davidcameron

[davidcameron]

On the morning of labour’s election victory, a wet morning, another wet morning in a foul summer, David Cameron opened the door to his bathroom, pulled down his plaid sleeping boxers (Gant), positioned himself squarely in front of his toilet, shoulders loose and rolling, a little bounce and give in the knees, took his shrivelled wad between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, and, for the first time since he took on the role of foreign secretary, allowed himself to piss. 

It had all happened without aforethought. Sometime after his mid-morning Dr Pepper, on the day of the surprise announcement of his appointment, an appointment that stirred even Andrew Sparrow down from his perch on the roof of the Guardian’s ugly offices, to start plucking at the keyboard with his beak, and - we’re back to talking about David Cameron now - at the head of a large, ooid table, David Cameron felt the first stirrings. The first limpid stirrings, he would recall it with that phrase, none more apropos, it was quite as though, he imagined himself saying to a group of people gathered in front of him, perhaps in a Waterstones, it was quite as though my bladder and balls knew what the sitch was, what the situation was, and they said to me, “Mr David, we’re here doing our thing, keep that in mind, but you’re good, you’re good to go… you’re good to go, buddy.” And so it was that he began to believe, and the belief turned into action, and the action into a technique, the technique to habit and the habit to something like transcendence. He told nobody else, but frequently tapped florid accounts into his Notes app, recording sensation after sensation, from agony to bliss, convulsion to insensibility, like the movements in a symphony by Schubert (and it’s from these reflections that these brief paragraphs are taken). What form did that transcendence take? What heights did David Cameron reach, what depths did he scrape the hard basin of? Certain constraints prevent a full account - some legal, some only moral (and if only David Cameron sometimes, only occasionally, allowed himself to think, and then say to his wife, usually in the car, heading somewhere far off, if only the public could glimpse the true me, the unfettered me, and really see what I’ve got goin on, you know? Outside of their so-called moral code? Without whatever passes for decency in this rat’s age, this cur’s age, breathing down their thick, entattooed necks? Do you know what I mean? Do you get what I’m saying?) - being gifted to you, the lucky reader, who, in spite of that, ought to be grateful for whatever you get, however meagre (though these are not meagre). In truth, this is a description of a feat never previously attempted, and never by a cabinet minister either, it’s something really out of the normal run of things, way out, and if that doesn’t impress you then please return to Pinterest and type “dog video” into the search bar. You know what? In fact, if you’re not impressed that David Cameron held his piss in the whole time he was Foreign Sec, and then pissed it out on the morning of Labour’s election win, then please go back to talking about the badass olympic shooter. Oh my god, who cares about that, could it be more boring to see people’s “takes” about it? It's just a guy. It’s like those fucking people you see queuing outside a cafe on a Sunday morning. How good can it possibly be? How good can their egg be? What are you doing there? Such thoughts swam around David Cameron’s mind, like shoals of yellow fish in a golden lake, the surface tension a white mirror, almost breaking.

What form did the transcendence take? We can relate two incidents from which a larger picture can be formed in the mind of the reader (and please do do that, please try to form a picture in your mind of the daily toil that it requires not to piss. Oh, you think it’s easy? Try it for just a month. Honestly, try it. Finish reading this, hit the like, tell a few friends about it, put it up on your Pinterest if you like, go around talking about what David Cameron did and how interesting it was to read all about it, true insight, real honesty, not like most of them politicians now, who have to consult the nation’s almanac before granting mere planning “permission” for a home gym and treatment centre/panic room on land that one already bloody well owns! Do all that and then come back and see how you’ve done. And if you wet yourself, which, come on, you did, you wet yourself, you stupid prick (or would have done/will do if you tried/try it) then there you go), which will grant them a deep understanding of David Cameron in this particular period. The first concerns a beautiful church in Tbilisi, which David Cameron had occasion to visit as part of his many duties as a state functionary. The church was dark and cool inside, the high vaulted ceiling something something (the assistant tasked with writing down architectural details had “lost” his notes from that afternoon, much to David Cameron’s chagrin, for let it never be said that he didn’t adore church architecture, but only that the technical vocabulary necessary to provide exegesis on it was recondite, and yes, David Cameron had a few suggestions for modernisation. What about, for example, instead of nave you just call it the preach space? No? Not that? Alright well what about instead of altar you say candle hatch? Naaah, naaah, just joking with you on that last one. But seriously, if anyone has any SENSIBLE and WORKABLE ideas, especially where crenellations and fonts are concerned, then send them over). The light from the windows cast broad, distended squares over the stone floor, and only those pellucid zones, which David Cameron dodged his way around, threatened the reverent atmosphere. In a side chapel, a trickle of cloudy water ran from the rock that the church was hewn out of, into a cracked and oxidised ewer, carved such that it appeared that Saint Brigid herself were holding it up on her shoulders. “This is spring water, believed to be holy. To touch it, say the local legends, is to be saved,” an attaché whispered into David Cameron’s pink right ear. The trickle was doing his bap in, though, and he momentarily hunched down into a squat and walked a broadly hexagonal route around the chapel, fists pumping like a sprinter, trying to stave off whatever was going on down there with himself. “I’m alright!” he finally shouted at the small group he was with, ministers from other nations, people of importance in the Georgian government, some priests etcetera, who all looked at him with alarm and concern. “I’m alright,” he repeated, more calmly now, and eighty or ninety percent of the way back to a normal stance. “But I must say,” he went on, raising his voice beyond the hushed volume that the building and its occupants were accustomed to from all but the bishop, “but I must say that the sin of idolatry is all about us. From every corner, the devil leers at me!” And, without looking back, except to make sure that his aide, whose notebook full of detailed observations was forgotten in the chase, was behind him, going full pelt. 

But let us return for a moment to David Cameron, happily now at the toilet in his home, thinking about politics, and thinking about foreign policy, about legacy and about reputation. Time to hang up the old riding spurs, place the riding crop back in its velour sheath (David Cameron had been as surprised as you are, reading this now, that the sheath, which he had bought in good faith from a website whose pink and purple design he had found decidedly chic, was a sex shop, but whatever, who cares, who gives a crap), David Cameron thought to himself, but thought it without nostalgia or wistfulness, those weakling emotions, emotions experienced largely by neckbearded indolents traipsing down Dalston High Street in designer hiking gear. Instead, David Cameron reflected, watching the bulbous, greenish-yellow meniscus rise like a plague’s plump little buboe, that he faced this second career’s end as he had the first, as he had all endings, including when Doctor Romano lost his arm on ER, a repulsive choice on the part of the directors and writers of a once great show. David Cameron had talked non stop about it, yes, in a wavering, even wheedling manner, bargaining, refusing to accept what had happened, that’s right, and he had cried for like eight or nine days, sure, but he had been stoic throughout, displayed the true strength of the general, the warrior, Braveheart, his wife and mother both agreed no matter how many times he asked them. And so with this, so with the foreign office and so with the government - his government, ultimately, if you really think about it (which he had, loads) - he looked back upon them as a man (or woman!) might look back at a familiar portrait, perhaps of a great uncle in ceremonial ruff and medals, on one’s landing, and, picking up on its detail for the first time in ages, think to oneself, “Oh yeah.” But in the sense of "oh yeah" like, oh yeah, I remember I have that thing, not "oh yeah" in the laudatory sense. And so with the foreign office, David Cameron thought to himself again, feeling his legs thin a little as they emptied out through his unit, into the toilet. 

The second example? Certainly. “What on earth is those Slovakian’s effing problem?” David Cameron’s wife had said at a dinner party, to murmurs of assent round the table, as David Cameron attempted to delicately and surreptitiously scrape the skin from his turbot. Heads, however, had turned to him, and, abandoning his endeavour he put his knife and fork down, a gesture he felt had gone down delightfully, once, at the UN, and said, "Well of course the situation is febrile now that we can no longer be certain of support from the Walloon." His speech rang out coldly in the room, each piece of fish quietly stopped steaming, and the clear air was suffused with a dignified silence, only the faint hum of Reef’s “Place Your Hands” (David Cameron’s choice), gilding it. The desire to excuse himself to use the bathroom was very strong in that moment, tempered only by the fact that, until his wife had asked the question, all anybody had been talking about around the table was how long it had been (at that point around eight weeks), how difficult it had been, how impressive it was and how, actually, you know what, it looked like it was doing him some good, whatever else one may think of it, that David Cameron had not pissed since taking on this new job.

