Gas (The Meaning of Life #4)

“…The thing is,” asserted the man in the Cavalry Twill overcoat, wiping foam from the tip of his nose with his sleeve “that it’s not our fault, so there’s no way we should have to pay for it.”
“Who should pay for it then?” asked the man in the Meerkat T-shirt.  “Who is responsible?”
“Napoleon,” said the man in the moleskin waistcoat.
“Napoleon?” laughed Cavalry Twill.  “Napoleon?  He never even had electricity.  He wouldn’t have had to take that Josephine on campaign with him, eating all the cake et cetera, if he’d had e.g. an electric blanket with him.”
“Napoleon ordered his army’s tailors to put buttons along his soldiers’ cuffs to stop them wiping their noses on their sleeves.”
“A dapper man that Napoleon,” said T-shirt.  “Wouldn’t have liked shiny sleeves.”
“Except on a mohair suit,” said Moleskin.
“Except on a mohair suit,” agreed T-shirt.  “Par for the course on a mohair suit.”
The man in the Cavalry Twill overcoat carefully picked a stray peanut from his lap and ate it in quiet contemplation.  “Putin,” he said at length.  “Putin is responsible for the current situation viz-a-viz the having to burn all the downstairs doors in order to keep warm scenario.  He should be made to pay our energy bills.”
“He’s got deep pockets, I’m sure,” said Moleskin, “but I doubt that even he can afford to pay everybody’s gas and electric.”
“Not everybody’s,” said C.T.  “Just those as need it.  Just those who e.g. have to keep their wossname knitted gilets on after they get back from the pub.  Just those who have to, for instance, get rather closer to their spouses in bed than they would ideally like to for the shared heat of a hot water bottle.  It could, in my opinion, be classed as a war crime.”
“Are you mad?” said Moleskin, a thousand tiny blood vessels popping gently behind his eyes.  “Stark, staring mad?  You do know, don’t you, that there are actual war crimes being committed out there?  That people are dying?”
“Putin denies it.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he.”
“He’s not denying messing with the gas though.”
Moleskin stared at C.T. for a long time.  He opened his mouth to speak, but decided it would get him nowhere.  He looked to Meerkat for support, but he was preoccupied with examining the tip of a pencil he had just extracted from his ear.  “Another pint?” he asked at length.
“Thought you’d never ask,” said C.T.
Moleskin stood slowly and lifted the glasses from the sticky table one at a time.
The man in the Cavalry Tweed overcoat carefully brushed down his sleeves.  “I mean, it’s alright for some isn’t it?” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” said Moleskin, fighting to ease his ever tightening grip on the fragile glasses.
“Well, you management types,” continued the man in the overcoat.  “It’s alright for you.”
“I’m not management!”
“He works in the same place as you,” said Meerkat.  “Same job.”
“He wears,” said Cavalry Twill, “a tie under his overall.  He has clean shoes.  He has pens in his top pocket…”
“What have my shoes got to do with anything?  I do exactly the same job as you,” said Moleskin, the cilia on the back of his neck rising as one, like the rioters at a Donald Trump rally.  “I get paid exactly the same.”
“But without the overheads.”
“I’ve got a mortgage, two kids at school, a wife who holds down two jobs to make ends meet, a nine year old car that’s in worse shape than Elton John’s toupee…”
“No dogs though,” said C.T.  “No satellite T.V.”
Meerkat looked alarmed.
“We barely watch the T.V.” explained Moleskin.  “We get all we need from Freeview.  And we listen to the radio a lot.”
“Oh can’t you see them of an evening,” sneered C.T.  “Reading books and listening to The Archers.  Drinking Earl Grey tea and dunking those Barramundi biscuits…”
“…Garibaldi,” said Moleskin.
“What?”
“Garibaldi.  The biscuits are Garibaldi.  Barramundi are fish.”
“Really?”  I suppose they told you that on Radio 4 did they?  ‘What’s My Fish’ was it, with him off the news?”
“I don’t care for raisins,” said Meerkat.  “They get under my plate.  I have to poke them out with a crochet hook.”
Moleskin glared.  “Is that really the point?” he asked.
“Well, not for you perhaps,” said C.T. patting Meerkat softly on the shoulder.  “You’ll have a dentist no doubt.  Properly fitting dentures.  Porcelain crowns I shouldn’t wonder.”
“A gas powered toothbrush,” said Meerkat, suddenly getting a feel for things.
The man in the cavalry twill overcoat and the man in the moleskin waistcoat stared at him, slack jawed, for some time.  “A man could dehydrate waiting for you to get them in,” said C.T. at last as Moleskin departed for the bar with a resigned shrug.
“Do you think that Putin will pay my gas bill?” asked Meerkat.  “I don’t mind if he doesn’t stump up for the electric.  We’ve got an electric cooker – I’d save a fortune on burned food.”
“It could be a true test of his communist convictions,” said C.T.  “From each according to his means, to each according to his needs.”
“You don’t suppose he’d pitch in a bit towards the rent as well, do you?”
“I thought you owned your house.”
“Well I do,” said Meerkat.  “Technically.  But he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment hasn’t he, that Putin, what with going mad and everything, perhaps he wouldn’t notice.  I don’t suppose he’d be too particular with his paperwork.  He doesn’t seem to be that bothered about petty bureaucracy does he?”
“Well no, I suppose not.  He’d want a bit of the property though, wouldn’t he?  If he was going to pay the rent I mean.  Somewhere with easy access to next door in case he fancied a piece of the action there sometime.  Some means of reaching next door but one…”
The man in the moleskin waistcoat returned with three pints of lager and placed them carefully on the table.
“So, if Putin’s not going to pay for the gas then, who do you think will?” asked Meerkat.
“Search me,” said Moleskin.  “We all will in the end I suppose.”
“Or go back to how things were a hundred years ago.”
“We’re already on the way I think…”


I’d probably like to say that these three are a joy to write, but it’s more true to say that they are a gift when you want to tell everybody exactly what you don’t want to say. They have also appeared in The Meaning of Life: Supplementary Philosophy (The Meaning of Life #2): Ancient Greeks (The Meaning of Life #3)