They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They

Sunday, November 26th, 2017

Dear Mr President

Lines from Toto’s ‘Africa’ come to mind whenever I think of you (which is far more often than any man should be thinking of another man).

‘Gonna take a lot to drive me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do'

I suppose you could add:

‘I bless my reign down in Africa’

Being concerned for your health and welfare, I wondered whether you might be feeling a little draught from the door left ajar after Uncle Bob’s departure. One would hate for you to be indisposed. After all, when you sneeze, or giggle, the whole country catches a cold. Incidentally, a language practitioner (I assume this is someone who speaks a human language), pointed out to me that the great one’s name is Rob, not Bob. I could not call him rob; that’s getting personal, isn’t it? Besides, the expression, ‘Bob’s your uncle’ was affectionately coined for him.

Mr President, surely you have achieved all that is on your bucket list? Castle, largeish family, friends in high and low places, hordes of adoring admirers of your fresh comedy routines - the list goes on. Is it not time for you also to fade ‘far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife’?

You see Mr President, as much as we delight in your wonderfully inventive routines with numbers, and new words, your revolving cabinets, cop rotation, headline - making surprises and every other squirming rabbit that you pull out of your cavernous. bottomless hat, we are in serious danger of circuit overload. We are living the ‘thousand (un) natural shocks that flesh is heir to’ in too short a time. You need to slow down so that we can at least catch up to last week’s scand… , er, story.

Wouldn’t it be nice to cast off the cares of state and swap transformation stories with Uncle Bob over tea, while Princess Grace does her cable knitting?
Mr President, unkind folk may want to quote Cromwell to you,: ‘For all the good that you have done here…… In the name of God, go.Seeing as you love music and dance, I prefer to quote you some fragments of another song that comes to mind: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

Here we go
Round and round the floor
It’s making no sense
But we’ll stay here till the end
It seems so long
Just like a marathon

Couldn’t we just stop now?

Yours in the brisk walk to retirement.

Richard