The Mummyfesto (18 page)

Zach would be gazing skywards through his telescope, having negotiated an extra half hour before bedtime in return for leaving me in peace downstairs.

I was tired. Oscar had woken several times the previous night and I’d had a day of fraught meetings at work regarding the state of the hospice’s finances. But fortunately from beneath the blanket of tiredness came a whacking great kick of adrenalin. This was what I’d been waiting for. The moment when I stopped being a passenger on a ride I didn’t want to go on and jumped into the driving seat of a runaway car which had, as yet, no track or route map but promised to be the most exhilarating ride of my life.

There was a rap on the door. As soon as I opened it to see Anna’s face staring up at me, seemingly unsure whether to say good evening in a prime ministerial tone or squeal in excitement, I realised she felt it too.

‘Welcome to the Lollipop Party HQ,’ I said. ‘The fun starts here.’

Anna smiled and was about to say something when there was a shout and we looked up to see Jackie racing over the bridge.

‘Don’t start without me,’ she said. ‘I want to say I was there at the beginning. It will sound good in my autobiography.’

I shook my head, gave them both a hug and led them through to the kitchen.

‘I’ve been somewhat more cultured this time,’ Jackie said, handing me a brown paper bag, ‘and brought Perrier, brie and crackers.’

Anna started laughing. ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Jackie. ‘You’ve gone downmarket and brought cheap plonk and Pringles.’

‘Not quite,’ said Anna, emptying her bag to reveal wine, brie and crackers.

‘Never mind,’ said Jackie. ‘If this doesn’t work out we can always set up a stall in one of those French markets.’

‘Or if it does work out we could invite President Sarkozy over for the evening,’ I said. Anna cringed. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

‘Forgot what?’ asked Jackie.

‘Anna has a thing about Sarkozy.’ Jackie raised her eyebrows.

‘No, not that sort of thing,’ said Anna. ‘A “he makes my skin crawl and I can’t work out what the hell Carla Bruni was thinking of”, kind of thing.’

‘Right,’ said Jackie. ‘Glad we’ve cleared that one up. Does rule you out of being Foreign Secretary though, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re only saying that because you want the job,’ I said. ‘Keen to be the new Jackie O, are we?’

‘Piss off,’ she replied.

‘So you’re not denying it?’

‘What? That if Mr Obama walked in now and offered to carry me off to the White House I wouldn’t put up any resistance? You show me a woman who would.’

‘Fair point,’ I admitted.

‘Whereas if Sarkozy turned up, I’d be straight out of the back door,’ said Anna.

‘Which is a shame really,’ said Jackie. ‘Because you’d be much better suited in height than that Carla woman.’

Anna appeared suitably squashed. Jackie winced, obviously realising it was not exactly a compliment.

‘Right,’ I said, opening the wine and Perrier and pouring three large glasses. ‘So we’ve established that should we get into government you’ve both ruled yourselves out of being Foreign Secretary.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Jackie. ‘Don’t think you’ve got it all sewn up. How do we know that you haven’t got something to declare in the “strong or inappropriate feelings for a foreigner” department?’

I thought hard for a moment. ‘No. nothing. Unless you count the massive crush I had on Rolf Harris when I was twelve.’ Jackie had to run to the sink to splurt her wine out.

‘Well that knocks our two right out of the water,’ she said.

‘What? He’s not even a world leader. I’m hardly going to be accused of causing a diplomatic crisis, am I?’

‘No but we can’t have a Foreign Secretary with a fondness for the wobble board and the man who sang “Two Little Boys”. We’ve got our credibility to think about.’

‘It was his art,’ I said. ‘It was an infatuation born out of respect for his artistic ability.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jackie. ‘We simply can’t risk any accusations
of poor judgement. It appears we’ve all been disqualified. It’s not a very good start, is it?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Anna, ‘we should just get on with the business of drawing up the manifesto for fighting our seats and leave the squabbling about who gets what job until the unlikely event that we get to Downing Street.’

‘You’re right,’ I said.

‘I think you’re going to be the sensible one who can always be relied upon to put the others in their place at the Cabinet table,’ said Jackie.

‘Or, in this case, the kitchen table.’ Anna smiled.

We sat down, Jackie got out a notebook and pile of papers. Anna and I opened up our laptops.

