A small headline on page six of the Peapod News read, ‘Outbreak Concerns.’ Dimple Potts, perused the brief article and said to his wife, ‘Listen to this. “A new study suggests a possibly serious outbreak of Alta Stultitia or Deep Stupidity. Neuroscientist Dr Klas Beekhof says the condition results in thoughts we may think of as common sense, such as ‘Dinosaurs helped to build the pyramids – it stands to reason,’ and ‘I did my own research,’ but which are clinically described as cognitive horse feathers. Whilst the condition has been apparent throughout human history, he said that researchers are alarmed to observe the current and rapid diffusion of Alta Stultitia into the general population, worldwide.”
Dimple nodded knowingly at his wife. ‘This is what I said to the Chair at last week’s meeting. I can tell you it’s reached our shores.’ He continued to read:
“Endeavouring to quantify the trend, Beekhof said that the study asked a broad sample of people across Europe, ‘If the moon was to fall, would you prefer it to fall on Africa or South America?’ Ninety per cent of people said they would prefer it to fall on Africa.”
Dimple gave a short and incredulous bark of a laugh. ‘Africa!’ he cried. Then reading on. “When asked why, most believed incorrectly, Africa to be wider and therefore less likely to sink, whilst fifteen per cent of these respondents preferred it to fall on Africa because if it fell on the Sahara, which was all sand, it would be hardly noticeable.”
Dimple cried, ‘Idiots! There are oases – and pyramids.’ Then he read, “Beekhof said that when this question was asked ten years ago, sixty per cent had selected the option, ‘This is a silly question.’ In the current study, this response had dropped to just seven per cent.”
‘Seven per cent!’ cried Dimple. ‘We are living in outrageous times…but I can tell you, it’s been very obvious to me.’ and he took a mouthful of his toast and marmalade. His wife said it was a silly question. Dimple replied, ‘That’s as may be, but I certainly would not have said Africa. I’d have said, if the moon was to fall, we’d need to nuke it. I am wondering why this wasn’t an option?’
Dimple’s wife offered no comment about this. She sipped her cup of tea and listened with a small smile on her face, to the blackbird singing in the apple tree in the garden. Dimple returned to the article and read, “Beekhof also pointed to alarming evidence of a fall in neuronal connections. In this respect, he said, a significant proportion of the cohort that is defined as ‘White older males before actual torpor,’ or WOMBATS, said that the moon should be nuked forthwith, as a precaution.”
Dimple nodded sagely. ‘Prudent,’ he observed. ‘My thinking, exactly.’
TWO
What had become abundantly clear to Dimple Potts, was that he no longer had a future in politics. Witness the calamity in his previous home town of Brewster’s Neck. Just three citizens, including himself and he presumed his wife, had voted for him to continue his short-lived tenure as Mayor. It was preposterous but what could he expect? Hadn’t his policies been deliberately distorted and misrepresented by his opponent? For a few moments he allowed his thoughts to contemplate his erstwhile opponent. A Latvian baker. The Latvian baker, Sarah Bumbulis. She had come from nowhere. He had been deputy mayor for twenty-three years and then, a baker who’d lived no more than eleven years in his town, had stood against him and won by a landslide. Humiliation.
The politician, Dimple Potts glanced up and found himself being regarded by himself. He studied the grave image staring at him from the bathroom mirror. He studied the longish but not unhandsome head with its prominent ears; its sombre grey eyes beneath bushy eyebrow and all crowned with a decent head of hair albeit flecked with grey, and considered what word best described that visage. He decided, not for the first time, that it was dignified. He raised a hand and took hold of his lapel. It was a dignified posture. It suggested a politician surely, who took things seriously. Not a smirking, flighty, Tik Tok, leotard-wearing and garrulous type, of which there were many, but a man of integrity, indeed, a man-for-all-seasons. He sighed. Three votes. Ignominy. Alta Stultitia. He had departed Brewster’s Neck like a dog-shot-in-the-butt, as that dreadful Verbal Pritchard had described it.
