The thing was this

There was a thing and the thing was this:

A giant bulbous mass of pink sweaty rubbery flesh, about ten feet in height and six feet across, right in the middle of Trafalgar Square, at the foot of Nelson's Column. People came from all around the world to pay so that they could see it oozing like a Bartholin's gland, which is all that it did.

No-one knew where the thing came from. One morning it was just there with a tent over it. People had put up the tent to stop other people from seeing it unless they paid.

And the tent erectors made themselves very rich from the thing, because a lot of people wanted to say to their friends: 'I saw the thing!' They wanted to say that in the hope their friends would reply: 'Wow! You saw the thing!' They wanted that so much that they would gladly pay five pounds to go inside the tent.

But one day, almost a year after the thing appeared, it vanished. For months, people kept visiting the tent in the hope it would come back. Some people lied and told their friends: 'I saw the thing!', because to see the thing, especially after it had gone, would have been a big deal.

Eventually, people forgot about the thing. So much so that one day, about twenty years later, a young man walking past the tent asked his friend, 'What's that for?'

His friend replied: 'Don't you remember? There was a thing!'