Notes From Cuckoo Island

You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.

Actually, scrub that. You do have to be mad to work here, but there isn’t any work.

For you join me on Cuckoo Island, the only place on the planet where the inhabitants (the more cuckoo of them, at any rate) decided to hasten their own demise by voting for Brexit.

How so, I hear you ask. (Should have kept schtum if you’re worried about data protection). Well, this was a complex, deeply researched academic strategy by Leave exponents, combining the age-old tried and tested instruments of blatant lies and finely-tuned manipulation of the electorate, with the trailblazing utilisation of cutting edge, 21st Century technological advancements in advertising, namely sticking a poster on the side of a bus.

We were promised cheaper food, ecstatic fisherpersons, and unicorns, whereas the reality is – who’d have thought? – the price of food has soared, the fisherpersons are about as happy as the fish they catch, and all the unicorns appear to be stuck in customs at Dover.

These days, instead of the WELCOME TO HEATHROW sign at some airport or another (the name momentarily escapes me), there’s a large glossy banner proclaiming FUCK OFF, FOREIGNERS. Some might say this is entirely unnecessary, since we already make would-be visitors jump through administrative hoops (made in Poland, just like our new, blue, bendy passports), clap students in handcuffs, insisting they avail themselves of our famed British hospitality of free overnight accommodation in detention centres, and have completely abolished tax-free shopping, because the last thing we want is very rich people coming over here and spending their money in our shops (“I ‘ad that Sheikh in my over-priced designer jewellery boutique once – bought all the stock and left me with half a million quid in the till. Who does he think he is?!”)

Those of you who have encountered me before (bad luck! Please accept my apologies) will remember my years in Nice, where I found myself writing a blog about my experiences*, and/or from another blog, which I penned on my return to the UK. (Yes, yes, we all know hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nobody likes a know-all). Well, this is a journal about life in post-Brexit Britain. If anyone can call it living.

Anyway, should you not be familiar with the convention, there is a tradition of writing to The Times newspaper on hearing the first cuckoo in spring. (Unsure if they published Delius’ missive, but he still went on to be famous for something or other). Post-Brexit, the letters continue to arrive, but now demand the birds – mostly brown, mostly emanating from Africa – are captured and shipped off sharpish to Rwanda.

Yep, you’re very welcome to my world, because I sure as hell don’t want it.

*

*so it wasn’t my fault, right?