Messing about on the river

I woke, as usual, two minutes before my clock-radio heralded the new day and immediately I could feel it. Something was different. As I lay there, waiting for the distinct click-ON and a bit of vhf chatter before the news, I listened to the barely-there sound of my wristwatch on the bedside table. The teeniest and tiniest of clacks, as the automatic mechanism slowly wound down.

Impatient, I slipped into a tee-shirt and bare-foot padded over to the window. I threw the curtains wide to greet the dawn, a splendid, red affair which streaked across the sky, no doubt in breach of several statutes, but what did it mean? I really must get my head around what colour sky in the morning means warning. Blue? Black, red, pink? It could be any of them. (And just how much blue sky do you actually need to make a pair of sailors' trousers?)

My grapple with ill-remembered weather lore was interrupted by the news theme and I settled back into bed to listen…

The government, it announced, had finally got the deficit under control and the economy was growing steadily, outpacing most developed countries. The trials of venal politicians were drawing to a satisfactory conclusion and cells were being prepared in anticipation of the correct verdicts and sentences being handed out. The repatriation of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants continued apace, following the collapse of the various corrupt and ultimately illegal European institutions and successful re-devolution of powers back to home ministries. Good news. All good news.

A baleful police siren wailed in the distance and a helicopter clattered overhead. I caught a brief glimpse out of the window then tuned the radio to the local station. A live feed broadcasts events in real time and it was reassuring to hear the tracking down of criminals before breakfast. What wonderful times we live in, I thought to myself.

The police, now free of all their diversity and human rights targets, could concentrate on bringing to justice known felons and troublemakers without the restraints imposed by the disgraced and disbanded Crown Prosecution Service. In a time of booming prosperity, the only sector where unemployment was rising was in the fields of human rights, criminal defence and discrimination law. Now that everything was prosecuted on sheer common sense, the thieves, muggers and rapists were being locked up and kept locked up and the petty fallers-by-the-wayside were being firmly brought back into line.

I made tea and stared out of the kitchen window. Birds singing in the hedgerows, the slow drone of an airliner high overhead and a feeling of peace and security… and *click*

The radio alarm blared into life, shocking my slumbering body awake. My heart pounded as I adjusted to my new state and grimly opened my eyes against the full daylight. Afternoon nap – I do like an afternoon nap (It says so, right at the top of the page there, d’y’see?) – but they sometimes come with the most vivid dreams.

Was it too much to hope that at least part of my dream was real? I listened to the late afternoon news. Nope, as you were. Some demented dickhead called Trenton has optioned his fifteen fickle minutes of fame and interrupted the boat race. Welcome back to the failed Utopian socialist collective shambles we call Britain.