Votes: The final frontier for starship Enda-prise

THESE are the voyages of the starship Enda-prise. Its 23-day mission: to explore strange new worlds (winnable seats), and to boldly go where no Blueshirt has gone before (well, not for 29 years, anyway) — a general election victory!

Captain Enda T Kenny: Captain’s log: Election date 2:2:11

“We have landed on Planet Cavan. It is a remote civilisation in the Border nebula.

“I was ferried here on my battle bus, the starship Enda-prise, cunningly named by myself because I, Enda, am in charge (oh, yes, I am, Michael Noonan, or ‘Spock’ as I amusingly call you behind your back because you think you’re so much cleverer than me just because you can add-up and talk coherently, and all that fancy stuff).

“We blasted out of Dublin at warp speed six — as in there were six of us speaking at the opening press conference and the positive message vibe got a bit warped when the whole thing descended into a rather unseemly spat with the journalists when we sped out of there after trying to shut the thing down early, despite starting it 18 minutes late.

“I’d made Richard Bruton speak in fourth place — just to show Brutus that nobody mutinies on my bridge and gets away with it. He was babbling on about public service reform as usual, then suddenly started on about “talented people trapped in a system failing” — was he on about himself again and the non-role I’ve given him? When he started mentioning: “consequences for failure”, it was too much, I knew he was getting at me for sure and already plotting his next putsch for Year Two in power.

“But whatever thoughts bitter little Bruton may harbour, Planet Cavan loved me.

“Some people might have thought it was a bit odd that I began the general election campaign shouting myself hoarse while standing on a pub table in a dingy, badly lit bar, but I thought it was kinda cool. Kinda retro.

“The sound of my booming, croaky, throaty voice certainly scared away any remaining FF Cling-ons rallying to Micheál — Micheál the Martian as I amusingly call him — and with that we blasted outta there and crashed down into Navan.

“The Enda-prise is known as my starship because it carries forth my symbol, the star and its whirly, swirly colours. I am the star, the star is me. Look how its five points handily remind me that my plan for Government has five points also. And see how its colours depict me in office — the blue for my steely resolve, the orangey-red for my warm heart — and, most tellingly of all, the green for my almost complete inexperience of Cabinet apart from that five minutes I was tourism minister in the 1990s.

“I bonded with the youth in Navan — all these hippity-hoppity kids with their smart anoraks and MC Hammer music giving me the old high five. I don’t believe that fella from the Irish Examiner who said he went back to ask them if they knew who I was and one of them said: ‘Sure I do, he’s from Sinn Féin, I seen him on the telly.’ Nonsense.

“The Enda-prise did hit some turbulence in Dundalk when a lady in unfortunate circumstances thought I’d let her down. Although I must admit I didn’t like her recollection of meeting me at my office: ‘You had a sweeping brush in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, you talk about jobs — you couldn’t even hire a cleaner!’ Well, I thought that was uncalled for, it was my favourite sweeping brush after all.

“But anyway, it has been written in the stars, I SHALL be master of the universe — well, as much of it as Eamon Gilmore let’s me have control of anyway.”