The Mayor
The Mayor
By Buddy Fulldae
Copyright 2012 Buddy Fulldae
Thank you for your support.
THE MAYOR
Chapter 1
Let me take you to a time back then, when the first ever mayoral election was about to take place in Seagull City.
It was a time of great excitement, because historically, the position, which had traditionally been selected from elected councilors, was a very important position.
So much was it a high profile and important position that mayors spent most of their time either defending the circumstances of their election, posing for photos to improve their community profile, fighting off mutiny amongst councilors who also wanted to be mayor, preparing new promises for the next election or posing so that a painted wooden bollard of their visage could be erected in their honour, so that it could be admired by the tourists who ambled the waterfront, or so that it could be shat on from a great height by the litanous flock of seagulls who swooped the foreshore with oil-slicked impunity.
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Chapter 2
There were a number of issues of great concern to local citizens.
Not the least was the number of potholes on the road to the oil refinery and the wood pulp mill, the number of mall rats that lingered at the front of the shopping centre, the lack of parking, the exponential increase in the number of parking meters to try to improve parking, a lack of facilities at the local cricket grounds and the presence of mall rats at the local shopping centre.
And so it was that the mayor elect, Cecil Sneezebottom, finally came to the job with a mandate.
"I will:
Get rid of the Mall Rats." He promised.
"I will:
Fix the roads." He said.
"I will:
Review parking." He enunciated.
"I will:
Make cricket facilities a priority." He whispered.
Chapter 3
And so he found himself posing for a wooden bollard and having his picture taken with shop owners, council workers, parking inspectors and sports club presidents.
Finally, after appearing on the front cover of the 'Seagull Crier' for a week to much acclaim, he finally found himself staring down a board room table at the red, bloated faces of ten disgruntled, jealous and vengeful councilors.
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Chapter 4
He opened the meeting with flamboyant aplomb, and proceedings immediately descended into a volatile shitfight.
The Member for Seagull East was in open conflict with the Member for Seagull North, for whilst the Member for Seagull North wanted the road to the refinery improved, and the Member for Seagull East wanted the road to the Wood Pulp Mill improved, and whilst both the refinery and the wood pulp mill were on the same road, the Member for Seagull North wanted work to start from the north where the refinery was, and the Member for Seagull East wanted the work to start from the east where the wood pulp mill was.
The Member for Seagull West was in open conflict with the Member for Seagull Central, because the Member for Seagull West thought that the Member for Seagull Central, a bollarded former mayor, and was a misogynist prick, whilst the Member for Seagull Central thought the Member for Seagull West was an ugg boot wearing flannelette adorned croquet playing feminist.
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Chapter 5
All the while, the Member for Fuggly Stanks was in conflict with himself, for many reasons, some to do with his genetics, some to do with his environment, and all to do with his psychologist who deemed him a veritable gold mine, and continued to invite him back at two hundred dollars per weekly session, to go around and around the same old stuff in ever decreasing concentric circles until neither the Member for Fuggly Stanks nor the psychologist could remember who was who any more.
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Chapter 6
The Members for Bright-On, Seagull South, Outer Beach Glorious, Mosquito Lakes and Sheep Shank Creek vacillated between tempests, each trying their hardest to navigate a sensible path through the un-navigable seas of illogical narcissistic neuropathology, becoming themselves gradually neurotically insane whilst the raging protagonists remained exactly the same, full of ruddy good health, surly vigor and rabid ferociousness in their seething boiling hatred of everyone and every thing.
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Chapter 7
Cecil Sneezebottom brought hostilities to a halt eventually, not by force of personality or power, but by spilling his coffee all the way down his silk cornflower blue shirt.
It wasn't his fault.
The lid of the takeaway coffee cup was not quite the right size, as happens occasionally, and whilst he had noticed initially and taken care to be cautious, the hostilities had made him forget.
