Charlotte's Diary

Charlotte’s Diary

Monday

Oh Dear Diary, My poor old Scotty looked such a mess when he came to breakfast this morning, still in his dressing gown, unshaven and confused. The first thing he did was to knock the sugar bowl onto the floor. ‘Who put the damn sugar bowl there?’ he shouted.

‘You’ve forgotten your glasses,’ I said gently.

‘Enema!’ he shouted for one of the servants. ‘Enema!’

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘her name’s not Enema, it’s Enela. I’ll go and get your glasses. We must learn to become self-reliant. We won’t always be living in this house with twenty-seven servants.’

‘We’re the servants of the people,’ he cackled, ‘so we have to be looked after properly.’

When I came back he was trying to read The Pest. ‘I don’t seem to look very well in this picture,’ he whined. ‘Are they trying to make me look silly?’

‘You’ve got the newspaper upside down,’ I said. ‘Try it again after putting on your reading glasses. And here are your false teeth, they will help you tackle the cornflakes.’

Oh Dear Diary, He used to be so handsome and energetic. Never marry a man twenty years older than yourself.

Tuesday

          Oh Dear Diary, Another struggle with My Old Man at breakfast. At least he arrived with his teeth and spectacles, but his eyes were bloodshot, his breath was poisonous, and the wobble had returned to his right arm.

          ‘Have you taken the pills for your wobbly right arm, dear?’ I asked him gently.

          ‘Useless fart of a doctor, his bloody pills don’t work,’ he snorted. So saying, he took a hip flask out of this dressing gown, and poured whisky all over his cornflakes. ‘This should do the trick’ he chuckled. ‘What’s on my programme today?’

          ‘You’ve got all day to try to make yourself look presentable,’ I said. ‘This evening you have go to another gala dinner, Christine is being given another award.’

          ‘What for this time?’ he growled.

          ‘She’s being given the award for being the Woman with the Most Awards.’

          ‘Is Michael going?’

          ‘No,’ I laughed, ‘He’s resting. He’s not a young man like you to be gallivanting around to all these award ceremonies.’

          That evening I dressed him up in his dark grey suit. It didn’t fit properly on his hunched back, but the sleeves were long enough to hide his wobbly hand.

          Oh  Dear Diary, Sometimes I remember those young men that courted me at college.

Wednesday

          Dear Diary, Last night my Old Man never reached his bed. He was brought home unconscious from the gala dinner, and left to sleep it off on the sofa. Strangely enough, this made his appearance at breakfast more presentable. When he finally woke up and staggered towards the breakfast table he was still wearing his suit, spectacles and teeth from the night before. Although he did have some trouble eating his cornflakes because he spent a long time finding his wobbly hand in his long sleeve.

          ‘There is a report here in The Pest,’ I said grimly, ‘of your behaviour at the gala dinner. It says that you defended the government by saying We men know what we’re doing. We’re not like women quarreling about which one has been sleeping with somebody’s husband.’

          ‘I don’t remember saying that.’

          ‘That’s the remarkable thing about you. You can never remember saying anything. Especially after insulting all the women in the country, including your wife who works hard to make you look normal. According to The Pest report, your statement came straight after several members of the cabinet had a fight about who was sleeping with somebody’s wife. And then, after your heroic statement that We men know what we are doing, you collapsed and were carried out.’

          ‘Really Lotty,’ he replied, sounding genuinely hurt, ‘you know what the doctor said about my brain not being properly connected to my legs. You should be more sympathetic.’

          Dear Diary, The real problem is that his brain is not properly connected to his tongue.

Thursday

          When my poor Old Dotty came to the breakfast table this morning, he seemed confused, but got my name right on the third attempt.

‘Look at this headline in The Pest, I said. ‘You told parliament that some of your cabinet colleagues are corrupt. Have you gone completely mad?’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was defending my friend Kapimbe, who had previously said the same thing.’

‘But why defend him? Is he not going to be fired?’

‘I have to defend him, because he is supposed to take over from me, so I can retire. That was the original arrangement. But if he is fired, I shall be stuck with this job until I die.’ Tears ran down his wrinkled old face and dripped into his breakfast whisky.

Don’t tell anybody, Dear Diary, but next time I shall marry a younger man, energetic and witty. I already have my eye on Spectator Kalaki.

PF Power Failure

PF Power Failure

            ‘I just can’t understand it,’ said Sara. ‘How can Cycle Mata go to give an official speech on Labour Day, and then come up with all that drivel about bald heads, witchcraft, monkeys in trees and so on?’

          ‘Be fair,’ I said, ‘he also mentioned the untiring efforts of the workers in producing the wealth of the country.’

          ‘What we are watching is a clear case of power failure,’ declared Kupela.

