Liz had dreams of living in a Tax Free World! Part 3 By Alfred N.Muggins

17/10/22

     Alfred stumbled over the meaning of ‘Growth’. There was only one way! It was up! Liz had only ever gone upwards before, even if she had had to change tack a few times. Now she might actually have to taste the possibility of having to drop downwards, as she saw she had come to the precipice of failure. If she was strong enough perhaps she would find another way to go back upwards again? Alfred would have to admire her if her embarrassing fall from grace did not result in depression and the strong feeling of failure, from which she might never emerge.

     She would have to be strong to survive this, and for her sake, he hoped she would be able to stay afloat as a human being after this immense rejection! Probably she would write another book on survival of her failures and U turns, and on how she did survive and continued her celebrity in new ways. Perhaps she would come amongst those who helped to overturn her, the presenters and journalists, and even those who wrote, or would write her history, the historians, if you like, and become one of them in some way, presenting documentaries on the Fall of the Roman Empire, or visiting Ukraine to discuss the aftermath of the War, or Moscow, after the Fall of Putin! Maybe there could be resurrection for her, on the lecture circuit, or a gameshow at the very least!

    Alfred would compare her failures to his own, and they might become might have beens together, blaming the world around them for not listening enough, and not giving them enough time!

Watching the endless catastrophe of the news Alfred wanted to seek sanctuary,

somewhere, anywhere?

Over the rainbow perhaps?

Through a wardrobe and into Narnia?

If only it was that easy!

Or into history again perhaps?

That was it.

Perhaps he could take refuge, into history!

But the problem was – which period of history?

    Alfred had been himself, in various ways, to explore the Golden Reign of Henry VIII, but in the end all that is gold does not necessarily glitter, and vice versa, and it had revealed itself as a sordid time of backstabbing and terror (much like many of the other periods of history!) He would have to consider whence he should go to restore his tranquility? That was not the true Golden Age, it could not be!

    But whence, and for how long? Not the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, nor the American Revolution, at a time of Slavery, ending in bloody massacre on the Fields of the American Civil War!, not to mention the outcomes of Capitalism and Industrial Revolution on the Fields of Flanders and Picardy, followed by the excesses of nationalistic zeal by the evil wizard Hitler, and Communism by Stalin the Terrible!

     He would just have to keep looking for that perfect time and place in history, where he could take refuge. His mind was boggling again! He could feel it. He would have to close the book, put his pen down, stop writing, and stop thinking! Put some nice music on and soothe his overactive brain! (Maybe he really should just find some more mindnumbingly dull work to do, and switch off his thought processes?)