I want to have wood-shaving hair and a permanent smile, and I want to live among people who somehow all look different and the same at the same time.
The high seas around Spoon Island are jammed with cruise ships full of complainers and misery addicts. Their TV news is either about conflict and anger or corruption.
Their social media streams are jammed with mirror gazers, whiners and self-promoters.
But the people on Spoon Island look incredibly happy, despite living so close together and having no visible means of travel. They appear to have risen above their restrictions and their differences and found new ways to express the joy of life. Their rather flat faces might be a genetic thing. It is an island, after all.
This place looks like an oasis of happiness. I have it on good authority from the mayor of Spoon Island that the sole purpose of all the residents is to support each other and to be as happy as they can, given their circumstances. And their circumstances are pretty dire. They can't leave the island without the mayor's permission, they all have to wear the same frozen expression and they all have to stay put and behave themselves.
At first I thought this sounds like Stalinist Russia at worst, or the Hotel California at best. I wanted to know what drugs they were on and what happens to spoons that don't like the rules?
But the mayor said that a spoon's life is not about being happy all the time. Each spoon was prepared to suffer some pain for the benefit of the whole island.
I shook my head. This all sounded a bit "woke" to me. It had the whiff of Antifa socialism about it. If the mayor wasn't careful, Spoon Islanders would soon be demanding universal health care, free education, free public transport and icy-poles for everyone.
The island would sink into a sugary whirlpool of contentment. Nobody would ever feel the need to achieve anything or climb on somebody else's shoulders to catch a mark and make a billion dollars for themselves.
Spoon Islanders would have no Ferraris or supermarkets packed with 10 different brands of tomatoes. They would have one wooden car and one boring can of tomatoes each.
Then I looked at the Spoon Islanders again and they were still smiling. I felt like slapping them. ``Stop being so damn happy in these miserable times,” I thought.
But then I thought, ``why not?''.
The mayor said every spoon was happy in their own way, as long as their happiness didn't make other spoons miserable. And they still all get free icy-poles.
I'm packing my bags now.
● John Lewis is a senior News journalist.
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