I’m just a typical British man having a pint in a traditional cockney pub on my way to work in the morning. A London Taxi is having a fight with a red phone box at one end of the bar. Through the window, I can see Big Ben, St Pauls, Nelson’s Column, Stonehenge, the White Cliffs of Dover, and Gordon Ramsey.
The pub was constructed in 1066 by Robin Hood and his merry men and has remained unchanged ever since, save for the introduction of a jar of pickled pigeons on the end of the bar that costs 50p and makes for a delightful light accompaniment to a pint. As was the tradition of the day, one of the merry men was encased alive in a glass compartment in the wall so his merriness would infuse the pub forever.
It is exceptionally crowded today with men in bowler hats eating a hearty breakfast of mince and onions who are too repressed to speak to someone else other than to apologise occasionally for looking like they might be about to speak to someone else.
Serving at the bar is an uncontrollably flatulent, toothless, wizened, 102-year-old crone with a suppurating face who greets everyone with a cheery “Wotcher cock, ’ow’s your bollocks?” She has been married to the pub since 1949.
There is a newspaper on the bar. Its front page shows a picture of the dead Queen topless with the headline “Phoar, you’ve still got it, Ma’am.” Everyone who sees it remains moderately tumescent out of respect.
Manchester United are playing Manchester United in the first football match of the day. They will play each other nine more times to decide who wins the day’s FA Cup. After the presentation of the cup, the fans of the winning team will hold a ceremonial riot before brutally slaughtering the fans of the losing team. Technology was introduced in Britain in 1998, so we are now able to watch the match on the television. Prior to 1998, a number of runners would be employed at football grounds to distribute news of goals, penalties, and ties around the country.
My teeth are entirely socialist and were installed in my mouth by the NHS when I turned eighteen. I notice that one has fallen into my pint and make a mental note to call into the People’s Democratic Doctors Office on the way home to apply to the Committee for Teeth Distribution for a new tooth. I should receive a decision by 2027.
It has been raining in Britain for several hundred years, indoors and out, so due to the effects of evolution, I am now part umbrella. Where most humans have a fringe, British people have a small metal tube. At the top of this tube is a canopy that protects our head and body from the rain. No one knows if the canopy is retractable, as it hasn’t stopped raining long enough for anyone to check.
Several people are playing darts. Darts is a traditional British pub game that, as we know from cave drawings discovered in the east wing of Buckingham Palace, has been played by British men in pubs since the Stone Age. Men gather round a small caged fox and fling darts—small, metal-tipped arrows—at the creature. At the point at which it starts to howl in agony, everyone roars, “One hundred and eighty!” and sets a pack of dogs on it.
When I finish my pint, I will continue my stroll to work alongside the River Thames through the Cotswold Mountains to one of the largest money-launders in the world in the City of London: the magnificent financial district of Britain. Once there, I shall work diligently and passive-aggressively introducing Russian criminal money into the economy, stopping only six or seven times throughout the day to repair to the pub for more pints and repression.