The Magic Roundabout

Elections a transparent publicly funded competition to see who it was that got a ticket to ride for the next few years

And Lo, it came to pass every few years in the Land of the Pure that the Kings, Queens, snollygosters, charmers snake and otherwise, con-artists, scions and rugrats, courtiers, fawners and the certifiably barking mad — all had to get off the Magic Roundabout and mill around in the fairground while it was polished and serviced, and before they got back on had a dignified and transparent publicly funded competition to see who it was that got a ticket to ride for the next few years.

The hoi-polloi, who normally did nothing but watch as the fabulously rich circled in faux-majesty waving and chucking handfuls of sweeties and pictures of flyovers and motorways — got to take part in the Ceremony of Choosing. This arcane ritual consists of scribbling an insult on a scrap of paper, wrapping it around a stone of handy size and then hurling it at their most-favoured Roundabout rider. Most of the riders wore big hats with symbols on — ferrets, butter-dishes, dirty washing, dead cats, three-fingered hands and the like — and dodged about trying to catch the flying rocks, unwrap them and at the end the ones with the most chits got to stand in line while the Magic Roundabout was being titivated in anticipation of their return.

Meanwhile up on the Roundabout the service crews were hard at work. Firstly they checked the workings of the ejector pins that were fitted to all the seats. These cunning devices could be activated by the Roundabout Master at any time and consisted of a six-inch spike that at the press of a button jumped from its hiding place and made contact with the nether regions of sitting so-they-thought comfortably aforementioned Kings, Queens, etc etc…occasioning their startled exit mid-ride. The hoi-polloi looked forward eagerly to the squealing arc of punctured rider as it crossed the sky. They are currently relishing the flight of Uncle Grumpy who had got a bit too big for his boots and triggered the ‘fly solo’ option. The crew duly obliged.

Then they paid attention to the sound system which was cleverly linked to the cerebral cortex of each rider who delivered at province-reaching volume the script that had been pre-written by the service crew who worked under the direction of a Grand Master known only as Hidden Hand. HH had been doing this for decades, his/her true identity forever shrouded in mist. The prevailing wisdom among the hoi-polloi was that HH was really the last of the Pandalerian Giant Fruit Bats which is probably as reasonable an explanation as might be advanced in these crepuscular times.

Sounds fixed and script sorted it was almost time for the Kings, Queens, etc etc to remount their plunging gilded chargers and set off on their circular journey. But first they had to be fitted with the Goldfish Delusion. Goldfish rarely win Nobel Prizes for anything involving outstanding cognitive abilities and circle their bowls going ‘WILLYA LOOK AT THAT’ on account of their short-term memories being measured in fractions of a second a consequence of which was that everything they saw was new, having forgotten they had seen it a few moments previously.

So there it was — the Magic Roundabout, freshly painted and oiled, gears and cogs meshing nicely and steam whistle a-tooting merrily, the pride of the fairground in the Land of the Pure. Around it lay the mortal remains of those that had not survived the rocks-and-chitty stage of the process to be picked over by flocks of gaudy vultures that all had a strange device worn at their neck which on close inspection read ‘Media’. They carried microphones and little pads with a stubby pencil attached by a bit of string and noted the dying words of the erstwhile riders of the Magic Roundabout. These they then broadcast via an arcane word-of-mouth tradition called ‘Fake News’ the better to disinform the public at large.

Then it was time to mount up again. They waved. They blew kisses. Exchanged loving billet-doux and off they went. Satisfied that all was in order HH pushed the master switch and the Magic Roundabout was up and away, taking off to rousing cheers of ‘Hurrah for Democracy.’

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2018.

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