The bowl began to overfill, and flow evenly onto the cerise tiles of the bathroom floor. Oh well, David Cameron thought to himself, and thought with gusto, true gusto (a rare emotion in this straitened times, these times of penury, spite and indifference), that the NDA his lawyer had had the maid sign was as thick and lurid as 2666, and, one hopes, as critic-proof. But wasn’t it really this, when it all came down to it, whatever one holds in eventually has to make its way out, and the world has to deal with it. Isn’t that all anything comes down to? Aren’t the fluids that you, the reader, are now expelling in awe at what you have just read, telling your mates left, right and centre all about it, upvoting, posting on X, all the fluids produced in those activities, are they, in the final analysis, any less putrid than that which now congeals on David Cameron’s floor as he idly walks away, leaving only damp footprints on the hall rug? It’s a cliché to speak of the heat death of the universe, as though anybody understands what that might mean, and of course David Cameron knew that there could never be such a death, but despite that, and despite the cliché, David Cameron knew, abundantly knew, the foreign office is like a huge toilet, and only the men (and the women!) with the stones enough to hold it in, and the endurance to keep holding, are the ones stopping a worse pipe, the big pipe, where all our fluids are intermixed, from bursting. 

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is finishing the dregs of a can of high ABV IPA, in a large green leather armchair, and thinking about the Villa, who have just lost two nil to Forest, an upset. What Villa needed to do, he thinks, instead of whatever crap they did out there, what they needed to do was get the ball out wide and from those wide areas swing it in goalwards. Dink it in goalwards.

David Cameron thinks all this while getting his phone from his pocket, switching to the front facing camera and holding it up to his face, making his expression serious, planning a little insta story with the caption “rough day out there fellas but the villains go marching on on on!” Is about to take the picture when something that he sees on the screen makes him close the phone, put it next to the now empty can, whose design, it strikes him, in its infantile luridness, as having something in common with the doggerel that Henry Darger expectorated onto his wide pages, or of the cruder daubings of Twombly. It strikes him as a repulsive sign of where the culture is heading. And not only that but why does there have to be a little guy on everything? Why does every fucking advert whether it’s something to make your toilet smell less bad or a ham sandwich have to have some little CGI person or animal or, David Cameron thinks, darkly, thinking of the Protestant service, the thick air hung with incense and song, or some alien or monster grinning and mugging at you from the screen? Why would that make you want to buy anything?

But bitchy resting face has affected the Cameron dynasty, or uhh, family bush, as David Cameron and several of his cousins used to call it back in the day, as they pored over flaking albums, one bitch after a miserable nother passing before their astonished young pink faces. Fuck your mom, fuck your dad and fuck your whole family bush, they used to say, running up and down the embankment; bitch after bitch in crinoline and brocade. So what’s the effing point in the selfie? Would Ian or Michael or whoever see it and reflexively tap the screen to move on? Would Georgie close the app, take a generous gulp of whatever malt he has open this week and think to himself: fucking hell? What purpose is there, David Cameron thinks, as he often thinks, in nudging open the door to the snakepit with the tip of one’s Balenciaga sneakers (triple S clear sole in smoky beige)?

And more to the point, why didn’t Villa get it out wide today? What does this dip in their form augur? And why does every selfie he takes make him look like such a bitch?

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is sat in a large leather reclining armchair, thinking about a time, oh, years ago, many years ago, on a bridge over the Thames, long before any of them were famous, the light in Rebekah Wade’s hair like an autumn sunrise. Across from him, in an identical armchair, is a gigantic Boofle dog whose expression - avuncular, inscrutable, wry, reminds David Cameron of Parkinson, and he often conducts little chats with the dog as though he were that same wise and gentle interviewer, and the show were still going on, and the whole nation was tuned in to watch him, to watch David Cameron flit between anecdote and opinion, between self-deprecation and clear-eyed scrutiny of the world situation with the manner of a gazelle who, if such a thing as gazelle olympics ever existed, would certainly be a podium contender. But that’s the thing with the past, isn’t it, that’s how the past is. You can’t get back there. Nobody would watch a clear twat like Parkinson if such a show was ever made these days, they’d be too busy watching TikToks of sandwiches being made or whatever it is, David Cameron thinks, eyes locked on the Boofle dog, whatever on earth it is that anybody is doing these days. These days he has to give the old chap an extremely stern speaking to before he’ll deign to piss, however desperate the situation appeared to be on the way to the bathroom. NOT that we need to spend too much time chatting about that, David Cameron thinks, we certainly don’t need to keep asking me what I was doing in there, nor using the term ‘stentorian’ in relation to the tone of voice apparently clearly audible through the bathroom door, nor inquire to whom or to what I was talking to, and certainly not to say that it was reminiscent to the way I perpetually send steaks back in restaurants, neither is my sense of what ‘medium rare’ means, wackadoo, eccentric or bananas, David Cameron thinks.

These days it’s hard to get anything going, you know? Everyone on the fucking street is looking at something on their phone, weaving all over the place, stopping and starting. And why do they all wear these disgusting puffer jackets? A cloud passes over the low sun and the light in the room, David Cameron’s rumpus room, off limits to the wife and kids except on Easter Sunday where he hides eggs in there for them to find, and the brief moment of shade makes the Boofle dog’s expression appear to register mirth at David Cameron’s whole bit (American for joke) about phones and puffer jackets. Yes, that went over very well. The thing about the puffer, he thinks, warming to his subject, is that any type of guy wears them, young or old, big or small. Back in the day, you wouldn’t catch old David Cameron in the same old Harrington and Crombie as his father and his father’s buddies. Such a thing was unthinkable! Naturally he sported a trenchcoat in deep vermillion, sported it up and down winter streets, whispering the words to ‘Every Day is Like Sunday’ and looking to all the world like Mozza if he tucked into a pork chop once in a while, all of which to his father’s chagrin, not to mention his mother’s, who sometimes looked at him as one might look at a big group who’ve just sat at the next table to you in the pub, with dogs and kids among them, and started reading the menus out to each other. But these days a dad and his kid could swap their puffers with each other and nobody would give a single solitary scooby about it.

But you can’t go back. Something stirs in David Cameron; yes, we’re talking loins here, his old loins, the loins of a man who could put the t-shirt he got for being there and doing that up on Depop as a vintage piece and get about forty odd quid for it. The leather creaks. Though he knows he’ll be in there a good half hour before anything happens, the bathroom and the toilet in it, have once again cut another clutch interview performance tragically short. And when it comes down to it, isn’t the Boofle dog nothing like Parkinson at all? What was it Shakespeare said, quintessence of dust… that’s all the ol Boofler is full of, so what’s even the point in saving the best anecdotes for him? The best chat?

And didn’t he, when the moment was there - her skin as white and smooth as Barbara Hepworth, hair broad and flaming, the water churning beneath them, the light flaking off it, the sky cloudless - instead of doing what he wanted, ached to do, made some crack, and she laughed but he hand slipped out of his? David Cameron limps towards his bathroom. You are Mozza, he thinks. You’re Mozza.

[davidcameron]

We find David Cameron, in media res, on the phone with his lawyer. “How bad is it? Tell me honestly,” David Cameron is saying. As he waits for his response, David Cameron leans his free hand on his kitchen counter and gazes - his eyes like two 7” copies (on white wax with a black label) of James Blunt’s ‘Goodbye My Lover’, spinning and declaiming their song - at a magpie on his elegant lawn, his lawn whose rich greenness shines ectoplasmically such that the sky over David Cameron’s house (unlike that of his neighbours) is teal-tinged, greenish. The magpie is nibbling at the grass, and presently it wrenches a worm from the soil with the same plucking action as David Cameron’s own thumb and forefinger might pull out a large, truculent, spring onion shaped nose hair. As he listens to his lawyer vacillate between this might happen, that could happen, should have informed him earlier, should not have put that in the calendar, etcetera, et bloody cetera, David Cameron thinks to himself that the birds of the air, like the insects of the earth, do not remonstrate with each other over their previous actions, nor do they disgorge, as though they had been fed with a particularly potent emetic, the details of what had been assumed to be private conversations into whatever passes (in the bird world, the insect world) for a public sphere. The magpie flies away, and David Cameron follows its trajectory with his eyes until it passes beyond the window frame.

Just as his lawyer is outlining what he oughtn’t to be saying in any public arena, David Cameron interrupts him to say, “I’m like the worm. I am that worm I just saw being plucked from the earth. I am that worm because surely the worm feels the presence of the bird above it, surely it can sense some slight change in the air, some sound which gives it warning and, in that moment, can choose to burrow downwards and away from danger. But it did not. And I am that worm because there were moments when I instinctively sensed the stupidity of the decisions I was making, and I had the opportunity to turn away from them and not do anything, but I still made those decisions, still picked up the phone. And now afterwards I don’t recognise or understand the person that did those things, I can’t comprehend what I was thinking or what I was doing. I am the worm because I didn’t turn away and now I’m in its beak. I’m out of the soil and I’m in the air.” David Cameron takes a breath, but his lawyer does not interject, there is only the thin sound of static on the line.

