The mine is dry

“The mine is dry.”

So saying Mendip held up a hard, dark nugget.

“The last in the mine. There is nothing more.”

I took the nugget from him. “Is this really it?” I said. “There is no more?”

“There is no more,” Mendip confirmed. “We have exhausted every seam.”

“Is this what it’s come to. A hard lump of a tale about a football manager.”

“It may not seem much,” said Mendip, “but at least it’s an idea. The last idea in the story mine.”

“Are we really sure?”

“We’re sure. We’ve searched everywhere.  We have tried every seam, every area of inspiration has been hacked and hawed to obliteration: A lonely childhood, nervous teenage fumblings into romance, your university years – unhappy love affairs, falling for a purple-shirted-hand-jive-goth-girl, encountering people who found Bobby Davro funny. All of these things had provided rich seams of inspiration. Seams which had now been severed empty.

Over recent months and years the mine had become increasingly exhausted, and the last few remaining ideas took longer to reach, located as they were in the deep recesses of the mine, each idea more remote and distant from the rest, a fluke, rump nugget containing less and less originality.

Until this.

In my hands I held the last, cold, damp, hard, clump of inspiration. My last story idea.

“I thought we should celebrate,” said Mendip. He clapped his hands and one of the miners walked over, with a glass of dark, strong beer.

“Excellent,” I said. “Let us toast the last idea in the story mine. “To all the ideas I’ve ever had.”

“To the stories,” said Mendip.  There was a cheer from the crowd of miners gathered around us.

Mendip clapped his hands again and this time music started.  I turned to the source of the sound, a violinist and an accordionist, who Mendip had somehow smuggled down the mine.

With music playing and beer flowing, many of the miners started to dance.  After a few of the dark, strong beers, at some point in the evening I joined them.   We danced and drank long into the night, though in the dark recess of the story mine it is always dark as night. It is only in the darkest, deepest moments that a story can be mined.

At some point I must have crashed asleep.  I woke late, head sore, limbs aching.  Mendip had left beside me a flask of strong black coffee, and a pile of recent papers, containing the news I’d missed during my last visit to the mine.

The country had a new Prime Minister, I read. Sir Keir Starmer, who had won one of the biggest ever landslide victories with a massive 33% of the vote. He had already made a number of his donors peers and promoted them to Ministers, with the department budgets thus opened up as their own personal piggy banks.  I could almost feel my pockets being dipped in anticipation of the taxes that would inevitably come to fund the new excess of these unaccountable chumocrats.

I was interrupted in my reading by a shout from Mendip, who ran towards me. “Firedamp,” he shouted. “Firedamp.”

“What’s this, Mendip? Firedamp. Surely not.”

“Yes.  I found one of the miners dead, intoxicated by the fumes.  I have cleared the area of mine until extractors can be erected.”

“But firedamp can only exist if …”

“Exactly,” Mendip said. “We have found a new seam.”

“But how. We searched the entire mine. We had exhausted every seam, there was nothing left.”

“It is a new seam of inspiration. A new source of ideas.”

“What is it? My ageing body, my failing mind. Do I write a more serious series of stories about my own mortality.”

“No, nothing like that. It’s Keir Starmer.”

“Keir Starmer.”

“Yes. There is a new seam of ideas about the new Starmer government.”

“And how rich is that seam. How many stories can I write about the dishonesty, incompetence and  corruption of Sir Keir?”

“Oh very rich, sir. It’s a very rich seam indeed.”