Crying Out For A Crisis
As the founder and director of the Optimystical Institute of Outer Brynteg, Doctor Meurig Meredith Selwyn was used to looking on the bright side of things. The power of peace and positive thinking was a message he had striven to spread around the world over the past two decades, even in times of war, plague, famine and light-to-moderate snowfall.
But those days were gone. Now the sunlit uplands that he once saw from his plush office had disappeared under a covering of greyness and rain. The Institute's European funding had dried up, Government programmes had turned their back on any sort of positive outlook, and the once-steady stream of income from the Tibetan yak's butter tea was simply a distant memory.
He had hoped that the publicly-funded gravy train might pull into a siding and hit the buffers gently, allowing him to alight with grace. Instead it had been a full derailment, with many casualties; chief among them was him.
But people were ungrateful. Who in this town would miss him when the Institute finally closed its doors, he wondered?
He liked to think he'd made a difference, made things better. He'd even managed to close down the local cafe 'Chips That Pass In The Night', because of its literally poisonous effects on the locals. Its name might have been poetic but its food certainly wasn't. Nobody had thanked him; not even his own staff. After that, he'd vowed to devote his mind to higher things.
And who else could have inspired the creation of a man-made mountain constructed entirely from the slates of houses left derelict as the younger population had drifted away? Even then, this beacon of positive energy, Ambition, had been dubbed 'the height of folly' by the local inhabitants. But at least it had appeared on inspirational websites across the globe!
It was true that he had to take on some of the local population as a condition of the Institute's Government funding; but he had mainly succeeded in employing them in the lesser roles, where their "life is shit" attitude - which he bitterly resented - would not affect the better motivated, and higher paid, team members.
His office had been a haven over the years, and now he took one last look around it. His Indonesian carving nestled next to the 'genuine' miner's lamp on the stylish curved desk that had been specially imported from Sweden. These treasures would be the last to disappear into the packing cases covering the office floor, he'd decided. But where would he take them next?
He walked over to the window and looked out at the small town with its grey unpleasant streets, sullen inhabitants and resentful weather.
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