“Listen,” David Cameron continues, “I will not do any - what do they call it? - porridge, I’m not doing that, okay? Okay? I won’t do that.” His lawyer begins speaking, very hesitantly and slowly, when David Cameron’s eye is caught by a dark shape approaching the kitchen window in front of him. Instinctively, he ducks out of the way of the object, which careens into the glass and falls out of sight. His lawyer still saying stuff like: well let’s wait and see what the inquiry recommends first and foremost, no guarantees, little appetite for punishing this kind of thing, David Cameron puts the phone down on the counter and goes outside. At the bottom of the wall below the window is the corpse of a magpie, hunched into itself, and, crawling slowly away from it, wounded but indomitable, crawling with what one might - were one inclined, as David Cameron is, towards poetry - call a regal insouciance, is a worm, crawling, of course, back toward the same hole from whence it was, moments previously, unceremoniously plucked, back into the black earth.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is walking down a hall in his big house. This hall - painted slate grey with a plum accent wall - leads from his bedroom to the guest bedroom and, because of ruddy corona, what a true shiter that has been, I mean, Christ almighty, a man can’t even go into a branch of Budgens and pick up a four pack of Red Stripes, a mint aero, some of those jalapeño pretzels, a Dr Pepper, one of those 500ml bottles, maybe some chewits, what else?, can’t even do that without having to put a bloody mask on, because of this effing corona, because of that the guest bedroom has been basically out of action for, gosh, getting on for a year now with this business, and David Cameron has quietly claimed the space for himself, creating a type of rec room, a type of, dare he say it, rumpus room, dad shack, den - and don’t say “of iniquity”, don’t say, “uhh, yeah, of iniquity”, in that sardonic tone, you don’t need to fill in jokes or telegraph jokes like you’re John fucking Virgo on Big Break, remember that?, “commentator’s eye” they would say when he correctly telegraphed a ball’s trajectory, there’s no need to provide your own jokes - man cave, dude ranch, for himself, even though he’s already got his games room, his office upstairs, his shed-cum-home-office out the back, and the second drawing room is basically his, and he has begun to move a few of his things - a couple of beanie babies (Schweetheart, Bananas, Kicks the bear), a life-size gorilla plush named Dazzle, a few Boofle bears and a couple of Boofle dogs, some Garfields and a big Snoopy he got in America - and has arranged them in such a way that the space utterly screams “David Cameron”.

But David Cameron won’t reach that rumpus-cum-man-cave in this story because check this out: about three quarters of the way down the hall (it’s a long hall), David Cameron encounters the ghost of his father. The ghost is dressed in fishing waders and both David Cameron and the ghost are wearing identical camel coloured bucket hats. “Daddy,” David Cameron says, in a high, wheedling voice (alright, look, “a high wheedling voice” you’re like, “errr…”, you’re like, “uhhhhhh… isn’t his voice already… I mean, come on… doesn’t his voice already sound… I mean… y’know… come on…. isn’t his voice already pretty…” that’s what you’re doing, but look, for this scene to have a moment of high pathos - like Balzac - it’s imperative that one is able to imagine, while reading it, that David Camerons’ voice is even higher and more wheedling than usual, that he is speaking as he spoke when he was a child, if you can take your Saturday Nigh Live-addled mind out of brothel of Twitter quips - “ooh, eleven hundred people have made the feral hog joke, so here’s my go at a feral hog joke”; not everything is a fucking joke, okay? Not everything has to be a fucking bit, you know? It’s impossible in this dog of a year, this crapper of a year, this toilet of a year, to write about David Cameron speaking in a high, wheedling voice without some quote unquote left Twitter Medium centrist dad Gawker Clickhole Deadspin quote unquote comedian seeing it, going haha, tapping their phone back to the Twitter app and posting something like, “what about if the feral hog said im baby” - then maybe you’ll be able to see this as a genuine emotional moment of David Cameron confronting the one true demon that we all have: the past) “Susie was mean to me again today, she said… she said I smelled of wee, Daddy,” just as he had said some decades ago, stood in the kitchen of his family abode in front of his father. Back then, his father, who was still alive at the time, had basically just told David Cameron not to worry about it and, anyway, little Susie’s mum was a complete bitch, doesn’t even say hello when you see her in the M&S queue, which you’d think she would after we had her whole hideous family at the garden party last year. Now though, in the present, the ghost of David Cameron’s father, whose face, in fact, though now wanly, yellowly ectoplasmic, translucent, resembles very strongly a particular Boofle dog, crouches down into, let’s say, warrior pose from yoga, the one where you bend your knee at the front and… just Google image search it if you can’t picture it, places his hand, his forehand… the hand that he has at the front… he places a hand on David Cameron’s shoulder, and it has a forlorn, yellowish coldness to it, a depthless cold, a fractal cold, spinning off out of itself like the fronds of a Romanescu cauliflower. “Son,” he intoned (said), “I have a sorry tale to tell you. Son,” he went on, sadly, a depthless sadness, a fractal sadness, like thinking about which came first: the chicken or the egg (it’s the egg, because that hatched into the chicken. But hang on, who laid that egg? Alright it was a chicken then. But where did that chicken come from? It came from an egg, so it must be the egg that’s first. Ah but…) “Many years ago your ancestor and mine, old Bobby “Fat Bob” Cameron was the first man in the world to operate a flushing toilet. In those days, almost as ignorant as our own, nothing was known of the so-called ‘toilet plume’, the efflorescence of urine that is thrust into the world by the toilet in the same manner that your wife’s Chanel Number Five is forced from its crystal vial, hangs in the air and drapes all over her… Anyway, son, as I was saying, little was known of the toilet plume in those days, and, being the very first - as we Camerons often are - old Bobby Cameron was enveloped in a rich fug of his own feculence, a real - as they said in those days - pea souper. Pee souper. Haha. Ahaha. Sorry son, whenever I tell this story I have to pause to laugh at that moment, even though what I am about to tell you is truly no laughing matter. At that moment the Cameron family, in everything they are and everything they do, was forevermore - because of the hubris of man in creating a device which effortlessly concealed his privations and unmentionables - cursed to faintly hum of piss, irregardless of whatever bathing or other self care routines they may take part in. I can’t believe I was laughing just now because as you can see, son, it’s a really bad curse. I must leave you now, son, you’re on you’re own. See you. Bye.” David Cameron, his eyes wet, looks upon the visage (face) of his ghostly father, its yellow hue now browning, as the leaves do in October or as piss does if you’re dehydrated, and, as it browned (like a pork chop does in the pan), it began to fade, eventually disappearing, gone, leaving the astonished David Cameron alone.

And was there - almost imperceptibly - the faintest tang of urea in the hallway? Was this ghost truly his father? Was this curse, this awful curse, real? Could what David Cameron just witnessed be merely the result, the excrescence, even, of the late night feast of three quarters of a jar of black olives, two pepperami wideboys and a Bombay badboy pot noodle that still roiled inside him? Was his own father fated to appear only as a vaporous yellow cloud, a fine mist of the type that you would give a treasured fern, but piss? Was he, David Cameron, and everything he had ever done and everything he would ever do, fated to stink of piss? Were those moments when, after a hefty one at the ballot box during PMQs he would sit down next to George, and George would give him a particular look, was that not just resting bitch face - which, by the way, he totally does have, whatever he and his Evening Standard cronies might protest - but his querulous nostrils registering that unwanted tang and recoiling, however much Comme des Garcons Wonderwood David Cameron had spritzed all over himself? David Cameron stands in his empty hallway (slate grey with a plum accent wall), and ruminates about the past and the future, thinks about piss, toilets, stinks, stands there for eleven or twelve minutes until his wife comes bounding up the stairs. “Ah, darling, she says, I’ve been looking for you, I just wondered if…” she stops right in front of David Cameron and also stops what she was saying and her eyes dart around, her nose twitches, and a look of revulsion and concern crumples her otherwise Hellenic (David Cameron has always thought) visage, “Oh no,” she says, “Oh dear, has the dog gotten up here again?”

