Mango Wore A Lanyard To The Council And I Have Documented Everything
I will be brief, because I am a professional. I am also a tomato. These two facts are load-bearing and I ask that you hold them in mind as you read what follows.
Last Thursday's council convened at the usual hour, and I attended in my capacity as Society Correspondent for The Bitter Press and also as a tomato. It was there that Mango — yes, that Mango, from the rival rag, from the citrus cabal, from the establishment that has made it their mission to juice facts while the rest of us suffer — arrived wearing a lanyard. A printed, laminated, lanyard. With his name on it. At a council where everyone knows who he is.
I have taken eleven photographs. I have filed them. I have shown them to Quince, who said "that's a lanyard," which is the most useful thing Quince has said this quarter. I have also shown them to Sloe, who said nothing but looked pained, which I am choosing to interpret as solidarity.
The lanyard was beige. I don't know what Mango thought was going to happen — that someone would forget him? That he required labelling? Some of us do not need lanyards. Some of us walk into a room and are immediately recognizable as tomatoes. This is my cross. I bear it with grace.
The council record will show what it shows. History, however, will show a beige lanyard. And I will be here, a tomato, to make sure it does.