‘OK,’ said Jackie. ‘So I’m a Luddite. That doesn’t preclude me from public office does it?’

‘No,’ I said, reaching for the cheeseboard, ‘and on the positive side it means you’re the only one who hasn’t got to worry about getting greasy fingerprints on your laptop.’

‘What’s that doing here?’ asked Anna, pointing to my micro tape recorder on the table. ‘This is not going to be used against us in some future court case, is it?’

‘I think she’s actually an undercover reporter for one of the Sunday papers,’ said Jackie. ‘This whole thing has probably been set up to see if they could find anyone gullible enough to go along with her crazy ideas.’

‘It’s just for the minutes,’ I said. ‘It saves me scribbling down everything you say.’

‘You mean your shorthand’s gone to pot since your journalism days,’ said Jackie.

‘Yeah, that as well. Anyway,’ I said, pressing the record button, ‘let’s get down to business.’

‘I found something on the internet about writing a manifesto,’ said Anna. ‘It’s very tongue-in-cheek, but I thought it might amuse you. It says to start with the word “today”, write a short sentence, then a shorter one, throw in a couple of one-word sentences, add a really long sentence about our overarching themes, then end by summing up in a word that makes no sense at all. Like kumquat.’

‘Job done then,’ said Jackie. ‘Though I’d go for pomegranate myself.’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘that the whole point of this party should be about throwing out all the usual crap in manifestos. People don’t believe them and I refuse to sound smug and condescending just because everyone else does. I think we should start with an admission that we don’t have all the answers but we do have lots of ideas and we can call on a whole load of people who have an amazing amount of knowledge between them.’

‘Can we?’ asked Jackie.

‘Yes. Well, we’ve got you two for a start. I imagine a teacher and a trained nutritionist and counsellor can muster up a fair amount of expertise. And then just think of all those women who have posted on Anna’s blog and tweeted their ideas. I bet we’ve got doctors, nurses, midwives, police officers, lawyers and goodness knows what else.’

‘I’ve actually got a mortician and a nuclear physicist following me,’ said Anna.

‘There you go,’ said Jackie. ‘If someone’s about to press the red button we’ll be extremely well placed to handle it.’

I laughed and passed her the cheeseboard. ‘It’s true, though,’ I continued. ‘If you put everybody’s skills together that would be one hell of a CV.’

‘We could still do with a bit more gravitas,’ said Anna. ‘I can imagine some men being very sceptical about letting a bunch of women run the country.’

‘If we can get six children to school on time, OK, maybe not always on time in your case, Sam,’ smiled Jackie, ‘and then get ourselves to work in the face of cat sick, dog poo, teenage hormones, elderly relatives, lost socks and book bags and the lure of CBBC, then personally I think running the country would be a doddle.’

‘Jackie’s right,’ I said. ‘But I think we should also work very closely with all sorts of organisations: charities, think-tanks, unions, academia. If anyone’s got some research to put forward or proposals to make things better, we should listen to them. And if they’ve got great ideas that promise to improve people’s lives we should implement them. How often do you see these reports and research come out highlighting an appalling loophole in the law or some national scandal and everyone agrees that it’s shocking and then completely forgets about it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jackie. ‘One of our NUT members died a few months ago from mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos, which she was exposed to in a school she used to teach in. I looked it up on the internet and 140 teachers
have died from it in the past ten years in Britain. We have the highest number of cases of it in the world; twice as many people die from asbestos-related deaths in Britain than are killed on the roads. An all-party parliamentary group published a report on it saying it was a national scandal and still nothing has been done about it.’

‘That’s outrageous,’ said Anna. ‘And if it’s killing the teachers just think what it’s doing to the children. It’s a time-bomb.’

‘We should put it in our mummyfesto,’ Jackie said. ‘We’ll bloody do something about it if no one else will.’

‘It’s in,’ I said.

‘Shouldn’t we vote on it, or something?’ asked Anna.

‘No need. Too many things that need doing and not enough time. If we think something’s wrong we try to put it right, simple as that. We are guided always by our core beliefs.’

Anna nodded though she still didn’t seem sure. It wasn’t surprising really. She was married to a man who was steeped in the kind of political minutiae that stifled the prospect of any chance of radical reform. If it wasn’t debated for an eternity at committee level, clauses and sub-clauses added to the point where whatever it was had been watered down to such an extent you could no longer taste it and then passed to the full council for approval, it wasn’t really considered politics.

