Mother country, some say 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 set me free.
And what did I do next? Couldn’t hack it on my own. I haven’t quite got over my difficult childhood and kept coming back to show how much I loved you. Yet you didn’t wag your finger and say you told me so. Staring down my sceptical fair sisters, you drew me even closer into your imperial scaffold.
Mother country, doesn’t your God move in mysterious ways? But for the tiff between your other daughters Canada and the United States, I doubt if we would come up with the idea of holding a sporting festival to honour you and hold the rest of the family together. You slapped down the nostalgic chief of household who wanted to remind everyone of your iron grip on the whip by insisting on calling them the Empire Games and renamed them the Commonwealth Games, alias The Friendly Games. Radicals, other belly achers and ungrateful adopted kids scattered to the left and to your right then fell into line.
We open those early 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 to get me up to standard.
It was not to be. Australians cast about for a cargo plane large enough to cart home their medals and smirks but not one medal did I have to show for my diligence. Not one. My siblings, in the main coopted or adopted, foundling or not, bound unbound out of sandpits and sped round the tracks. Broad smiles to the back teeth on their faces, the wind whipping their backs, their supple facet joints. I staggered in last almost every time, patronizing sympathetic, there there aren’t they cute applause stripping my self-esteem, not what I wanted to hear. And I was not the only one who asked, what are we doing here? Worse for wear, on high rise shoes handed down by a sister from Alberta, one of us, disqualified for hitting below the belt, fell flat on smiling face during the closing ceremony. The experienced St. John’s ambulance crew, diplomats to boot, bless them, said she hurt her ankle.
My heart clawed at itself as your fairer birthkids, the Canadas, the New Zealands, staged huge events. The best we, the dark adopted, could get up was a game of tiddlywinks during the break in the netball match between you and Jamaica. Mum, you had fifty kids in all that I know of but I have none. You rarely visit. I only see you during these Games and almost always from afar, sweat dripping down my tears.
My desperate quest for solace has driven me to drugs, close to suicide, torn me apart, into abusive relationships. Then, somehow, over desserts, as the forests recovered after a prolonged drought, I came to my senses. Break free woman, grow up rewild your mind.
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. One afternoon, sweltering under a forensic geologist’s tents, whilst they probed every part of me for coltan and cobalt to sell, I heard that Australia couldn’t find the cash to host the 2026 games. Covered head to toe in soot, dust and cobwebs I threw off the canvas and leapt to my feet, delighted. Australia, never liked her. But Scotland had to go and spoil it. No, she didn’t nip into Bermuda or the Virgin or Cayman Islands for half a billion of your offshore investments but 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 tried to get your wicked stepdaughter USA to murder the games but she was busy in West Asia trying to emulate you and failing.
Dearest mummy, your servants (now pensioners) shiver, their food banks are begging, and sewage has nowhere to go. The naughty ones had to be released early because prisons overflowed. Glasgow wants the Friendly Games to cheer you up. I have my doubts. Mummy, I’m growing up. I love my sisters but won’t be attending the Friendly Games. For old time’s sake here’s a few million to plug the gap Starmer kept squeaking on about in front of those priapic Union Jacks before you turfed him out for taking too long to bomb Palestine into the Games.