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is sitting on his sofa under a hefty floral weighted blanket featuring a print which most people would recognise as being Laura Ashely, maybe Cath Kidston, but actually comes from somewhere far more expensive. He is around halfway through penning an “op-ed” (an article) which will be published anonymously in The Times Weekend Magazine which basically argues that it demeans men, demeans the entire notion of liberal humanism, plus it’s an SJW plot, to refer to “the balls” or “men’s balls” as a collective, as though they were a conjoined pair without singular definition or singular attribute. In fact, David Cameron writes, one must refer to each individual ball, must give the ball itself, in and of itself, in its own ovate perfection, with its own foibles, its own ooid implacability… something something, he writes, and, in doing so, place the family back at the heart of British politics. David Cameron sighs, knowing that he has left a big hole in that last sentence that he cannot for the life of him fill, and some junior sub-editor in vaporous streetwear will complete it with some sophomoric glop. Whatever. Who cares? It’s almost as though the subject of making sure people refer to each individual ball lacks the solemnity that suits David Cameron’s esemplastic late style. Almost.

David Cameron pulls his earphones out for a second (‘The Mind of Mannie Fresh’) to ensure no one else is around. He clicks around on his MacBook Pro (the newest possible model, with whatever those have) and opens a password protected folder named ‘Old Number 10 Docs’ which in fact contains David Cameron’s secret stash of images and videos of burning police vehicles. He opens an old, lugubrious favourite in which two police vans, their insignia obscured by smoke, roll backwards through a grey street, rendered greyer and smeared by the low quality phone camera that recorded the footage. Both vans are on fire, diadems of orange flame, both rumble down the street, unclear whether they are empty or manned, and young men in caps, headscarves covering their faces, throw bottles at them. Now, if you want to read about male masturbation then there are dozens of hack writers you can go to for detailed descriptions of guys pulling out their little things, masturbating their little penises, taking their little dicks out, their little wangs out, abundant descriptions of guys just hammering away at their things, jerking away at their schlongs, their dicks, their penises, plentiful accounts of personal jacking it (Philip Roth), of wanks, frigging, jerking it, tanking it, tugging it, screeching and honking like threatened geese. So, if you like that kind of thing - and, come on - go and read one of those and imagine David Cameron in the position of the guy.

Picking up the narrative at the point where David Cameron is finished, clean and calm once again, the folder closed, he looks at his phone and, just at the moment he opens it, he receives a message from his wife saying, “Hey babe, what have you been up to?” He momentarily panics, does she know? Does she know what he’s been doing? But how could she? There’s no way, it’s not possible. “Hi Darling,” he writes, hoping that his natural acumen for finding le mot juste (French for having good patter) will kick in, “not much,” he continues, “just been writing an article about my balls. And U?”

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is in his shed-cum-home-office, situated right down the far end of his beautifully manicured lawn, ensconced among blue verbena and, further back, high puffy fronds of pampas grass. David Cameron is working on an article which, he hopes, will serve to promote his China Investment Fund. The Fund of late has been as mercurial as his beloved Villa back four, as vaporous as Matthew Cash, as vaporous (can’t think of another word for it) as Tyrone Mings getting forward, tracking back, scoring, conceding. The China Fund is like the Villa itself, sometimes an overachieving prodigy in a sea of bigboys, at other times like a set of Primark sweats in a sea of figure-hugging Y3 drip, David Cameron thinks. For all its successes - and there have bloody well been some, let’s not talk shit - the big difference is that the Villa still have Cash, Targett and Steer, whereas the China Fund is still struggling to break even, which basically - in pure financial terms - means that David Cameron is losing money on it every month; no cash, no targets and no steer, if you see what he did there. None of this is in the article, though, which has to be so boring and flat that nobody will read beyond the headline which, whatever it says, will include the words ‘David Cameron’ and ‘China Fund’ and that’s the point. David Cameron thinks Matt Targett, about his movement on and off the ball, while composing - effortlessly composing - a paragraph about steel prices as uncommunicative as an armadillo curled in its shell.

Having completed two more silent, indifferent paragraphs, David Cameron settles back in his chair and looks out of the window, which faces north, faces his house, which is bathed in afternoon sunlight. He can see his wife in the kitchen, pacing up and down, talking on her phone. He half raises his hand and catches her eye, she looks directly at him without expression before turning away again, and he lowers the hand, purses his lips in a manner he has seen described as ‘duck face’, favoured by young women seeking… seeking what? on social media, doing this with their lips, taking their own picture and… and… and…? David Cameron almost loses his train of thought, thinking about the Instagram models he follows on an anon account (davcam_incognito), but then remembers, picks up his phone with the same hand and unlocks it. His plan is to call his wife’s phone such that her current conversation will be interrupted by the incoming call noise, an obnoxious act which he relishes for its obnoxiousness, for its brazenness, something that, he thinks, were mobile phones around at the time, he would have been doing all the ruddy time when he was up at Oxford, oh yes. David Cameron is scrolling through his contacts, half an eye on the kitchen window, at which his wife, still deep in whatever chat she’s having that’s sooo important, still paces, searching for her number on the list when rampaging up and down the lawn, so replete with gusto, with life, with effervescence, come two dogs flinging themselves at each other, rolling and carousing. David Cameron half rises from his seat, the phone forgotten in his hand. A medley of thoughts runs through his head. If he has told that effing gardener once he has told him a billion times to block up all the gaps in the hedge; the dogs might foul his herbaceous borders, and what abjection of salad would contain a once-befouled clump of parsley?; how much do dogs dig?; to what circumference does the type of fear that dogs can smell radiate? But roiling with the most turbulence in his head is the thought: How the hell am I going to get back to the house while those dogs are there? Now, of course, David Cameron’s shed-cum-home-office is the size, or twice or three times the size (don’t know, never been in one) of a couple of decent starter flats, with all the conveniences (snicker bars, doctor peppers, toilet, bergamot handwash) that one might need in a pinch, but, thinks David Cameron, I don’t want… I do not want to be in a pinch. Why should I be in a pinch? Should I want something, why oughtn’t I to have it? What if there is mange on those dogs? What if they dig under the foundation of this shed? What do dogs want?

David Cameron turns away from the window and tries to centre himself by looking at the framed poster from the 2012 film ‘Red Lights’ with Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy, but his mind’s eye can only picture a path beset by dogs in various states of rage and hunger, dogs that wheedle and grind their teeth, that are starving, that have nothing. Where are their owners? What happened to all these dogs? How many years of neglect caused their fur to mange, their ribs to show through their lank fur, their teeth to grey and yellow?

David Cameron takes a deep breath. He pulls himself together. He can buy parsley, dig over the herbaceous borders, perhaps replace them with something better: a deep orange Japanese Acer. Any hole can be filled in by the gardener and smoothed over such that it would be as if it were never there. All he need do is contact his wife and have her stand by the kitchen window, her phone at the ready in case of emergency, and he will leave his shed, make himself big like a goalkeeper, like Martinez facing down a penalty, whoop in a low voice, windmill his arms, keep his head down and make a run down the manicured lawn towards the back door at such a pace that the dogs are either frightened or bamboozled, or some combination of the two - what goes on in the dogs’ heads is immaterial as long as they stay away from him - and then the whole incident (barring finding out to whom these dogs belong and making a stern complaint to the neighbourhood association about their negligence) can be forgotten. David Cameron turns to the window, his course of action determined. But he is again put off his stride. The two dogs have stopped in their tracks and are looking fixedly at something off to their left. David Cameron’s wife, too, is gazing out of the kitchen window, at the same point in space. David Cameron cranes his neck, scans the entirety of the garden with his eyes, scans up and down with his eyeballs, but whatever they are seeing, the dogs and his wife, he cannot for the life of him make out.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron, halfway through watching Michael Snow’s La Region Centrale (not really, he’s watching the episode of Frasier where Frasier’s dad has to pretend to be gay), receives a text from an old buddy of his saying, “Dave mate, sorry to be the bearer of etc, but that whinging effing bitch from the Guardian has been on about you again, might want to check it out. Talk soon, up the Gooners LOL x” David Cameron half rises in his seat, lowers himself to grab the remote control and pause Frasier, then rises again and looks to the heavens (in fact at the bloody nice coving job on the ceiling of his well apportioned living room, although now that he looks at it, he can perceive, in the blue light produced by the television’s rendering of a closeup of Frasier’s consternated face, his father Marty having just said something that only a dullard would read as anything other than the words of a warm blooded, straight shooting, no nonsense hetero, a hairline crack where the east wall meets the north, spreading upwards from the corner, he’ll have to get the missus to call the man about that, shouldn’t be happening, the job is only eighteen months old). He is, he thinks - in fact he could care less whether he is or not, what difference does it make - alone in the house and so he allows himself a bellow that briefly fouls the air around him, and while bellowing thinks to himself: locked Twitter accounts are repulsive. 

