On Paranoia and Pickles

What Ho Proles!

My usual mediation with a glass of brandy was interrupted, last night, by a visit from the condiment magnate who owns one of the cottages down the lane from the Hall. The man is obsessed with European politics and spends half of his year buying up onion and gherkin crops throughout Eastern Europe. He arrived at my door stinking high to his swollen gills on raw pickle juice and claiming to be the victim of Kremlin infighting. I asked what he expected me to do and he demanded that I put him in contact with friends I maintain in our secret service.

‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ I said. ‘What would the British government want with the Russian gherkin harvest? You have piccalilli on the brain!’

He didn’t care, having no doubt imbibed more magic onions than is good for a man. He pushed his way into the house, settling himself in the drawing room where I’d been eyeing Fiona Bruce on the ten o’clock news.

‘You have to help me, Murgatroid,’ he said before he flicked over to Sky News and proceeded to rant about Chelsea’s domination of the Premiership. Finally he settled down and produced a picture of himself standing before a Russian piccalilli super-tanker. ‘I know all the secrets,’ he explained. ‘I know why red cabbage is red! Can't you see that I fear for my life?’

What could a man say or do? I feared more for my sofa and wondered if Mrs. Priggs owns a chemical proven to nullify the stench of raw pickle. Leaving the condiment man to get excited by the discovery of minute levels of radioactivity on British Airways flights into Russia, I told My Man to fire up the Bentley and I left the Hall, overwhelmed by the smell of condiments, and retired to the local tavern where I caught the rest of Ms. Bruce on satellite. I say she’s a fine looking woman, by any accounts.

But as I was sitting there, wishing for happier days when the mass media had much less mass and Ms. Bruce might see the appeal of tall aristocrats, I was stuck by insight into the national condition.

Hold the fort, I thought! Isn't this condiment man suffering from the same paranoia that has the country testing its drinking water for the last week or so? We're all suffering mass panic since the ex-Soviet spy died of radioactive poisoning. Everybody fears that Russian agents are posing as the local Polish builders. But I say, so long as he can lay a good patio, why should we bother what secrets he might steal? You have to pay for good workmanship in some form or other.

'But damn it all, Murgatroid!' I hear you cry. 'What about patriotism?' To which I reply: it is our patriotic duty to live free of worry.

We live in fear and government like us to live in fear. Ye gods! I know the political mind so I can assure you that they are never happier than when calling meetings of the Cobra committee. More paper gets shuffled, more meetings arranged. And it’s all different, of course, to real fear: those sphincter clenching moments when we face an proper abyss. Preventative measures against bird flu don’t get the politicians excited at all, but if they can make the nation feel like it's living on the brink of collapse and would not function without the politicos, then they leap for their Geiger counters and declare every sushi-bar unfit for humans for one hundred years.

So now the raw fish is off. The nation is falling to pieces and the government does everything it can to sap the national spirit, stripping us of our rights. Crime casts dark shadows at every street corner and we’re in danger of splitting up the union we’ve worked so damn long to sustain, despite more mutual loathing than anything found in a bag full of European diplomats.

When I got back to the Hall, Mrs. Priggs came running around the side of the house. She was dressed in her nightshirt and with a head full of rollers under net.

‘Oh, Mr. Murgatroid, I’m so glad you’re back. He’s threatening to kill himself!’

‘Who is, for goodness?’

‘Your guest. He’s sitting eating all of your favourite red cabbage.’

I recollected my hasty retreat and the odour of onion.

'A jar of that would be sure to do him in,' I agreed. 'Oh, who will rid me of this meddlesome pickle salesman?’

My Man stepped forward with a suggestion. The look on his face said so much about his enthusiasm for trouble.

‘Deal with it how you will,’ I said. ‘I’m going to bed. And don’t wake me unless the government call a national emergency.’ I looked at my watch. ‘That’ll give me at least eight hours of shut eye.’