Burning down the house to get rid of a wasps’ nest
AS A small child, I loved the clever fables of Aesop, miniature stories which told deep truths about life. So, unlike most people, I know what the expression ‘sour grapes’ actually means. And I have always remembered the clever parables of King Log and King Stork ( a warning against wishing to live in interesting times) and The Man Who Tried To Please Everybody and ended up pleasing nobody.
Recent events have caused me to write some fables of my own. See if you can work out who they are aimed at. I have put in some clues.
The first is The Man Who Burned Down His House To Get Rid Of A Wasps’ Nest. In this, citizens see their neighbour doing this mad thing and rush to try to stop him. But he refuses to be dissuaded, shouting as he throws petrol on the flames ‘Well, what would you have done?’ while his neighbours shout back ‘Not that, anyway!’ until the entire street is burned to embers, while the unharmed wasps buzz round his silly blond head.
The next is The Surgeon And The Verruca, in which a man comes to see his doctor with a verruca. ‘That’s a really terrible verruca,’ says the medic. ‘The only thing I can do is cut off your leg.’ The man is not sure about this but the doctor tells him that this is an advanced new treatment and that without it, the verruca will probably be fatal.
His assistant, an eminent sage, produces reams of figures which seem to prove this. The man submits and duly wakes up with one leg. Filled with remorse, he questions the surgeon’s wisdom. ‘Well,’ stammers the sawbones defensively. ‘Your verruca’s gone, hasn’t it?’ He then adds sternly: ‘Actually, I should have cut your leg off sooner because look, there’s now a second verruca on your remaining foot and the other leg will have to come off too.’ The sage proclaims: ‘He’s right, you know,’ and out comes the saw again.
And the third is the story of The Great King Who Thought He Could Stop Autumn. In this, a prince who has longed to be World King since boyhood ascends to the throne. He finds his royal duties surprisingly dull until a courtier rushes in to say: ‘Panic! The leaves are falling from the trees! Something must be done!’ And so the King orders his soldiers out into the forests to glue the leaves back on the trees.
Advisers who grumble that the fall of the leaves is a normal event called autumn are shouted down, dismissed and accused of being callous and cruel to leaves. The King spends all the money in the country on glue, ladders and soldiers’ pay. And after he has made his kingdom bankrupt and autumn takes place as usual, he says: ‘We should have acted sooner.’
Moral to all three: the cure can be worse than the disease.