Gulliver’s Grand Tour

  PREFACE

This story is a satire based on real events that have happened since the referendum in 2015, it was inspired by an art project ‘My Kingdom for a Croissant’, which is to open at Basement Arts in Leeds in November. The themes are migration, and a return to colonialism through Brexit, and mixed media work and sculpture have been produced. Several are based on comments made by Tories and feature as characters too. This story has been written with the kind editorial assistance, and feedback provided by Steven B Williams.

                                         GULLIVER’S GRAND TOUR

The Reform Group were marching down the street with Brexit rosettes on, yelling into a loudspeaker and hailing the benefits of a Leave vote. “With us you will never need another party, we guarantee a target on bringing down migrant numbers, and reducing and eliminating inefficient and lax border controls.”

The town of Rotherham is an ex-mining one, and there is a good sprinkling of the local population who used to work down the pit. With high unemployment, the anti-drifter sentiment was getting worse; endless rhetoric and slogans about the need to protect our borders and toughen up on security checks at Dover. On that day though, they came with a real crowd pleaser: “300 South Yorkshire jobs taken from us by workers from countries outside the UK this year!” The crowd gave a weary cheer as if unsure of their own resolve even on this matter, but then some began to nod and mutter in agreement, gradually concluding that perhaps it was high time for new leadership, a figure of authority who could bring them out of this calamitous situation they found themselves in. On the fringes of the parade several canvassers wove their way in and out of the busy streets. They were giving some very one-dimensional arguments and trying to persuade the people they met to give them the red cross at the ballot box next time. “We will be the answer to all your prayers,” they said.

Some of the people who had recently taken ownership of the brand-new theme park ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ were standing nearby, and they made conversation between themselves about how they were going to be just what this town needed to give itself a kick up the arse. “We have already been in collusion with the council who we have promised that we will drive down unemployment rates, and once we are in it will be a walk in the park: we will take them to the cleaners!” The park opened as planned and there was only one thing that nobody could have forecast: within a week, half the town had taken a backward leap to the time and place of imperialist 1726.

On the first day the park opened, the public bore witness to the bound down figure of Gulliver, a miner’s lamp on his head and a battery at his hip. They gathered trying to gauge his immense height, breadth, and weight, each stumbling away making approximate calculations as to what his real dimensions were. For them to see this hero of theirs, this iconic figure up close, was liberating, but heart wrenching at the same time. Why was he lashed down in this way and, who could have done such a thing?

During the night a swarm of tiny people known as the Torputians had crept upon him and shackled him. These people were known as a race of ill tempered, small minded, egotistical, and violent backstabbers. They had had it in for Gulliver and his people for many years now. They showed their disdain in many ways over the years, for example, using their considerable power and influence to cull jobs wherever possible.

After the Torps had tired of taunting Gulliver, they decided to give him an inquisition: where had all the jobs of the Plebs gone? He balked to begin with, then gave his own opinion, where vacancies were and were not available, pay rates, and types and classes of people going in for different positions.     

The Torps listened for a while incredulously, before cackling back in reply, “We know what’s been happening really, you can’t fool us with your nonsense. Your jobs have been taken by the Drifters, and do you know what we are going to do to repay you for that? We are giving your jobs to them to set you both up against one another. We will get them to do your work in the mines, but we will do it on zero hours contracts, so they will not have any security, and you will not get paid a penny. You will both end up winding each other up even more and causing more division and strife between yourselves!” Gulliver was mortified at this and looked on in stupefaction. It was a typical response of the Torps, anything to make the lives of those around them more problematic, and it was guaranteed they would go down that route.

Footways and paths criss-crossed the mountain range at the park. It had been minutely copied to imitate the range at Rushmore, in part because the owners had wanted it to reflect the values of the white supremacist Gutzon Borglum, who was considered a racist and had affiliations with the Ku Klux Klan. One of the heads was being scaled, carved, and cleaned by bands of restoration workers. The back of the skull had a support of fence poles, with acres of chicken wire that had been tangled tightly around. A series of Brexit heads supported by a column of cranes and towers made up its frontage.  A roller coaster weaved its way through the structure to remind people on board of the debt they owed to the industrial heritage of their own country.

One of the Torps who wanted to join the Reform Group was widely considered a hate cleric. He was the Angel of Intolerance. He had lost a leg in the Falklands defending King and Country. Now he ploughed his time into preaching to the people he would meet whilst parading around the park. On the Angel’s shoulder sat Churchill the ranting parrot. He tended to spout off a lot of nonsense about migration and a return to colonization through Brexit. Angel looked up lovingly to him and said, “he’s a pure breed, a picaninny, with a watermelon smile so fake and fixed that he wouldn’t notice all the atrocities and acts of repression going on about him. He’ had no cross contamination with other bird species from other places in the world, and you can see this in his untainted white feathers.”

Churchill began a monologue: “This is the perfect excuse for us to cut our ties with the E.U. How we can turn back the clock and take back control of the Commonwealth countries, places such as Tanzania, Benin, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, and India. If we can just begin some form of backwards, twisted bureaucracy, where the books were tweaked so that all past trades deals, collaborations, partnerships, wars, conflicts, and memberships of different organizations, could be rewritten. Then, they would only reflect our view that we are a country who still has the power of our imperial reign; this could then be filtered down into schools, other establishments, and institutions to proliferate that word, eventually hoodwinking millions into believing that the Empire never broke up in the first place.”

Churchill’s audience gave a stony silence, some deep in thought, others mulling over the depth and the seriousness of his words, and whether to believe him or not. He continued, “And I’ll let you know how we will be going about this planned takeover of the modern world.  We will be making a proposal to the owners of the park for us to collaborate, with an aim of taking back control of these various ex-colonial countries. From tomorrow morning a tour will take place where you can learn about the various approaches we have been experimenting with, in order to quell the indigenous populations from rising and migrating”.

Churchill went on, “Take World War Two for example. This could have been a perfect opportunity to push our own importance as a country that was a global superpower and that took part in it. We won the war and managed to prevent millions of Drifters sneaking into the country from all different parts of Europe. Think of the allied relationship that existed between the UK and Poland and allowed citizens, many of whom had been made homeless, to seek asylum, most trying to escape the clutches of the Nazis or their Soviet oppressors.”

As Churchill and Angel returned from their daily walk, and after having been preaching to the already converted, they were pulled to one side by the owners of the park. They asked them whether they would like to take part in new plans that they had, and that would mean separating the whole place into bordered off areas, each representing the various lands of the Commonwealth, where people could experience life under colonial rule. “In what way would this mean us taking part?” they replied.     

“With your regular diatribes upon the visitors of the park, you are the most likely candidates to give our visitors a rounded view of how life would have been back in those days of empire. So, would you like to conduct the tours on a regular basis?” Angel and Churchill agreed, and at 9am the next morning they set out on their daily walks again, following the old trade route as it took them from one continent to another.

Once enough visitors had arrived to go on the first tour of the day, they set off. In Tanzania in Africa, they saw blatant cruelty being carried out by contemporary politicians in hunting groups that were poaching and wreaking havoc on the animal population. Hunts focused on obtaining game trophies, but also skins, tusks, or any other vital organs heavily prized on the black market. Items that were purported to increase male virility were also sought.

These items would be aimed at the markets of the smaller Commonwealth countries, the governing classes. The politicians knew the governing classes would be happy to slug down the potent brew, and that it would give them the confidence to sow their seeds and spread the word that they needed to knock seven bells out of the local immigrant population. This process was designed to cause the people to become embittered with each other, finding any small difference to argue over, and hatred to gradually build up, eventually igniting the search for new political directions and leadership. The products were being shipped by the Torps to outposts of their imperialistic reign, so that they could continue bullying and manipulation of the Plebs and Drifters, eventually haranguing them into giving up their own beliefs and picking up the party line.

The next stop was the country of Benin. As Angel, Churchill, and the tour group approached it they could see that the landscape, rides, and other attractions of the fair were all made of fibreglass and had been hastily painted to give the appearance of rocks, caverns, and caves. A coconut shy had been set up on the beach, perhaps to entice them. As they approached the coast, they saw a man-eating shark circling around that had on its belly aquarium stones of the finest corals, and several rows of jagged teeth to aid gnashing and mashing of flesh. This was Larry, the people’s favourite for mayor, and for keeping the beaches open in ‘Jaws’.