At the thought of his former PR man, the man-in-the-mirror grimaced. Dimple asked, rhetorically, ‘Had I not allowed that charlatan Corker and his vacuous nephew, Verbal anywhere near my campaign, would I not have rebuffed the Bumbulis challenge?’ The man-in-the-mirror assumed a most reflective expression, before replying, ‘Dimple. You had an albatross around your neck.’ Dimple nodded and allowed his gaze to settle on that neck. A solid neck. Not without some wrinkles but nevertheless, not the etiolated neck of a green sprout. It had borne an albatross but it was unbowed. The bird-of-ill-omen had been cast off.
His thoughts returned to Corker Pritchard. Founder and owner of the very successful but ultimately infamous business ‘Forest Flavours,’ bringing consumers a taste of wild venison in its acclaimed sausages and other small goods. Corker Pritchard…not content with making a great deal of money from Forest Flavours, meddled in Council affairs, such that rules always favoured his manifold dealings and schemes. Such as a coal mine. And who had he enlisted to this new venture? The new Mayor, Dimple Potts. And so, when Dimple’s fellow citizens and voters discovered that Corker Pritchard’s venison sausages also contained various species of vermin as well as a citizen’s cherished pet, purely by association, Dimple’s campaign sank without trace. Bumbulis triumphant.
Dimple glanced toward the ceiling, ‘Was mine not a robust and reasoned policy platform?’ The man-in-the-mirror pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks but made no comment.
‘Jobs,’ continued Dimple accusingly. ‘Everything is about jobs. No jobs? Bottom feeders and chaos. And proper types of jobs that everyone knows about…not the airy-fairy jobs that Bumbulis proposed. Of course, I expected that coal was going to attract some controversy, but didn’t I always say it was a transition? I maintained just that, from the beginning. A temporary gold mine as it were. Then, out with the coal and on with the windmills and so forth. I always said that, but that woman twisted my words. Shameless! And the average punter? Too daft to know the difference, and now we know, getting dumber by the day.’ He looked for affirmation but the man-in-the-mirror remained annoyingly silent. Dimple gave him a cold stare.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, Dimple considered, it had been fated. Quite apart from Forest Flavours, there had been the Hemopo problem. Recalling how the uncooperative inventor had derailed the plan for coal, Dimple removed his hand from his lapel and pinched his cheek, quite painfully. The man-in-the-mirror’s eyes widened. Both now contemplated Doug Hemopo, who, for reasons to do with a contrarian nature, opposed things – and especially things proposed by the Mayor – on principle. Had Hemopo taken the substantial amount of cash on offer and granted access to the coal behind his land, much that had gone catastrophically wrong, would not have done so. Not only had he obstructed the Mayor and his entrepreneurial sponsor, but he had invented and built that monstrous robot that had quite literally, destroyed Corker’s mining equipment. And then what? The iron beast had brought down the electrical trunk lines into Auckland, destroying itself in the process and utterly driving the final nail into the coffin that was Dimple’s mayoral campaign.
Dimple said indignantly, ‘What would Beekhof make of all that?’
*
These then, were the reflections of a man who had selflessly given twenty-four years of his life to public service. Twenty-three years in Brewster’s Neck, and now to the minor political party called the First Union of Conservative Thinkers, here in the leafy and complacent Auckland electorate of Peapod. But what did it mean? To represent the First Union of Conservative Thinkers? Frankly, he did not know. And as the weeks ticked by and the General Election loomed, it became no clearer. And why? Beekhof had confirmed his suspicions. Brain fog abounded and most particularly in the committee for the election of Dimple Potts.
A voice called from another part of the house. Ah, thought Dimple, dinner. Just what he needed. He had detected the aroma of a steak and kidney pie and it was most tantalising. He completed his business, arranged his attire and flushed the lavatory. Then he washed his hands for half a minute. The man-in-the-mirror nodded approvingly. As Dimple exited the bathroom, the man-in-the-mirror inspected his own fingernails and said, ‘A man who possesses genius is insufferable, unless he also possesses at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness.’
