Fascinating Rhythm

Following the shocking abdication of the Caledonian Queen Angus McTrout, your Cat has been interested to a subatomic degree by astounding new developments in the politics of the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria. 

Since it was recently decided by the Caledonian public that the fantasy of self-determination and separation from Northumbria proposed by the retired monarch was a prospect dogged by potential disaster, distress, deprivation, depravity, desolation and biscuit, Dagwald Caedmeron - the Principal Demagogue of the Tree Faction and Archdeacon of the Tree/Liberationist Alliance administration - has promised to grant the Picts and Scots a greater degree of freedom. This will enable them to mind their own affairs in the wild, wet and wintry wastelands of the North. Inevitably, this involves the principle that Northumbrians should henceforth solely have their own representatives in the Witangemot, taking decisions which affect Northumbria - and that existing Caledonian politicos representing their own kinsmen should be banished to their own homeland, where they can inflict their peculiar band of misery upon their own compatriots.

This is a matter upon which the Tree Faction is roundly agreed - and this augurs no great sacrifice for them, since none of their number would ever dare to be found in any constituency north of the River Tweed. However, the Redistributionists - whose inviolable Creed includes the holy dogma of Equality and Fairness for all those who are deluded enough to agree with them - stand to lose the prospect of future electoral success in the next Northumbrian Great Count: not an insignificant number of the mushroom-chewers represent Caledonian parishes. Understandably their Princess, Edweird the Milliner, is deeply unhappy about this prospect, since it obliges him and his motley cabal of acolytes to resort to violent armed struggle in order to gain power and win the hearts and minds of their detractors. 

Once again, it's that time in the cycle of the year where the various factions of the Realm converge on a hapless location so that they can indulge themselves in an annual orgy of rhetoric, rat's whiskers and rhubarb in their respective Annual Unfortunates' Outings and Picnics. Much mead, ale and finest Frankish wine are consumed - along, of course, with industrial quantities of magic mushrooms - an ingredient essential for the business of such political posturing. The Redistributionists have already started theirs, and the smell of beansprouts, boiled cabbage and dog breath - along with the sound of bongoes - already saturates the air around them to a radius of about fifteen thousand miles. Edweird the Spheres - the mendacious and fantasy-fuelled Treasurer of the Shadow - has outlined his fifteen thousand-year-plan for the economy of the Kingdom. More ingenious ways and means have been devised under the influence of the sacred fungus in order to further impoverish and punish the working Northumbrian and to reward the industriously idle.

Like the fine ales, meads and wines, the fantasies continue to flow in measures which are inversely proportional to your Cat's fast waning fascination…