Churchill looked on as the poor townspeople reacted with fright, horror, and disbelief. The colonialists who were there already, had been expanding and gently easing more pressure on them, until some began to crack, others trying to resist and protest, demanding for more freedom and for these extremists to loosen their grip. But with such an unpredictable leader many did not want to take that chance as it might mean their lives were made more of a misery.

The next stop on the tour was Trinidad and Tobago where they saw Windrush Migrant Totems. People were being sick on the top of the hill when they saw them. Dramatic in the setting sun and looking much like gallows, the totems were erected by the Torps to cause fear to run through the peoples’ veins and course through their bones, as they realised the similarity between themselves and the skinned creatures before them. Shredded organs flapping unnervingly above. They were migrants, and with this history of mixed blood it was only a matter of time before the Torps would have smelt them out and been on their tails too.

The next stop was the United Arab Emirates where they saw the infamous Burka Flasher Brick Thrower. It stood in the desert surrounded by palm trees, the sun beating down fiercely on its back and causing locals to react in a variety of ways. The top section of the totem reflected a comment comparing women in burkas to letterboxes, and the body below to somebody exposing themselves while wearing a bright pink neon pair of boxers with bold green AstroTurf hearts.

Most saw this as blatant racism. People were heavily offended and thought that the west was a place of loose morals; a place where people thought it was acceptable to randomly expose themselves. What was more, to compare a woman to a mailbox based on her wearing a burka, and then to juxtapose that symbol of modesty with someone flashing their nether regions, was, again, abhorrent.

Those on the tour who saw the Burka Flasher had a mixture of reactions to this structure that had been put up by the Torps. Some felt a deep affinity with it, whilst others looked at it as highly discriminatory, and that it caused great pain for the people of the Emirates.

The next place they called at was Zimbabwe, where they saw hordes of elephants spinning gracefully on huge metal arms, each circling high in the sky above the central point of a ride called the Tunnel of Tusks. Each arm had several hornless Dumbos searching for their missing ivory teeth, and as they flapped their gigantic ears to fly and pass overhead again, they looked beneath them to see recently slaughtered elephants, still huge and beautiful, being guarded by a proud killer.

The Zimbabweans for their part saw the erection of a theme park ride by the Torps as a way to cover the dirty trade that went on, and as a way to smuggle more ivory into the west through the black market. Every inch of the elephant went to a purpose, what was not sold or eaten went off to be manufactured into potions and lotions, anything to keep a superstitious soul actively at peace.  They knew full well that poached wildlife was being shipped out of their country, but they could not do anything about it. Some corrupt officials were even selling poaching licenses to hunters from foreign countries to exacerbate the trade.

When the Zimbabweans saw the Torps’ bloodthirsty commerce, they were in shock. Although they wanted to be a part of it and profiteer, they looked at the Torps and could see that they felt no remorse for their actions, and this made the Zimbabweans feel even more guilty themselves for the fact that they too were making a living out of the slaughter of these beautiful beasts. And yet, the arrangement went on. The local people processed the animal’s bodies, before the bodies were sent out to the Torps, who were arranging shipments of black-market goods to be distributed amongst the countries of the Commonwealth.

The last stop on the tour was India, where the tour group saw a red-faced man puffing and panting in the heat. The man was trying to ingratiate himself with the local Muslim and Sikh communities and so was wearing a turban. Of course, he was also carrying a nuclear warhead in one of his hands, while the other he had wrapped in a boxing glove.

He was pointing up at a huge Tally Ho Totem which glorified the poaching efforts of the far right and other hunting groups. Once he got his breath back, he explained that the Tally Ho Totems had been put up to promote hunting and other types of blood sports. Back in England, this was a long running tradition for the Torps. They would go out with their hounds and hunt down and kill anything that moved. Locals were also included in the hunt, and they would knock seven bells out of the bushes. Any life in there erupted from the brush and ran for its survival, bullets of flying lead zipping closely over its head.

This glorification was what the Torps intended, but most Indians saw the pole as a mass antagonization thing, designed to raise tempers, and that they were trying to ridicule them with the use of the word ‘Tally Ho’. The totem also left the Indians afraid. What if the British started hunting the people next?

Once the tour was finished, Angel of Intolerance and Churchill headed back to the rendezvous point with the visitors. Most of the tour group were from the local town.  A mixture of Plebs and Drifters. Most lived in relics from the industrial age, rows of miner’s terraces against a background of broken down and decrepit factories. Their political allegiances varied, but of those that did vote they always fell to the left.

 Back in 2015 there had been an upsurge in far-right extremism, and the Torps had locked onto an anti-immigrant feeling and were using it to bolster the battle against Europe. This took the form of Brexit, where they convinced people that a removal from the UK’s long-standing friendship with Europe would be beneficial in taking back control of the UK’s borders. The country would be able to manage its own affairs more wisely, they said, and there would be many more jobs and opportunities. They kept quiet about the fact half of the UK’s funding came from Europe anyway. Many voters, even those who would have traditionally voted against leaving the E.U., switched at that point to support the Torps. They did this because they felt isolated, partly because they were an older population, and one who was not used to adapting to new communities in their area.

As Churchill and Angel left the meet up point for the tour, they headed toward where they knew they would find Gulliver. He was still tied down in the place the Torps had left him earlier on, by the entrance to the park where a gathering of trees stood. He was out in the open and with no protection from the elements, let alone water or bread to satiate his thirst and hunger.

As they got closer, Angel muttered into Churchill’s ear,” let’s do something rotten to him.” With that they both darted into his head, one into an ear and one up a nostril. Gulliver was startled, and more so when he began to pick up tiny whisperings crowding his mind. He could hear Angel and Churchill warning of the dangers of his own people, the Drifters, and the Plebs. They proclaimed that if Gulliver’s people were left in power, great harm would come to the country, and that the jobs market would go tits up.

Gulliver quaked at the thought of this. Could things ever be as bad as they were during those austerity hit Victorian winters? He had even heard of state sanctioned lunatic hospitals, and many a dark and sinister experiment having been carried out on those poor patients. Ones that were sectioned off were left howling and shrieking in the night. Only a few lived to tell the tale of the use of hideous and primitive torture devices, as well as other apparatus designed to keep the patients subservient. With these thoughts Gulliver gave a great sneeze that blew the pair of them out of his mind. It was too late though; his whole thought pattern had been altered. He immediately began to think his own people were questionable, and highly incorrect. He looked upon them as a sick and diseased example of society.

Right at that moment a group of his brethren, the Plebs and Drifters, came past, and realising what evils had been carried out by the Torps they hurried to him. “Has he been wearing a lid lock?” one said. “He has got that fearful and anxious look in his eyes. Maybe he has been subjected to a political discourse of a mind altering and wildly different nature. We can potentially bring him back onto our side, but it means we will have to carry out some heavy-duty hypnotism. This can be dangerous for all parties involved. If he overreacts then, at his size, he could take us all out. That or his memory banks could be scorched beyond repair."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

For several days, the Torps had been giving orders for a showdown and spreading the word that this was to be their ‘Battle of Brexit’, its aim to wipe out any trace of camaraderie and reinforce the idea that we would be better off with a free trade economy. The location of this potential bloodbath was yet to be decided. Benin, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, or any one of several occupied countries that were at the park might be suitable. The hate cleric, Angel, and his ranting parrot Churchill were at the park already. After having pushed for an election on the strength of Angel's shoddy promises and defiant claims to rid the place of migrants, and then having won, Angel was now pursuing his secondary goal, which was to become a military leader.

Angel’s purebred pet, the parrot on his shoulder, was a perfect example of white supremacy, something for them to aspire to, and his anger was infectious. This meant the Torps gained the upper hand quickly, as they swanned around the park giving venomous speeches against the indigenous populations of Benin, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, India, and the other isles, demonizing them and portraying them as ugly cultures.

The man-eating shark called Larry was still seen to be an influential mayor by the Torps. His last posting from the Commonwealth office had ordered him to the exotic outcrop of Benin, where he was making his presence felt from beneath the coral blue of the ocean and carrying on his regular imitations of the region’s tropical ways; he would study the locals and their oddities, and broadcast this to stir up discontent about them and the best way to fight this evil.

