In this week’s Mercury Column – you’ll find it on Page 38 after wading through about 37 pictures of Diogo, I decide to recount a dream I had whilst falling asleep studying the county budget papers and watching an episode of ‘Game of Thrones’. My only gripe is that the Merc editorial team changed my headline-which of course is a spin on the Joe Strummer film ‘the future is unwritten’ to something akin to giving away the punchline. But never mind, you rarely see me complaining.
Although in this article I come pretty close to it…..
It’s the year 2525 and bonfires are being lit across Somerset. Not just to mark the end of the ‘Great Austerity’ of 2024 but because all the heating was turned off in the late 21st century and they need to keep warm somehow.
The exiled Emperor Tharko the 1st, descendant of Somerset’s last democratically elected ruler ‘Bilius Revanant’ known to history as ‘The Last Liberal’, is returning from Lundy to take back control from the grey faced commissioners that had held sway in the county since the section 114 notice of late 2024 delivered Somerset to a small company of accountants from Basildon.
In the walled and moated People’s Republic of Bridgwater a decision has to be taken. Economically stable since the Localisation Decrees of 2024 the People’s Commissariat for the Advancement of Street Cleaning is on its fourth tray of vol au vents and can’t make up its mind. What would People’s Commissar Smedley have done? Well, not much since his sudden relocation to the Club Whoopee, Rio De Janeiro shortly after the event means we’ll never know. If only he’d left some writings!
But the world has moved on. It’s 2025 and the Earth is now part of the Intergalactic Economic Community. Despite its obvious success there are moves afoot for a ‘Universexit’ and this is the year that Nigel Farage, cryogenically frozen for 500 years, is returning to make a speech on the subject. Appropriately, from Uranus.
Thankfully, however, it’s January 2024 and I’ve woken up. It was all a dream. None of this could ever actually happen…..