31st January, 2020

A cold, shivering figure, wrapped in a soiled kimono, still clutching a baseball bat sobs gently and wipes away the tears running down into his unwashed stubble. A 40 watt bulb flickers in the damp cellar, his final refuge...

He hears a gentle knock on the door and ushers in a sorry figure of a prepubescent black youth, wearing shorts, white trainers, and a snot stained Chè Guevara t-shirt, clutching two cans of baked beans. "You must eat something," he says, his voice cracking as he wipes his nose. "I've been stockpiling." 

The door opens again, and a sniveling, disheveled figure reeking of gin, her pale tear-stained face like parchment stretched too thin, enters wearing a threadbare power-suit, shoulder-pads and all, hobbles in. "Do we have anything to eat?" she says hoarsely, fighting back the lump in her throat.

"We have couple of cans of baked beans and some raw fox meat," says the man in the kimono, "But nothing to heat or cook them with."

A little voice emerges from the shadows and whispers, "I've been hiding here all along. I've got a bottle of £3.75 supermarket Claret, and a few cans of Campbell tomato soup.  I once sexed up a dossier and helped burn an entire country to the ground. I can start a fire, even in this dank, dark basement. Shall we eat?"

The door creaks open yet again, bringing with it a bitter draft of ice-cold January air and a senile old man in a tweed jacket clutching an over-sized marrow repeatedly muttering, "We won the argument, we won the argument..." nodding his head and wiping the frost from his snow-white beard, his teeth chattering as he spoke.

"Do come in," says the man in the kimono, grateful for more company.

The five huddle around the fire, blissfully unaware of the carbon-monoxide filling up the tiny basement, as they tuck into the charred remains of a dead fox from two months ago, baked beans and rancid tomato soup.

Meanwhile outside, the sky bursts into life, with fireworks, strains of jubilant music, the popping of corks, and a renewed energy of a nation freed from the shackles that bound it to failed social and political experiment.