Meanwhile, Angel and the parrot Churchill had decided to take another wander through the park, to top up on their knowledge about the outlying states of the kingdom. They were approaching Benin and thought this would be a good place to give news about the impending battle. As they arrived, they could see a familiar red face, huffing and puffing in the sun, and performing a macabre dance to put the fear of God into the locals. They recognized it immediately as Larry and realized this was the perfect time to give him his summons, a call to war against the Plebs and Drifters of the Commonwealth, and he joined them gladly.

As Angel, Larry, and Churchill left, they stumbled across a feral creature on the mud road at the edge of the village, whose name was Beastie Bride. He could hear them coming and stopped in his tracks wondering, who were these outlaws conversing in such aggravated tones? The conversation must have been despairing indeed, he thought. In fact, they were trying to work out the best way to build up their numbers from only a skeleton staff of three. The Angel of Intolerance reckoned the most likely way to do it was to stop people on the street and beg people to join them.  At that moment they saw the beast slumped up against a tree. It was peeing in no apparent direction, and with no regard whatsoever to who happened to see him. To begin with they were shocked, but once closer they realized maybe this wasn’t so abnormal after all; if you cannot urinate in a public place as an animal, then can you even do it as a politician? They decided either way that Beastie would make a brilliant example for the masses to follow. The fact that he was plainly interbred, consisting of both human and animal parts, and this being a cardinal sin in their culture, only encouraged them to take him along as a mascot to show that only the Torps could get away with doing such depraved things.

As Larry, Churchill, and Angel got to know one another better on their way out of the Benin section of the park they exchanged plans for making the little people’s lives a misery once more. Suddenly, one of them remembered that he’d visited the Burka Flasher Brick Thrower in the Emirates and had come across a business whilst he was there whereby, they trained up their law enforcement officers, the Plod, and put them to work cutting off people’s hands for minor offences. The Drifters and the Plebs in Saudi had been getting out of control for a long time now, and any measure would be considered, even using the business owner’s cut-throat army of crack Plod, with their cutlasses and axes.

Larry recommended asking one of the Plod if they could potentially enrol them in their evil deeds, so it was agreed that they would try. They set off in the general direction of the station, and on their way, they met a whole squadron.

One of the party had a letter he wanted to mail back to the office in the UK, and as they passed a box Angel stepped over to deliver it. As he was about to post the letter, the letter box began gushing with insults, verbal assaults, and other offensive claptrap. It did not put them off though, in fact they were just drawn closer. In some sick and twisted way, they were actually turned on by the leering piece of red street furniture and wanted to know more about its background. Churchill the parrot and Larry were entranced. They had gone into some strange anti-social zone, not even talking to one another now, both picturing exactly how, with this spitting viper by their side, they could bring down the indigenous tribes much quicker.     

Larry, Angel the hate cleric’s deputy, had pushed himself into the position of ultimate leader, and was now orchestrating the whole thing. Addressing the whole group, he said, “Soon we will have the potions of masculinity. They are on their way to all the imperial lands from Tanzania. We have planned this, and it will work well as a tactical strategy. The potions are reported to increase macho capability by up to one hundred per cent and give our people a fighting chance against the opposition. As soon as the potions arrive, we will make sure that they are brought straight to our encampment where we can split the lot between us, some for you, some for me, a batch for the Plod, Churchill the ranting parrot, the Letterbox, Beastie Bride, and any other army that we manage to conscript. This should guarantee an optimum boost in our aggression, bitterness, and overall dislike for anybody we run into on the battlefield”.

When the parcel arrived, Larry the mayor and the cleric Angel fell upon it like wild dogs, tearing the paper and card into tiny shreds to reveal a small number of vials containing a darkish brown looking liquid. It looked like the tar that seeped from the end of a cigarette, but to hell with the taste they both thought, this will be well worth it for the kick to our testosterone. They called the others over, who came shuffling, limping, and flying, to see what all the fuss was about. Once reassured that its effects would be desirable for their overall malevolence, they necked the contents of the vials on the spot. The Letterbox started gurgling unintelligible figures, all those deeply hidden letters in the pit of its belly rising and bubbling gently up, until it was literally frothing at the mouth. Exclamations of malice and ill will poured from its lips, and they had never heard it so serpent like and sinister.

The effect on the rest of them was just as pronounced. The bride had even toppled over and was giving himself his own celebratory shower, while Larry the Shark had his heels tucked in and feet turned out like some crazed armed forces general standing at attention and howling with rage into the open night. Angel had taken to chanting extremist terror threats. They were aimed at any person of a more vulnerable state of mind. Churchill had his white feathers standing up on end with prickly loathsomeness, and his twisted melon smirk beamed like that of a madman. “Once we figure out how many Plod we’ve got, we can have them reach striking new records for lopping off limbs”.

All the party had just downed their respective formulas and were gathering back under the command of Mayor Larry and the cleric Angel. They were told that they needed to press on, but they could not leave as Churchill was looping the loop like some drugged-up lunatic, fuelled on that aggressive steroid-like cocktail. “Once he finally calms down, we need to go and rendezvous with the Plod,” said Larry. “They are marching over from Saudi. We will be meeting up with them tomorrow morning.” They decided on a good place to camp down for the night in a layby at the edge of the park, close enough to where they wanted to get to in the morning. “Churchill won’t be down for hours or get a wink of sleep after that tarry high!”

The next day they set off early, and at around 11 am arrived at the Tally Ho Totem. It was the wet season and another tropical storm had just passed, leaving the monument glistening. Raindrops dripped from the taxidermied forms of trunks, fangs, teeth, horns, antlers, and claws. It ran in rivulets around and down the scaly elephant hide feet that made up the totem’s base. The whole structure was made up of an endless tower of faces. Each was giving an individual expression that described their reasons for wanting to dissolve their relationship with the E.U. and reignite old world values. An elephant and a deer were protesting by giving pained expressions of agony with regards to the whole process. The cheetah, too, was frozen in the act of trying to escape, but falling prey to the gunshot and the blasting barrel of the poacher’s gun.

As the whole group waited under the lengthening shadows of the tower, they saw a cloud of dust through the haze. The clouds had been gathering and a heavy humidity hung in the air. A few minutes later and panting with the heat the Plod reached them. They were sweating profusely and had on full regimental dress in blue and chequers, with specially adapted desert helmets to keep the sun from the backs of their necks. Angel of Intolerance called to them, “Are you looking for an opportunity to show your best side and dazzle? If so, come along and join us in our crusade to rid the world of this weak-willed opponent, the Plebs and Drifters, they have no backbone to speak of and simply must be eradicated from the face of the earth. Using your tough nut technique of arm locking you will be able to police out of control elements. When they are restrained, we want you to use a miniature guillotine on the wrists of the offending criminals. In this way we will sever the opportunities of the enemy by removing their working digits and render them completely slayable as they will be in no position to raise arms and fight back. Are you ready to help us in this effort to reduce the Plebs and the Drifters to nothing?”

The Plod were in discussion for a short while before agreeing wholeheartedly. They relished the thought of the bloodbath. Then one of them popped up with, “Normally when we fight, we are under the watchful eye of the Burka Flasher who gives us more strength and stamina to do our job. It’s an immense size, but I think between the lot of us we can drag it from the Saudi zone back to where the war is to take place.” They managed to talk the rest of the group into going back with them to assist with the delivery of the monument. They decided the best way to transport the Burka Flasher would be to use the same technique that had been used at Stonehenge, putting log after log in front of one another, then taking them and putting them to the back again, as the thing to be transported rolled over the top and to its destination. In this way and with very little effort, a truly herculean feat could be attempted, a great mountain being moved by tiny little ants, as in the times of ancient Egypt when many men would transport huge pyramids in the same way.

It was agreed, but then they realized that in the dry and dusty soil that surrounded them, they would have difficulty finding trees that would yield wood strong enough for this process. “They just don’t grow deep enough into the ground to give the tree the strength,” one of the Plod exclaimed, using this as an excuse to rubbish the local flora and putting it out there that the British species were the best, and what they really needed was the legendary oak tree. We will have to use the palm variety then, was the answer from the rest of the group. After a quick hand up vote, that only gave one option, they left the Indian zone for the Emirates. Nobody could argue with the Plod who had given such a good argument, and Angel and Churchill joined in with merriment poking fun at the ideas of the others, stating the sheer weight of the Burkah Flasher would crush those trees like matchsticks.