Dimple paused in the doorway. ‘Do you think that profound? An idiot could pronounce as much.’
The man-in-the-mirror said in his typically offhand way, ‘Ich zitiere Nietzsche.’
*
The pie was excellent. The Shiraz was satisfying. But the brussel sprouts were not. Dimple reminded his wife that he did not like brussel sprouts. An expression of distaste came to his dignified face. ‘I refuse to eat them!’
Dimple’s wife came around the table and taking his knife and fork from his hands, sliced the sprouts and applied a little salt, pepper and butter. She returned to her seat.
In response to her enquiry, he said, ‘Yes. I have a committee meeting tomorrow morning. I intend to resign. No more of this shilly-shallying and wringing of hands. I am through with politics. I am through with the First Union of Conservative Thinkers, and I am through with this Peapod electorate. I intend to cut-to-the-chase and brook no argument.’ He swallowed the last slice of the sprouts. ‘There must be an end to it. I think to become an entrepreneur. Look at Corker Pritchard – made a fortune turning deer and possums into sausages.’ He raised his fork and poked the air to emphasise his determination both to resign from politics and to become an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is the very model citizen, whom everyone wished to be. Hardly anyone wished to be a politician because a politician was held in the lowest regard. Very low. Some of the tweets he had read recently suggested that the authors of those tweets held a cane toad in higher regard. He touched his chest and grimaced. Then he prodded his thigh and said, ‘Ouch.’
It had occurred to him that had Corker Pritchard not become excessively greedy and padded his products with pets, he would still be the king of Forest Flavours and the magnate of Brewster’s Neck. That was the lesson. When it was discovered that the town’s favourite dog, Nostradamus, had been unwittingly eaten by the locals in a Forest Flavours sausage, Corker’s days were over. Greed. Or was it stupidity? Or perhaps, just plain carelessness? Perhaps that was the lesson? By some reckoning, it was stupid, certainly, but it wasn’t greed, per se, that had led to Corker’s disgrace and hasty flight to South America. It was, contemplated Dimple, more akin to carelessness…in which case, the successful entrepreneur’s creed must be greed, but with care…
In the midst of these thoughts Dimple prodded his ankle and said ‘That hurts too! Perhaps I’m coming down with something.’ He poked his chest and cried out in alarm, ‘It’s everywhere.’
His wife came around the table and took his hand in hers. Then she went to the bathroom and returning, handed him a single band-aid.
‘What is the use of this?’ Dimple demanded.
His wife advised him to put it on the cut on the end of his finger.
*
In the Peapod office of the First Union of Conservative Thinkers, a meeting was taking place. The subject being debated heatedly, was the party’s sole candidate – to wit, Dimple Potts. The debate did not concern candidate Potts’s suitability to run for the election in three weeks – the debate was about who might be found to replace him at such short notice. The meeting was characterised by sudden outbursts, with all speaking at once but which clearly boiled down to the sentiment that Potts was a most unsuitable candidate, mixed with not so oblique accusations against those who had brought him into the fold. These outbursts caused complexions to change colour and elicited mutterings beneath the breath – which occasioned sharp questions such as, ‘What? What are you saying? Speak up, so we can all share!’ These outbursts were punctuated with silences that could best be described as a funk, and in one case, the mysterious demand, ‘Who’s got the bodgy?’ During the funk, eyes were downcast. Fingers fidgeted with pens. Sighs were common, as was the sudden gesture of a hand clapping to a brow. Then a new outburst would begin. ‘What I don’t understand is how…’ and then the question was lost in the cacophony of raised voices.
The meeting proceeded in this vein for approximately an hour. Finally, the Chair was able to make a speech with barely an interruption. ‘I think we are all agreed that we’ve been saddled with an idiot. Yes, yes – let me finish! Obviously, I take some responsibility for Potts’s appointment, but that’s water under the bridge. And to be fair, his previous campaign movement, which you may recall was FOKKERS, seemed an admirable fit with our own persuasions. ‘Fundamentally opposed to Aucklanders, Kangaroos, Environmentalists, Rivers and Socialists.’ I grant you that ‘Rivers’ was a stretch – but that’s the farmers getting their oar in – and of course we’re not opposed to all Aucklanders – more that we’re for ourselves, in a selfless way – but otherwise, Potts’s slogan was in pretty decent alignment with the values of the First Union of Conservative Thinkers.’ He paused to encourage scarcely perceptible and grudging nods that indicated that indeed, in other circumstances and with a little modification, FOKKERS could easily have been their own.
