Riddle Me The Snap Election: A Moral Story on the Sorrows of Not Voting

1. You wake up in your bed. Outside you hear the loud, hateful tune of traffic and when you open the window to let in a fresh breeze, all the muggy air brings in is the faint promise of armpits on the rush-hour tube. This is London. Below you, a queue of people snakes around the building like a fat worm and you suddenly realise it’s the day of the General Election. Who do you vote for?

Answer: Trick question! If you vote May the country will become a privatised island where the rich pluck the sweet flesh of dying children to feast on. If you vote Corbyn, the monster of national debt will multiply a thousand-fold and all will perish beneath it, except a thriving troupe of musical theatre students whose tuition is now free. You vote for no one.

2.  In your office you are beginning to get worked up with guilt. You know you should have voted. You decide to sneak off on your lunch-break for a stiff drink. There are two pubs near your office; the first is frequented by all your co-workers and presided over by an old-fashioned pub landlord who claps people on the back and calls them ‘son’. The counters gleam, and the pork pies are baked fresh every day, the gravy never has lumps. The second pub is always empty, and run by a philistine with a thin face and receding gums who lets beer get warm. His pork pies are injected with beef slime and the crust is made of dog biscuits. Where do you go?

Answer: Afraid of seeing your co-workers and being drawn into political debate, you decide to go to the second bar, where the man with receding gums offers you pork scratchings from an old ashtray and feeds you shots of ethanol, flavoured with tea tree oil. Serves you right for being a coward!

3.  It is time to go back to work. The sun is shining; the snap election is in full swing. London town is tense! You, on the other hand, thanks to copious amounts of ethanol, are feeling rather loose. You do not know whether to go back to work and face the boss catching you drunk, or to go home and call in pretending you had a family emergency.

Answer: Bad luck – it’s neither! You’re so lashed you don’t make it back to the office and pass out in the street next to a homeless man and his blind but loving German Shepherd – Chow Chow mix called Rinny. You don’t have a chance to call in to explain yourself. As a result, everybody suspects you have been the victim of a hate crime and alerts the police.

4.  You awake to find it is dark, and both you and Rinny have urinated on your trouser leg. You can’t blame blind Rinny for taking an enthusiastic wazz on you, he probably meant it as a misguided act of devotion. You do however, blame yourself, suspecting (correctly) there was no act of devotion involved in the emptying of your bladder. A combination of sleeping in the street, drinking tea tree oil ethanol and being drenched in the piss of various mammals has brought on a strange shivering and a demented pounding in your head. Do you go to A&E or do you head home and pray it all blows over?

Answer: Ashamed of using public services that you didn’t defend with your vote, you decide to drag yourself home in a sorry state. Unfortunately, since you have been reported missing, your frantic girlfriend has let herself in with her keys and is ransacking the place looking for clues. When you reel in looking rancid and stinking of piss, she naturally assumes you’ve developed a fetish for golden showers.

5.  Your girlfriend is pretty angry. She goes on a rampage tearing apart your flat, cutting up your sustainably sourced Matcha green tea bags and pouring the leaves down the sink. She stuffs Swiss cheese into the light sockets. She starts smoking from the stress. Eventually you just about calm her down. She gives you two options, either you tell her the truth, or she leaves your sorry ass.

Answer: You don’t know what to do! You’re already keenly aware that you’re bad at making decisions and so you hesitate. Telling the truth would expose your sorry poll-skipping and smack of your inability to commit both politically and romantically. But to let her leave would be to lose your partner in a twist of fate most brutal. Your pause drives your girlfriend into a wild frenzy and before you can answer she throws her cigarette butt at you.

6.  You discover you are flammable. Your girlfriend has left, banging the door shut and you realise you are going to die. Do you choose to be remembered as a hero, who set himself a-light in political protest? Or do you allow yourself to be buried under the mysterious headline “spontaneous combustion”? Neither is true, but you might as well inject some glamour into the situation at this point.

Answer: You’re not really able to convey your last wishes. It’s a shame, you’re sure you could have produced a good epithet for yourself. You’ve always had a talent for writing moving poetry.

7.  At your funeral you’re billed under “accidental death” and everyone has gathered, genuinely confused at what the hell happened to you, you crazy double-crossing, piss-coated, vote-cutting, fake-disappearing weirdo. You wonder who’s the new PM. What do you do?

Answer: Well, you’re dead as doornails so you can’t ask anyone. And Londnr… mate, we don’t cover politics.