They travelled for what felt like days before the landscape about them began to change from dry, dusty mud tracks, to sun parched expanses of sand and huge dunes that constantly shifted with the wind. “We will have difficulty finding the Burka Flasher statue in this,” Larry the mayor said, and he was right as no matter how much the group tried to use the sun as a compass to navigate their way through the blinding sandstorms, they could not see a thing.

Once the storm had finally dropped the group were awed to see Astroturf fluttering aimlessly in the air above them like a flag at half mast, and the Burka Flasher’s structure seeming to stretch right out of sight; cork, nails, and balsa as far as the eye could see. A tiny letterbox face was completely obscured and tucked up high away in the sky, shameful and hidden from view. The aquarium stones at its lower level were brilliant mosaics, designed to draw the attention of the viewer towards its underwear on which were ridiculous green hearts. The cleric Angel, with rapt attention, took it all in, whilst Larry gave orders to Beastie Bride and the Letterbox who had been sitting about vacantly for many hours, without offering any assistance towards the group’s forward progress.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Angel also explained how they were to pull up the palms, ordering that if any monkeys were seen scaling the tall trunk looking for coconuts not to mistake them for humans, but to try to collect them as they came to a lower point, then carry them in bags as they could be used for pinning onto the Tally Ho Totem at a later date. After a couple of days of travelling, Beastie Bride decided to stop for a pee, and the rest of the group used this as an excuse to discuss whether they were on the right track, and how much longer it would take.      

Angel was worried. "We will need a grand weapon, to disseminate our messages, but I am stumped as to what could be potent enough." Churchill was about to agree with his master, but was cut-off by the Letterbox, who had not stopped steaming..." Churchill began discussing how the letterbox could easily be used as a weapon of mass destruction. They could tuck tanks of noxious gasses like tear, chlorine, and cyanide, into its insides. These would be slowly released as it gave out speeches designed to strike fear into the souls of mortals. This was confirmed with Larry and Angel, and they decided that they would collect the necessary chemicals required for this on the way back. After an hour Beastie came back to a row of gaping open mouths. Nobody could believe that he had been gone for so long! But he merely rolled his eyes rudely and played the ignoramus.

Larry decided the best thing to do was to leave them then and told the group to make haste on their mission. The cleric Angel then decided they would also need to retrieve the Tally Ho Totem from the India zone, and chose a handful of Plod, the Letterbox, and Beastie Bride, before bidding the rest farewell. Larry continued with his group, Churchill, and a smattering of Plod.

Angel’s group travelled the same beaten tracks they had made earlier in the week, exchanging shrivelled up footsteps for the wet depths of the jungle with one hundred percent humidity. “We must be getting there soon,” Beastie said. “This oppressive heat has all the bearings of the Indian subcontinent.” As they neared the giant Tally Ho Totem standing ominously in the shade of tropical trees, hundreds of meters high, they began to slow down. The totem was barely recognizable, disguised as it was beneath many layers of leaves, but then they saw the muzzle of one of the big cats, the fastest land mammal of all. One of the Plod had spotted it, even though it was not a creature they were familiar with, it lunged from the top left-hand side, from beneath the outstretched head of a deer.

Angel of Intolerance drew the half dead monkey out of his bag and made it as an offering to the spirit captured within the Tally Ho Totem. The totem began to shake as if rocked by an earth tremor, and the masks that covered its surface rotated. Invisible hands drew the primate from Angel’s grasp up towards the raised snout at the top of the Totem, all the while pulling the primate closer and closer. By the time the primate had ascended halfway up the totem, it was consumed by the horror’s thirsty innards. This began a process of engulfing and soaking the specimen in mercury, leaving the preserved animal hollow and lifelike once it had been spat back out again. Its reflective surface shone dully. Those who were gathered around onlooking caught fragments of the glassy eyed creature’s myriad reflections as they moved around, its skin hardened with resin. It sat in the centre, a slight moisture evaporating from its forehead and ears, giving off a toxic appearance, the molten metal having done its work and poisoned the vital organs and blood.

Angel then took it up and tested it. The surface was so strong and unyielding. “This would make the perfect shield,” he said, “Another thing to put the fear of God into the hearts of the opposition during combat. We can make as many of these as we need, using any species of beast we have.” “We can use this as a weapon to taxidermize the Drifters. This can then be one of our major tactical approaches”, Angel added. So, they radioed the rest of the group back in the UK and put it to them for their opinion. They said, “We don’t need shields as we have plenty, but they can be used as replacements for any standard equipment that goes missing in action or worn and dotted about to act as talismans to scare the opposition. Or they can be thrown or cannon-balled using a catapult.”

At that moment across the park, the Plebs passed Gulliver, who was still looking woozy and under the influence of something, but they could not tell which political party that could be. They appeared like mice before him, but a dim and distant memory induced him not to crush them on the spot. There was something vaguely familiar about these friendly sounding creatures, and the more they spoke to him, the more in their favour he became. “Gulliver”, they cried, “We were not out there to steal your jobs, it was the Torps trying to do us wrong and force us apart.”

The Plebs then explained their plan to get their own back on the Torps, whilst some of the others ran in and started crying, “You can be our War Elephant in our stand against the Torps. Gulliver agreed but not without some reservations about the measure of transformation that would have to happen to make this occur. But as an advocate of elephants having their own freedom, I am one hundred percent behind this, they nodded furiously and were just keen to get on with the sewing, pinning, and tying together of trunks, ears, and feet to Gulliver’s body.  Gulliver explained that the spell that the Torps had cast over him had been broken, and now he was feeling much more like his old self.

The Plebs were greatly enamoured by this plan and, basking in their own glory decided to have a short break. Meanwhile, more men and women were sent out on a trip around the park to see if there was any equipment or other disused furniture or appliances lying around, which could be used to construct their own rudimentary weapons for warfare. They were scouting around in all the zones of the park to find any items that could be reused when they stumbled across the tuskless elephant carriages from the rides in the Zimbabwe area. “Don’t you remember how they soared gallantly through the air, but with just a touch of shame that they lost their horns? These are just what we need!” one of the Plebs said. “They will make brilliant torpedoes. Just a dash of gunpowder, or another device for ignition such as flint or tinder”.

The search party Plebs proceeded to drag their finds back to the central point which they had agreed as being Gulliver. Once the elephant remains began to be shipped in, they were taken to one side and put into storage until another consignment arrived, and in the same way until they had enough to cover the whole of Gulliver. Carriages thrust out in one direction, hundreds of ears had been sewn together, and were being used to create a scaly armadillo effect that covered the whole of Gulliver’s body. The elephant trunks, it was decided, would make a great way to shoot boiling oil, in the same way that they used to do in medieval days, and to make sure the Plebs and Drifters were as safe and secure as could be in the central seating and standing area of this botched together contraption. The trunks would be coming out on all angles, and the oil could be refilled by dedicated people on the inside, and stored in giant barrels within Gulliver’s feet, then pumped up to the higher levels as required.

Angel, Beastie, Letterbox, and the Plod began to take down Tally Ho Totem, which due to its size took over a day. As the totem was fully lowered to the ground, it was wrapped in huge rainforest leaves that were said to protect its precious surface and prevent its ability to perform miracles of conversion from being impaired. As the group set off from India in a sweltering heat, they checked a compass just to be sure they were heading in the right direction. They passed Tanzania, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, Emirates, then Benin, all the countries on the trail, before finally hitting the short path back to the UK. Once Angel's group was back, they arranged to meet with Larry, Churchill, and the rest of the Plod. As soon as the groups met Larry’s group showed them the ‘Burka Flasher’ they had brought back from Saudi, and the five of them fell to plotting over the best way to combine the two oversized sculptures.

Churchill the parrot gave a ruffle, fluffed himself up to his largest size, then began cursing and stuttering malicious instructions to the rest of the group, to run here, to run there, and to collect as many different things as possible that they could use to build themselves a vehicle to strike terror into the hearts of the Plebs and Drifters. He had this idea that if they could deconstruct the two huge structures of the totems, then maybe they could be put back together in a more robust way. Once everyone was back, they puzzled over the craft, like some huge jigsaw, struggling to find the best way to piece it together, but all to no avail as the sections that had been glued, nailed, and carefully fixed in place gradually dropped away.

