Good Gods dear reader, what a month!
I know what you’re thinking, and I apologise. I’ve been quite rushed off my feet recently with work and theatre and excuses but two days late, WE HAVE THE EXAMPLE PIECE!
So I hope you’ve been reading the entries to last month’s I’m my stead as I have that to do tonight. If you’ve read them and want to vote, the voting for May can be found here. This also ends the extension to the writers hand in as I had been taking ages.
So to June! Now June is the birth month of two of my heroes: Stan Laurel and George Orwell. Both were incredible in the genre of Satire, Orwell questioning the human condition through his writing and Laurel being incredibly funny in reacting to Oliver Hardy’s ridicule. Now to clear a thing, I checked the actual definition of Satire as it seems to be misused like ironic is.
the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Now as June 8th is a bit of a political wormhole, I’m tempting fate giving the theme of satire to the seven witty gits that are my writers so I have tried to propel them on another tangent this month. The theme is PARODY. The writers are invited to give us their takes on whatever they like, the less obvious the parody the better! To make sure that we don’t start any political revolution, points will be deducted to any writer who makes reference to the current political landscape. I know, I’m not nice.
And so, dear reader, to the example piece. This piece is inspired by an idea my good friend Ian Mason had about the response to the original broadcasting of a certain radio programme, and leads me to finish on “I’m not obsessed with Sci-fi recently, you are!”
Enjoy!
The Waning World
October 30th
“Good evening and welcome to BBC World Service. We apologise for the interruption of tonight’s broadcasting to bring you the news that our Prime Minister, Hugh Laurie, has declared that the UK and indeed the world is at war.” The radio crackled in it’s obtrusive manner, echoing and resonating with half built machineries in the lofty Tewkesbury Garage.
“Earlier today a message was received by the Pentagon – the US’s second largest centre of information after Facebook – declaring that the earth had been under surveillance for the past century and the human race left our audience wanting.”
Morris flicked the radio off in a half dazed state. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. The world was at war with an unknown entity/entities? Just because they didn’t like what they saw? He scoffed, “Well I blame the Americans! Running around shooting one another and screaming about how they’re the ones in the right.”
His audience, his tabby cat Jessy, didn’t much agree. She sauntered off, flicking her tail in indifference and knocking Morris’ tea off the side table for good measure.
“Oh well that says it all! World War Three is one thing but knocking a man’s tea over? I’m writing to my local council!”
November 13th
Morris knew there was something a miss, he’d felt the air change about 3.45am and knew that something was definitely not right. His morning cup of Yorkshire Tea did little to brighten his mood and he hadn’t seen Jessy in a day or two. Realising today was a Sunday and being a man of routine, he went to the garage to fetch his Triumph Bonneville and embarked on a calming and idyllic ride across the new Moor that had appeared since the last onslaught of plasma cannon fire. Morris was further upset by the events of the day as the ricochet of the blasts had caused several pot holes which took the council weeks to sort out and even then they didn’t do a good job. Morris was indeed a little miffed about this whole debacle.
December 8th
Morris sat at the abandoned train station. He didn’t know why he was sitting there, as trains had gone with the rest of civilisation after the war had ended. The word war seemed a little out of place to Morris. War, in his mind, was the act of two groups fighting over something of belief or value. Now the world was indeed valuable to Morris, don’t get him wrong, and he imagined that many of the other people that had lived on the planet thought so too but the the fighting seemed very one sided. Earth had sent everything it had in one fowl swoop and did nothing to the approaching pods as they landed in major cities on their pipe cleaner legs and started blowing things up with much more veracity and effectiveness. Although Morris had managed to avoid the major onslaughts by living in a tiny grouping of houses on the outskirts of Tewkesbury, he had heard the explosions from a far and couldn’t help but notice how the alien technology seemed to sound. He couldn’t quite place the reason why but when the things had torched Worcester, it sounded like a rock concert. It was as if Robert Moog and Steve Vai had moved in with Ginger Baker down the road. Normally the most music that Morris would listen to would be the theme to The Archers before turning the radio off for the night.
December 26th
During the early hours of the morning, a man appeared at Morris’ garage door holding a yellowed envelope and Jessy. Morris couldn’t understand a lick of what the man was saying but seemed to keep saying Old Rosie, and surmised that this was his name. As Morris opened the letter, Old Rosie made himself and Jessy comfortable by the storage heater. The letter turned out to be a call to arms by local constituencies to rebuild the now blasted country and indeed, world. It explained how somewhere in Devon, am elderly lady had realised the solution to renewable and pollution free energy. It occurred one morning when she had had a slight turn and dropped her toast, the polava spooking her own tabby cat who leaped from the top of the fridge. Not sure if it were the sudden loss and regaining of oxygen to the brain or the new outlook on life from the tiled kitchen floor, she realised that toast always landed buttered side down and cats always land on her feet. Later that night, she had carefully lay her cat to bed as she always did and then went to the kitchen. Reports from the local neighbourhood suggest that the lights in the district were supercharged and then exploded. This technology was far beyond where the human race should be at this point in time, and caused the Jeffery Wayne Time Continuum to set their agents to rectify this problem.
At the end of this explanation of recent events sat a simple instruction: To confirm your participation, please follow Old Rosie to our headquarters in Somerset. Morris wasn’t sure why Hugh Laurie would set up shop there, and even exclaimed so to Old Rosie who thought for a moment and spoke two words that Morris could actually understand. They were the answer, Morris knew. The words were:
THATCHERS BREWERY
Novel Dreamers 