Terror on the Boating Pond

There are fears that the Trump administration’s policy of illegally sinking small boats on the pretext that they are somehow involved in a ‘war’ being pursued against the US by foreign drug cartels might have been extended across the Atlantic. “Look, I’m telling you, I was just minding my own business last Sunday, out with my wife in a boat I’d hired from the council on the lake in my local park, when this bloody plane came screaming in at tree top height and fired a missile at us,” claims forty five year old Reading resident Otto Prelicker, who is contesting financial liability for the loss of the boat with his local council. “The boat was blown to bits and me and the wife were lucky to escape in one piece. The bastard then came back and strafed a flotilla of ducks and a couple of swans before flying off again!” The council have dismissed Prelicker’s claims as ‘fantastical nonsense’ and are demanding compensation for the loss of their boat, which they claim that the Prelickers sank due to their own negligence. “If that was the case, the sodding thing would be at the bottom of the lake, in one piece,” retorts a furious Prelicker. “But there are charred bits of it floating all over the lake – how do they explain that?” Local newspaper The West Berkshire Smallholders Chronicle has taken up Prelicker’s cause, claiming that the aircraft involved was clearly a US Navy strike plane. “Mr Prelicker says that he clearly saw US markings on the plane’s wings and fuselage as it attacked,” explains the paper’s crime reporter, Herman Hickstop. “This is clearly an extension of the recent US attacks on small boats sailing from Venezuela – we’ll doubtless soon get a statement from their Defence Department claiming that the Prelicker’s were planning to covertly sail the boat to Miami with a cargo of drugs.”

The local journalist’s claims have, naturally, been met with scepticism, not least because the lake in question is nearly a hundred miles inland, offering no routes by water to the sea. Critics have also pointed out that the Trump administration’s strikes on small boats has, so far, been concentrated in the waters around Venezuela, an oil rich country the US is currently trying to economically exploit, whereas there is no immediately obvious motivation for the US to similarly pressure the UK. “I doubt very much that it has anything to do with stealing another country’s resources,” opines Hickstop. “This has more to do with the continued need for headlines to bolster Trump’s ego forcing the US military to cast their net wider and target boats further and further afield. They probably figure that they’re safe in attacking vessels in UK inland waters – not only can they not get away, but the US probably believes that the UK government won’t have the temerity to object, for fear of further economic sanctions.” Hickstop’s claims have been bolstered by a second reported attack in UK waters, this time on a swan-shaped pedalo in a pool in Colwyn Bay. The occupants survived the attack by what they described as a US-marked helicopter, but were shaken by the experience. “I really can’t understand why we were targeted,” survivor Will Clonwyn told local reporters. “I mean, it wasn’t as if we were smuggling drugs or anything! We were just out enjoying ourselves on Wednesday afternoon!”

This latest incident has been complicated, however, by the revelation in the Colwyn Bay Pigeon Fanciers’ Gazette that Clonwyn had, two years ago, been involved with a friend in a bizarre plot to smuggle drugs into the US using a swan-shaped pedalo. “We were drunk at the time and thought that a small non-ocean going pleasure craft would be the perfect disguise,” he said I his defence, when confronted with the facts. “Who would suspect two guys pedalling a tiny craft shaped like a swan across the Atlantic of being top international drug smugglers?  Plus, we’d have the perfect cover story if stopped by the US coastguard or Navy:  they somehow took a wrong turning while on the boating lake in Llandudno and were convinced that they were heading back toward Colwyn Bay.” In the event, the pedalo began to sink only a few hundred yards from shore and the pair had to be rescued by the local lifeboat. Their cargo of drugs – half a dozen spliffs – was lost overboard.

Fears have been raised in some quarters that these recent apparent US attacks on small boats in British waters might set a precedent for some domestic politicians. “I’m quite frankly surprised that we haven’t already seen Nigel Farage praising these US interventions,” muses Toby Gunnerswhale, political correspondent of the Sunday Bystander. “After all, he’s pretty obsessed with small boats, albeit ones crossing the English Channel and full of migrants.” Gunnerswhale suspects that the extreme right-wing politician would like nothing better than to take his cue from Trump and declare those entering the UK on small boats as ‘invaders’ and call for the RAF or Royal Navy to sink them before they reach UK shores.  “After all, they are ‘invading’ the UK, doubtless with a ‘hostile takeover’ of the country in mind, via being exploited as low paid illegal labour in those dodgy shops selling dodgy goods and acting as money laundering fronts,” says the journalist.  “But I’m even more surprised that, on one of his many trips to the US to grovel at his idol’s feet, Farage hasn’t tried to convince Trump that these small boats crossing the channel are, in fact, chock full of Islamic fundamentalist drug dealers merely using the UK as a stepping stone to peddle their wares in the US.  Thereby giving the US a pretext for bombing rubber dinghies in the English Channel in the name of defending America.”

Such a move would fit perfectly with Farage’s hypocrisy – allowing US military action on UK sovereign territory despite having championed the UK leaving the EU on the grounds that the latter infringed upon British sovereignty – Gunnerswhale believes.  “All-in-all, it is exactly the sort of shitty thing he’d do – get somebody else to do the dirty work then claim credit himself for ‘saving England’ from the dusky skinned hordes of invaders at our gates,”  he contends. “Perhaps if that succeeded he could move on to persuading Trump to bomb Birmingham on the grounds that it has been taken over by Jihadists planning to export their violent terror to the US.” The journalist has been left despairing as to the possible consequences of the US strikes on British inland pleasure boats. “Where will it all end?” he asks. “Are we going to end up with US nuclear subs sailing down the Trent and Mersey Canal to try and sink innocent narrow boats before their deadly loads of drugs reach US shores?”