“A new approach is needed,” crowed Churchill, “We have laid down the gauntlet for battle in just two days now, so we are desperately in need of a plan of action that will beat the Plebs into submission.” He began conversing with Larry and Angel the Intolerant in animated tones, one bright spark after another being tossed up and thrown aside. It was only when Churchill recalled the efforts of the Spanish and Portuguese colonialists, in their ongoing habitation of the countries of south and central America, that they thought they were getting somewhere. “Amongst many evil pursuits carried out on the local populace, one was that they felled balsa trees and started to take the wood home when they realized how perfect it was for the construction of airplanes, and how they could with their own far-reaching technology, improve and develop their own lifestyles and modes of travel.

 “England could learn a lot from this,” Larry said. “Not just England but also us, you klutz,” Angel replied. “This is just what we are missing to level us out on the playing field. Churchill added: “If we can make use of their technique of construction to build our own fleet of super lightweight flying planes, then we might just be in with a chance!” And, with that, Churchill propelled himself up with two crooked wings, clicking them as he went. All five of them set out with an entourage of Plod with them in case the packages proved heavy.

They walked for what seemed like days, until Churchill announced that they were close. He gazed down into a valley and pointed. In between the slanting clouds and through the towering tree trunks, he had picked out a small settlement where a wood mill could be seen. “We will make a beeline for that,” he said as he went ambling off down the path.

As the group drew closer, they fell to whispers. “If we are heard they will make mincemeat out of the lot of us. We have never got on with the Spaniards, not since the Armada. Out here they will probably string us up.” Even the burly Plod fell quiet, and some pulled rosaries from a secret pocket to count their last Hail Marys. They were too late though, the Spanish spotted them and fell upon them shouting, “What is your business here, you dogs?” Churchill, in his typical narcissistic way, started spouting about his intentions to bring down the Plebs and that, if they could leave with some fine balsa trees, they would be forever grateful. The Spaniards did not welcome this at all, saying they had not gone through all the trouble of conquering the local tribes just to have some meandering buffoons come stumbling in to steal their supplies. At that, Larry and Angel leapt up and launched themselves at the group of Spaniards, toppling them to the ground and pinning them down so they could not wriggle free. “We are just going to have to run for our lives” said Churchill, “If you see the odd plank on the way out, grab it. We will see if we can gather enough to knock up something as weightless as a paper jet for us all to glide back to Blighty in.”

Between them they managed to gather enough wood to build a craft as big as a zeppelin. Under Churchill's relentless direction, the Plod were assigned to the mechanical work, while the rest of the group did their best to fend off the locals. The Plod sent out scouts to do a reccy, and search for the tools that they needed to work the very delicate featherweight wood, it was not so much brittle as soft and easy to damage even by stepping on it too hard. They were specialized and had been adjusted to accommodate rubber clamps, so there was no danger that they could leave any gash in the wood, no chance that they could be sent careering back down again, with its drastically reduced aerodynamic capability.

When the hard work had been finished, each would-be passenger was required to act as a sandbag for the craft, with thick pieces of rope tethering them all to avoid it floating off. Then, just as the Spaniards were massing, they each climbed into the narrow cockpit, before cutting a final rope and letting the whole blasted thing drift up to higher altitudes. As they rose, Larry launched into the cunning ruse he had been hatching. “Now I have full faith in the early colonial explorers. Their clever and quick minds combined with our own sophistication, technical prowess, and creativity has led us to a highly airworthy craft which can transport us to each and every country of the Commonwealth in the park.” The rest of the group gazed down over the patchwork of countries that made up the topography of the theme park, as they shot beneath their gaze, the outer reaches were so far distant that even its two dimensional and flat form they could not see its edges.

Churchill, who was at the wheel, implored him to carry on. “What with praising us, you mean?” Larry said and guffawed. Angel who was at the rudder leant forward to catch the update and could just make out that they would be taking a roundabout route, calling in at Benin for gold and diamonds, Zimbabwe to pick up supplies of chrome and tobacco, oil and pearls from the Emirates, jute, cotton and tea from India, and sugar from Trinidad, to be picked up in that order. “We have sources that we can tap into in all of these places, without having to pay a single penny in taxes”, he went on, “and we will resell the produce and goods back to the Plebs later, to build up our own fast-depleting war fund. Then the goods can be traded with whichever countries have declining stockpiles themselves.”

Once they began descending, gathering troops were cracking off gun salutes to welcome them. As the group sailed over the white cliffs of Dover, they came over all patriotic and began crooning old Glen Miller numbers from the war. Angel the Intolerant announced, “This would be our time,” and how they could get their own back on the lousy, stinking Drifters. “This will be our war,” he swore. Churchill the parrot boomed in by declaring that this would be the war to seal off the country for good, and that this will be the ‘Battle of Brexit’. “By shutting our gates on Europe, we will be ridding ourselves of all our problems,” he said.  “No more avenues for Drifters to creep through France and Spain, coming over in waves and invading our economy!”

The group decided the best course was to head towards the north, the spiritual mecca of the Plebs. “This is where we need to display some showmanship so that those Plebs realise just how insignificant and puny, they are, and how we as the Torps will rule the day in our wax cotton jackets and Chelsea tractors.” As they came lightly tumbling down in a field just south of Barnsley, they assault-rolled from the balloon, silk slowly floating down, descending upon them, and pinning them down in a huge mushroom shaped cloud, nothing short of atomic in its aspirations. Within seconds of landing the Plod were carrying out their orders, to use the poorer people they encountered as ammunition in this ongoing conflict. These people were to be oiled, greased, and packed into muskets, before being sent up into orbit, and to come plummeting back down upon the heads of their fellow people, whereupon they would explode like bombs.

Larry took the lead, beckoning to Angel, Churchill, and the Plod to follow his masterly attitude. Graceful as a swan, he darted to the left, then to the right, as he made his way across the field towards where they knew the rest of the group to be. Tally Ho and Burkah Flasher had been planted so that they could act as landmarks for them, and once they had been locked onto it was easy for the group to make haste. They moved like shadows, balancing on fences, streetlights, hedgerows, country houses, and farms in their hot pursuit, every step bringing them closer to the allotted spot where that first murderous screech was made.

The Plebs and the Drifters once they had reconvened after scouring the park for junk that could be recycled for the building of the War Elephant, and its construction itself, looked about them realizing that without noticing they had walked into a huge and barren valley, full of cliffs, rocks, and boulders. Towering above were the famous faces of Rushmore, all carved into the immense rock, each had an expression which reminded them of the Torps, the look of disdain, displeasure, and belittlement that they were used to when encountering each other. The groups shuddered as this just made them even more fearful. At that minute, the trundling of wooden wheels echoed across the park, as Gulliver was dragged through the bushes, shearing the tops off the trees as he came. The word of the Plebs’ resistance had spread to the various countries of the Commonwealth, and now their numbers were set to swell.

The Tanzanians were sick of the sight of the cruelty they had witnessed against the safari fauna and hoped that by being a part of the War Elephant they would be able to make their own individual stand, but on a global level, where they could also be recognized by other countries under the thumb of the British. The Beninians were beyond depressed by the behaviour they had had to endure daily since the first occupation by Larry the mayor, his constant imitations, and lack of respect for their culture. Also, his pioneering approach towards ‘business as usual’, regardless of human life and during the cull of the empire; had already resulted in the deaths of thousands of them, and they were at a loss of what to do.

The Trinidadian and Tobagians were raging about the Windrush scandal. “It’s a terrible thing too,” they were heard to exclaim. “We have been settled here for so long, to suddenly begin threatening people with deportation who have been living here for generations, these are people that have made their lives here!” And, at that, they agreed to join forces and unify against a common enemy - the Torps. The people of the Emirates could not understand how in some countries people could be forced to disrobe, having to remove their religious items of clothing, such as the hijab, and for the government to be able to make such a command! They joined the fight willingly to fight for their freedom and right to decide their religious expression.

The good folk of India had had enough and could not understand this whole reiteration of life in the aristocratic circles of England. They could not see its relevance in their lives, and they did not really want to. They saw enough of it in the people marching around barking orders and treating them like muck every day. As soon as word got around there was an opportunity to take retribution for the harsh regime, they were all for it and hurried to the allotted meeting place.