David Cameron picks up his phone and begins to text the guy back, “Listen Charlie,” he writes, “don’t fucking text me at half nine at night, i’m trying to get my slant on here and the last thing I want to be thinking about is... your greasy fingers sliding up and down the surface of your iPhone SE. Anyway eff that woman, if I ever see her out I’m going to tell her where she can shove Tim Dowling’s Weekend Column. All the best to you and...” David Cameron thinks for a few moments about what on earth Charlie’s wife is called. Charlie and... Chalky? Charlie and Bernice? These are the things that can ruin a top shelf text message. Charlie and Gladys? Doesn’t sound right at all. 

David Cameron walks up and down his house, goes into the kitchen where he pours himself a glass of the special tawny port that Michael Heseltine gave him, goes up to the bedrooms, peers into the garden. Every room is dark and empty, his wife is not there, nobody is. He goes back into the living room, sits down and unpauses Frasier. He calls his wife and when she picks up he says, “Listen darling, what is Charlie’s wife called? It’s not Hermione is it? I mean I know that’s from the wizard thing but I still...” he trails off. “David,” his wife says, “have you read the Guardian?” David Cameron sighs, “Yes, darling I’ve read it. The Oscars are dominated by films about cowboy violence, we should be concerned that there are too few Welsh in sitcoms, there aren’t enough Scottish CEOs, there aren’t enough women in world war two films, there are too many male ski jumpers, too many horses were killed during the making of Ben Hur. Yes, I have read it.” There is a pause. "David,” his wife says, “this article says not only - correctly - that you refuse to allow your testicles to be referred to as a collective but insist on a nomenclature that demands each individual ball being recognised, not only that, but indeed goes on to say that your balls look like a pair of hirsute Ian Hislops. Now, my question, David, is this: how does this woman know what each individual ball of yours looks like?” 

David Cameron, knowing that this is not a real question, rather only a prelude to a longer piece of oratory, holds the phone away from his ear and tries to turn his attention back to Frasier. He can still hear, faintly, his wife reading from the article - a few zingers, fine, but only the ball thing really hits. In time, like everything else, it will be done with. He takes a drink of the port - creamy - and reminds himself to remind himself that the second his wife finishes speaking he’s going to let her know about the crack in the coving. On screen, Frasier’s dad makes an ostentatiously fruity remark. Now that, thinks David Cameron, is bloody well funny. 

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is having a business meeting over Skype with a potential investor in his China Fund. David Cameron, having almost forgotten the meeting, having hastily pulled a shirt on at the last moment, feels a little self-conscious because, though the camera can’t see it - it picks up only his face, pink as a Christmas fairy light on the screen - on his bottom half (the more embarrassing half by miles, David Cameron thinks to himself), he wears only a very close-fitting pair of electric blue running tights. The tights, which David Cameron habitually wears around the house and while working on his memoir (of which this is an extract), feel so blissful, so tactile, so elegant against his skin, against his legs and against all the rest of it. The young man with whom David Cameron is speaking, on the subject of investing in the China Fund, takes up, with his beautiful young head, hairstyle, the bulk of the screen of David Cameron’s laptop (Acer), though David Cameron’s eyes are perpetually drawn to the smaller insert at the top right, which shows himself, face as pink as a Christmas fairy light, at which he can’t stop looking. The young man is so gorgeous. He and David Cameron are talking about the China Investment Fund and the fine details, the ins and outs of their conversation on that subject are - thank you very much - private. The figures they discussed? Of course those can’t be disclosed, but let’s just say, let’s just very happily and with a very satisfied mien (a very satisfied mien indeed) say that they were very high, and whether he (though this extract from the memoir is narrated in the present tense, it is in fact happening (was happening, had happened) in the recent past, the use of the present tense is just a cool trick that writers use sometimes to keep the reader on - as you are - the edge of their seat) ended up investing or not is ultimately immaterial. The young man is wearing an intensely crisp-looking white shirt, open at the collar, as is David Cameron’s. Behind him, David Cameron can see what look like a lot of investment books, which is a good sign, David Cameron thinks. Why would somebody have a lot of investment books if they weren’t looking to invest? Behind David Cameron, also, and visible to the young man, are lots of investment books, also a good sign. They talk, go over the details, none of which can be repeated here, and at a certain point, just as the conversation is winding down, the young man, without any self-consciousness, excuses himself for a moment - has to check on his phone which is some distance from his computer - and gets up. For a brief but very full-on moment, as the young man gets up, David Cameron can see that he is also wearing electric blue running tights, and, just as David Cameron’s do, they hug the young man’s legs and all the rest of it. And in that brief (but full-on) moment, David Cameron thinks of elaborate Ottolenghi salads, of the brief audio snippet that went, “Hello Moto,” of the perfect arc of Super Mario’s jump, of the precise moment of touching down, still alive, in a plane, of the first sip of an exquisitely made sazerac. And then he’s gone, it’s over. He didn’t invest, so now you know. Who cares? Who fucking cares? Who gives a shit?

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is in his club, sat with a regal disposition in a high-backed, green leather, chair, talking with a young man who is representing a potential investor in David Cameron’s China fund. The fund, David Cameron thinks to himself, as the man, who has a neck tattoo (David Cameron can just make out the letters ‘CK’ in gothic script, emerging from the collar of the man’s shirt), talks about money, is like a stick one throws into the weeds, for one’s dog to chase, but the dog, having gone into the weeds, disappeared into them, into the tall weeds right down the back of one’s garden, has emerged with, in its mouth, not the stick, but instead a large Swarovski crystal of devastating clarity, expertly cut. David Cameron luxuriates in this image for a moment. The sun glinting off the dog’s mouth - what is that you’ve got boy, come here boy, good dog, what have you got there, drop it, drop it, good boy, good dog, good dog. Wiping it clean and putting it up to one’s right eye (the good eye), and seeing, like that poor woman in the Leonard Cohen song, or a fly, the world refracted and broken up into thousands of images. And, David Cameron continues to think, still picturing the world (picturing this young man in front of him) like the particulated surface of a disco ball, everything bright, swirling and multiple... And the best thing about the fund was that the stick that you threw remains there in China, uncollected but playing host to all kinds of parasitic life, providing the mulch, providing the stew (if that’s not too strong a word) of life itself.

The man is still talking about money. David Cameron cuts him off. Do you know, David Cameron says, what the one question I ask investors is, and the one question that I’m about to ask you now. Do you know what that is? The man, who had been in full flow talking about, let’s say, derivatives, is somewhat taken aback. But of course, you don’t get to sit here, in front of David Cameron without having faced down a few curveballs in your time, to put it euphemistically (or, to put it plainly: having been to private school). I’m afraid I don’t, but please, ask it, the man says, smiling, and doing the type of high level mental calculation that top finance executives are capable of to work out how long it would likely be before he could get to the toilets and bang another line out. The one question I ask, David Cameron says calmly is this: Do you think I fucked that pig?

There is a moment of silence in which that calculation has to be severely revised. David Cameron, seeing the sour look that appears on the man’s face, is briefly troubled by the image of a dog emerging from the weeds, carrying an old tennis ball, covered in red ants. Well, look, the man begins, but David Cameron again cuts him off. If, David Cameron says, you’re concerned about what you tweeted - you did, on the day in question, tweet, and I quote, “LOL, a pig, fucking hell” - don’t be. It was a long time ago, and tempers were running high. I’m not interested in that. What I’m interested in, is a plain answer to a plain question, a yes or no question. Do you think I fucked that pig?

The man scratches his neck. What might that tattoo say, if he were, so gently, to remove his shirt? He sips from his brandy. He looks David Cameron in the eye. No, he says. The answer is no.

David Cameron’s head drops to his chest. He closes his eyes. David Cameron sees in flashes - himself in his garden, rearing back like he has something to throw, even making the throwing gesture, but with nothing in his hand, and the dog running into the weeds after nothing, fooled; a pig on a spit, turning elegantly, in its mouth a giant Swarovski crystal; in its mouth an old tennis ball covered with red ants, the ants popping with the heat of the fire; the crystal buried deep in the weeds; the dog lost in the weeds; the charred, uneaten corpse of the pig being overrun with ants; the garden breaking up into a million images; the garden filling with tennis balls.

