The 'X' Factor

The general election and all its ensuing razzmatazz had passed the inhabitants of Sleepy Hamlet by. A few attempts had been made by Tom, Incomer, Entrepreneur and Landlord of the Cock and Bull pub, to enlighten these simple country folk as to what the outside world was gearing itself up for, but his efforts had flown over their heads and been carried away on the thermals of indifference. But on Tuesday April the 27 their collective heads were about to be rudely pulled out of the sand by the sudden arrival of William Marshall Postlethwaite, prospective candidate for the Conservative Party and his arrival was noted by an elite clique of village curtain twitchers.
WM Postlethwaite got out of his car and strode purposefully to the first cottage and rang the bell. When the front door to the Old Smithy opened, WM Postlethwaite gave the occupier no time to utter a word and with a wide smile that contained a full set of well trained teeth he dived into a highly polished spiel on his parties manifesto while simultaneously rubbishing that of his opponents. He asked many questions of a rhetorical nature and waited for no answer. He hit upon the vagaries of Gordon Brown and then finished with a flurry of positive points on his own party before punctuating his confident pitch with a hearty ‘so what are your views on the present incumbents of No. 10?’ WM Postlethwaite was rewarded with a statement extolling the virtues of Hetty Wicks and her mother

WM Postlethwaite looked visibly stunned but regained his composure like the true pro he was. He rallied with a few more positive manifesto points before enquiring who ‘Hetty Wicks and her mother’ were. He was told they lived at No. 10 and as if to prove it, the villager pointed to No 10 Hamlet Villas. WM slowly tilted back, taking in more of the Old Smithy’s frontage as if making sure that he hadn’t inadvertently rang the bell to an insane asylum, then tried again. No, he started, Gordon Brown, the present prime minister of the UK lives at no 10. This was rewarded by more vehement head shaking from a villager who was positive that he’d seen both Hetty and her mother going into No. 10 yesterday while WM Postlethwaite, in his turn, tried to reintroduce reality to someone who had obviously built up a keen resistance to it. After several more attempts at trying to differentiate between No 10 Hamlet Villas and No. 10 Downing Street and being thanked for his efforts with protestations to the contrary, WM Postlethwaite took his leave. And with his head swimming slightly with visions of the twilight zone he walked out of the garden right into even more trouble.
Mrs Mulliner, the partly deaf and short sighted welsh housekeeper to Rev Batwing, was making her way to the post office as WM Postlethwaite came out from the Old Smithy. She stopped and studied what her mixed vision perceived to be a large clump of wayward shrubbery with a clipboard. WM mistook her open mouthed rigidity as a positive sign and once again attempted to connect with one of the villagers.
He began by wishing her a hearty good day and enquired as to what party she was. She, now realising he wasn’t a wayward shrub and not altogether hearing what he said, enquired what party he was talking about and if she would be expected to wear a frock to it. He, once again having a reoccurrence of the swimming twilight zone headiness and with a strong realisation that this conversation was crashing down the same nonsensical ally way that the previous one had gone, tried to explain about party politics and the general election. She, having the attention span of a dim-witted gnat pushed on with the frock questions. WM Postlethwaite thought it best if he slip away to try the pub and leave this dumpy little welsh half wit to her ramblings.

He wasn’t to fare any better in there as it was occupied by a very tidily Lord Hamlet who hiccupped loudly through the whole manifesto speech before blowing himself off the barstool with a burp of biblical proportions. He made several attempts at righting himself before deciding to stay where he was and sleep it off. But WM was a battler; his belief in the conservative way border lined fundamentalism, so he set off into the streets to take his evangelical message the great and gloriously mad of Sleepy Hamlet. After another hour and a half which was filled with inane ramblings he could take no more. He was a broken man.

And that was when he spotted the post office.

With what would turn out to be his last surge of self belief for the 2010 campaigning season, WM Postlethwaite strode on to the Hamlet Village Stores and Post Office. ‘Surely a postmistress’, he thought, ‘would have something to say about this present government’s wholesale destruction of this most iconic treasure of village life’. So with his clipboard at the ready and his click top pen poised, WM entered the shop.
He went slightly pale when he saw Mrs Mulliner there and she appeared to be talking to someone who was actually wearing a WW 1 German helmet with a mini umbrella attached to the spike? Mrs Mulliner spoke first as she recognised the shrub like shape with the clipboard. She remonstrated with him over his disappearance while the whole dress subject was still unanswered. Mrs Heppleheimer, for it was she with the unorthodox headgear, wanted to know about the party, WM tried to explain that the party title was a political epithet and sited the closure of the village Post Offices as an example of the opposition’s party politics. And that is how the whole wasted day suddenly went pear shaped. For at that precise moment Mrs Markle, the village postmistress, came in from the back with an industrial sized tin of beans for Mrs Heppleheimer. She could see agitation was in the air and enquired as to its origins. Mrs Mulliner said this foreigner was throwing a party but was extremely evasive on the subject of dress code and Mrs Heppleheimer said he was from the government and wanted to talk about Post Office closures.
Now if we can just hit the pause button for a few moments I feel it only fair to explain that Mrs Markle, although a strong minded person of undoubted ginger frizzyness, had one fear and that was the closure of her beloved Post Office. She had had numerous letters of intended closure and she’d spent many a dark moment brooding over what she’d like to do to any of the faceless little Whitehall bureaucrats if she ever got within swinging distance of one. They had up until now, it’s fair to say, managed to keep a fair piece of the British Isles between themselves and her; but today, it would appear, they had made a mistake. And in WM Postlethwaite she saw her target.
Now hit the play button and see the realisation in WM’s eyes as he twigs to the damage that a change in conversational meaning can elicit from a formidable wall of tweed like Mrs Markle. He looked pleadingly to Mrs Heppleheimer for re clarification of what he meant but was met with the malevontly twinkling eyes of someone who knew not only her target but was fully aware that she’d scored a bull’s eye. As Mrs Markle leapt over the counter with a war cry that wouldn’t have been lost in a Red Indian battle charge, WM turned to flee but Mrs Heppleheimer put a perfectly timed foot out and WM Postlethwaite, Conservative candidate, went down.
Precisely fifteen seconds later, the door to the Post Office burst open and a shattered prospective parliamentary candidate made his battered bid for freedom. His clip board was broken, his body battered and bruised and his click top pen was now a proctologists dream. Mrs Markle, for her part stood in the doorway holding his toupee in her hand like a battle scalp and yodelled her defiance.
It was a broken WM Postlethwaite that rang his party office a while later while looking nervously over his shoulder all the time. When asked if the inhabitants of Sleepy Hamlet could be classified as ‘floating voters’ he said that he believed they all had a strong political affiliation to one political party. When asked which one he simply replied: The Monster Raving Loony Party.
Sleepy Hamlet © Karl Dixon 2010