This flash piece was inspired by the urban legend that the Churchill statue in Parliament Square is electrified to prevent birds from sitting and shitting on it (which probably isn’t true).
It was written in 2019, before Covid and before the hugest of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. When I wrote this, it was the AIDS epidemic I was thinking of. It was the way that disease was ignored as long as it was only harming people whose inclusion in society was marginal. It was the devastation of losing whole (chosen) families while those in power looked on unmoved.
It was about the perception of “power.”
Many thanks to Allison Thai of Plott Hound for finally giving this story a home.
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