They’re not really strings. More like tensile wires.
No, no, they don’t hurt. Well, they do a bit, but it’s more like a constant annoyance than a sharp pain. It’s not like when I used to have that stick up my arse.
It’s kind of a long story, a bit like the man with a massive orange for a head, but without the punchline. Do you know that joke? No? Okay, remind me to tell it to you some time.
Anyway, so yeah, I grew up working class. My parents could only afford to send me to a second tier private school, and only a select few individual tutors. I was on track to get into Cambridge, but I thought they would scorn me and look down on me, you know, for being poor. So I went to Exeter instead. I wrote a really good personal statement I think, that’s what did it. We had a professional writer in to look at it, but he barely changed any of it.
Theeeen, after Uni, which I did bloody well at considering, I got a proper job. At one of Dad’s smaller companies. Before I was lucky enough to be selected as an MP.
Squeaked through, as always, then after serving my time on the back benches, a long trudge, longer than most, three months later I was Chancellor.
But yeah, no, sorry, the strings.
They got put in at Uni actually.
It sounds Faustian, but it’s like totally normal.
I did some, shall we say, dodginess. That was coincidental, but about the same time, someone asked me if I needed any help. They were really nice actually. Paid some of my debts, bought me a house, you know, just little things, but lovely nonetheless. And all they asked in return was to have the strings installed.
It’s fine for the most part. Just every now and then, I feel this yanking, and my hands move, or my mouth moves.
I’m still me, though.
Nothing’s changed.
