Getting to the Heart of It - Vote Tessie

Badger Blenkinsop bowled into the pub announcing to the uninterested group of men in the bar that he had been sworn in and deputised to represent Tessie May in the village and the surrounding farms.

Badger is a well-known liar and handler of stolen eggs. The village bandmaster’s wife once called him "a ne’er do well" after he led an unsuccessful campaign to stop her walking her dog Barney through the village. All the villagers said her language was too polite.

Badger handed around a leaflet claiming it had been dictated to him personally by Tessie May. It read -

‘Dear rich people and all those who have not taken advantage of the opportunities of life and are poor and working class.

‘The issue in this election is really about choosing me, I, not Corby. Ignore his babbling about a country where the money is not for the many.

‘Lynton has crafted an original slogan I will repeat ad nauseam after my coronation - a country for the many led by the few. He has such a way with words.

‘Could you trust a leader who has moral principles and will not sell weapons and torture techniques to some seriously wealthy oil-rich chaps who will buy, no questions asked. What questions would we ask?

‘Meeting ordinary people is so distasteful. They throng around, filling the air with fake news about their hungry children, moaning about being homeless, complaining about long waits on operating lists, the disintegration of the NHS, the collapse of industry, the rich walking away laughing (that should be ‘sailing’) and the old who are neglected and dying. I thought dying was what the old were supposed to do.

‘Forget those pesky policies the fake news people went on about. I told you what you should have understood my words to mean when those media yobs misinterpreted what dear Fiona and Nick the beard really meant me to mean. I attended a grammar school, unlike many who were rejected and rightly branded failures. I know what I meant to mean even when my words mean some other meaning.

‘I will be the bruiser to beat those Brussels Brexit Busters. I played snakes and ladders against the visitors who surged through my father’s vicarage when I was a child. Rolling the winning dice in the face of the predatory parish councillors prepared me well for the battles my trusty negotiators will lose on foreign shores.

‘Together I will build a nation once again fit for those who rule, funded by those who are old, young, poor, middle class, northerners, disabled, children without a midday meal, nurses, immigrants, unemployed car and steel workers, bankrupt SMBs and anyone who is not a professional politician.

‘None of my decisions will afflict those in need of large bonuses or planning permission to throw up shoddy houses with on-going leasehold rents for years to come.

‘Lynton said it was an inspired piece of PR to latch on to the “girlie” thing the interviewer chap raised at my in-depth interview on some TV channel.

‘He said that people were so astounded that I was associated with anything ‘girlie’ that I should go for it in a big way. Nick the beard said Lynton is an Aussie and he might have a deconstructed version of ‘girlie’. I like the risqué nuances suggested by Lynton even though I do not know what they mean.

‘How we laughed on the way home about being asked which of us took out the bins. I repeated my House of Commons chuckle that everyone thought so funny. I thought it a girlie thing to support chaps and I am known for my sense of humour. I did not know what he meant by “taking out the bins”.

‘Be conservative. Go for Terrific Tessie, Me, I on June 8th and get what you deserve.’

Scrimper Scuttleboard said Tessie reminded him of a woman whose face had forgotten what her brain told it to look like so she smirked all the time. Badger and Scrimper were thrown out for raising their voices in the altercation that followed.

The village bandmaster’s wife walked by with Barney her dog but the dog paid no attention to Badger sitting in the car park trying to remove the leaflets from the orifices where Scrimper had shoved them.

The drinking men went back to their relaxation technique of raising glasses in an attempt to wipe woeful thoughts of elections from their minds.