Gilliver's Travels
Peripatetic
Spin doctors advising Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott today admitted he’s been suffering for eighteen months from an extremely rare brain disorder. This compounds the dyslexia which for years has been at the root of his legendary difficulties with expressing himself.
Termed Falmaphobia, the newly diagnosed condition makes him clinically incapable of ever concluding the planning application for Brighton and Hove Albion’s new stadium. His wife Pauline explained. “It’s awful. John has been wanting to pronounce on this application for many months now, but whenever the papers arrive on his desk, his jaw locks up and he’s unable even to open his mouth. Even writing the word “yes” is completely beyond him. Whenever it happens, we just have to lay him down in a special, smoke-filled room and wait for the affliction to go away. It usually takes around ten weeks before he can bear to think about it again - and then, well, the cycle just repeats itself.
“John often wakes up in the middle of the night, crying, ‘Pauline, it’s terrible! If I say yes, well okay, that may well please around half a million Sussex folk. But where’s the sense in that, eh? Saying the Y-word will seriously hack off - at a guess - as many as seventeen extremely posh people! Most of them are friends of Tony. And these toffs all know each other, y’know. So yours truly’s chances of joining the Humberside Shootin’ and Fishin’ fraternity would be absolutely bloody ruined. And you, pet, I know you’ve set your heart on being Lady Goole… I just can’t let you down now!’”
Falmaphobia, is a condition that affects many men in late middle age. Another sufferer is Charles Hoile, a hardly-known, provincial solicitor. Already beyond treatment, his Falmaphobia has for months forced him to refute any and all known facts about Falmer. Some time ago he exhibited classic symptoms of the sadly terminal stage three. This means that he now claims, to anyone that will listen, that he is ‘seeing sites’ – unfortunately ones completely invisible to everyone else.
The Falmaphobia Appeal Rural Trust (FART) is holding an all night – and all day - incandescent vigil at the Labour Party conference in September. Don’t miss it.
Termed Falmaphobia, the newly diagnosed condition makes him clinically incapable of ever concluding the planning application for Brighton and Hove Albion’s new stadium. His wife Pauline explained. “It’s awful. John has been wanting to pronounce on this application for many months now, but whenever the papers arrive on his desk, his jaw locks up and he’s unable even to open his mouth. Even writing the word “yes” is completely beyond him. Whenever it happens, we just have to lay him down in a special, smoke-filled room and wait for the affliction to go away. It usually takes around ten weeks before he can bear to think about it again - and then, well, the cycle just repeats itself.
“John often wakes up in the middle of the night, crying, ‘Pauline, it’s terrible! If I say yes, well okay, that may well please around half a million Sussex folk. But where’s the sense in that, eh? Saying the Y-word will seriously hack off - at a guess - as many as seventeen extremely posh people! Most of them are friends of Tony. And these toffs all know each other, y’know. So yours truly’s chances of joining the Humberside Shootin’ and Fishin’ fraternity would be absolutely bloody ruined. And you, pet, I know you’ve set your heart on being Lady Goole… I just can’t let you down now!’”
Falmaphobia, is a condition that affects many men in late middle age. Another sufferer is Charles Hoile, a hardly-known, provincial solicitor. Already beyond treatment, his Falmaphobia has for months forced him to refute any and all known facts about Falmer. Some time ago he exhibited classic symptoms of the sadly terminal stage three. This means that he now claims, to anyone that will listen, that he is ‘seeing sites’ – unfortunately ones completely invisible to everyone else.
The Falmaphobia Appeal Rural Trust (FART) is holding an all night – and all day - incandescent vigil at the Labour Party conference in September. Don’t miss it.
