The Neverendeedum Tea Party

‘IN. IN. IN.’

‘OUT. OUT. OUT.’

They were all wearing suits and waving their tea spoons. They looked rather horrid.

‘Who would like tea?’ Alice said.  No one answered. The men sitting on either side of the table were too busy shouting at each other. ‘I do hope you’ll behave.’ They didn’t of course. They looked smart, at least they had looked smart before the tea party had begun, now their very expensive ties were slightly askew. That’s a good word, she thought. I think people are generally askew. The end of George’s tie dipped into his cup but he was too busy looking down at the end of his nose to notice

‘You’re rubbish and you smell!’

‘No, you’re bigger rubbish!’

Alice wished the Mad Hatter and the March Hare were there; they were so much more grown up and made so much more sense than these people from Parliament. Even the Doormouse, who barely ever woke up to say anything at all, was more interesting.

One of the men, a chap with a podgy face and a thatch of blonde hair was thumping the table and growling: ‘I AM interesting! I AM the most interesting person here! I love me. I love ME!’

Beside him, a little fellow with a squeaky voice kept trying to make himself heard. ‘We’ll all get locked up if we’re naughty,’ he said and looked as if he were about to stand up, but he didn’t. Instead he bowed his head and stirred his tea. ‘I am quite naughty,’ he said. ‘I am.’

At the far end of the table was a hefty chap who Alice thought looked rather fierce. He didn’t have much hair but what he had was cropped short and he wore a very tight suit buttoned up to his chin. Rather surprisingly though, he was crying and large shiny, tears were rolling down his cheeks and plopping onto his suit. ‘You are so mean!’ he kept shouting. ‘You are just saying THINGS that I don’t want to hear.’

Meanwhile the blue-suited men on the other side of the table were waving their arms and looking, Alice thought, a little like crabs. ‘Pinch you!’ they shouted. ‘We are going to pinch you! And we’ll have more money than you ever will.’

‘You are all very stupid,’ Alice said in her bossiest voice. ‘I can’t think why anyone would ever want to invite you to their party ever again. ‘You’, she said to the ones who had been chanting ‘OUT’ and waving their spoons,  ‘just want to hide under a pillow and stick your bottoms in the air.’ Bottoms was rude, of course, but no one was listening to her. ‘And you,’ she said to the ones on the other side of the table, who were now pulling faces and sticking out their tongues and tugging their ears, which Alice thought was a very silly thing to do because ears were ugly enough anyway without making them even longer, ‘you are not very good at your job.’

She was right; they weren’t listening.

Really, she thought, they should have left it all to me.

‘And to me as well, of course,’ said the Mad Hatter popping out of nowhere and taking her arm.

‘And me,’ said the March Hare popping out of the other side of nowhere and taking her other arm.

‘And me,’ said the dormouse, emerging from the teapot and hurrying after them. ‘And can we have joined-up thinking for tea?’