This month’s #blogbattle prompt is ‘Tribute’
Torpid Whirlpool sucked the top of his pencil and not for the first time wondered which twisted capricious deity had decided he was the person to craft a suitable tribute to Gideon Numbthighs, the outgoing leader of the Congress. Half-formed sentences floated like small dappled turds on the sewerage of his antipathy…
He rose without trace…
His legacy will …
The only noticeable thing about his premiership was its ending…
This was meant to eulogise what headline writers were describing as the great man. A hagiography was what they wanted, not a hatchet job.
Torpid leant back. Of course the joke was on him. He had aspired to the top job. Throughout his career in servicing the needs of his fellow men, he had always been in Numbthighs’ shadow, a nuisance more than a rival, but he had adhesion. He’d been demoted, moved sideways and promoted beyond his capabilities, but every time he’d popped back through the scuzzy ranks of the career civil servants and survived, causing Numbthighs endless frustrations with every reappearance.
But they were joined at the hip. In the same way Numbthighs couldn’t scale the heights without Torpid as his penumbra, so it was that the constant, irritating eclipsing of his ambition by Numbthighs’ ability to hold onto the greasy pole of political aspiration gave Torpid the teeth grinding determination to stick at it. If Numbthighs had been good, adequate even rather that the least worst, Torpid might have accepted his lot, nodded to the next taxi on the rank and sunk back to pen pushing obscurity. But being there, knowing with the bone deep certainty of an egomaniac that he, Torpid Whirlpool could do a better job kept him in post. Every day he told himself this couldn’t, wouldn’t, mustn’t continue. The world deserved better, they deserved him and yet they’d ended up with an incompetent numpty whose only talent lay in having none.
The truth was that in politics as often in life, the serially talented fail because those whose support they need recognise a superior being and, like breathing and disliking ear hair in others, cutting down to size smug knowalls was hard-wired into the human psyche. Having the living embodiment of a blank canvas allowed everyone to ascribe to Numbthighs sufficient talents to keep him at the top while avoiding feeling threatened or worse, inadequate.
That was Torpid’s error, his Achilles heel; he knew his own self worth – that and a penchant for trimmed goatees that singled you out as having a tendency to stalking or playing football to a high level.
Torpid extracted the pencil, pulled the sheet to him and wrote:
Gideon Numbthighs, everyone’s nobody.
Which when you considered what he might have done, wasn’t the worst epitaph.
TanGental 
Apt.I’d say…Most apt. x
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Joy
LikeLike
Nice one!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you
LikeLike
This could, and does, apply to so many throughout history!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good one, Geoff. (both the piece and the epitaph)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks John
LikeLiked by 1 person
What’s that song – everybody’s somebody somewhere!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes and everybody loves somebody sometime
LikeLike
That’s just the way it goes .
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ho hum
LikeLike
Yes indeed
LikeLiked by 1 person
As much as I hate to say it, Geoff, Torpid is spot on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sadly he probably is
LikeLiked by 1 person
Another adventure diving into the minds of the deranged. I like how you nailed the self-importance of those who devote themselves to politics. The whole cesspool imagery was appropriate!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do wonder at career politicians. It often feels that those who want to do it should be the last people allowed to.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: #BlogBattle Stories: Tribute | BlogBattle
Nobody would ever believe the latter of these options about me: “a penchant for trimmed goatees that singled you out as having a tendency to stalking or playing football to a high level”. However the former has sent me to the shaving mirror. 🙂 Clever piece, Geoff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The dangers of pognophilia Doug… keep trimming!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who needs a Thesaurus if they have your posts?!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha thanks.
LikeLiked by 1 person