Never mind Jesus – What would YOU do?

A parable of the unwanted guests ….

A few weeks ago, I was woken from my slumbers by a call from my slightly loopy but endearing friend – let’s call her Saffron. She is really REALLY pissed off with her husband because he is a rich capitalist bastard AND IT’S JUST NOT FAIR that he won’t share out any more of his ill-gotten gains with her and her friends just because they haven’t worked as many hours as him. It’s ruining her life and can she come and stay for a couple of days because she hasn’t got anywhere else to go except back at her parent’s holiday home and they aren’t too keen on that idea?

“Er …. OK. But just for a couple of days mind. The family is coming for lunch at the weekend.”

Saffron arrives with a huge rucksack and three friends – who also have huge rucksacks.

“Hope you don’t mind – I’ve brought Tapioca, Sago and Semolina with me. We’re going to hold a protest against rich capitalist bastards like my husband. Here. In your house. Can I borrow your computer? I’m going to publicise it on Facebook. It’s going to go viral.”

“Oh. Errrrm ….. fine. Tea and biscuits?” I say.

Saffron was correct. It did go viral – as in ‘spread like a virus infecting my house’. Over the next few days my house guests multiplied from four, to eight, to 16, to 32, to 64. Then I lost count. Tents were set up in the front garden when the floor space in the living room ran out. They held debates three times a day about how they were going to “Achieve Change in a Truly Democratic Way”. Ideas were proposed and debated at length and all were rejected because all they could ever agree about was that everybody had to agree on any propositions and there was never a 100% consensus on anything.

I was getting through an alarming amount of toilet paper and teabags. My cleaning lady had resigned because the vacuum cleaner was clogged up with the biscuit crumbs and remains of wholemeal hand-knitted tofu sandwiches which were littering the carpet. My friends and family were refusing to visit because they said the stench of BO and marijuana was making them gag.

On day five I found Saffron in the garden strumming “We Shall Overcome” on an out-of-tune ukulele.

“Look Saff, do you think you and your mates could go and do your protesting somewhere else now please? The hall is totally blocked by rucksacks, camping stoves, ponchos, Wellingtons and vegan sandals. It’s a real hazard. If there was a fire, we couldn’t get out.”

“Oh sorry” said Saffron. “We’ll take all our stuff upstairs and dump it in your bedroom. No problem. Oh, could you get some more teabags? We had a debate about it this morning and everybody agreed that we prefer Earl Grey to that Yorkshire crap in your kitchen. And why don’t you have any coffee? Some of us are having to go to Starbucks. Ta.”

I set up a campbed in my shed. One night I was woken up by the sound of somebody fiddling with the garden gate. I stuck my head out of the shed door and saw about 50 of the comrades in the garden.
“Oh, are you leaving?” I asked hopefully.
“No we’re just going home for the night. It’s getting a bit cramped and uncomfortable and Hugo has broken your sofabed. We’ll be back in the morning to carry on with the protesting. Oh, we had a meeting about your biscuits. Everybody agreed that they aren’t that nice. Could you get us some better ones? You’ve run out of toilet roll again too.”

Next morning I came into the kitchen to find a middle-aged woman knitting some yoghurt.
“Hallo. I’m Moonface. I’ve come to protest about public sector pensions.”
“What do you do in the public sector? Nursing? Teaching?”
“Used to be a traffic warden. Then I set up a business selling lunch boxes to City workers. Tofu-filled filo pastry parcels and a carton of mung bean juice go for £10 each. Those rich bastards can afford it. I make a bundle.”
With a sigh I decided to go out for some fresh air and shopping to replenish the teabag, toilet roll and biscuit stocks.

When I opened the front door, a short, dumpy, hatchet-faced woman was coming down the garden path holding a megaphone. “Hallo. I’m Polly Toynbee from the Guardian.”
The multimillionairess, private school fee-paying, three houses-owning, patron(iser) of the “poor and downtrodden” Polly Toynbee who trousers £120,000 a year penning self-contradictory drivel for the tax-dodging Guardian Media Group, plus God know how much more from her book deals and far too frequent TV appearance fees, has come to address the comrades and tell them they have a perfect right to occupy my house, that they have her full support and she so admires what they are doing. Yes, that Polly Toynbee. The very same.
Christ Almighty, this is all I bloody well need.