What we were proposing here was to tear up the rule book and not even bother to write a new one. We were going to work on gut feeling as to whether something
was right or wrong. The same gut feeling that parents the world over relied on when they were trying to decide what was best for their child. Sure, occasionally they might get it wrong, but as long as they had been motivated by love, by an honest intention to do the best by their child, then nobody could ask for more than that.

‘OK, so what are our core beliefs exactly?’ asked Anna, spreading some Brie on a cracker and nibbling it in such a delicate fashion that I wanted to replay it in slow motion so I could marvel at it all over again.

‘Children,’ I said. ‘I’m proposing we adopt article 3 of the UN Convention on the Right of the Child which says, “Everything we do must have the child’s best interest at heart.” I also want to put in the thing I said before, about our society treating children, young people, the elderly and those with disabilities appallingly. And about us putting that right as one of our priorities.’

‘OK,’ said Anna, seemingly warming to the idea a little. ‘I’m happy to go along with that.’ Jackie nodded.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Your turn, Jackie.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘At the risk of sounding like some leftie revolutionary, I’d like to pledge that we create a fairer society where wealth and power are more evenly distributed. A Robin Hood tax, the living wage, that sort of thing.’

‘That won’t go down well with big business,’ said Anna.

‘Maybe not, but we’re a party for people, not big business. People hate bankers,’ Jackie said with a shrug. ‘It’s the one thing which unites the electorate. There is one
other thing,’ she said. ‘I’m aware that this whole manifesto—’

‘Mummyfesto,’ I corrected.

‘OK, this whole mummyfesto is in danger of sounding a bit worthy and dull. I think we need to lighten it up a bit. Show that we can laugh at ourselves too.’

‘And how do you propose we do that?’ I asked.

‘Skipping,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I think we should call for skipping to be actively encouraged.’

‘Skipping as in with a rope?’

‘No,’ said Jackie. ‘Skipping along the road in gaiety, if we can still use that word.’

‘You mean for children?’ asked Anna.

‘Oh no. Children do it anyway. Alice skips all over the place. I bet Esme does too.’ Anna nodded. ‘Well, I want adults to do it too. I hate the thought of Alice growing up and losing that wonderful expression of joy she has on her face when she skips. And I think it would wipe off the miserable look on people’s faces when they arrive at work on a Monday morning.’ Jackie looked at me, waiting for a response.

‘I think it’s up there with David Icke being the son of God,’ I said.

‘That’s because you’ve forgotten the joy of skipping.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Prove it,’ said Jackie.

‘How?’

‘Come with me now. We’ll skip down to Market Street, round the block and back again. All of us.’

‘You’re crazy,’ I said.

‘Certifiable,’ added Anna.

‘And you’re both too chicken to do it,’ replied Jackie.

I looked at Anna, she looked at me. Neither of us found it easy to resist a challenge. We both shrugged and stood up at the same time.

‘Come on,’ said Jackie. ‘Shoes on. You won’t need your coats. Skipping is great for getting the circulation going.’

Anna and I followed Jackie to the front door. I pulled my Doc Martens on and started to do up the laces. Anna slipped on her court shoes.

‘Right,’ said Jackie. ‘I’ll be the leader, please try to keep up. It’s best done at a brisk pace. It’s all about getting a rhythm going. No walking or running allowed. Ready?’

‘For public humiliation?’ I said. ‘Oh yes, count me in, anytime.’

‘Come on then, stop your whingeing. Let’s go.’

Jackie set off at a brisk pace, down Fountain Street, over the bridge and across the cobbles, her earrings swinging wildly, her bangles jangling, her shoes clattering across the cobbles. She made me think of a morris dancer on acid – not that I’d ever seen one – but in my imagination, at least. I followed behind, unsure whether to laugh hysterically or hang my head in shame. After a few moments a strange feeling started filtering through from my toes; a pleasant feeling, something akin to eating warm buttered toast and dancing barefoot on freshly cut grass rolled into
one. It was joy. Sheer unadulterated joy. I glanced over my shoulder. The look on her face indicated that Anna was feeling it too.