The Friendly Games
Dear Mother Country, mummy may I tweak your ear about the Friendly Games.
One afternoon, sweltering under a forensic geologist’s tents, whilst they probed every part of me for coltan and cobalt to sell, I heard the news that Victoria couldn’t find the cash to host the next games in 2026. Covered head to toe in soot, dust and cobwebs and all the more indignant because it was Victoria, never liked her, I threw off the canvas and leapt to my feet. Mother, I rasped over the hotline internet, wasn’t Victoria an ingrate and a disgrace to your Commonwealth? If she’d only said. For the Friendly Games we could have nipped into Bermuda or the Virgin or Cayman Islands for half a billion of your offshore investments. So angry was I on your behalf that I sent the Chinese geologists packing.
Doesn’t your God move in mysterious ways? But for the tiff between elder sister Canada and the United States, would we have come up with the idea of holding a sporting festival to honour you? You slapped down the nostalgic chief of household who wanted to call them Empire Games. You named them the Commonwealth Games, The Friendly Games instead. That move scattered the radicals to the left and to your right
We opened the Friendly Games with a tiara perched on your coiffured locks. Expiatory gifts of diamonds from the South Africans glittered round your neck. You looked amortal, angelic, radiant and handsome. I so wanted to prove myself worthy of the sacrifices you made. Facing down those who said, allowing for inflation, you would get an even better price for me than the terrorists did in the 18th century.
Alas, it was not to be. Whilst Australians cast about for a cargo plane large enough to cart home their medals and smirks, not one medal did I have to show for my diligence. Not one. My siblings, foundling or not, bound unbound out of sandpits and sped round the tracks. They wore wide smiles on their faces, the wind at their backs. My lot staggered in last almost every time, patronizing sympathetic, there there aren’t they cute applause stripping thinner their self-esteem. Worse for wear, on high rise shoes handed down by a sister from Alberta, one boxer, disqualified for hitting below the belt, fell flat on his face during the closing ceremony. The experienced St. John’s ambulance crew, diplomats to boot, bless them, said he hurt his ankle during the bout.
My heart gnawed and clawed at itself as your birthkids, the Canadas, the New Zealands, staged huge events. The best I could get up was a game of tiddlywinks. That only during the break in the netball match between Jamaica and England. But if I was not for sale and could not run or jump then what was I on this earth for? Kids of course said my coastal rival, out of the cryptic corner of her mouth. Mum, you had fifty kids. I had none. Yet the only way to such fecundity was closed to me because you’d cornered the market in voluntary adoption.
Mischievous members of your Fourth Estate claimed that of all your kids, birthkids or adopted, you love Australia the most. I, for one, got that. After my sad – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – start to life, a product of the rape of my slaving mother by my terrorist father, who would want a girl like me? Yet you clasped me to your generous breast. You offered me your culture, language, and a share of world history on a plate. And when I began to bawl and throw my toys around about leaving home, wanting to run before I could walk, and though you knew what would happen, you loved me so much you let me go.
And what did I do next? Messed it up, didn’t I. Fighting myself and my neighbours over who had the larger yam tubers. Yet you didn’t wag your finger and say you told me. Staring down the sceptics and cynics, you drew me even closer into your imperial folds. I am not worthy.
My desperate quest for solace drove me to close to overdosing on painkillers. Then, over desserts, my wily butler and a cat lover, pandiculated as she passed a coded sweet forecast across the dining table. As if by magic, my angry masochistic despair dissipated. In its place, slid a most delicious feeling, drug free. Eureka. Madam feline sagacity was right. If the games died there’d be no more ritual humiliation and jibes from my siblings about the land with no mates or medals.
For days after that surging insight, when the news came on radio or TV suspense stalked my every breath. I yearned for news of the demise of the childish four yearly ritual of child abuse. But Glasgow, my senior sibling by a few hundred years, because it did so well last time, had to go and spoil everything. She conjured up a hundred million pounds in a back of the envelope calculation. Where is the fun in having a Spartan Commonwealth games, eh? What would happen to the retired basketball players I recruited during their visit to a neighbouring slave fort if Glasgow didn’t keep netball in the programme? I got my feline chief minister to draft a damning resolution to set before the UN Security Council. With the USA on our side we’re sure to get away with murder. Murder of the games, not kittens or persons, mummy.
Seriously mummy, I’ll be honest with you. We all had a soft spot for the grand dame who used to run your affairs. Can’t say the same about her lad though, or the last lot of cleaners. The thatchers and floorers and plumbers who cleaned you out and tried to borrow against the silver they’d already sold to their friends in the 80s. Love you to bits but if they try to get their paws on our gold bullion, yes, our gold, it’s not just yours, there’ll be rivers of blood on Threadneedle Street. I’ll tell you that for the price of a used toothbrush.
Dearest mummy, your pensioners are shivering, food banks are begging and sewage has nowhere to go. Nor do the naughty guys and dolls you had to release early because your prisons overflowed. Glasgow claims the Friendly Games will cheer you up. I have my doubts. I won’t be attending the Friendly Games, but here’s a billion to fix the leak Starmer keeps banging on about in front of those priapic Union Jacks.
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