Unprecedented is exhausted. He’s had more jobs in the last month than in the rest of his career put together.
If you’re a simple conjunction like And or But, or a prominent pronoun like He or She, you’re never out of work. (Although He and She have had stiff competition lately from the newly-versatile They, whose agent is now in high demand.) But if you’re a character word like Unprecedented it’s difficult to avoid becoming typecast. Unprecedented was no stranger to lean periods of being hired only for the occasional melodrama, and even then of having to settle for third billing behind Devastating and Ordeal. Then, after months of being obliged to tell his friends he was resting, he was on the point of giving up altogether and returning to his old bar job at the Slug and Lexis when coronavirus broke out. Now he’s the global star in Covid 19’s cast of vocabulary.
Not that it’s all encores and ovations; Unprecedented has to put up with Nicola Sturgeon both mispronouncing him and expecting him to make three appearances in the same sentence for no extra fee. But that’s the Scots for you. Far worse is to be dragged out as an excuse for the government and PHE to hide behind. Unprecedented is now worried that lasting damage will be done to his career by his association with Michael Gove. He’d like to be more selective in accepting gigs, but you never know how long your run of luck will last and besides, he’s enjoying the limelight. His bigger fear is that he’ll catch the virus and have to self-isolate. It’s a fear shared by all those he works with, for where would the politicians and the pundits be without Unprecedented?
But until he succumbs or over-exposure leaves everyone weary of him, Unprecedented will go on dashing from show to show and stealing that extra bow, and when it’s all over he’ll settle down to write his memoirs. These will recount his humble origins as the product of a one-night stand between Precedented, an obscure adjective devoid of charm or beauty, and Un, a prefix-about-town of such legendary sexual profligacy that nobody can keep count of how many offspring he’s fathered. Unprecedented can’t help feeling a little emotional when he thinks of his meteoric rise. There must be a word for it…
© C P Jenkinson 02/04/2020
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