The Tsar of all the Russias, Vladimir Pudding, got up from his extra-long table in the Kremlin and walked to the other end to get some fruit, a journey that took about 5 minutes. Being of rather short stature, he had to stand on tippy-toes to reach a banana, which he peeled and scoffed noisily.
He pressed the button on his intercom and barked out: “Svetlana, tell my Foreign Minister and Supreme Commander of the Serf…I mean the Imperial… the Army of the Russian Federation, to come and see me immediately.”
“Certainly, Tsar Pudding. At once.”
“Thanks Svety and, remember, you only call me ‘Tsar’ in private, ok?”
“Can I call you by your special name?” asked Svetlana.
“Go on then.”
“Tsarry, Tsarry Night.” It was a private joke.
Unbeknownst to most, Vladimir Pudding got into Don McLean in his KGB days. He’d played the American Pie single so many times, it now seemed strange to hear it without the break in the middle when you have to flip the 45 over for Part II [younger readers will now be stroking their chinny-chin-chins in puzzlement].
“Helter skelter, in the summer swelter…” he sang-muttered as he took his shirt off, ready to pretend to do some exercise, while listening to reports from the front.
Velary Getyouroksov and Sergei Lapdog shuffled along the corridor leading to the President’s office and Lapdog murmured: “Oh vey, we’re going to have to sit at that ridiculously long table again.” To which Getyouroksov replied: “They’re calling it the ‘UBER Table now? Cos you have to take an UBER…”
“…to get from one end to the other. I had heard. The distance that he makes you sit from him corresponds to how pissed-off he is with you. The far end means the firing squad is assembled and fully-loaded.”
“But he mumbles and I can barely hear him. Do you think he’s ok?”
Lapdog looked at him, quizzedly: “Ok? You mean today or always?”
“Well, you hear rumours. I mean, just look at his head…it’s getting bigger on a daily basis. It was normal size a few years ago and now it’s swelling. It’s like a big zit.”
“He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Lapdog, smirking. “You’re right. It makes his eyes look really close together. Like something out of a Picasso painting.”
“Looks like a potato to me,” said Getyouroksov.
“He could be a Whatsapp icon…”
“Or Boss Baby,” said Lapdog, and they both sniggered like Muttley.
Their shuffling stopped as they found themselves at the office of Svetlana; the person who had the ear of the President. What she was doing with one of his ears is another story. The absurdly high double doors to the Pudding Chamber loomed before them, like the North Face of the Eiger [the South Face is a doodle, by the way].
They both smiled, hopefully, at Svetlana.
“He’s exercising but you can go on in.”
They both ushered the other to go in first but neither wanted to. They made exasperated faces at each other and then tried to go in at the same time, Laurel and Hardy-style, shoulder-to-shoulder as they squeezed through the door, and popped out into the Pudding Chamber, all a-flistered and a-flustered.
Their President rolled his eyes to the ornate ceiling.
Minority News Report 