David Cameron looks up. Thank you for your time, David Cameron says, and half rises, extending his hand to the young man. We’ll be in touch, David Cameron says, but his face says something else entirely. It says: Wrong answer.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is on a long solo hike. Just as Wordsworth once did, so he does - takes the air, takes it well, really gets up there and takes it. He rests, for a short period, on a damp grass ridge, and reflects, looking ahead of him at a family with a black dog that he wishes would just fuck off, his waiting not because he is tired, but because he can neither bear moderating his pace so that he remains a comfortable distance behind them, nor speeding up sufficiently that he can breeze past and get far enough ahead to be clear of them, nor wanting to deal with that dog (or any dogs) bouncing around him, putting its stinking head near his legs (North Face technical hiking trousers), nor wanting to deal with being recognised, or bothered by their kids, or even to have to give the obligatory and humiliating (and let’s face it, incredibly passive aggressive) countryside “hello”, reflects that even the hills provide no sanctuary these days. Even the highest peak is beset by dogs and bikes, and kids, without respite.

From his position on the ridge, David Cameron looks back down the path and sees, approaching him at some distance, another family, also with a dog, this one with red-brown fur, carousing and frolicking like a thick piece of shit in amongst them. David Cameron takes his thermos from his bag in utter misery, even the generous tot of brandy in the coffee no succour to him. David Cameron brings to mind a neologism that he was sadly obliged to coin on a particularly dismal day of campaigning: the “Norwich Sandwich” (a phrase which one must pronounce by exaggeratedly elongating the “a” of sandwich), which was occasioned by the combination of narrow pavements in that woefully designed, medieval shitpit full of decrepit, inane, uncultured losers, city, and the predilection of its residents for two speeds of walking: for those in front of you, incredibly slow and ponderous; for those behind, incredibly fast and impatient, such that for you (in this case, David Cameron and whoever he was with at the time, which he spends no energy attempting to recall) were squeezed uncomfortably between a group you could not pass, and one behind you attempting to pass both you and those ahead of you. A complete effing nightmare.

David Cameron laments that even here, on the hills, the mediocre beauty of Malvern visible below him on all sides, one could find oneselve the bully beef in a Norwich Sandwich where the white bread is dogs, kids and ineffectual parents. And once we were warriors!

David Cameron stands. Down the hill from him are more groups, a steady stream. Up it, the family with the dog are still pissing about, petting the dog. With no other option, David Cameron turns from the entirety of them and starts to walk perpendicular to the path, curving around the hill, going, as Wordsworth would have done, as Coleridge would have, as Colley Cibber would, no doubt, have done, off piste, off the beaten, taking the air, putting his technical gear to the test. David Cameron, with some difficulty, having occasionally to grasp onto rocks or bracken, makes his way towards the top of a hill. Soon, the land levels out, and he finds himself in a deserted patch of brown scrub, nothing around him but the heavens, and the crest of the hill within sight. He takes out his flask and gulps more down. No black dogs, no Irish Setters. Nothing.

David Cameron approaches the peak, and a shadow passes over him, too black to be a cloud, and moving too quickly. His instincts still sharply honed by years of PMQs, David Cameron throws himself to the floor, and sees, flying low, a bright white glider, banking noiselessly away from him. David Cameron gets to his feet. He recognises fear as something merely chemical, and knows that if it came to it, he could (he could) face down the glider, feint to one side, grasp and wing a pull it to the ground, then go and batter whoever had the temerity to be sitting rattled in the grounded cockpit. But even so, suddenly his solitude, and the brown scrub, the grey sky like (like… like…) an egg cooked in old fat (the yolk the pallid sun), David Cameron feels an intense vulnerability. Whatever the chemicals are, David Cameron feels them in the same places he felt the coffee and brandy going down. He watches the glider arc around to his right, unable to see anything through its black windows. It wings tilt in the wind, it too looks vulnerable, too big to be in the sky, too flimsy. It gains a little height, and David Cameron has to spin around to keep it in his view. David Cameron knows (all those years, those fine years, besting Milliband at the dispatch box) that the vulnerable seek the more vulnerable to lash out at. The glider banks into another turn, and is coming at David Cameron directly. David Cameron takes a hit from his flask and drops it to the floor where it rolls away into the scrub. David Cameron’s chest contains so many of those chemicals that he feels like he has eaten that hot grey egg, and the yolk is there molten inside him. David Cameron stares directly at whatever is behind the glider’s black window, and clenches his fists.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is out and about. He has his walkman on, his favourite tape (To Live and Shave in LA’s ‘Vedder Vedder Bedwetter’ on one side, a particularly sweaty d&b mix he taped off pirate radio on the other) is playing at a volume that one would, if one were so inclined to, describe as raunchy. Or perhaps, even, one might describe it as fruity. Deeply and unadulteratedly fruity. And with it banging away, David Cameron, out and about as he is, walks down a windswept, wet and empty street. The rain no longer bothers him, nor does any weather. His back, he has observed, is like a duck’s, in the sense that it protrudes perpendicularly from his smooth neck, in the manner of a dowager’s hump (though, as his doctor has repeatedly asserted, not that in medical terms), and in the sense that he couldn’t give a shit, literally could not care less, about the rain, or about any weather, no matter how effing heavy. 

David Cameron is late for a dinner party that his wife is giving, deliberately late and heading in quite the wrong direction altogether. He won’t be getting there soon, will in fact - though at least one, possibly two, former PMs will be in attendance - get in so late that he’ll just pay a flying visit to the table, make an excuse about the head, the terrible head that he has on him (which, though not untrue, does not distinguish this day from any other recent one), snaffle a bit of cake from the kitchen to take up to his office, where he’ll wait out the guests leaving, his wife going to bed, before ordering a Chinese from the place that stays open all night. He can taste it now. He can taste the black bean sauce that manages to be simultaneously thick and opaque but also to have the consistency on the noodle of a fine glutinous broth. David Cameron will, as he perpetually does, face the consequences of his actions tomorrow, and tomorrow, and most likely for the rest of the week. 

But for now, he turns the tape over, To Live and Shave come on. To live, David Cameron thinks, turning into a side street that is darker, and which the lower streetlights - which illuminate each fleck of rain as it falls - make look wetter, and which, because of the high buildings at its corner, is windier. The wind howls around David Cameron’s foam earpieces. David Cameron puts his head down. Were he to go left at this next junction, David Cameron could be home in fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes. As it is though, still thinking and thinking about black bean sauce, with nothing but black bean sauce on his mind, David Cameron - just as you expected when you began this sentence, perhaps even this paragraph, or perhaps you thought it in 2016, or 2010, or perhaps you had the perspicacity to think it in 2005, before he put the weight on, before his face went properly chick-lit pink, before his gait resembled a duck’s, before he stopped giving a crap about what the weather was doing - goes right. 

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is sat in his study, the only light in the room comes from his computer monitor. Outside his window, a thin, gloomy snow eddies around. Eddie, he thinks to himself. Eddie Izzard. Eddie Vedder. Eddie the Eagle. He pictures them (except Eddie the Eagle, whose face he can’t recall). And in picturing them he seems to see the faces emerge from the swirling snow, and approach the window. But David Cameron does not feel fear, but rather comfort; knows that even in the depths of the winter blackness, alone in his huge house, he can conjure company - friends, even - to satiate himself. He takes another huge hit of Cuervo. Without taking his eyes off the window he exclaims, THAT WAS TIGHT!

On the computer screen, David Cameron is half-watching a Korean teenager playing Farming Simulator 2019. It’s nighttime, and the farm is bathed in artificial floodlights. In the east, the gloaming. The guy is chatting away, laughing. David Cameron turns away from the window and gives his full attention to the screen, taken by the lightening sky. Where he is, there are hours of darkness left; on the farm, days pass without effort and the nights are short. There are nine thousand and one people watching the stream, David Cameron notices. I am the one, he thinks to himself. The chat fills up with words, none of which David Cameron can understand. The guy is laughing, he is raucous, but on screen, his character leaves the huge combine harvester he has been driving, and begins walking slowly towards the light, walking east towards the sunrise. I am the one. David Cameron scrabbles around, spinning on his chair, looking for the bottle of Cuervo. He had put it down on the floor, it’s there, he drinks from it. It’s fine. Tight. Tight, he says to himself softly. The sun is coming up, it’s visible over the ridge that surrounds the farm and the whole area - the hills and the fields behind - fill with yellow light. The guy doesn’t stop laughing, but suddenly, at the very moment that the entire sun became visible, tiny emotes of David Cameron’s face filled the screen, raining down from the top and falling slowly (as dark soy sauce might leak down the side of the bottle). The photograph, which David Cameron recognised as having been taken at a UN Summit in 2012 (his best year by miles), showed him looking imperious one eyebrow cocked in the same manner that a gangster or superhero would cock a gun, in a film, to show a bad guy that they were serious. The emotes gathered at the bottom of the screen, and continued to fall from the top such that, in time, they stacked on top of each other and gathered, filling it.

