Order Order

Let me just say I'm a massive supporter of democracy.

The last dream I have in the morning is a heaving congress of my own brain cells casting a single non-transferable vote for me to wake up and have a wonderful day. But the first thing I dream at night is a crazed leftist wearing a fluffy Russian hat, smashing up all the ballot boxes in England with a little toffee hammer.

Sadly, democracy is not abundant in my waking life.

My boss keeps smacking the heel of his shoe on the break room desk when I propose a vote on having toilet breaks or the living wage. I was approached by a union rep who filled my head with promises of a democratic work life, but when I mentioned it in the work Whatsapp group a Boston Dynamics robot dog smashed down my front door and intermittently fired off warning shots from a spine-mounted flamethrower until I followed up my message with "lol only jk ;)".

My last refuge from pure anarchy and living within the scenes of the brutally prescient cinematic masterpiece The Purge (2013) is voting on what food to order with my friends during our weekly socially-distanced soiree in the concrete bin area behind my moldering flat. Each of our stomachs gurgling with hunger, draped in union flag slankets roasting cans of Special Brew on an open bonfire until the metal splits and their brown guts spew across the twilight.

As patriots, we love commemorative plates, bunting, racism, gingham and ‘first past the post’ parliamentary democracy and we do our best to incorporate all of these into our weekly takeaway vote.

This means constitutional catchments based on seating position and coalitions of the dietarily-aligned formalised into parties and pressure groups. Very quickly our options narrowed to pizza or curry, as the more powerful caucuses closed ranks to destroy food orders they found repellent (within weeks vegan speciality food was a decisively non-viable platform).

After a month, the more powerful factions had sufficient resources to appoint whips to keep order behind the scenes. These practices were acknowledged but practically invisible, except for the people who started going pale when they received a text.

Members who had been trying to expand The Pizza Party to include other forms of Italian food began to fall sullen and taciturn. The People's Committee for Curry members who were vocal about including Thai curry suddenly started recanting, acting like they'd never even heard of Thai curry, and became increasingly furtive and evasive when questioned. Normal conversations ceased and all dialogue became a short loop constructed from a cache of party-appointed phrases.

Trying to bolster their ranks, smaller groups like The Burrito Democrats and Phomentum have been inviting new members to our weekly tinny roasting celebration. The bin area is heaving. The members' speeches are lost beneath the chorus of boos and cheers from the throng.

I started telling people I'm running a Fight Club because it's an easier explanation than the truth – though I've had to change tack after my neighbour's boyfriend turned up wearing a mouthguard and smashed the Shadow Minister for Calzones square in the gob.

The whole system looks like it should fall apart, but the mass of angry bodies continues to move forward using nothing but the momentum of spite and sunk cost fallacy.

That suits me fine. So as long as there are people ready to argue about what food to order, I'll be sat on the blue recycling bin outside my house demanding members show some decorum and getting a migraine while trying to write over 100 orders into a delivery app on my phone.

I do it because I love democracy, I love my country – and because my mate runs the delivery service and I'm getting a massive kickback on every order.