It was all going so swimmingly - those honky bastards had been kicked off those ill-gotten farms, the tobacco lords now cowered quietly in Vic Falls and made obsequious grovelling noises whilst the last scraps of resistance had been effectively undermined and brought into line by an unrelenting assault on their families and loved ones. The country had effectively been emptied, leaving only a handful of diehard Green Bombers to lord over municipal dumps, and of course Bob, who was convinced that victory was at last at hand, but there seemed nobody about to enjoy the moment with. Bugger.

"Fuckin' pussies!" spat Bob, stirring his strange Brew as it simmered over a fire made from the legs of that magnificent pearl-encrusted Steinway Baby Grand that Liberace had sold him all those years ago in Vegas. The pearls made a gentle pop-popping noise as they grew hot and exploded, fizzing, into the embers. Their smoke brought the hint of a tear to Bob's eyes, but the smoke, realising it would have no joy there, thought better of it and wafted off in a different direction. No wetness had lurked there since his dear mum had died, all those years back, and he certainly wasn't going to disrespect her memory by hubbling over small matters now, of all times.

"Grace! Come and stir awhile, woman – I'm off to get me some more of the battery acid from the Jag – this one doesn't pack as much of a punch as last weeks!" Bob's echoing voice receded into the gloom, without answer.

"Hmm, that's weird, coulda sworn she was just here, lazy cow. Probably gone off to bum some fags off the Bombers at the gates... sow. I know she's up to no good."

Bob wandered from room to room, occasionally sniffing the air for a telltale scent of cigarette smoke to guide him to his wife, to no avail. The smell of the brew was thick throughout the palace, and the state of the roof meant that all other smells were smothered by mould and damp. That's what happens when you sell the lead to no-good Nigerians... couldn't use the dollars they'd given him, either, the bastards... the black ink wouldn't come off, no matter how hard he washed them.

"So much for African unity.", muttered Bob as he stalked through the halls and chambers of the once-opulent State House.

"State House.... house in a fuckin' state, more like. Grace, you moo, 'the fuck are ya, woman...min...min...min...?" All he could hear was the distant cooing of the wild pigeons that now roosted throughout the manse.

Spluttering and shaking his fist vaguely in a southerly direction, the source of all his woes, Bob went back to the kitchen, which was now a shadow of its former self – all the granite had been lifted by the last of the Italian sculptors he had employed to carve a likeness out of the last giant malachite boulder left in the Chimanimani's. He'd told them to scram when they had become tetchy about wages; the next day the kitchen was stripped naked of all those acres of lovely pink and black stone, bound for Pretoria, he'd heard. Those damned lily-livered Southerners, what did they know about bitter ends, eh? All high and mighty and chummy with the U.N. - and where did it get them? Onto the Security Council.... bunch of ingrates, the lot of 'em, especially that Commie crew, those Bolsheviks would bay for revolution till their throats were raw, but they wouldn't get a sausage – not a sausage – because they'd always be lapdogging to some master.

"Hmmph..." mumbled Bob as he gnawed on an old leg of lamb, long atrophied and cured into a curious new kind of biltong.

"Fuggin liberals, that'll show 'em... Socialism my hairy presidential ass!"

Just then Grace swanned in, a cigarette in hand, a beatific smile on her face:

"Bobby, darlin' – sorry to break this to you when I know you're so down, but.... well, Bob, I'm leaving.... with Morgan...."

"Hmmph... so that's it, eh? After all I've done for you, eh? Just waltz off into the sunset with your knight in shining armour, leaving me with this shit-hole shell to waste away in... how terribly common, Grace. And I thought we were going to celebrate total victory over the imperialist forces together. Well. Hmmph..." He blinked his watery cataracts at the blurred purple image of her, dressed as she was in lavender Prada sweats and heels, and turned to the Brew.

"Oh Bobby, don't get all humpy on me! Pfff..." she toked on her Sobranie, waving the smoke away as she shook her head in dismay, "There's just nothing left for me here, Bob – there's nothing left for anybody – the Nujoma's have legged it, the Dos Santos' have just moved to Rio and, and... well, fuck, Bob, who am I s'posed to hang out with?"

"Well, suit yourself, but you're missing out on this Brew... looks juuust right... " Bob leaned forward and, taking a battered Harrods shoehorn, tested the fermenting vat of liquid.

"Sssthip..." Bob closed his rheumy eyes and savoured the heady green Brew, studiously ignoring the lilac traitor.

"Oh, Bobby, don't be like that, you know I'll always love you, you old rogue, but it's just.... well, Morgan's all recovered now from the bollocking your boys gave him and... and... well, Bob – he's got a fuckin' car full of petrol that can actually get us out of here and he cares about me... and... his house in Bulawayo doesn't fuckin' leak, Bob! And he's allowed to travel, Bob! We never go out any more and you've never got time to listen to other people's problems, but Morgan does! You can't expect me to live here in this dump any longer! I told you those Nigies were scamming you - and now just look at the travertine, after all the trouble I went to, to have it imported from Mussolini's old villa - for fucks' sake, Bob, I tried to make this place pretty! If you cared for me at all you'd have taken the option to abdicate and live on the handsome benefit Haile gave you for saving his skinny ass! We could have bought property on Lake Malawi, but noooo, not old Bobby M, the Mack Daddy of the South, oh, noooo! You had to trot out the old rhetoric – "the sovereignty of this great institution of President For Life will not bow to imperialists, new or old!" You know what they're saying in the malls, Bob? Do you? 'Bad Old Bob is a crazy-ass has-been crackpot despot who's lost it, he's living his last days on his Brew, pigeons and mushrooms that grow out of the carpets!' How's a woman supposed to hold her head high, huh? Pigeons, Bob? It's too much for a woman of my station, Bobby, wake up and smell the fuckin' revolution!" Done, she stubbed her cigarette out defiantly on a priceless blue Baluchi rug and flounced out, ass twitching the funky twitch of the freshly liberated.

"Sssthip, sssthip... hmmph... hoo-hoooo... now that's what I call fire water, Grace... Grace?" Bob looked round; alone again, save for the receding clop of a well-worn pair of Blahniks and the insistent cooing of copulating pigeons.

"Hmmph... gold digging sow. Sssthip... sssthip... Whooo - fiery!"

Just then Bob spied a fresh bloom of shiitake sprouting out of the mouldy Isfahan runner in the scullery.

"Oh, good. Dinner... "