A fable for our times

Once upon a time there was a garden with potting shed at the end of it, that was where the man who worked in the garden kept his tools. It was also where the other tools lived, and they were commonly known as the Cabinet.

Outside the potting shed there was a number of strange -looking orange pots, and in the middle of the strange -looking orange pots there was a little weed, she was commonly called a Mayflower, but the naughty boys and girls  who lived across from the potting shed and sat on rows of green leather toadstools will forever ragging the little Mayflower, who many regarded as a weed and every time she got up to speak to warn the naughty children across from her that she was strong and stable they just laughed.

Most of those naughty boys and girls were roses of one sort or another, and mix with them were a bunch of very jaggy Thistle's also jeered at the little weed and her strange orange pots that lurked in the shade of the potting shed where all her other little friends were hiding and plotting to chop the little weed down. They were almost no probably more naughty than the roses and thistles who sat on the green toadstools opposite. They her friends in the potting shed believed that she, poor little weed had betrayed them and had promised to be strong and stable and had turned out to be a heap of meaningless manure stop

The little weed could do nothing right, well that's not exactly true everything he wanted to do was right, indeed almost as right as her almost friend Nigel the poisoned fruit bat(sorry fruit tree) but Nigel was not in the garden, not even in the potting shed and in fact he had cleared off to be with his friend across the water Trump the termite(who thought by the way he was in fact the terminator but of course he couldn't spell that when he tweeted and so he settled for being a termite)

When the weed had decided that she was going to show all those naughty boys and girls who were bullying her and laughing at her shoes and making rude remarks about her expensive leather trousers and she decided that the best way to do that, the most austere way to do that was in fact to call all the naughty boys and girls bold the ones across from her on the green toadstools and the raggedy arsed mugwumps back in the darkness of the potting shed, to impose on all of them a day of reckoning, which she decided would be 8 June.

However things did not go quite to plan, and all those millions who lived outside the garden decided it was time to rain on her garden and instead of planting hundreds of new austerity plants and harvesting even more helpless, hopeless, homeless, unemployed, poor, useless mugwumps who would do their duty and lie down for the weed, the buggers listened to the bearded rose grower sitting opposite and they, the great unwashed mugwumps turned their back on little weed.

All the things she wanted to do like punish the young mugwumps and punish the old mugwumps and punish the sick mugwumps and of course build a big tower out of Lego to stand proud in the garden which you called a Brexit tree.

Four weeks she had been telling all the mugwumps that there was no such thing as a money tree, but there were hungry trees, poverty trees, austerity trees, coffin -shaped trees for the old mugwumps but certainly no money trees – zero, nada, absolutely zilch.

As her dreams fell apart like her friends in the Cabinet in the potting shed, she had even less friends than when she started, so she looked around the garden and saw standing grimly in their bowler hats and unusual orange sashes 10 likely looking new friends. And so while the garden fell into chaos and disorder she asked her strange pot -shaped new friends if they would like to play with her in the garden.

"Surely wee weed, we'll come and play in your garden,but ye ken we'll want to see your lovely money tree first. And we will need to shake that money tree a wee bit"



"Of course strange barrel-shaped orange coloured fellows and fellowess(by the way I view related to my orange friend across the sea?) What would you like from my lovely newly discovered money tree? A free ride in one of the Queen's aeroplanes? Would you like that my new orange friends?"

"Away to F**k, as our revered Master Dr Paisley would have said, we don't want much just a wee bit to get by on, so wee weed we'll settle for a nice round figure, give your money tree a good shake and we'll depart with a nice round billion poonds!".

And they did and nobody lived happily ever after in that garden until the weed was sprayed weed killer and the strange bowler hatted orange coloured men and women were returned to their box.