A NEW YEAR’S WISH (Part 1 of 2)

by Richard Banks

The problem with wishes is that people seldom, if ever, wish for the right thing. This is only to be expected. Well, after all, they are only people and will never, as people, achieve true wisdom. Better that the wish goes to the shepherd rather than the sheep, and that’s the way it use to be. Yes, I know that was a long time ago, but sometimes the old ways are best. The trouble is that too few of ‘us’ -and I use that word loosely - are old enough to remember anything before the Great Flood. If they could, they would know, as I know, that wishes are best made and implemented by a properly constituted body of Guardians.

         The evidence for this can be found in the records, if anyone can be bothered to look. Not that anyone should need to. Think about it! How can the judgement of Guardians, possessing as we do many millenniums of all-knowingness, fail to come up with better wishes than mortal beings whose time on Earth is come and gone in the blinking of an archangel’s eyes.  “What could be more obvious,” you say, and you will never be more right but apparently, that’s not the point any more. Since the Ethics Committee invented Free Will all wishes relating to the well-being of the human race have to be made by the little blighters themselves. How else will they learn appears to be the current wisdom? When will they ever learn is what I say.

         I mean, look at what happened last year. I am sent below to Betty who has been selected to make the one and only wish granted to the human race on New Year’s Day. And who is Betty you are thinking? Why has she been chosen. Is she a leader of church or country, a philosopher, a great benefactor, a seeker after truth, the righter of wrongs? No! She is Betty, the barmaid at the Dog and Bucket who otherwise spends her time being wife and housekeeper to Harold, a benefits fraudster. No one is less endowed with the virtues and skills needed to benefit the world, she even pilfers money from the til! She is one of an underclass of semi-criminal dullards that the Celestial Focus Group have decided should be entrusted with this year’s wish. Who, they reason, knows their needs better than one of their own who with a single, insightful wish might instantly raise the fortunes of an entire strata of society. That’s the theory. Will it work? In a word, no! but who’s listening to me. I’m just the messenger. My job is to deliver the good tidings to the wisher, note what he or she wants and then inform the Implementation Team who make it happen. Fortunately all this takes less than a day, which is indeed fortunate as the whole charade is a complete waste of my time and everybody else’s.

         I arrive in Betty’s bedroom in the early hours of an earthly night to find her asleep in a double bed alongside Harold whose head is hidden from sight beneath a large pillow. This he has placed there in a desperate but unavailing attempt to escape the reverberating shrieks emanating from her open mouth. If he had a wish I have no doubt what it would be but it’s Betty who has to choose. Woken by the stardust Betty stares up at me and says, “blimey, who are you?”

         I ignore this and make the usual announcement that I have come with glad tidings of great joy. She reaches out to Harold to wake him but before she does I quickly draw her up into the beam. While she is within it she is in another dimension, a micro-world unseen from Earth, a world that will be remembered only by myself once she returns to the mortal realm.

         “So I’ve got a wish,” she says, once she has cleared her head sufficiently to take in what I’m saying. “Is there a cash limit?” She asks.

         I reply that we don’t do cash wishes.

         “And does that apply to gold and silver bullion?”

         I confirm that it does.

         “What do you think I should ask for?”

         I should be seizing the moment and telling her that the wish can be used to bring peace to the world, end hunger and disease, but I’m not allowed to. The wish must be entirely hers and when I tell her this the expression on her face indicates that the thoughts in her head are unlikely to benefit anyone in the world beyond herself. She looks about her at the objects in the room as if willing them to provide the inspiration for her wish.

         “Perhaps,” I say, “there is something missing from your life, and others, something that will make them better, give them new meaning.” This is as far as I can go in guiding her, perhaps I have gone too far, but at least I seem to have inspired a light bulb moment.

         “Blimey, yes, of course, why didn’t I think of it before. I need a new freezer.”

         “A new …!” I can’t even bring myself to say it. She can have almost anything she wants, but she chooses a freezer. She can’t be serious, but serious she is and even if she isn’t she’s said it now and there’s no going back. At least she’s done better than the idiot man who said he only wished he knew what to wish for and when this was made known to him had to be told that he wasn’t allowed a second wish. Unlike him, Betty seems fully satisfied with her choice, especially when I assure her that it will be a top of the range machine with a ten year, all faults guarantee. I release her from the  beam and she falls gently back onto the double bed where she resumes her snoring.

