From the sooty shanties of Kensington to the overflowing burial mounds of Hyde Park, all one hears of in London today is The Beast. This flesh-eating Lusus Naturae, currently overflowing both the underground network and the world’s oldest functioning sewage system, is even the maxime popularis of tight-lipped respectable ladies in what is left of the city.
The Beast has, I admit, devoured a number of souls that cannot be counted in the mere tens of thousands. The true sum of unfortunate statistics given to its voracious hunger will remain contested for generations, if indeed we survive long enough to gather such information.
But to tell you the truth my dear reader, scandalous as it may seem to our co-competitors at The Guardian; I admire The Beast.
It was not so long ago that I could not think clearly over all that damned noise. The piercing shriek of the snowflake. The blade-in-my-brain of the endless complainers. Escalating by degrees over the years. Increasing in exorbitance of both volume and content.
“Exit Brexit!”
“Trans people are people!” – a tautology if ever I heard one.
“The planet is dying!”
“My toilet has mauve demon fur growing out of it!”
“I can’t breathe, the air makes me nauseous!”
“The Sun. Can you remember what the Sun looked like?”
Et cetera, et cetera. All very loud. All very earnest. All, in an extremely tedious literal sense true – apart from “Exit Brexit” which is a phrase without truth value. But impossible to concentrate around.
Now, as a consequence of The Beast, the complainers are thankfully no longer with us. I can think clearly. My thoughts. Hot, black, heavy, sticky thoughts. The kind that have me afraid of sleep for the things that will wake me. Halting thoughts. Thoughts that make the heart leap and scratch.
But they are my thoughts dear reader. And I can hear them. We have our insatiable friend to thank for this. Those of us who are still alive are undoubtedly better off for its quieting omnipresence.
And so it is with great sadness that I look toward the upcoming democratic ritual. If the polls are to be believed then The Beast is about to lose its majority. The repercussion will either be a hung Parliament or a sickly Corbyn administration. Or both. Dread to think. In any case, the result is sure to put Brexit, now in its forty-seventh year of negotiation, in jeopardy.
I for one do not wish to live to see the outcome.
