Steve Braunias: The secret diary of ... David Seymour, the baddest man in the whole damn town

Associate Education Minister David Seymour says the government-funded school lunch programme is wasteful. Photo / Supplied

OPINION

Monday

Wild David Seymour dressed in front of the full-length mirror in his room above the saloon. First he put on his boots. They made him very tall and upstanding, a man of awesome height. Then he struggled into his buckskin pants. He had made them himself from the young buck that he tracked for seven days and seven nights, getting it in his cross hairs and shooting it in the near shoulder and through the off-side shoulder. It dropped dead on the spot, and Seymour got busy with his knife, then a sewing needle. He put a black shirt over his rippling torso and pinned on his deputy’s badge. It shone like water on a lake. Finally, he positioned a yellow Stetson made of fur felt with matching satin liner. He had to crouch a little to see the top of it in the mirror.

He spent the rest of the day in front of the mirror to practise drawing his Colt .45. He had got very fast over the years. The gun moved like a bolt of lightning and was just as fatal. He sometimes thought of himself as Judge Holden, a scalp hunter from the days of the American west and immortalised in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as “a man who excels in shooting, languages, horsemanship, dancing, music, drawing, diplomacy, science and anything else he seems to put his mind to”.

He stared hard into the mirror, just as Holden was described, “his hog-like eyes gleaming with a sullen ferocity”.

Tuesday

Wild David Seymour rode into Dodge on his high horse. He asked townsfolk for the whereabouts of Professor Joanna Kidman.

“She’s an academic,” he spat. The only other occupation that stirred such disgust in his righteous heart was journalist. Both kinds of people were critics of government. They needed to be taught a lesson.

The townsfolk didn’t like those kinds of people either. They searched for a length of rope, and cheered Wild David Seymour as he rode through town, those hog-like eyes black and vengeful.

Wednesday

Wild David Seymour kicked down the door of the schoolhouse and said, “No more free lunches for you varmints. The Government can’t afford it!”

He picked up their sandwiches. “Wasteful!”, he said. He picked up their pies. “Unaffordable!”, he said. He picked up their pastries. “A marketing stunt!”, he said. He fed the food to his horse.

Back at his office, he made a lunch reservation at Logan Brown. He was partial to their $50 grass-fed beef fillet with porcini mushrooms, tempura oyster mushrooms, charred onion and pesto. The thought of it brought a luminescence to those hog-like eyes.

Thursday

Wild David Seymour rode into Dodge on his high horse. He asked townsfolk for the whereabouts of Benedict Collins from TVNZ. They found a length of rope. “Journalists,” they spat, and saddled up.

Friday

Wild David Seymour undressed in front of the full-length mirror in his room above the saloon, then lay on his feather bed. A thin smile played on his lips. It had been a good week. No doubt about it, he was a man of stupendous importance, a man of considerable authority, a man of power and strength and great, great courage. He snuffled happily to sleep.