         The granting of her wish is, of course, an administrative detail that the Delivery Team take care of with immediate effect. By the time Betty gets up in the morning the machine is waiting for her in the middle of her kitchen floor. Is she pleased? In a word, No! Not having any recollection of our meeting she is totally at a loss to understand how it’s got there. “There’s been a break-in,” she tells Harold; “how else could it have got indoors?” Harold knows that break-ins don’t usually result in the delivery of expensive merchandise but has no logical explanation as to what has happened, so Betty phones the police who, after several long conversations, prosecute her for wasting their time. Change your locks is their only advice and when Betty and Harold do this it costs them more than the retail price of the freezer.

         So, that’s the story of Betty’s wish, but not, I’m afraid, the whole story. Gone are the days when wishes were granted and I was able to hurry back to the celestial realm and forget the whole thing ever happened. Now I am expected to go back and conduct a six monthly review.

         “What’s the point, I say, “it’s got a ten year guarantee. What can possibly go wrong!”

         But it’s not the going wrong the Focus Group are concerned about, they want to know what went right, particularly the socio-spiritual benefits for Betty and the wider community. When words fail me they give me a thirty page questionnaire and book me a ticket on the next stardust beam to Earth.

         I arrive and immediately make my way to the kitchen where I come across Betty on bended knees about to open the freezer door. While most people consider it necessary only to tug the handle Betty is engaged in a strange ritual that involves her throwing up her arms while lowering her chin to the floor. Once she has done this several times she opens the door and to the accompaniment of martial music a large man of Oriental appearance emerges and after stepping awkwardly around Betty exits the kitchen through an exterior door. Before he leaves, he tosses a thick wad of banknotes in her direction which she stuffs into the pocket of her pinny. She shuts the freezer and rises stiffly to her feet.

         It’s time to take her into my beam and have a good chat. “How do you like the freezer?” I ask.

         Betty replies that she likes it very much, although it’s not quite what she was expecting.

         “Yes,” I say, “I did notice the man. Is he often in there?”

         She thinks not. There’s a bell that rings and when it does she opens the door and a man gets out but it’s probably not the same man because some of the feet she sees seem larger than others. She explains that owing to her prostrate positioning when greeting them she seldom glimpses much above the ankles.

         “Is that strictly necessary?” I say. “I mean to say they’re only men.”

         “Wouldn’t be too sure about that, dear. All I know is that once you look them in the eyes you don’t want to do it again. Shakes you up something rotten it does. No, best to do what they say.  After all they don’t ask much. All they want is that you help them through the freezer and do a bit of grovelling so you don’t see their faces. Nothing to it really, and in return they give me all this money.”

         “And, that’s all for you?”

         “No Sir, gawd blimey no. It’s for the downtrodden masses of the proletariat struggling to free themselves from the yoke of capitalist oppression.”

         “So they get the lot.”

         “Well, not exactly. I mean, we got to cover our expenses, don’t we. And then it’s only right that we pay ourselves a proper salary for all the work we’re doing. It wouldn’t be a proper charity if we didn’t do that.”

         “That rather depends on your cut.”

         “On what, sir?”

         “Oh don’t be coy with me Betty. You know perfectly well what I mean. How much for you and how much for the downtrodden masses?”

         At this point her equivocation gives way to a genuine inability to answer the question.

         “Well, it’s like this, sir. It’s all depends on the cupboards. When they’re full up of banknotes because we can’t spend them quick enough Harold puts the left overs in a handcart and takes them over to the food bank at the Sally Ann. They’re ever so grateful. No one goes hungry around here I can tell you, nor homeless and I’m not talking about the old doss house they use to run. They’re brought up all the old council flats that went private and charge the people that live there only what they can afford to pay.”      

         “And they do all that on the money you give them?”

         “Well, sometimes we give them a bit extra. I mean, how can you not when they name their new HQ after you. The Betty and Harold Centre they call it. If you came along the Nags Head Road you would have gone right by it.”

         I reply that I came down not along, and that there is someone outside the kitchen door wanting to come in.

        

[To be continued]

Copyright Richard Banks