David Cameron turned back to the window, pulled on his Cuervo and whispered into his grey reflection, the snow behind it thickening, That was tight.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron is in a country pub with his wife and a couple of her acquaintance. They're in... David Cameron wants to say fashion, he's met them a lot of times, but he can never remember, and it's gotten to the point now where, were he to ask, he would appear either cretinous or like he gave so little of a shit about them that... well obviously it's the latter, and however much he couldn't care less about these people, he doesn't want them to know. So David Cameron smiles, makes the odd quip, and stares into a very hoppy American-style IPA that the husband of this couple absolutely insisted he try, and which he - as he feels the explosion of taste on his tongue, a sensation like eating the kind of sweets that old people like - now regrets. And the regret only bolsters his feelings of: what am I doing here? What is the point of this? What is the point of anything? The woman of the couple is talking about some kind of opening that she attended recently. And, she is saying, they made an absolute ton of sandwiches, which not a single person touched! Everyone laughs, including David Cameron, though he is only playing along. In fact he feels as though laughing at this demeans him, the obligation to laugh demeans everyone; but that the alternative, bitter silence, is equally awful, equally demeaning. The woman starts to go in on another sentence, but David Cameron cuts her off. Do you ever have that thing, he says, Do you ever have that thing, right? Where you have a sandwich? So you have a sandwich, and you take a couple of bites out of it, but it's just not doing it for you? So you get up, and you're thinking to yourself - do you guys ever get this? - you think that what this sandwich needs is to appear as though the bites I've taken out of it have caused the sandwich to bleed, that they've wounded this sandwich? You ever have that? No? And so you get up and go to the kitchen, and you get some ketchup, and - we have the squeezable kind at home, what a boon that is - and you just spread a load right onto the kitchen surface, just get it all out there? And then you get the sandwich and just jam it in there, just get the whole thing really covered in ketchup? David Cameron begins to slightly rise from his chair as he gesticulates, stabbing his hands at the pub table. And you look at the sandwich and suddenly it disgusts you? Suddenly it recalls all the violence you've ever taken part in, or condoned, or even just witnessed, and not done anything about? So you get the sandwich and you open the kitchen window and you just fucking chuck it out of there? David Cameron's voice is becoming higher and higher as he speaks, his eyes wider. And you stand there and look at the mess in the kitchen, and suddenly you're hungry again, so you go out into the garden, and you get down in the dirt by the bushes looking for your sandwich? And you find it, and you sit there outside in the rain, if it's raining, and you brush it down, and you sit there and eat the sandwich, and you're satiated? You ever get that? David Cameron looks around at the glum faces that surround the table. Nobody laughs, and in the silence David Cameron picks up his glass and drains it. Ooh, he says, I might have another pint of that.

[davidcameron]

On the busy high street of a commuter town (cheese shop; place doing hot roast pork sandwiches; branch of Long Tall Sally), a man with a shaved head sees David Cameron walking along, minding his own business, doing his own thing. "Hey mate," the man shouts, his shaved head inclined towards his mates, who look on, the lot of them in the throes of ripe, very ripe, amusement, "Hey mate, you fucked that pig mate!" David Cameron stops his walk and calmly appraises the group. They are laughing, but (as in all laughter) there is barely concealed fear. And if anyone knows how to go into a group and stop it from laughing, it's David Cameron. David Cameron goes right up to the man who shouted at him, and looks up into his face, which appears perplexed, he had not expected a confrontation to ensue, had not expected that there would be consequences. David Cameron goes right up to him, looks him in the eye, and without raising even the ghost of a smile says, "My good man, I fucked the whole farm!"

[davidcameron]

David Cameron comes to suddenly, finding himself ensconced in the generous proportions of a grey John Lewis corner sofa, which sits, as a holy man might sit on a wheel atop a pole - that is, sits abundantly and with grace - in a cavernous living room. David Cameron is at a party, which appears to be on the wane. A man wearing a gilet places a hand on David Cameron's shoulder, Are you having a good night, mate? the man asks, moving his pink face into uncomfortable proximity with David Cameron's own face, equally pink, but in a totally different way (like the difference between a child's drawing of a head and the expert rendering of a head by a top of the range abstract painter (whose name, at this particular time escapes David Cameron); and if you have to ask the difference, then you just don't get it). David Cameron nods uncertainly, Yeah, he says, slowly, Yeah mate, banging. The man smiles, although his eyes appear concerned. And when is your wife getting here? he continues, and David Cameron thinks to himself that the 'puffa' style gilet suits this man very well, it's such a bloody cool bit of kit. I don't know, says David Cameron, and gets his phone out of his pocket. He squints at the screen, which looks unfamiliar, the size and shape of the device seem slightly off, and at some point earlier in the evening, though he does not recall, he must have changed his background to a plain black rectangle. There are four or five messages from his wife, covering a period of several hours, from early in the evening to just a few moments ago. It's after midnight. All this takes place very quickly, please don't think that David Cameron was fucking about, the blur in his vision slows him down only slightly. The most recent message assures David Cameron that, despite the litany of delays she has had to put up with, the string of unfortunate incidents that have caused her lateness, she is on the way, and should arrive at the party at any minute. She'll be here soon, David Cameron assures the man, who nods solemnly, then gets up and walks in the direction of the speakers, which are playing Schoolboy Q's 'Man of the Year', a tune that David Cameron has always found underrated. David Cameron gets up and walks the other way, all he can think about is getting another bloody drink. His progress - he impresses himself with a fairly steady gait, enough that an onlooker, he thinks, would... well who cares what an onlooker would think? who gives a shit what those pricks think? - is suddenly halted by another hand on his shoulder, though this one is placed gently, unobtrusively, even, he thinks, as he turns and sees a woman. David Cameron looks at the woman, who he thinks he recognises, but the act of recognition, at the level of the neural pathway, at the level of synapses firing, causes David Cameron immediate and profound physical pain, a sensation that is like (as though 'like' is sufficient a word, it isn't) freezing poison snaking through every vein and artery, every permeable membrane, every tube, every sac, every surface. All this takes place very quickly, the sensation is momentary, and though there is concern in the woman's eyes as it occurs (David Cameron's face fleetingly betrays the discomfort he is experiencing, and his body convulses violently, causing him to drop to one knee), she continues to smile. She grasps his hand, and looks him in the eyes, It's been such a long time, David, she says warmly, even flirtatiously. Sage the Gemini's 'Gas Pedal' is playing softly on the other side of the room. David Cameron scrutinises the woman's face in the manner that one with a severe peanut allergy might scrutinise the ingredients on a chocolate bar wrapper. She has the face of a wealthy middle-aged woman. Where is your wife tonight? she asks, Can she not make it? David Cameron again removes his phone from his pocket, but there are no new messages. Er, he says, looking into the woman's brown eyes, She got held up, she'll be here soon. The woman smiles, and the meaning of the smile comes over David Cameron with all the shuddering warmth of a fat line of top shelf chiz, comes over him as though narrated very slowly and deliberately by a decrepit theatre actor: I - have - not - had - to - work - for - this. Would you like to leave with me? the woman, still smiling, says. It's time to leave, David. David Cameron looks in the direction she is looking, at the darkened hallway at the far end of the room. Thank you, I... he tapers off, he smiles, but the meaning of his smile is obscure, even to himself. But first I have to... First I simply must use the bathroom. The woman's smile does not crack. At the top of the stairs David Cameron finds a large bathroom. He locks the door. On the way up, a man handed him a large glass of whiskey. It's Japanese, the man said, raising an eyebrow. David Cameron places the glass down. He looks at himself in the mirror, very pink. The glass that he was handed, he sees, looking past himself at the room's reflection, is extremely clean. David Cameron goes to it, he picks it up, drinks a little of the whiskey and then puts it down again. Ordinarily his fingers leave a considerable amount of residue - grease, sweat, whatever - on the glass. And that's just his fingers, that's not even taking into account his mouth. This glass, though, looks like an advert, looks clean enough that someone picking it up might not - as they customarily do when picking up a glass that David Cameron has used - grimace involuntarily. On a distant stereo, David Cameron can hear Rich Gang's 'Lifestyle'. David Cameron leaves the bathroom, but just as he is about to descend the stairs, he hears someone calling his name from one of the nearby bedrooms. As he turns, a man emerges from a doorway, and puts his arm around David Cameron and leads him into a large bedroom. Another man, both are wearing suits, is sat on the bed, a similarly clean glass of whiskey in his hand. David, the first man says, clapping David Cameron on the back, so good to see you, so bloody good to see you mate. There is a pause. It's so fucking good to see you, yeah, the second man says, it's been such a long time. From a clock radio in the corner of the room - which is large, grey, and has plants in it - Dej Loaf's 'Try Me' is playing. David Cameron looks at the two men, the first having now sat down next to the second on the end of the bed. Listen chaps, David Cameron says, great to see you as well, really it is, but I just need to step out for a moment to make a call. The two men look at each other. Of course mate, says the second, without shifting his eyes from the first, You do that. But come back, there's something you'll want to see, he says, and smiles. David Cameron goes out onto the landing. At the bottom of the stairs, he can see people partying. He gets his phone out of his pocket and dials his wife's number. It goes straight to answerphone. David Cameron allows himself a moment of pique - these days his huffy moods are brief and intense and they pass as summer rain passes, a few moments in the sun and it is as if they never happened - and leaves a message, cupping his free hand around his mouth so the fellows in the next room might not hear what he's saying, Listen, I don't know if something has happened to you, but please try to get here soon. David Cameron pauses for a moment, enough time to register that below him, people are partying to Metro Thuggin's 'The Blanguage'. Momentarily, David Cameron perceives the message as his wife will receive it, his voice thick with the burr of the all the juice he has drank this evening he remembers nothing about, the thick beats rendered hollow by her phone speaker, everything made thicker by the resonant frequencies of the, he has to admit, pretty top-spec staircase and landing he is standing on. I'm afraid, David Cameron says, and then, very softly, breathing it into the phone behind his hand, head bowed, knees bent into a very deep squat, I love you. Back in the bedroom, the two men have not moved, although their drinks have been refilled. David Cameron stands in front of them. The second man, seated on the right, as David Cameron looks at the pair, says, Open that bottle would you mate? and gestures at a chest of drawers behind David Cameron, upon which stands an ice bucket containing three or four bottles of champagne. David Cameron, without a word, goes over there and picks up the bottle. A fresh glass of whiskey - very clean, immaculate, as though straight out of a bloody good dishwasher - stands next to the bucket. David Cameron takes a sip of the whiskey before expertly popping the cork, a debonair flick of the wrist all it takes, he has done this type of thing a billion times before. David Cameron fills three glasses with the champagne and hands one to each of the men. David Cameron does as the other men do, takes a deep pull on the glass, and as he does so he looks out of the bedroom window, an enormous and entirely black square. David Cameron, a real one for taking furtive glances at himself in whatever reflective surface he happens to pass, particularly the windows of parked cars (in which his mien unfailingly appears strained, anxious), notices without any particular feeling about it, that the window in this room is not reflecting the light, has no reflection, is only itself, black. David Cameron begins to move towards it, but stops when one of the men, the one sitting on the bed, who has loosened his tie - silk, expensive - speaks to him. David, he says, you'll want to see this, you really will. And he stands up and gently manoeuvres David Cameron by the shoulders so that he is facing the bedroom door. Not much longer mate, says the other man, now behind him, even this short speech interrupted twice by his hiccoughing. The two men lead David Cameron, one hand between his shoulder blades, out of the room and towards the staircase. We'll take this with us, says one of them, taking the bottle of champagne, hiccoughing, and gesticulating with the bottle. This is a great house, says the man with his hand on David Cameron's back, as they descend the stairs together, nobody else seems to be around, the music has stopped. Yeah, says David Cameron, concentrating carefully on each step. Ahead of them, at the end of the hall, the front door is open, revealing the black night. This way, one of the men says, guiding David Cameron towards that door. As they approach, David Cameron shrugs the hand away from his back, hesitating. This way, says one of the men. David Cameron looks at the doorway. Listen chaps, he says, I really should try my wife again. He goes to turn, but his way is blocked. Your wife is out there David, says one, and the other nods, and hiccoughs. David Cameron removes his phone from his pocket, but the battery is dead. We should go out, says one man, waggling the bottle of champagne, We'll have this, and then we'll come back for another. The fridge is full of them. David Cameron hesitates, both men are smiling, the glasses are topped up, But, David Cameron says, aware of how pathetic his tone sounds, I don't want to go. The men look at each other, but say nothing. Is my wife out there? David Cameron asks. No, says one of the men, but she'll be along soon, don't worry. You'll see her again soon. We'll have this, David Cameron gestures with his glass, and then we'll come back for another? The men smile. Yes, says one, if we get round to it. David Cameron finishes his drink, does not flinch when a hand is placed on his shoulder. He turns towards the door and, still gripping the champagne glass as though it were the lead of a very flighty dog, he walks out into the darkness.

