21 January 2016

The Four Bears, the Princess and the Hung Parliament

A fairy tale for a warm winter

by Neil Tidmarsh

This week, biologists in the Spanish Pyrenees reported that the unusually high temperatures this winter are preventing brown bears from hibernating…

Once upon a time there were four bears – Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear, Little Boy Bear and Little Girl Bear.  One day in January, Daddy Bear was woken up by the sound of his two little bears arguing.

“You fetch the acorns!”

“No, you fetch the acorns!”

“But I’m hungry!”

“So am I!  I’m hungrier!”

Mummy Bear sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes.  “Is it spring already?  Oh good, I can make a start on the spring cleaning!”

Daddy Bear didn’t like the sound of that.  He didn’t like the sound of his children arguing.  He liked to sleep.  He liked to sleep for three months solid, from December right through to March.  It didn’t feel like he’d been asleep for even three days.  It didn’t feel like spring.  “Go back to sleep!” he growled angrily. “It isn’t spring yet!”

“It must be!”  his children shouted.  “It’s hot!  And there’s no snow! And we’re hungry!”

Mummy Bear was already busy with the noisy hoover, so he couldn’t go back to sleep.  He peered out of the window. There was no snow.  So the children weren’t playing a trick on him after all.  And it was warm.  But…

A newspaper flopped through the letterbox.  He crawled out of bed, grabbed the paper, and crawled back into bed.  He looked at the date.  “It’s January!” he roared.  “Back to sleep, everyone! Now!”

“But we’re hungry!”  shouted his children.  “And we’re hot!”

“And I’m busy!”  shouted his wife above the thunder of the vacuum cleaner.

Daddy Bear was beginning to get a head-ache.  All he wanted to do was go back to sleep.

“Can’t you make yourself busy, you two?”  Mummy Bear shouted.

“How can we?”  Little Boy Bear replied. “You know what the unemployment statistics for young people are like in this country!”

“I could go to London!”  Little Girl Bear shouted.  “It’s hip and trendy to be Spanish in London!  I could work in a tapas restaurant! Or in a sherry bar!”

“I could go too!”  Little Boy Bear shouted.  “They love Spanish-speaking bears in London!  Remember our primo from Peru, el Paddington? They’ve even made a film about him now!”

“You just want to grow a silly beard and get lots of tattoos and hang out in Shoreditch and drink craft beer with supermodels and silly English pop stars!”

“If I did, I’d make sure you weren’t invited!  Not even if Prince Harry was there!”

“Prince Harry?  You’d better!”

“Will you two stop shouting?” Daddy Bear shouted.  “I’m going back to sleep!” But his eyes fell on a headline in the paper. ‘Stocks fall in China.  The year’s first week of trading the worst since records began.  Sets off bear market all around the world.’  Bear market.  Daddy Bear groaned.  Perhaps it was time to go back to work after all.  But he didn’t want to go back to work.  He wanted to go back to sleep. He closed his eyes and lay back in the bed.  If only his wife would stop vacuuming…

“Who’s that?”  Little Girl Bear shouted in his ear.

He opened his eyes.  Little Girl Bear was standing by the bed, looking at a picture in the paper spread out over the quilt.  It was a photo of a well-dressed blonde woman being led into court.  She pointed at it.  “Is that Goldilocks?  The bitch!”

“No, that’s not Goldilocks.  But it does look like her, and she has been very bad.  Apparently.  Allegedly.”

“What’s she done?  Has she broken into someone’s home, too?  And smashed up the furniture?  And stolen the food?”

“Who is she?”  Little Boy Bear shouted.  “What’s she done?”

“She’s a princess – ”

“Cool!”  His daughter shouted.  “Princess Goldilocks!  Even better!”

“She’s Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, she’s in court accused of tax fraud, her husband’s facing charges of embezzlement and tax evasion.”

“Cool!  She’s a princess married to a bad-boy gangster?  What a brilliant fairy story!”

“Well, neither of them have been found guilty yet.”  Daddy Bear shifted uneasily.  “Innocent until proved guilty, you know?”

The vacuuming had stopped.  Mummy Bear was looking at the picture too.  “She can’t be guilty!” she said.  “She’s a princess!  She’s sixth in line to the throne!”

“Well, there’s talk of stripping her of the title. Her brother the king has already stripped her of her title the Duchess of Palma de Mallorca.”

“Go big brother!”  Little Boy Bear shouted.  “If she was my little sister, I wouldn’t stop there, I’d get her head chopped off!”

The noise, and the fuss, it really was too much.  They were climbing all over the bed.  Daddy Bear really, really wanted to go back to sleep.  Suddenly he had an idea.  “Oh, and there’s been an election. Listen…”

Mummy Bear yawned.  “Politics? Boring…”

“No, listen, all of you.”  He began to read from the newspaper in a slow, dull voice.  “In a closely-fought election, prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party failed to win a majority of parliament’s 350 seats. His party won 123 seats, ahead of the Socialists with 90 seats…”

Mummy Bear yawned again.  Little Boy Bear’s eyelids began to close.  Little Girl Bear’s head began to nod. She snuggled up to her mother.

“… with new parties Podemos  (‘We can’ – left-wing, anti-austerity – 69 seats) third and Cuidadanos (‘Citizens’ – centre liberal – 40 seats) fourth.  The Popular Party lost ground because of austerity measures and high unemployment; the two new parties offered fresh options to voters tired of the two-party establishment and corruption scandals…”

Mummy Bear’s eyes closed and she lay down on the bed.  Little Boy Bear’s eyes closed and he lay down on the bed. Little Girl Bear’s eyes closed and she lay down on the bed.

“…the new parliament has been sworn in and a moderate Socialist MP, Patxi Lopez, has been named as the new speaker of Parliament’s lower house.  But coalition negotiations remain deadlocked…”

Daddy Bear stopped reading and put the paper down carefully.  Mummy Bear, Little Girl Bear and Little Boy Bear were all fast asleep, breathing gently.  Daddy Bear smiled happily and closed his eyes. I wonder if they’ll have formed a new government by the time I wake up in the spring…

Soon he was snoring away, and dreaming of that naughty blonde girl Goldilocks, as Daddy Bears tend to. Mummy bear was dreaming about being made Duchess of Palma de Mallorca, now the title was vacant, and being presented to the King at court. As Mummy Bears do.  Little Girl Bear was dreaming of being a princess and marrying a bad-ass gangster, and Little Boy Bear was dreaming of stripping his sister of her title Little Girl Bear and chopping her head of, as Little Bears do.

Outside, the biologist monitoring the bears’ home dabbed more suncream on his nose and lay down in the shade of an oak tree for a siesta. “Phew, what a scorcher!” he muttered to himself as he fell asleep. “Winter like summer! It ain’t natural! It’s unreal! Whatever next? A country without a government? A criminal princess? Talking bears?”