Thread by @mrhenrymorris

Goveller’s Travels

Thursday 1st October

The frequent labours I underwent every day in in this withering empire of Brobdingnag made a very considerable change to my health. Yet the more wealth my hedge-fund overlords got by me, the more insatiable they grew. I had quite lost

my stomach for it when a charge came, commanding I be carried to court for the diversion of Queen Patel. Her majesty sat atop a volcano so vast, it made the greatest Cumberland fells seem as molehills. She sat on a throne of penguin skulls and barbed wire and

wore a crown of malfunctioning Serco prison tags, with rivers of molten lava flowing beneath her feet. I begged the honour of kissing the imperial boot and beyond measure delighted with my demeanour, the gracious princess held out her little toe, which I put the tip of,

with the utmost respect, to my lip. She asked my master Johnson “whether he was willing to sell this conniving little git?”, at which he demanded a ghost-written column, five book deal, and folder of unsigned super-injunctions which were all ordered him on the spot.

Yet as he left, betrayal! For she pulled a lever which looked very much like Alok Sharma’s spine, a trapdoor opened, and he was deposited into a torrent of Tory magma. This discomforted me somewhat, for as I looked around, it began to dawn that Queen Patel’s kingdom was

built upon a Serco holding centre for Asylum Seekers. These extraordinary human beings, who risked everything under the direst circumstances in the hope of finding a better life in Brobdingnag, had, on arrival, found themselves rounded on by some of the best placed people

on earth to help them. Too bereft of wit and imagination to empathise with their plight, and deluded into thinking they had earned their own luck, the citizens of Brobdingnag held that human kindness extended only as far as their arbitrary borders. And Queen Patel was a great

appeaser of these base instincts. As a bully and a cretin, she knew it was easier to sow division and build a prison, rather than set an example and offer hope. I was suddenly in great fear of being ill-treated under the protection of such an empress;

this barnacle on the cosmos, furuncle of the world, terror of her subjects and phœnix of annihilation. So for the umpteenth time in my life, I conjured a hollow smile forth from my sandpapered soul, and gave plentiful and obsequious thanks for her wisdom and

most august presence, like I do with my best mate Donald. And furthermore, I pledged to do what ever it would take, to further my own ambition in this land.

With many thanks to @tombaileyart for this original oil painting of her majesty.