There are two reasons for this, the first of which, the smartest amongst you will have already figured out: I have been in Alice Springs, Australia, competing at the 48th World Air Hockey Championships. There, after six weeks of gruelling matchplay, I successfully defended my title as undisputed king of the floating baize, beating that cocky left-handed Australian 'prodigy', Shane 'Bombshell' Brannigan 1099-1087 in a memorable final.
Brannigan, of course, was the people's champion. He had confidently swaggered through the first 48 rounds of the tournament like he didn’t have a care in the world, but the pressure of being on home turf and carrying the hopes of a nation on his young shoulders proved too much for him in the end and his flashy, crowd-pleasing game of power-serving and audacious shot-making disintegrated in the face of my steady and determined grinding. Indeed, Brannigan was so disappointed in himself by the end that he lashed out at me, claiming that I had sucked all the joy out of the game for him. Poor lad. He had cracked under the weight of everyone else's dreams.
I knew just how he felt. I had to deal with similarly high expectations when the Championships came to Bognor in '98, and came close to a meltdown of my own in the semi-finals when I accused my opponent Pedro Remigio, the Great Portuguese Man O'War, of striking a non-oscillating or 'dead' puck. Later on in the game, when he repeatedly bamboozled me with his mesmerising use of the angles, I called him a cunt.
So, you see, I know how it feels to be in that pressure-cooker situation, and I know how it feels to be taught a lesson from a more experienced player. What Brannigan mustn't do is 'give up and get a job watching paint dry' as he rashly declared he would after the match, but learn from it, as I did, and come back stronger.
A poster from the final. I was affectionately known as The Slimy Limey.
The unorthodox 'Eastern grip' as demonstrated (badly) by Westerner, Phil Michigan. He was whitewashed in the first round, ironically, by a Chinese player using the more natural, and better, 'Western grip'.
Pre-qualifying in Adelaide. Over 80 million people from across the globe entered the tournament.
My triumph in Alice Springs, however, was soon forgotten when I learned of the terrible events back home. I had been out of the loop for over a month in Oz (due to a sudden and unexpected Southern Hemisphere newspaper shortage) and heard no news from Westminster until I arrived in Tibet for a meeting with the Dalai Lama. The meeting was intended to be little more than a quick photo-op, a chance for the World Air Hockey Champion to have his picture taken with the Dalai Lama and a chance for the Dalai Lama to have his picture taken with the World Air Hockey Champion (air hockey and Buddhism having gone hand in hand for over two thousand years). But the look on Mr Lama's face immediately told me that something was wrong. I soon discovered that the Tories had seen my temporary absence from the political arena as the perfect opportunity to strike. They had launched Phase One of their dastardly plan: Blame The Poor For What The Rich Fucked Up.
And knowing that, even if news had reached me, I was in no position to respond (I was, at the time, locked in a titanic quarter-final struggle with Jurgen 'BrickWall' Mertesacker, which had already been going on for 94 hours) they immediately ploughed into Phase Two: Punish The Poor For What The Rich Fucked Up.
'Tighten your belts, folks,' Mr Lama read from The Times. 'These could be the biggest cunts since the Great Depression.'
As always, the Tories had moved to protect their fellow Normans and decided to heap the blame for the current recession onto the shoulders of honest benefit cheats and scoundrels.
A little perspective: the amount of money that Norman Overlord Philip Green (a man who actually 'works' for the government) 'avoided' in tax on one single payment in 2005 would be enough to keep one of these 'benefit cheats' in fags and drink and crack and whatever else they choose to spend their money on for 180,000 years (roughly the same amount of time that the human race has existed).
A little benefit swindling is a drop in the ocean. The state of the economy is fuck all to do with the poor. The poor don’t have the power to fuck up the economy any more than we have the power to fuck up the sun. It was solely the work of Norman fat cats.
People like this:
A muted cheer was faintly heard. We Reticents are uncomfortable with cheering. 'Now let’s show them we mean business by smashing this window in…'
And so this brings me neatly on to the second reason for my lengthy absence: prison.The Establishment, fearful of further unrest, decided to make an example of me by locking me in the Tower for 4 days and 4 nights without bread, water or pornography.
But I endured and now, a free man once more, I am here to tell you that the Reticent Party will not be silenced! Or, rather, we will be silenced but only because that is our wont. This is just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. In a few months parliament will fall and the monarchy with it and a golden age of Reticence will begin where everyone will be encouraged to shut up and be quiet.
One last thing:
During my time in Tibet, the Lama and I decided to write down Every Problem In The World on a big piece of parchment and then solve them all. This we did. In one big, amphetamine-fuelled orgy of problem solving, and by the end of the evening we held in our hands the document that would shortly become The Reticent Party Manifesto, which will be posted here next week.
Write this in your diaries, folks: this time next week all the world’s problems will be solved.