As the various peoples began to descend upon the meeting point at Mount Rushmore, they realized that they would not be able to make it to the battlefield that night and would have to camp out under the stars. The word was passed back quickly, and bit by bit the human chain with their assortment of caravans, equipment, and valued animal parts were brought to a standstill. Once tents and other makeshift camping apparatus had been set out, they called a last-minute meeting in which groups were invited to voice their opinions and concerns with regards to the impending battle. The Indians sent a delegate forward who proposed that they were preparing to sell large quantities of ivory that had been recovered from animals onto the Torps. They said their reason for this was so they could build up their own funds, but also so that not all avenues of trade might be lost in the future.  Some of the other Plebs called them traitors, and they were horrified that they could even entertain this idea after the harsh treatment they had received.

After the heckling and banter had died down the Trinidadians put forward the motion of carrying out an ‘empty fort strategy’, whereby the Torps could be fooled through reverse psychology into thinking that ambushes lay in their opponent’s path. With this they cackled we can fool them into giving themselves up through fear that that they cannot leave their base or their craft.  “Whilst they are incapable of moving, we take our chance to carry out a false surrender”, others chimed in, as a lot had heard this take place in popular folklore.

After the meeting had finished, they set burning a blazing campfire so they could keep predators away, and they gazed into the fire telling tales late into the night. They suddenly heard the sound of thousands of horses galloping, and whooping screams. That sound filled the empty canyon above them, creating a haunting kind of music that made them fearful.

In the morning, the Plebs and Drifters called a meeting to discuss what had happened, and to try to deliberate the exact meaning of this, some of the older members of the group who had ancestors who had been born, lived, bred, and died in the Western Steppe came forward and claimed it was because the Native American people of the land were constantly being pushed out, always having to migrate for the white man, as boundary after boundary was redrawn, leaving them ousted into reservations and having their ultimate freedom taken away from them by the colonialists. As the wise man thought about how they always come off worst, he pictured how their lands had been reappropriated, their sacred homes being erased and deleted from the textbooks. The Black Hills at Mount Rushmore was a perfect example, these were the property of the Lakota Sioux, but the white man had slapped one president after another up onto their hallowed grounds. The wise people believed that the ancestors of this place had come to them in the night to bless the coming battle.

After the meeting they continued along on their way, but their hearts were beating fast and their blood was pumping through their muscles and veins like dumbbells about to burst, they were blazing now and had the invisible rage of the Apache, Cheyenne, Navajo, Lakota, Shawnee, and many other sacred tribes who had been devastated. By the afternoon they had reached their destination and as they came over the brow of the hill they looked down into the valley and saw thousands of their number milling around. They made headway and within an hour were amongst their own, joyous shouts and claps of camaraderie, but as they began to realize the importance and severity of the battle ahead, they grew silent.

The Torps continued their hunt for Burka Flasher and Tally Ho; they were still in two groups, Larry, Angel, Churchill, and the Plod. Beastie and the Letterbox had been left back at base camp. They had the continual verbal diarrhoea of the Letterbox to lead them along, its curses, taunts, insults, and other horrific and inciting comments designed to stoke up their anger. Beastie Bride had been with the Letterbox for a while now, and his antisocial streak had grown worse. Between gripes about the opposition and gurgles of incomprehensible anger, they continued conversing like two relatives who had vowed never to talk again. They looked up and saw the stealthily moving figure of Larry the shark mayor, his great barrel chest and flabby pot belly bounding along in front of him, followed by the rest of the group, their sights all fixed on Tally Ho. 

“We have a plan to adapt this,” Larry said, and launched into a discussion of how the Tally Ho Totem could freeze the heartbeat of any mammal or beast and make the whole organic structure, fur, hair, and skin, become brittle and hard to the touch. He seemed to be enamoured at this vision and started going into revelations about how this could then be used to make torpedoes and bombs, only needing to add a little extra gunpowder or other explosive substances to their outer shells.

Larry announced, “With this and the psychological lift that we will get once Burka Flasher has been rigged to the front of the balsa winged creation we have already constructed, we will be invincible!” They waited for the Plod, Churchill the parrot, and Angel the Intolerant to catch up, before enumerating all the things that needed to be done.

A final meeting was called by Larry the mayor, whereby he addressed the rest of the group. “At dawn tomorrow we will set out for Mount Rushmore, taking along our people, equipment, supplies, provisions, and barricades to block up any vulnerable entrances that the enemy might try and squeeze through, as well as our warcraft which will allow us to glide into the heart of the fray. Once they have all been transported down to the floor of the canyon, we will be ready to meet with our opponent, our surfs, our servants, the people that we allow to farm our land, those who think they can revolt against us now and need to be punished to bring them back into line.”     

They set up camp for the night on the outskirts of the mountain, the cleric Angel giving speeches long into the night about how the Plebs and Drifters needed to be more tightly controlled in the future: stricter restrictions, curfews, more privations, no more freedom to migrate, more incarcerations, building walls between regions, towns, and cities to stop people from being able to interact so freely.

There were long whoops and cries of encouragement and enthusiasm following the speeches. Churchill sat on Angel’s arm clucking with agreement. That night, Larry did not sleep a wink. A red mist had descended in front of his eyes every time he thought about the liberties that were being taken. The next morning, they set off early and soon reached the gentle slope that led into the cleared space in the forest. The Letterbox and Beastie Bride had been set up here for a while already. They had set up a system of transporting the craft down the last bit of the journey where the trail had steep sides and led down to a gully, and then their base. Getting the craft there relied on using planks of wood that had been bowed gently using heavy bits of pottery to weigh the planks down, and now sloped into the space below.

The whole group struggled to get the ship down without breaking it. Constructed as it was from balsa wood so prone to shattering and splintering, there was a real risk it could spin out of control and shatter on the rocks. As they were trying to manoeuvrer the craft it became stuck fast between two jutting parallel rocks. Angel got the impression it was their fault for being clumsy, one of them must have slipped and lost his footing. So, he started berating them, “You imbeciles! If there is any damage done you will pay with your lives.”  Beastie Bride answered, “If you’d just seen what we saw you’d have probably made the same mistake!” Beastie Bride then went on to describe with fear in his eyes that they had seen a towering elephant draped in camouflage netting “It had many proboscises each tipped back and gurgling boiling cauldron oil, several hundred tusks all jutting in different directions, ready to prong unsuspecting customers in a most painful way!”

Hearing this description, the group, including the Letterbox, had gone rigid, but within seconds was jolted back into life by an angry cry from Angel the Intolerant. The burka on the Letterbox’s face blew up revealing a toothless grin filled with inhospitality. The Royal Mail badge on its front started to swivel, and poisonous and harmful vapours issued from its orifices, while death watch mantras seeped from its open box, which itself had begun to take on the appearance of a tank gun armament, its sights raised in a threatening way.

As Larry and the rest of the Plod witnessed this, they knew they had seen something special. “With this dark technology at our fingertips the Plebs won’t have a prayer. If they are not scooped up as live specimens and turned into frozen cadavers, then we will have them with the Letterbox frothing its toxic thoughts. With every minute the Letterbox’s lips became bluer, and its patience wore a little thinner, another poor ignorant sap to deal with, another weakling to be thrown to the dogs.

The Letterbox rarely spoke, but as it did so Angel just caught its words, “Another gormless looking face to be pinned into the middle of an election badge, flaps of its own skin flying around like petals but resembling a gruesome flower, to be worn to the next polling day by our party to warn people of the dangers of not voting.”

The whole group was feeling exhilarated by the Letterboxes dark and satanic outpouring, and it spurred them on to free the craft by rocking it gently back and forwards until it slipped onto the twigs and bracken beneath, then the whole thing came sliding down into the gully in one piece. “We’ve made it!” shouted Churchill with elation.     

The next morning the mist hung low and both sides had a few spare moments to fix and do last minute repairs, tuning up and adding extra weapons to their respective crafts.  The Plebs threw down ladders against the flanks of the War Elephant and rushed up into their respective positions, some darting for the outermost points, whilst others headed towards its heart.  Disguised as it was, it looked like an entirely new and unrecognizable entity now. With the bad weather and their currently indistinct look, the Plebs decided to make tracks quickly across the battlefield. Within minutes they would be halfway across the field, and the Torps would not have even moved. They would strike the first blow!

