The Revolution Begins With An Empty Can Of Paint

A Flash Fiction by Judith Potts

Photo by Sara Cottle on Unsplash

It was Ted and an empty paint pot that started the revolution.  Tired from a night spent packing parcels that people didn’t really need, on his way home, Ted sat heavily on a bench for a rest and found an empty pot discarded next to him. New Dawn was a shimmering, pearlescent green, and as his mind wandered to what room might now be experiencing a pale green dawn, Ted’s fingers began to tap out a riff on the tin.

And that was how it started. An old man, too tired to work nights, too tired to walk home without a rest, too poor to stop, tapping out a ska rhythm of his youth on a paint tin no one wanted.

Jamie, musician by night, nurse by day, was making his way to the hospital, already weary to the bone, guitar case slung across his back. His feet dragged, his heart was heavy, and he whispered a silent prayer to a God he didn’t believe in for some kind of boost to get him through to the end of his shift. That’s when he heard Ted, gently tapping out a beat on the paint tin, humming a tune that tickled the back of Jamie’s brain. So Jamie stopped, just for a minute, to join in, to feel connected, to make a joyful noise. Just for a minute.

Jamie got out his guitar and added his own rhythm to Ted’s. Ted grinned at the young man and went right on tapping away.

Now the bench where Ted stopped happened to be on Cromwell Green, which was on his way home and on Jamie’s route to St Thomas’s, the other side of Westminster Bridge. A place where someone is always protesting something, a place where there’s always plenty that needs fixing. And so it was on this morning that Annie and Maggie were there planning to be noisy and annoying, to protect the right of people to protest. They had maracas and a tambourine and were making their way to Parliament Square. They couldn’t resist stopping and adding their own sound. Ted grinned and kept right on tapping out his old ska beats on the tin of New Dawn. Beside him, a smiling Jamie strummed a welcome; his burden already lighter.

Soon a dozen other passers-by stopped at the bench. Some tapped their feet, some clapped, some joined in Ted’s humming. Someone filmed them and posted it on Tik-Tok, and it was shared on Twitter and Facebook and others came with drums and violins, guitars, keyboards, banjos, bongos and ukuleles.

A man on stilts came and began dancing, a unicyclist bought a rainbow flag that streamed behind him as he circled the crowd, arms in the air, cheering. Some acrobats formed a tower and at the top, a girl played a flute.

In the centre of it all was Ted, no longer tired but full of joy.

Journalists arrived and they asked why are you dancing, why are you climbing on each other's shoulders, why are you playing music on Cromwell Green? Is it a protest?

No, said Ted. It’s a celebration of the New Dawn, tapping his paint can.

It’s dangerous, said the politicians. But no one listened. They were making music.

And people kept coming, and people kept playing. In their hundreds. In their thousands. Schools closed, factories too. In Fife, Bangor, Truro, Tyneside, Reading, Romford and Redditch people hired coaches and came to join Ted.

The music was so loud that Parliament closed. They couldn’t hear themselves plot, finagle or filibuster. They blustered and bellowed, shook their ruddy chins, shook their feeble fists. But no one was listening.

More music broke out in Manchester, Chichester, Cheadle and Leeds. The news was filled with dancing, singing, twirling people.

Not everyone was in time, but that was okay, because every beat was the right beat, every note was the right note.  

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Author: Jude is a full-time carer and some-time writer currently (slowly) working on a crime-comedy novel about beautiful lies, ugly truths and the extortionate cost of spa days. She dabbles in flash fiction, focusing on wry, dry and sly looks at human failings (usually her own). She believes in the magical capacity of shared joy and humour to change the world for the better and tries to contribute to that.

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