar from the village pharmacy said he ran out of supplies of contraceptives because no sensible person could see the point of having children with Donny T in charge of the world. That had nothing to do with the pub being closed so he too was told to shut up.

A new landlord has been spotted but has spent a lot of time hiring bar staff and sitting upstairs planning and plotting and maybe even working out which part of the pub to clean first. Selecting the US Presidential team would be easier.

Drinkers accustomed to quiet and calm drinking of pints were seen to hold pints in trembling hands when the rumour was put out that the bar area might be turned into a disco type themed hostelry. Such inroads of barbarism had been stoutly rejected by the outgoing landlord. While his desertion to Wales had been greeted with hostility, he was now seen in a slightly better light as all present considered this new threat. The lack of certain knowledge of what the new landlord might do was proving a strong challenge even to those who had lived through several wars, the missile crisis under Kennedy and the bin strikes when Edward Heath refused to do his job and clean the country.

The total power enjoyed by the new office holder would brook no resistance no matter what mad idea he might entertain. The office of pub landlord was the highest in the village and the crazy ideas of an office holder would not be allowed to interfere with the respect to be shown at all times.

Some of the younger drinkers, not properly reared and domesticated, murmured about dissent and voicing disagreement, but no one could take such thoughts seriously.

Michael from the White House cottage in Cold Comfort Lane said to even question the right of the landlord to wreak havoc if he wanted to do so would be tantamount to treason. In what was one of his longest speeches, he compared such a dissent to calling Donny T a racist as he picked his new leadership team and said it could even be compared to someone complaining that the Queen was being given too much money to spend on doing up Buckingham Palace when there was so much homelessness through the country.

It was agreed that we were living in uncertain times. Old Peter Haskins thumped his stick on the floor, a sign he would like his wheelchair moved nearer the fire or that he wants another pint, or that he has wet himself. Fortunately, he wanted to speak. In the old days, he said there were only two mad men in the world, one in the US and one in Russia. Now, he went on, the two loonies in charge of those two countries are joined by at least another five crazies from other parts of the world.

We thought his lumping together of other maniacs around the world with these two was a stretch too far.

At least the people of America had elected Donny T and so had a say in who would ruin their lives. We didn’t even have that choice in the selection of the new pub landlord. While the Americans who were unhappy could emigrate to Canada, there was nowhere for us to go under the new regime.

At least the pub was open, for another while at least.