Friday evening, Cerise and I stopped by the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Hotel for cocktails before having dinner at the Café du Parc and taking in a show at the Kennedy Center. Certainly, the scene at the Round Robin about five o’clock the day Donald Trump actually won enough delegates to become the Republican Party nominee for president was a circus of the absurd, no doubt about it. But this – this was the day after the first repercussions of the Brexit had reverberated around the globe. World markets had plunged, causing three trillion dollars of paper equity to vanish overnight like an inside trader from Goldman Sachs headed for Brunei one step ahead of the SEC. And while the Yen had soared, the Dollar shook and the Euro tottered; the Pound circled the bowl as stomachs churned from Hong Kong to the CBOE, waiting for someone to flush it. British Prime Minister David Cameron had resigned, effective sometime in October, or as soon as someone daft enough to replace him can be found, whichever comes first. Politicians the world over had alternated between expressions of distress and calls for calm, wringing their hands nervously as they attempted to say something that wouldn’t make them look like idiots or cause the situation to become even worse, most displaying the startled countenance of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming automobile. Economic experts at major universities and think-tanks had furiously backpedaled, desperately crafting new explanations and strategies for a situation none of them ever expected would, in fact, actually occur. And Donald Trump, for his part, in the midst of a strangely inappropriate sojourn to Scotland, ostensibly for purposes of blessing a Trump golf course there, had given a press conference where he declared that the United Kingdom leaving the European Union was a splendid idea, and wouldn’t it be a great thing for Americans to burn their own house down, too, and vote for him in November?
Without the least doubt, the Round Robin on Friday was a veritable zoo, and well beyond anything I have seen there since Lehman Brothers collapsed and everyone realized that, damn it all, that particular set of circumstances signified something… serious. Well, gee whiz, who’d a thunk it? The UK had actually voted to leave the EU. Top shelf liquor was flying off the top shelf as mavens, power brokers, corporate insiders, lobbyists, contractor executives, high ranking bureaucrats and yes – even members of Congress attempted to deal with yet another major global paradigm shift. In the midst of the inebriated pandemonium, I spotted one of my clients – Sir Wallaper Scunner McBoaby-Bambot PhD, MBE, FRS, LSMFT, Deputy Associate Attaché for International Trade Policy at the Embassy of the Court of St. James’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland here in Washington, DC. He appeared to be (IMHO, of course) three or four sheets to the wind.
“Collins,” he harked at me, beckoning in that jaunty, nonchalant manner of the truly drunk, “come on over – you and that brae braw burd of yours with the bonnie neck brace!”
“My God,” Cerise whispered to me as she smiled and coyly waved hello to the sanguine stranger with the prominent brogue, “is that snockered Scotsman one of your clients?”
“He is,” I affirmed, as I smiled and took Cerise by the arm, leading her to his table, “but believe me, he can speak the Queen’s English with an Oxford Received Accent if he wants to.”
“Okay, if you say so,” she reluctantly agreed.
“Sir Wallaper!” I exclaimed, as I pulled out a chair for Cerise, “what a pleasant surprise!”
“Ha!” he replied, “At least somebody’s had a pleasant surprise lately! Damned sassenach scunner’s been givin’ plenty of folks nasty surprises, one after the other, the mingin’ English roasters!”
“Scotland was pretty dead set against leaving the European Union,” I acknowledged.
“Aye, mannie,” he nodded. “Not a single member of my entire family voted to leave the EU, and I’d say that’s par for the course with us all in Scotland, and I’ll tell ya fir wye – the English workin’ class are nothin’ but a lot of whingin’ whinin’ lazy wankers who want somethin’ for nothin’! They always have been, ya know. And those dobbers are the ones to blame for this bowfin pooched pile of Turkish Delight we’re all in now! And by the way, lass, how’d you come by that?” he asked, pointing at Cerise’s neck brace.
“Traffic accident,” she said. “I was rear-ended on the Whitehurst Freeway.”
“I hope you sue the breeks and skiddies off the twally that did it,” he replied.
“Illegal immigrant,” she informed him, displaying as much of a shrug as her neck brace would allow. “Fake name, fake driver’s license, unregistered, uninsured vehicle. A local Hispanic aid organization put up his bail and he was out the next morning. Since then, he’s disappeared.”
