{"id":1560,"date":"2023-03-31T12:02:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T12:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2023-03-31T12:02:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T12:02:21","slug":"councillor-consuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/councillor-consuela\/1560\/","title":{"rendered":"Councillor Consuela"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Councillor<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consuela hated it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She popped the note in the envelope with the leaflet and resolved to drop it off at the branch that afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phone rang. It was Alf, the branch chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Can you take the leaflet to the printers, Consuela? I’m a bit stuck.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow, the original article had gone missing<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was too late to change it but, as the branch secretary, Mary Conciliatory put it, “No-one reads them, anyway.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, they delivered it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, they returned Consuela as a Councillor, and Swansea was never the same again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[695,718],"tags":[717,716],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-695","category-april-2023-missing","tag-consuela","tag-councillor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-pa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}