Dear Donald, sadly one can’t make this trip
6–8 minutes
My dear Mr President, Donald, old bean, how the devil are you? Congratulations on the moon rocket thingy. Ingenious contreption. Wish I could be up there m’self, weightless as a peacock feather, peering down, lord of all one surveys.
No doubt you were champing at the bit for a spot in the cockpit yourself. You told me last time we met how you planned to join the moon trip (like you did in 1974, on the top secret mission that no one knows about) and then be the first man on Mars, which is actually much warmer than most scientists think, and probably has plenty of oxygen, according to what you’ve been told by a lot of people, actually, a lot of very respected people.
What was it that stopped you in the end? Those demmed bone-spurs, was it? I’ve always felt your disappointment at not having been able to serve your country in uniform on account of that wretched podiatrist your father got to say that you weren’t fit enough to go to Vietnam.
What a great soldiering career was thwarted there. Why, only this week you were employing your famous military expertise to explain how Britain, the country of which I am fortunate enough to be King, doesn’t have a navy. Which shows what I know. I had always thought we did have one. My late mother even told me it was a “Royal Navy”. But I suppose one’s mother tells one what one wants to hear.
You remember my mother? She was the little old lady in a blue hat you trod on at Windsor Castle in 2018. Easily done. You probably thought she was Paddington Bear. But that’s all by the by. I’m writing to say how sorry I am, because my wife and I had been very much looking forward to seeing you and the first lady later this month on our long-mooted state visit but, alas…
How is Melania, by the way? Marvellous gell. The way she manages always to keep a straight face, a very smooth face, one might even say a rigid face, in the trickiest of circumstances. The definition of unfleppable. Never so much as a flicker of a smile or a frown, not a movement of the eyebrow, almost as if she had been replaced with a wexwork and gorn orf for a cup of tea. Often wish I could do the same.
But to the metter in hend. I see from your post on that dashed clever Truth Social oojamaflip of yours that you are expecting us in Washington from the 27th to the 30th with, as you put it, “a beautiful Banquet Dinner at the White House on the evening of April 28th”.
And I cannot tell you how much my wife and I would have loved to come. You know how we enjoy a quarter-pounder with cheese, large fries, Coke and a rectangular apple pie in a cardboard envelope. Especially served on a gold platter by a dwarf of colour dressed as Uncle Sam.
But the thing is there’s been the most almighty diary cock-up at my end. I’ve made a terrible boob and, well, this is most egregiously awks, but I’m actually committed to a game of croquet with the King of Narnia that evening. My valet has already put out my tweed knickerbockers and croquet shoes.
It is an especial wrench for me because I had been so looking forward to meeting victims of my brother’s friend Jeffrey Epstein, as has been called for in the American press, and possibly, with a bit of luck, bumping into my son in the weed aisle of the Montecito Whole Foods.
I had also been looking forward to potentially being mistaken for a left-wing agitator while innocently driving through suburban America on my way from the airport, getting dragged out of my car by an ICE agent and shot to death on the pavement. Or “sidewalk”, as you chaps call it. One doesn’t want to overreact to these rare incidents but the images do lurk in the mind, adding a frisson to what was already a very exciting proposition, state visit-wise.
I also happen to know how much Camilla was looking forward to talking to Melania about child literacy. She’s ever so keen for young people to read books. Which are those big lumpy square things you’ll have heard about, that people in Europe read.
Camilla says it’s important for young people to read books so that they don’t get lured into a doom spiral of ignorance and lies online, and end up voting for giant orange lunatics who would rather destroy the universe than learn their alphabet.
But the thing is, I have a rotten cold and my granny died and the dog ate my invitation, so I didn’t see it until just the other minute, which is why I’m only letting you know now that I can’t make it. It’s got nothing to do with you telling us to “go get your own oil” or repeatedly insulting my country and its war record and its history and its prime minister.
Indeed, the prime minister, in whom you have declared yourself to be so disappointed, and have so accurately pointed out is not Winston Churchill, is the one most keen for me to come.
And I really wanted to. I did. It’s not often one gets to have dinner with someone simultaneously fighting three wars with eight countries on 14 fronts who can’t point to any of them on a map. I had this hilarious plan to pull out an atlas and give you three goes at finding Greenland on it. How we’d have laughed, Donald, old stick.
But, tragically, I’ve just got a mountain of work, and the children aren’t well, and I was up all night with a suspected tummy bug, and we’ve been terribly let down by the babysitter, and I’m actually doing dry April, and the bloody car is in the garage and I’m not getting on Connacht vs Sharks EPCR Challenge Cup Livethat well with the wife and I’ve got this dicky hip and…
Oh God, I hate this pen! I can’t bear this bloody thing! It does it every stinking time! Ugh, ink everywhere. Take it away, for God’s sake. Why am I using a bloody fountain pen to write to this illiterate monkey of a man anyway? I should be TYPING IT ALL OUT IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT ON SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE HE DOES, the f***ing mentalist, instead of giving it all the regal squiggle and curlicue in royal blue Quink.
… where was I? Oh yes, I was saying how I sadly can’t make your common little banquet in your vulgar gold dining room for totally unforeseen reasons but am absolutely determined to reschedule for some future date. I’m looking at my diary as we speak, Mr President, and I’m wondering if we could do… let me see… never? How about that, Mr President? How about never? Is never good for you?
Yours most sincerely,
massive angry splodge
Charles R