“Ach!” he exclaimed, “it’s a sad state of affairs when pommy wahrmehrs overrun your country and behave like a bunch of manky, glaikit fuds. But ya don’t go around bein’ totally radge tryin’ to fix it, now do ya? Sure, those huddies down in Yorkshire and Manchester and Birmingham and Cornwall and Devon are tired of all the wogs and polacks and rommies and muzzie moors sneakin’ in, but dinnae they ken that leavin’ the EU won’t do heehaw to stop it?”
“Apparently not,” I opined, as the waiter arrived. “We’ll have what he’s having.”
“That would be Talisker eighteen, neat, with a wee bit o’ water, then,” Sir Wallaper declared.
“None of that ice we Americans are so fond of,” Cerise commented as the waiter left. “So I take it you’re drowning your disappointments?”
“A wee bit of that,” he admitted. “But it’s more complicated, you see, lass. There’s my family.”
“What about them?” I pursued.
“Ah, well,” he sighed, “sure, we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns, but you’re lookin’ at the only one who voted No in 2014.”
“So,” I concluded, “In the Scottish Independence Referendum, you voted to remain a part of the United Kingdom.”
“Aye,” he confessed with a choke in his voice. “And in a family of rabid Scottish Nationalists, ya know they all gave me plenty of mince for doin’ that! And now, I’ve got to go face them lookin’ like a feel diddie with a loupin oakster!”
“Tom tells me,” Cerise ventured, “that you can communicate in Oxford Received Speech.”
“That I can,” he nodded, “it’s what I use when I futer aboot with me job at the embassy.”
“Do you suppose,” she asked, “you could use it when you’re futtering aboot with me? Because I’m having a really hard time following your conversation.”
“Why of course, my dear,” he cooed in a perfect BBC announcer’s voice. “I’d be delighted.”
“Thanks,” she smiled. “I bet you could get on the good side of your family by talking to them with that thick Scottish accent you were using a minute ago, though.”
“Truth be told,” he confided to Cerise with a wink, “most of them wouldn’t have any better comprehension of my remarks than you.”
“What do you think, Tom,” Cerise inquired, “are the Scots going to leave the UK now so they can stay in the EU?”
“Talk about that sprouted up earlier today,” I answered. “It’s all over town. The other big rumor is that Northern Ireland will stay in the EU by leaving the UK and joining the Republic.”
“And,” Sir Wallaper chuckled, “I hear the Brexit has your Texans talking about them leaving the US.”
“Hardly surprising,” I replied. “They bring that subject up at the drop of a hat.”
“I, for one, hope they do it,” Cerise said. “Then we can build a twenty foot wall around the place and make the Texans pay for it.”
“Of course,” I noted, “Spain would never condone Scotland leaving the UK to join the EU, because it would set a precedent for Catalonian secession. It might even give the Basques ideas.”
“There are ways,” Sir Wallaper hinted, “to get the measure through Brussels without Spain’s support.”
“Provided,” I pointed out, “that Spain doesn’t insist on leaving the EU in retaliation.”
“Sounds like things are going to be pretty complicated from now on,” Cerise remarked as the waiter arrived with our drinks. “Oh, I’ve got an idea – how about renouncing your knighthood? You think that would get your family to forgive you for voting to stay in the UK?”
“More likely,” he shuddered, “it would get me thrown out of my position at the embassy. No, at this point, there are those in my family who wouldn’t feel satisfied of my sincere remorse if I cut off one of my fingers.”
“How about putting on a hair shirt and walking barefoot from Glasgow to Edinburgh in the middle of the winter?” I suggested. “Do you think they might forgive you then?”
“Only if I died of pneumonia afterward,” Sir Wallaper sighed.
“Well,” Cerise speculated, “when Scotland holds that second vote to leave the UK, make sure all your relatives see you out there, campaigning for Scottish independence. That’s guaranteed to make a favorable impression, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he thoughtfully murmured. “Perhaps.”
“How about if you do it in the dead of winter in your bare feet wearing a hair shirt, speaking in that overblown Scottish brogue of yours?” I wondered.
Sir Wallaper drained his glass and considered the proposition for a moment. “You know Collins, you may have something there. Under those circumstances, they might very well forgive me. Unless they try to use it as grounds for my commitment to an insane asylum instead.”
“Okay then,” Cerise proposed, “how about if you get pneumonia doing it, but you don’t die?”
“That… hmmm… yes,” he mused, “actually, that’s brilliant. When I get out of the hospital, I could even stand for an SNP seat in the Scottish Parliament.”