The 16:26 Powl of Borridge

For DL and GJ (aka NB)

Most families who grew up on our estate had the 16:00 tea-time, replete with tea, toast, scones, tea, jam, cream, Rottweilers, tea, and servants in Nirvana t-shirts to serve the whole lot. Our house was slightly less conventional (it always voted Communist and wore wellington boots on a Sunday), and my mother insisted we would have none of that upper middle-class, bourgeois 16:00 tea-time nonsense. No, instead, we had to have the 16:26 (the precise moment at which Uncle Jo Stalin had passed away) Powl of Borridge (my mother was dyslexic, on account of having gone to a Steiner school). Make that the proletariat’s 16:26 Powl of Borridge. She always managed to add just enough salt, but for what purpose, my eight brothers, six sisters and I never could tell. Even today, whenever I see a Powl of Borridge, I unthinkingly start singing “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying” and offer up a silent prayer for Uncle Jo Stalin, before I snap out of it and remember that I am a Captain of Industry responsible for running the armaments factories which maintain global military operations. I have a photograph of Margaret Thatcher in my office. I bet she never had to suffer years of eating Powls of Borridge.

Sir Josef Oik was talking to himself.