Sometimes when I talk to Theresa May I wistfully ponder what might have been, all those years ago when I called her Trish…
Oh well, let bygones be spilled milk, as the saying doesn’t go. We’re still close though, enough to share the odd drink (Dubonnet for Trish, a shot with a chaser for me) or go off to the occasional dance together.
I do admit that at times I still get that funny feeling, which I did the other day as I watched Trish defy her age by whirling around the dance floor in that leopard-spotted top of hers and a skirt deliciously split all the way to the hip bone… Oh well, enough of that.
Afterwards, I asked Trish over a drink about that grandiose project of hers, Shared Society. I knew it was different from Maggie’s no society at all, but was it the same as Dave’s big society?
“Al,” she said with that enigmatic smile of hers, struggling to contain her admiration for yours truly. “How can you be so bloody daft?”
“Fine, I’m daft, Trish, and you’re the bee’s knees. So explain, and talk slowly so even I can understand.”
“Can’t you see, you bloody nincompoop? Dave’s society was big, and mine is shared.”
“Shared by whom?”
“Everybody, you pea-brained, oligophrenic moron,” explained Trish affectionately. “Especially the nutters. I’ve decided to go mental big time.”
“But Trish,” I objected. “You can’t decide to go mental. You either are or you aren’t.”
“That’s not what I meant, you bloody retard,” said Trish, covering my hand with hers. “I want to correct all the burning injustices faced by the people, starting with the huge stigma attached to the nut… I mean the mental lot.”
“But Dave also wanted to correct injustices…” I suggested meekly.
“Can’t you see the difference, you half-witted cretin?” asked Trish in that loving way of hers. “He didn’t do anything for the head cases specifically, and I gave Boris Johnson a job, didn’t I? If you have a mental health problem, people are more likely to try to avoid you – and that’s what I’m going to stop.”
“How exactly?”
“I’ll tell you how exactly, you imbecile, if you promise to keep your mouth shut until I unveil the policy.” I hastily gave the requested promise, which I’m mournfully breaking now.
“Anyone giving a non-compo a wide berth will get three points off his driving licence,” said Trish with that strange gleam in her eyes. “That’ll teach the bastards the meaning of compassion.”
“What kind of non-compo are we talking about here?” I wanted to know.
“All kinds, you nitwit. This lady isn’t for burning injustices. Or stigmas.”
“Trish, I understand fining people for avoiding someone who’s depressed. But what if he’s a schizo? Or someone with paranoid delusions? You try to correct a burning injustice and he slashes your eyes with a razor…”
“Now that’s vapid even by your own idiotic standards, Al,” said Trish, looking her sexiest. “You have antediluvian ideas. Get this into your stupid head: there’s no stigma attached to any mental illness that a promise of few billion quid can’t remove.”
“A promise or actual investment?”
“Sometimes I wonder how you get through life, Al, with that vacuous brain of yours. Is money all you ever think about? If you look at the issue of mental health in this country, it’s more about the stigma that still attaches to it, it’s about how we recognise one in four of us will suffer from some mental health issue through their lives.”
“So, statistically speaking, you have six head cases in your cabinet?”
“Don’t be more obtuse than God originally made you, Al,” said Trish and crossed herself, as she always does when God comes up in conversation.
“What do you think I am, dumb? I’m not going to appoint any psychos, with the possible exception of Boris.”
“Does this mean you yourself attach a stigma to mental problems?” I asked innocently, pouring her another Dubonnet out of the almost empty bottle left at the table, as Trish had insisted.
As happens so often, that last one pushed Trish over the edge and she started babbling incoherently:
“Al, you plonker, what’s important is that we recognise… that this is about dealing with everyday injustices… but it’s also about us recognising our obligations… as citizens within the communities and society that we have here in the U bloody K… It’s about recognising that there’s a role for government… but government needs to ensure that it’s acting as effectively as possible… in those areas where it should be taking action.”
At that point Trish began to remove her leopard-spotted top, a public embarrassment I managed to stop in the nick of time. I then took Trish home in my car, with me watching out nervously for cops and her singing “Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go”, sharing her shrieks with the whole mad society out there.