“Errrrm Polly,” I pleaded. “Would you mind putting them up in one of your houses? You have so much more room than me, and seem to know what they are on about.”

“You want them to leave??” Polly shrilled. “But you invited them here! Good grief, you are just as bad as THE FILTY CAPITALISTS! How very dare you? You own this whole house and have nice stuff! You middle-class hypocrite! You even employ a cleaner for God’s sake!! THAT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!”

I’d had enough. My ears were starting to bleed, so grabbing Polly’s megaphone I addressed the throng in my living room:

“Listen Comrades. In the first place, my now ex-cleaning lady cleans my house far better than I can and I pay her more than twice the minimum wage. Yes I could sack her and do my own cleaning but what would that achieve? I would have a dirtier house and her kid would have fewer Christmas presents. Would that be fairer?”

“In the second place, I have what I have and own what I own by the expedient of getting up before dawn and working my arse off for decades and never claiming a penny off the state let alone taking the food out of the mouths of single mothers on benefits. And I did all that as a single mother myself.”

“In the third place, you claim to be against war, poverty and injustice. Who isn’t? If you want ‘Change’, however you wish to define it, as we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy, take your heads out of your navels, set up your own party, stand for election with some half-coherent policies and see if anyone will vote for you. Now THAT would be fair.”

“And in the fourth place, if you were to hang the evil capitalist 1% from the lampposts and shut down the banks where will that get you, beyond throwing tens of thousands more ordinary people out of work in this country alone? You claim you are protesting against Corporate Greed and that you are going to stay here protesting until…. until what? Until Corporations stop being Greedy? Well good luck Comrades, because you are going to have a bloody long wait and I am going to die in my shed. Since the dawn of time people have been setting up businesses with the sole aim of making money. Lots of money. As much money as possible. A by-product of which is that they can afford to create jobs which employ people. Lots of people like you and me. If these Evil Greedy Corporations were not interested in making lots and lots of lovely moolah they would set up charity shops instead. Except even charities want to make money and even more money judging from the mountain of begging letters coming through my door thanks to the charities that I do support selling on my details to other charities. Yes, for money. The CEOs of these Evil Greedy Corporations work insane hours at their pointless jobs and go to their early graves never having seen their families – that’s if they have found the time or energy to marry and procreate. It must be a horrible life and they pay themselves vast amounts of money to make up for it. It’s the way the world works and it is not going to change one iota no matter how long you sit mumbling in my living room. You might as well be protesting against cheese!  Deal with it. Put up with it. Shut up. Grow up. And above all PISS OFF OUT OF MY HOUSE!!”

There was a stunned silence interrupted by a knock at the door. A slightly grubby teenage girl wearing dreadlocks and a rucksack pushed past me saying: “Hi. I’m Skylark. I’ve come to join the protest.”
“Are you an anti-capitalist?” I asked weakly.
“What’s one of them? I’ve come to protest against cheese. I bloody hate cheese I do. Cheese is horrible cheese is. Expensive. Disgusting colour. Smells minging. IT’S JUST NOT FAIR. And I’m staying here until cheese changes its expensive evil stinking ways. Got any biscuits?”

There was a sudden rush of blood from my head and I passed out ……

I wake up with a start in my own bed. I make my groggy way downstairs to get a cup of tea. My house is empty, clean and quiet. There are teabags in the cupboard and plenty of milk in the fridge. The phone rings. It’s my cleaning lady reminding me she is coming in tomorrow. Both of my beautiful glossy-haired successful hardworking children have left messages to arrange Sunday lunch. As I sip my tea I shake my head slightly and try to recall a horrible dream. No, it’s gone.

Turning on the TV news there is a scene of a tented village around the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. People wearing plastic Guy Fawkes masks hold up a banner which demands to know: “What would Jesus do?”
Christ only knows. And he’s not telling.

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