Web Site Story

nature generally, he was probably the right man for the job.

Mr Doveston did have an A level in political science. He'd done it on a World Wide Web night-school course, along with home economics and macrame.

And, as a designer, manufacturer and supplier of holistic footwear to specialist shoe shops, he did have a working knowledge of finance. At least within the field of holistic footwear. And, as a Runie, which is to say a follower of the great twentieth-century Mystic, sword-swallower, and self-styled Most Amazing Man who ever lived, Hugo Rune, he did speak a second language.

Runese. The Universal Tongue. This was a language invented by Hugo Rune, in one of his many (and sadly abortive) attempts to bring about world peace.

Runese was, as might be said, and kindly said too, a 'basic language'. Consisting, as it did, of just forty words. But, as Rune had explained to those who were prepared to listen, 'No man needs any more than forty words to express an opinion, as long as he keeps it simple.' And, 'If a language consists of only nice words, then those who speak it are unlikely to say anything nasty, are they?'

And, for those who wish to count, these two statements add up to precisely forty words, although none of them is in Runese.

So, by the by and all that stuff, here was Mr Doveston, eminently qualified, some might even say overqualified, to take on the job of Prime Minister, and here were the muck-a-mucks giving him, if grudgingly, the big thumbs up.

So, what of the British voting public, you might ask? What did they make of this? Were they appalled? Did they take to the streets and burn down the shopping malls? Storm the Palace of Westminster? Tar and feather, throw ropes over beams, hang, draw and quarter and place severed heads onto high railings?

Well, no. Actually they didn't.

They might well have done and there was much pub talk regarding the doing thereof. But they didn't. Instead they cheered. They partied in the streets. They put up bunting and roasted pigs on spits. They glorified the name of Mr Doveston.

Why?

Well, because the British voting public were British, that's why. And believe it or believe it not, the British really do have a sense of fair play. They love to see the underdog have his day. And they love it when the little man beats the system. It's hard to explain just why they do, as hard to explain as just what the magic of Brentford really is, but they do, they really do.

It's a British thing. It's a tradition, or an old charter.

Or something.

Mr Doveston found himself sitting behind the desk of power and his feet inside the slippers of power, which few know of, or talk about.

The slippers of power were not to his personal taste, for reasons that will soon be made clear. But he would deal with them, as indeed he would deal with everything. Because Mr Doveston was a man with a plan, as all the world would soon come to know. If not necessarily to understand.

For one of the things that people particularly liked about Mr Doveston was that he was 'open'. He didn't keep any secrets. He told it as he saw it. He said what needed to be said.

Mr Doveston had prepared an electoral manifesto. All candidates do this before elections. It is not a tradition, or an old charter, or something. Mostly it's a load of old toot about all the wonderful things they'll do when they get into power. It's something that the leader of the opposition likes to take out every so often and wave across the despatch box at the Prime Minister and embarrass him with.

Not so Mr Doveston's manifesto. Mr Doveston intended to make good on his. His was a one hundred and eighty point plan, designed to restore the British Nation to its once proud greatness. Starting from the ground up.

It covered pretty much everything that such a manifesto could reasonably be expected to cover. Poverty, urban decay, environmental issues, the NHS, transportation, welfare, schools, world trade, the benefit system, all and sundry and much else besides. And it set out a strategy for putting things right. A strategy that worked from the ground up. It identified a single cause for all the nation's ills.

Its footwear.

Where previous governments had got it all wrong, Mr Doveston explained, was that they had not dealt with issues from the ground up. Which is to say, with the nation's feet and what the nation wore upon its feet. Mr Doveston knew all about these things. He had studied these things. These things were what Mr Doveston was all about.

And it is not an untruth to declare that to some extent these were things that Mr Doveston's guru, Hugo Rune, was also all about.

Rune had spent much of his fascinating life [2] in search of alternative energy. He pooh-poohed the internal combustion engine, described electricity as 'a passing and dangerous fad' and considered nuclear power 'unlikely to say the very least'. As for solar power, Rune turned his nose up and made pig-like gruntings. 'The planet Earth itself is the source of ultimate power,' Rune once declared to a party of Japanese students who were enjoying an open-topped bus tour around the borough of Brentford. 'It spins around and around and around, generating mighty forces that the man who has the know of it, might tap into and exploit.'

'Is this a magnetic force?' asked a Japanese student called Kevin. 'Likening the globe to a gigantic magneto, whereby a magnetic field is produced by the constant revolutions, taking in that two-thirds of the world's surface is covered by oceans, thereby creating the ideal conditions for magneto hydrodynamics, the saline fluid acting as a…'

But Hugo Rune cut him short with a blow to the skull from the stout stick he always carried. 'No,' said Rune. 'Nothing like that at all.'

Apparently it was all down to a substance called Runelium. An element which science had so far failed to identify, but Rune had.

Scientists had catalogued one hundred and five elements, ninety-three of which occurred naturally. Rune, with the aid of his X-ray vision and enhanced intuition, had identified the ninety-fourth. And named it, modestly, Runelium.

Rune described Runelium as 'sort of sticky with a spearminty smell'. It was there, all around, and if you looked very hard, you might just catch a glimpse of it. Rune declared it to be an untapped source of ultimate power that might be ultimately tapped into through the use of specially constructed Runelium-friendly holistic footwear. The plans for the construction of such footwear were made available to the public during the 1980s, priced at a mere ?4.99 including postage and packing, through mail order to a certain post-office box in Brentford. Cheques to be made payable to H. Rune, NEW AGE INDUSTRIES INC.

It was during these same 1980s that Mr Doveston, then a freckle-faced lad of nine summers only, had come across the advert for such footwear in the back of a Marvel comic. Next to one for Count Dante's course in the deadly art of Dimac.

History was already being made, although Mr Doveston was not to know it then.

So, returning to the present.

Years and years of work had gone into the Runelium-friendly footwear. Years and years of work put in by Mr Doveston, disciple to the Mystic and the Man (as Rune described himself upon his gilt-edged star- shaped calling cards).

And now the time was right. Mr Doveston was behind the desk of power. The nation could be told. The nation would respond. Great days lay ahead. There would be dancing in the street (quite careful dancing, given the height and complexity of some of the footwear), heavy petting in the back seats of Morris Minors and jumping for joy (again with care) the length and breadth of the country.

There would be the singing of songs too. New songs with catchy tunes and easily rememberable lyrics. Lyrics written in the new tongue of Runese. The Universal Tongue of Peace. And a few minor changes besides, such as allocating every first Monday in the month as a bank holiday and renaming the months of the year. Hence the month of Rune.

It would all be joy and joy and happy joy.

Happy happy joy.