Consuela Edda Luisella Maria Beneventi always wanted to be a councillor, and not just for the amusement of being Councillor Consuela either. Although, in inebriated moments at the pub after a tiring branch meeting, she admitted it had a bearing. But mostly it was because Consuela thought she could “sort things out”.
She was, everyone admitted, a bloody fearsome woman, and quite capable of sorting things out. But no-one ever thought it would actually be a good idea to let her play with council powers. Far too dangerous.
Consuela was the daughter of an Italian immigrant, a pre-Brexit anomaly who escaped Braverman’s trawl by virtue of being married to a Welsh woman for twenty-five years, naturalised, a small business owner, and an MBE. But only just.
This enraged Consuela. She hated bigotry and as soon as she could, she joined her local Labour Party, soon developing a reputation for not taking any crap. The male councillors would visibly wince when she took the floor to rail against something the council, and by extension, they had done.
“She’ll bloody-well take over if we let her,” Cllr Alvin Affront confided to Cllr Jim Machinate. “Nothing will get done unless Consuela agrees to it.”
They nodded sagely and hatched a plan. Consuela would get her chance; she would be a paper candidate in an unwinnable ward. Somewhere so Tory the dogs wore Prada mittens.
The ward had to rush everything because of Consuela’s tardy adoption as the candidate, and she received her draft election leaflet the day it was due at the printers: it was full of the usual execrable platitudes, and pothole-pointing-pictures of Consuela.
Consuela hated it.
She wrote a note: “I realise I am only a paper candidate and have absolutely no chance of removing that corrupt Tory wanker from his sinecure, but surely, we have something better to offer than this garbage? They need a proper councillor who will FIGHT for them!”
She popped the note in the envelope with the leaflet and resolved to drop it off at the branch that afternoon.
The phone rang. It was Alf, the branch chair.
“Can you take the leaflet to the printers, Consuela? I’m a bit stuck.”
She agreed and took the envelope to the printers, resigned to having a rubbish election-address. When it came back, her note formed the headline story on the first page.
Somehow, the original article had gone missing.
It was too late to change it but, as the branch secretary, Mary Conciliatory put it, “No-one reads them, anyway.”
So, they delivered it.
On the day of the election, queues formed outside the polling-stations and Consuela arrived to cheers. They had seen nothing like it before. Chants of “Consuela! Consuela!” rose from the assembled masses.
When asked how he was voting, local resident Jameson Ascot-Rider said, “Consuela, of course, just like everyone else. We like her frankness and bloody mindedness.”
And so, they returned Consuela as a Councillor, and Swansea was never the same again.