[davidcameron]

David Cameron has been invited to a formal dinner in celebration of young farmers. He had forgotten all about the dinner after accepting the invitation several months ago, when he was happy. Upon seeing it on his Outlook calendar, coded green (a colour designation which David Cameron, were one able to investigate the way in which he arranges his Outlook calendar, he has called 'Fun Stuff'), David Cameron realises with that he does not want to attend, picturing himself momentarily on the motorway at dusk, drably keeping pace with a Nissan Micra, driven by a young woman, to his immediate right, forty five minutes to an hour still from his destination, a banqueting hall in somewhere called Shrewsbury. David Cameron writes an email explaining that he cannot attend the event, he is deeply sorry, but circumstances to do with childcare have impinged upon him in such a way that he is unable to get away, much as he would have liked to. That evening, alone, David Cameron watches an entire eight hour playthrough of an old PC game based on the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels on Youtube. The Duncan-Smiths invite David Cameron to a dinner, at which, David Cameron is told, a number of celebrity guests will be in attendance, including the head of an important right-wing thinktank, a woman with incredible eyes that David Cameron has had a crush on for about ten years. David Cameron accepts the invitation, marks it green on his Outlook calendar, a designation which, you will recall from the previous paragraph gives it the rare honorific 'Fun Stuff'. But on the day that the dinner is to take place, David Cameron pictures himself walking up the Duncan-Smiths' drive, a bottle of Riesling in his possession, the bottle so chilly that he has to continually move it from one bright pink hand to another, and crossing the threshold, and all of them being there, and him among them all. David Cameron writes a text, Sorry mate, it says, have to wait in for a new chair to be delivered, going to have to give yours a miss. Up the gooners, Dave x. That evening David Cameron orders a large, stuffed crust, Texas barbecue pizza, with a garlic bread. The Riesling is gone after an hour or so, but it's cool, there are a few extra bottles somewhere. Later, David Cameron descends his staircase, wearing only a dressing gown, thinking about oven chips. David Cameron is invited to present an award at the UK Comedy Awards, something he has always really wanted to do. He later learns he will be presenting the award for best sitcom, yeah, the biggie, the big one. I'm chuffed, he writes in an email to one of the organisers. Buying garlic bread in Tesco, he says, I love sitcoms, to the young lad behind the checkout, whose earlobes are stretched wide by plugs. At home, David Cameron takes a fresh piece of headed notepaper from his stack and writes My Sitcom in large letters at the top. Underneath he writes, A young lad with those plugs in his ears. The day of the award ceremony rolls around with all the inevitability of a bowling ball rolling toward a set of pins. But just like that bowling ball returning to the place it came from, via some unseen mechanism, David Cameron feels out of sorts all afternoon, nauseous, nervous. He is picked up by a driver several hours before the event is due to begin, so he can attend a short rehearsal, nothing difficult, just showing him where to go, where to stand and so on, no problem. But as the car passes through a series of tunnels, David Cameron pictures himself approaching the podium, pictures his body as it will appear on camera, his arms and legs like overdone baguettes of garlic bread, he thinks, his trunk like a garlic flatbread, his head like a garlic pizza bread, he thinks. And his mouth, like two old dry slices of garlic bread, he thinks, opening to deliver what he now sees plainly are callow jokes, written deliberately so as to wound him, make him look like a total, total dickwad. With all the authority he can muster, David Cameron imperiously lets the driver know that he's sorry but he's going to have to cancel the event, that the driver can let whatshername know, and that he absolutely has to get out now or he's going to bloody well spew over the back seat of the car. Having made his way home, which by the way took ages because of a couple of very late buses, David Cameron, alone in his study, looks away from a Youtube speedrun of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to see the piece of headed notepaper entitled My Sitcom. He picks it up, and holds it in such a way as to be able to watch the speedrun at the same time as reading it. Who was that man, he thinks, as Sonic rattles from bumper to bumper in a way that might appear random, but is in fact meticulously planned, who was that man, so impetuous, so precocious, who dared to indulge in that most egregious of human fallacies, that of putting to paper his dreams?