 The Plebs hoisted their conveyance of destruction into the path of Larry’s vehicle. Larry was surveying the skyline beneath him when this happened. In a second, he reacted, sending waves of shock and pressure through the rest of the unit. The elephant glanced off the side of Larry’s craft, giving themselves nominal damage, only tearing shallowly into the soft armour of ears that they were soundly and snuggly wrapped up in, even the occupants at its centre could not feel it. The adrenaline was palpable and both sides could feel it with mounting tension. The Plebs decided to respond with something that they hoped would make the Torps reconsider their cruelty: They began crying out the numbers of people and animals, killed and maimed by the Torps, and demanding that if this did not stop the Elephant alliance would continue to assault and batter the Torps in their craft, giving the old adage that an elephant never forgets!        

As the Plebs looked beneath them, they saw remnants of the field below, and saw some of the hideous and cruel things the Torps were getting up to; prisoners being stripped of their clothes and their dignity and being made to walk naked in in a freezing ditch while others were being captured and deported back to their home countries with no due process. 

As the Plebs were trying to get to grips with what they had just seen, they could hear the diabolic outpourings of the Letterbox. Churchill then gave an evil grimace and his crooked grin started to crack. His ancient totem wings spread like those of a vulture, his white feathers becoming ruffled, then sprouting and growing all the way down his neck to mock the great tribespeople who were defeated in running battle after battle with the British, such as the Algonquins and the Cherokee.

Meanwhile, Beastie Bride had been given the responsibility of navigating, and was lurching the craft of the Torps from side to side. The Plod were already onboard and were feeling quite queasy with all this severe movement, but with the colossal Burka Flasher towering overhead, they had been whipped into a frenzy of rage and were aching for a fight!   

Larry the mayor cried out to incentivise his team to do their best. He had done well to take full leadership of them. He thought they were a bunch of half-wits, if the truth were told. He could see himself resorting to his usual tactic of sacrificing his people, in addition to his own blood, sweat and tears, just to make sure the job was done. He shouted to Beastie to pull on the joystick. They careened into the nearest band of Plebs and Drifters who happened to be from Tanzania. He sent those poor Plebs scattering about like skittles, and once down they were an easy target to be picked up and put to work. One who had not been picked up yet and was running off cackling was screaming, "The animals they have stolen from these lands and poached for profit will become our weapons!" For the rest this was like a call to arms, and many saw red when they pictured how often their lands had been ritually raped and pillaged by the Torps, not to mention the bloodshed of their animals.

Larry barely even heard and as the War Elephant lumbered over, next on the list to be picked up was the Trinidadians who were fuming. They had had enough of the constant racist taunts that prevented them from being able to live their lives in any normal way, always under the tyranny of some hot head authoritarian, who saw it as his responsibility to make their lives a misery. Once they were onboard, they were sent to the feet of the craft to be put in charge of making sure the oil pipelines were kept running and did not get blocked. As they had experience working on offshore rigs, knew exactly what to do if one spouted a leak, or a new bracket was required to divert oil to a different trunk.

The trunks themselves were being operated by the Zimbabweans, who had provided all of the elephant remains from their home country, the reason for this was because of their far-reaching knowledge of the elephant’s nosepiece, how far they could blow dust and water, the exact measurements a trunk could reach to, and in all directions, and how dexterous this specially adapted and highly unique feature of theirs was.  The Zimbabweans had their seats at the helm of each trunk, one per person provided by a pipeline that stretched down through the body and legs, as the black gold pumped through guided by an assistant from the Emirates, that was there purely to allow the free transition of the liquid to flow unheeded. Once it reached the old hands of the Zimbabweans, it was guaranteed that in those quick and deft movements it could be spread several hundred metres at least, easily smothering the craft of the Torps, and all its merry crew within.

The Plebs in the elephant lurched across to gather the next group who was waiting around a corner, they were the Indians, and they were heatedly exchanging views and opinions, many still in shock at the way an Englishman conducts himself, back in the days of the empire this was expected, but today, please, India is a great and ancient country with long traditions, and to be treated by these newcomers with such a lack of respect for them was grating on many.

As soon as they made their way into the centre of the elephant they were sent up into its highest reaches, the far extremities of its face where, dotted all over, hardened tusks grew out of gnarled and bony stumps. The Indians had control of these great and unwieldy horns, and with their advanced wisdom of the species, they knew well how to scoop up an object in their path and with one quick flick send it sailing over the nearest wall or fence. This knowledge they put into practise, too; once communication had been made to edge ever closer to the nearest ramshackle group of Plod, they hooked a few unwilling customers up and sent them flying.

The Plebs were riding high in their elephant simulator. One was at the wheel, and they came tramping slowly over to pick up the next group of Drifters who were from Benin. They cut a relaxed figure but inside they were seething, never again would they be left in a place where they could not defend or empower themselves.

As the craft slowed, the Beninians leapt aboard and were diverted to the underside of the war elephant’s armour that was stitched together from thousands of ears. One Beninian staffed each ear so that they could be the senses for this huge creature to hold itself steady without toppling over. As each settled into their place to await further instructions, they plugged themselves into the inner workings of the ear with an extremely sensitive microphone that allowed them to hear the faintest snap of a twig underfoot.

At that minute, Angel the Intolerant caught a glimpse of a sight that made his blood curdle and his skin crawl: hundreds of ears flapping gently in the breeze as the War Elephant casually sauntered past. He let out a horrifying scream, then began bellowing out orders for the Plebs to make way, to fall in front of them, and every auricle hit by his scream, including the very delicate ones that had been used to line the exterior of the War Elephant, suddenly found themselves bleeding internally. An influx of blood rushed over the heads of those Beninians who were responsible for the function of the ear. They tried to bail out, but the onslaught was too much, and they were overcome at their positions. Blood flooded the rest of the elephant, heart, trunks, legs, tusks, and it seemed as if all was lost.

“We have the Tanzanians paddling our huge craft,” Larry said, as he barked orders to the crew. They were in a heated debate as to what the best option for them was, but all agreed that the more Plebs and Drifters they could take out in their craft the better.

Larry, who had stationed himself at the rudder of their craft, had now mounted the Tally Ho Totem and scrambled to its highest point. He thought their best chance of annihilating the enemy lay in the totem’s capability to convert flesh and bone into a substance so impenetrable and dense it could be used as lead shot, or mortar fire. So, he started feeding it using roadkill that had been found around, he was not fussy, Drifters, Plebs, or animals, anything that had the requisite make up to add to their bizarre and ghastly recipe, and he began directing the concoction down the network of gutters and tubing that ran around the tower.

As it hit the bottom and ran down the channels that had been carved out, the substance ran in rivulets towards Beastie Bride. Beastie sat in a chair jutting out at a manic angle, dangerously low to the ground and fashioned on the same design as the one on which the outlawed fishermen in their ramshackle array of boats set off in to hunt down the shark Jaws, this inspired by Larry, his great ally.

As the molten shot plopped into Beastie Bride's lap, he scooped them up and popped them into the end of the shotgun barrels. Beastie raised the sights of the guns to his eye before letting them blast. At the same time an awful screech issued from above. It was the cry of ‘Tally Ho’ and mortal fear filled the minds, hearts, and bodies of those who heard it.

 As this went on the Tanzanians, who had been enslaved by the Torps, were preparing for their own revolt. With all the hubbub and activity on the battlefield they had been able to get their heads together, and with no lookout to keep an eye on them they had been free to plot and scheme the best way to hinder the efforts of the Torps. It was their own fault through arrogance mostly, and not reckoning on the Plebs’ ability to rally themselves together.

The Tanzanians had voted democratically for their own leader before getting caught, and now she stepped into the limelight to have her moment as hero: “If we all stop rowing at the same time” she said, “the plane will drop like a stone”. On the count of five one said, and they all halted their pace. Within seconds the craft began to plummet, though they were not incredibly high over the ground anyway, and as it crashed to the floor, the troops were all sent sprawling in different directions.