The brown stain mapped the topography with eye-catching effectiveness, and each face at the table could not help but stare.
Unconventional though it was as a call to order, it none-the-less did the job, and in the ephemeral silence he found just enough space to clear his throat and set the agenda.
Thus mall rats, potholes, parking and cricket assumed strategic importance for much of the day, with no two members having the same opinion on any of the issues.
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Chapter 8
Ideas and counter-ideas fluttered back and forth across the table like butterflies in a typhoon, and the day was terminated when the minutes secretary collapsed in tears and was led from the room by the council immunisation nurse on the promise of two Panadol washed down with a medicinal brandy and the next day off for the purposes of blood pressure control.
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Chapter 9
The mayor took matters into his own hands with respect to the first of his promises, drawing on the extensive research he had done in the lead-up to the election.
Classical music was the key.
Documents existed which proved beyond doubt that teenagers hated classical music, and that playing classical music over loudspeakers in the mall would send the mall rats scurrying back to wherever they came from.
Agreement was reached at the very next council meeting, and installation was followed by the requisite photo session and an article in the 'Seagull Crier' about the affirmative abilities of the new council.
Cecil Sneezebottom finally settled the selection of music.
Hovhaness was his favourite, and so it formed one of the major selections of tunes to be played.
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Chapter 10
At first, it worked a treat, if only because the mall rats couldn’t get close to the mall entrance for little old ladies and youth social workers who hung around all day for weeks to see if it worked.
When at last they dissipated, the mall rats still stayed away, and council was very happy.
Victory was sweet, and the Letters to the Editor were even sweeter.
"What a grand council this is."
"Cecil Sneezebottom lives up to his promises."
"I can now go shopping without feeling threatened by those disgraceful louts and tramps."
And so on and so on.
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Chapter 11
One sunny Public Holiday weekend, something interesting happened.
People even more marginal than the mall rats started coming in, at first a few at a time.
"You should listen to this music when you are high, man. It’s really something else!" was the word that got around on the social network sites.
Soon the mall was a bustling marketplace of substance abuse, worse than ever before.
It wasn't just local skateboarders and smoking vocational students hanging around anymore.
People were coming from all over the state, all over the country, and even from overseas to partake of LSD right there i
n the mall, for little did he know, but the well-meaning Mayor had chosen the very music that had been elected as the iTunes five best classical tunes to get high on LSD to.
It was featured in travel guides, on prime time television, and on international news broadcasts.
Everywhere.
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Chapter 12a
Grannies walking by got high just on the smoke that issued from the entrance to the mall, and worse, it was sucked up into the air conditioning vents, and recycled back into the shops.
Retail went gangbusters.
The 'Two Dollar' shop couldn't keep up supply, especially on pension day, and the major retailers saw the recession start to turn around as shoppers found retail confidence in the hazy shopping centre air.
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Chapter 12b
Just like that Cecil Sneezebottom made a name for himself, and just like that he disappeared without trace.
Many years later he was found living a reclusive life in quiet downtown Dundurrabin, in a circular house just down the road from ‘The Bridge That Jack Built’.
Back in the town of Seagull City, his bollard remains at the waterfront, holding a spoon and a lighter as a reminder of their most famous Mayor, who single-handedly and unintentionally turned a manufacturing-led recession on its ear in a city that almost went to pot.
The End
Literary Disclaimer:
Disclaimer:
All characters appearing in this amazingly superfluous magniescent though inconsequential novella are completely of my florid rabid morbid imagination and any similarity to persons, animals, plants, virus, bacteria, or neo-biologica preforma beings which don't yet exist but may, some time in the future, achieve sapience, be they living, passed, or in any way in a vegetative, ambivalent or multifarious state is completely utterly and consumptively coincidental and outside the construct of the performative narrative that makes up the para logical sequencing and chronological sequestering that brought forth the impossible calculus that melded the concrete confabulation of this abstract literary creation.
Sincerely,
The Author.