          ‘Huh!’ Sara snorted. ‘Power failure! If you ask me, they’ve got too much power! They need taking down a peg or two!’

          ‘Too much political power, but not enough electrical power,’ said Kupela. ‘That’s why their speeches degenerate into nonsense. When they run out of electrical power, that's when whatever they say suddenly begins to degenerate into confusion and absurdity.’

          ‘I don't believe this,' Sara laughed. 'Humans don’t run on electricity!’

          ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Kupela. ‘It’s electrical messages from the brain to the muscles which keep everything going. Now if you run out of the electricity necessary to connect the brain to the tongue, then you will begin to babble complete nonsense, giving the unfortunate impression that you’re a complete drivelling idiot!’

          ‘Like Dotty Scotty in his interview with the Guardian?’

          ‘Exactly,’ said Kupela. ‘In his case he lost the electrical connection between his tongue and his memory, causing him to forget all his diplomatic training. So instead his tongue was connected directly to all his nasty little prejudices, causing him to insult everybody in South Africa from the president down!’

          ‘At least he was honest,’ laughed Sara. ‘He said what he actually believed!’

          ‘To tell the truth,’ I said solemnly, ‘that is a foolish and fatal mistake for any politician.’

          ‘But what explains this strange electrical power failure?’ Sara wondered.

          ‘It’s a symptom of old age,’ explained Kupela. ‘Our electrical energy is supposed to be stored up in the fat of our buttocks. But when you become old and senile, and your buttocks are all shrunken and withered, there is no storage capacity. So if you try to give a long speech, especially while trying to stand up at the same time, you suffer a disastrous power failure.’

          ‘So that explains why our illustrious but senile leaders sometimes have to rush off home right in the middle of a ceremony?’ I suggested.

          ‘Exactly,’ said Kupela. ‘They have to rush back for emergency electrical dialysis treatment to recharge their worn out batteries. Only emergency application of electrical shock treatment can reverse the decomposing chemical reactions in their decaying buttocks.’

          ‘Does this take a lot of electricity?’

          ‘Enormous amounts,’ said Kupela, ‘because their worn out bodies are nearly finished. It has been calculated that it is necessary to supply a full hour of a kilowatt of electricity into an ancient buttock to induce just one joule of additional energy.' 
          ‘So what happens to all the wasted energy?’

          ‘It is dissipated as hot air, wind, tantrums, bad jokes, peremptory dismissals, and other useless and distasteful behaviour.’

          ‘But what is the physiological reason for such biological inefficiency?’

          ‘It arises mainly from the difficulty of energy generation in a geriatric,’ Kupela explained. ‘The lungs have turned to leather, the liver is shot with alcohol, and the fibrous heart has no regular beat but instead exhibits only irregular twitches.’

          ‘So it takes an enormous amount of energy to get the smallest result?’

          ‘Exactly,' said Kupela. ‘It has been calculated that once Axe Chikwale’s eyelids have closed, it takes the power of an entire two megawatt North Bank generator to lift them open! And then, of course, there’s the larger task of trying to reconnect his eyes to his brain!’

          ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘this momentus geriatric dilemma must put a terrible strain upon the national grid, causing low voltage, and so on.’

          ‘Of course it does!’ laughed Kupela. ‘That’s why we’ve got all this load shedding and blackouts between six and nine o’clock. After these ancient politicians have finally reached home, they are desperately trying to recharge their energies expended  on their useless and incomprehensible speeches. After having hopelessly blacked out in the middle of their speeches, they then go home and black us out, so that they can steal our energy to regenerate themselves.’

          ‘The way they are going,’ said Sara, ‘they’ll be no energy left for the rest of us. They’ll bring this country to a complete halt!’

          ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Kupela grimly. ‘As they cast around desperately for more energy, they are also sucking power from parliament and from the judiciary, leaving them both powerless. In a desperate bid to re-energize themselves they are now trying to capture the constitution to give all power to themselves, leaving the rest of us with nothing.’

          ‘Sucking us all down into a black hole of darkness,’ said Sara.

          ‘It’s a tragedy,’ said Kupela, ‘because these ancient zombies can never be fully re-energized. Their impending fate is all too certain and inevitable. The only remaining question is whether they are going to suck the rest of us down with them.’

          ‘But can we escape our fate?’ I wondered.

          ‘The trick,’ said Kupela, ‘is to cut them off from their energy supply. Pull the plug!’

‘But how do we do that?’
          ‘Some people say there’s only one man who knows how to do it. While he was working for ZESCO he managed to analyze the problem and work out the solution.’

          ‘And who is he?’

          ‘Father Bwalya,’ replied Kupela. ‘He is the one who knows how to pull the plug.’