CHAPTER 1 – INCEPTION
“I fear the men coming!” he used to proclaim, on a fairly regular basis. Some days he wouldn’t stop. The anguish in his voice and the genuine terror in his eyes would make me, at least, consider that he was telling the truth. It was hard to. Most of my half-brother’s waking hours were made up of screaming at birds, furiously masturbating a snooker cue, and egging passing children with cries of “EGGS! EGGS! THEIR CHOLESTEROL LEVELS AREN’T AS BAD AS PEOPLE THINK!”
Then July 13th, 2015 happened. It changed everyone’s lives for ever. It was the day of the Kettle Lobbyists and their grasp for power…
That day was like any other general election (except on a Monday. I didn’t check the date I made up and don’t want to change it because it seems to have something poetic about it). Each representative wanting to stand for election had paid their deposit and completed their campaigning. The big two were represented everywhere, as usual, and various comedic names put their names forward. “Steel Toed Alex And The Fanny Warriors” appeared in Wentworth & Dearne, and the succinct “Stiffy Party” showed up in Somerset North.
All the usual perfunctory nonsense went on and the country ended up with a party with no majority. We were heading for a (an?) hung Parliament.
But that didn’t happen.
After days of deliberating, after weeks of round table negotiations, the two major parties agreed to sit together.
That’s right. Together. And form a functioning Parliament, with an insurmountable majority.
At first this seemed odd and uncharacteristic, until a peculiar set of circumstances and events unfolded in the months to come. The first was the appointment of a very specific set of characters to high office. The CEO of Tefal entered Whitehall as a “Chief Economic Advisor”, for example. All sorts of people from the kettle world started to enter public office – Kenwood employees entered the police force, DeLonghi staff were given contracts to run the NHS Trusts, and Dualit and Breville formed a joint venture to manage Network Rail. Next, which should have raised suspicions, was that regulations around Kettle capacity/power/safety/manufacture were being pulled apart and removed. In the space of 6 months, anyone could build, buy, or operate a kettle of any size or function, and when all public spaces were re-branded “Hot Water Zones”, with proclamations to “Bring your water heating receptacles so everyone can enjoy it”, it should have clicked. This is when it was too late. They had done it. My half brother was right. They were coming. The kettle lobbyists had got their way, and they were coming for us. They were coming for us all.