L'IMPRIMATUR DU SNOT

Scene:

 

 In the store room of a Kircaldy Oxfam Shop, a heavily-medicated former politician is doing his shift,

 

 an  activity arranged for him by medical staff and community social services, 

Gordon spends Tuesday afternoons folding dead men's shirts and trousers, donated to the shop by widows and families. 

 

It gives Gordon a sense of self-worth and most importantly gives his pretend-wife, Sarah, some respite from him.

That's what they call it in the trade, respite.

It means having a break from an otherwise unbearably burdensome relation.

 

We're in fucking Auschwitz. 

And  my husband's signing his fucking autograph.

Talk about showing a girl a good time.

Unknown to Gordon, after four o'clock, when he has been collected by his care worker and driven home in the minibus, his carefully folded items of clothing are put in bags marked Incinerator.  

Like most of Gordon's working life, his afternoon shift has all been make-believe, someone has always come behind him, clearing-up, discarding his efforts. Today, though, 

 

he strides around the store room, 

side-to-side, side-to-side, 

 

grinding his jaw, clunking his nail-bitten fist down on  cupboard-tops and  ironing boards, sometimes ruminatively picking his nose and meticulously eating  its contents; sometimes he wipes his fingers on gentlemen's ties, awaiting display in the shop, other times, he simply licks them.  

Gordon is quite mad, 

 

suffering paranoia, delusions of grandeur and anxiety;

 

 he thinks that no-one takes him seriously, when it is he, in fact - or in his poor, mad mind, anyway - who knows what's the Right Thing For The Country, the Right Sol-You-Sun.

Mr Tiny Speaker, he says, 

 

to a pile of dog-eared Tom Clancy paperbacks, 

 

the right honourable lady for Maidenhead, Mrs May,  is exactly the right person to lead the Labour party.  She has a mandate from myself not to go to the country upon assuming the Emperor's throne. 

There is no need for the right honourfable lady to have an election, ever.  This is where I went wrong. In allowing dreadful, bigoted old ladies to vote on things they did not understand. Not that Mrs May is a dreadful, bigoted old lady, although she is. 

I meant, Mr Tiny Speaker,  that dreadful old woman up North, a ghastly, but all too typical  Labour voter who didn't want to welcome a few hundred thousand Bulgarian muslims into her health centre. She cost me my throne, you know. There was a time when our voters did what we told them.  But I am still hugely popular in my homeland of Scotland.

No, Mrs May need not seek the endorsement of the electorate for her betrayal of them. 

Not, Mr Deputy Speaker, when she has mine.

Back at home, Mrs Gordon tucks Snotty up for a long night in the arms of Morpheus.  And  Largactyl, assorted Benzodiazepams; Loxadine, Risparidol, Clorazil, Amitryptiline and a beakerful of  Laxido ( laxido-do-do, helps you do you poo-poo-poo, gives you healthy number-twos, drink up your Laxido-do-do.)

And I like to masturbate furiously for an hour or so, before going to sleep, Mr TinySpeaker.
 Just in case I explode.