‘What we have since learned, and I’m first to admit I slipped up, but you all know how busy I have been – what we have learned is that Potts was mayor of a village of barely three hundred. In fact, I haven’t been able to even locate this huddle of huts on any map I’ve looked at. And Potts himself disclosed that an Indian, a Pawnee, for Heaven’s sake, rode up main street – all fifty metres of it – and shot an arrow into a beggar’s throat.’ The Chair shook his head. ‘Unbelievable, I grant you, but we have to face facts. We’re three weeks out from a general election with no other candidate in sight.’ Nods accompanied this evident but painful truth.
‘What to do? That’s our dilemma and that’s what we must resolve. We must be of one mind. We must put aside our quite legitimate concerns, and focus on the election. And in my mind, it comes down to this. We either back Potts with everything we’ve got, or we stand aside for the Other Lot. Now, here’s the thing. We’re Peapod. And in Peapod, we vote for anyone but the others. It’s our badge of honour. It’s how we stand apart and frankly, it’s why we’re the envy of everyone. Peapod would vote for anything that drew breath, provided it opposed taxes and losers. That being the case, I think it more than safe to assume that instilled by us with the correct fervour, Potts could be moulded to become a successful candidate. What happens after, well, that’s for the future. But what we must have, is an MP. We must hold the balance of power – and I say, if it must be Potts, so be it.’
The Chair opened the floor for discussion, which occasioned another two unintelligible outbursts, further darkening of complexions and in one case, a body slumping forward onto the table, temporarily indisposed.
‘So, I think we’re agreed that Potts it is.’ The Chair glanced at his phone. ‘He’s here in ten minutes. We must compose ourselves.’
THREE
Experimentally, candidate Potts poked his bandaged finger into his neck and noted with satisfaction that his neck appeared to be unaffected. He popped into the bathroom and observed in passing that he was presenting his resignation that very day. He said, ‘Time to show that the Potts has many strings to his bow.’
With this liberating thought he drove through the elysian avenues of Peapod and wondered what extraordinary and perhaps revolutionary new business he would soon create. He imagined how he would be received. He would enter a crowded room of conspicuous affluence and momentarily, all eyes – envious and worshipping, would be on the Entrepreneur. There would be comments such as, ‘That’s Dimple Potts, you know…one of the most creative minds in business today…unbelievably wealthy…reinvented the category…revolutionary product…an example to us all…eccentric but a genius…’ Indeed, so engrossed was he with his ‘new direction,’ that when he paused at his favourite café to take a coffee and a croissant, the sudden collapse of the barista; the ensuing kerfuffle behind the counter and the urgent attention of the paramedicals, went entirely unnoticed. With great surprise he replied to the distraught waitress, ‘He’s dead, you say? Well, well.’ And at that precise moment he experienced the frisson of an entrepreneurial idea.
Who wanted to be a pall bearer? How much better if the coffin floated, under a smallish helium balloon and needing only a slight nudge this way or that to be guided to the hearse and thence to the grave site? And once conveniently suspended over the hole, a dart, perhaps, ceremonially thrown by the widow, would cause the coffin to plop to its final resting place without need of any other paraphernalia…The tiresome problem of the overly-tall pall bearer opposite the very short, instantly solved! A coffin that with an adjustment to its balloon, might actually be launched into limitless space and thus solving the worldwide shortage of burial ground. Naturally, there were details to be worked out – but this is where it started, with the entrepreneurial spark and a dead barista. As he drove along the avenue to the office of the First Union of Conservative Thinkers, he smiled and hummed. Approacheth the Great Thinker!