Larry was the quickest to recover, and as he did so he began to put two and two together. They had been stitched up by the prisoners in the hull below, and he was fuming. Angel came next, then Churchill and gradually the rest of the group rose from the wreckage. Somebody poked Letterbox, but not a single sound came from his open trap. Beastie, too, had the first signs of rigor mortis setting in as he had tumbled into the open mouth of the Tally Ho totem. Now, when he came rumbling back out, he had a faint glimmer in his eye. “How can he not be set in stone?” exclaimed Larry. “It could only be due to his Torpian constitution, which is made up of very different characteristics than the Plebs. We are far more refined, dignified, and respectable than they ever could be”, he said.

The Plod were lying in and around the Burka Flasher, swirls of dust blowing like hurricanes between them. The blades of the guillotines they had been using for delimbing the opposition were dotted around, hundreds of freshly severed fingers that they had taken off at the orders of Larry were laying on the ground, God knows where the rest of the bodies were. Angel the Intolerant then came over, “Where is my pet?” he could barely be heard to murmur, after having lost his voice in the altercation and when he let out his ground trembling scream. “That creature and I go back many years; if anything has happened to it, I’ll make the Plebs and Drifters pay with their blood.  How can we hit the election trail and broadcast the evils of the great unwashed without my pet!?”

Angel took a cursory glance towards the War Elephant and spat in disrespect, “Those plebs are responsible for a lot. I’ve lost my voice, Beastie nearly became a statue, the letterbox blew a gasket, Larry’s turned grey twice over, and Churchill will never get to see his precious borders reinforced so that no mere mortals may pass.”

As the Torps looked on, the War Elephant writhed about on the ground, the great flood of blood leaking from its joints. A handful of Plebs and Drifters came stumbling forth from its depths. Most had been washed away by oil and blood that came gushing through the trunks, pipes, and other tubes of the massive machine. The deluge had totally swamped the Zimbabweans, Beninians, Trinidadians, and Emiratis at their posts. Only the Indians remained because they were still tucked away in the relative safety of the War Elephants tusks.

From their vantage point, the Indians were able to contact the other groups and signal that the Torps had been taken down by the Tanzanians who had made the Torps' plane take a fatal plunge". Excited cries were exchanged, and as a precautionary effort a plan was made to use the Elephant again, but it was insisted by the Plebs that its true self should be revealed. At this, various members of the different groups, Tanzanians, Emiratis, and Beninians amongst them, stepped forwards and began stripping off layers of the War Elephant’s hide. Indians who had spent many hours chipping away at the horny undersides of the tusks, splitting fine enamels and bones as they did so in order to snap them free, came valiantly clambering down. “Somewhere under here is our old friend Gulliver,” they said, and as they hit the ground, they began marching across to where they had arranged with the Torps to begin hard bartering the prized ivory. The Plebs had a plan.

Larry had a telescope and had been keeping an eye on events. As soon as the Plebs had abandoned the elephant Larry readjusted the eyepiece and squinted. It was Gulliver who lay underneath all that skin and material!  Suddenly, Larry realised what the Plebs were up to. They are carrying out an ‘empty fort strategy’, he thought. The Plebs have abandoned the ship, and now with explosives and other landmines probably littered about here, we are cornered and cannot leave this spot.

The Plebs and Drifters had been out on the battlefield recovering what they could, second-hand scrap still had its value even though it was battered and worn, once renovated, and cleaned and up it was well worth the sale that was made to their fellowmen. The money that had been collected would go towards covering the cost of the recuperation of Gulliver himself, for their own activities in the future, and the message was gradually sent down the grapevine to alert all that the coast was clear now.

It took Larry’s group several hours to pick their way through the bombs that had been planted in the field, but once they had made it over, the Plebs began popping up, one by one, from rocks and boulders all around, many making faces at them as if they had been tricked and giving false surrenders by holding up their hands. The Torps were baffled but continued to push the craft through the crowds with Angel and Churchill taking the lead and shoving the craft themselves. Larry yelled into the ears of the rest of the group about the pace they were taking, “Get a move on!”    The leader of the Plebs called over in reply, “We are prepared to lay down our weapons and be submissive to your pleas and wishes”. Larry cried back, “That sounds great, but how do we know that we can trust you?” The Plebs and Drifters replied, “You have shown your superiority during the course of the battle, and we will readily throw ourselves down at your feet”.

“That’s grand then,” Larry said, and he beckoned to the rest of the group that were still standing to follow his lead. They ambled over in various states of disrepair, dishevelment, half-starved and malnourished. The Plebs descended from various look out points around the site, still at the foot of the valley but writhed with smoke and corpses now, splinters of a craft, and littered with parts of the elephant that had been stripped down from Gulliver. They began circling their leader, who unrolled a great sheet of paper, a document on aged parchment. He gave a croaky choke and spoke: “On this spot we the undersigned Plebs hereby handover our God-given rights and liberties to the Torps and accept that they have been victorious and throw ourselves into full submission.” Larry stepped over and with a silent grin signed the declaration. With Beastie acting as his shameful witness, he gave a cheer to rouse the rest of the group and was echoed by the Letterbox. It was only after that he saw in the small print the Plebs had given themselves overall domination in every walk of society. The Torps had been fooled by not having read the footnotes until after, then realizing they had been stitched up, inadvertently putting the Plebs in control by signing and agreeing to give up all God given rights to the territories they had settled in, as well as the ones where the battle had taken place. They were now like a Constitutional Monarchy: all titles but no power.

Kicking himself, Larry gathered the remaining Plod and gave an order that they needed to beat a hasty retreat, giving the command to the others to be gone to their respective zones from which they had been wooed in the first place. The Plebs left at approximately the same time and arrived back to the park entrance well before Larry’s group. They were called to a meeting to discuss where they would put posters, that had been printed by themselves and demanded change to every rule and regulation, aimed at those responsible for the restructuring of government at a grassroots level, and ultimately at those of the upper echelons too, so they can make their voice heard better.

The Plebs had this notion that they could encourage people from the town outside the park this way, fellow drifters who could be drafted to fight their own cause, instead of footing the blame for everything, and being made the target of hate campaigns.  Drifters had been allies with the Plebs for many years now through their similar social standing and respective position with regards to the Torps. Both were suffering inequalities. For the Plebs it was more of a localized thing, cuts to health service, benefits, education, and other public services, but for the Drifters it was more about tightening up on visas and making it more difficult for them to travel around, work, and to visit family abroad. Together they could make a change.

When Larry and the rest of the group arrived back, they were stunned to see posters dotted about on every lamppost, tree, and sign, all stamped and printed by the Plebs. Larry and the gang were milling about near the entrance to the park when they heard the voices of the park owners from a distance, drawing closer by the minute. The owners gave an incredulous account back to them of when they had met, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ had just opened and we had agreed to do the tour, “everything seemed to be going well then,” they said. “The Plebs and Drifters were eating out of our hands; the park had been built around the theme of colonialism and to encourage racist attitudes, and it did just that. This seemed to be going down well, but suddenly look what’s happened to us?”

Larry ripped a poster down with a distant look in his eye, voice quivering with fear. “Listen to this trifle” he said, “They want to reinstate Gulliver as their working-class hero, they want him to be their representative, and unified voice, to travel to the countries of the park that had requested assistance, and to take on the disreputable and dishonourable Lion itself in all its different guises. They want Gulliver to be their new and shining light.”

A Pleb could be heard yelling in the background, “Gulliver needs taking up a peg or two as the Torps will never take him seriously.” Another replied, “what are you talking about, we are buzzing after our great defeat, we are invincible and need to use this as an impetus to push us onto greater things, to a better quality of life. “We need to push him into the realms of government, so he can be our fighter for this”.

Their leader, an anonymous soul, who had built great respect for himself by managing to hold down his ego and trying to affect change for his brothers and sisters, called out. “Gulliver will have to go out into the big wide world, beyond the fences and walls of the park and visit Tanzania, Benin, Trinidad, the Emirates, all of those nations that have been oppressed by the Torps, and that have had to withstand the iron rule of the British. In each he will have the diplomatic task of making sure that they don’t come to loggerheads again.”

Another piped up, “we can use him to fight our corner in the parliament, his knowledge and intellect will be built as he is out and about on his travels, and that will make him far more aware of our situation.” The leader joined in with, “he can prove himself amongst those of his own dimensions. The fight will be fairer as they are of equal size, but he will have a much better chance, I believe that!” The Plebs and Drifters had formed an immense crowd and gave a united cry that was rousing and heartening.

                                                       THE END