Green and Cabbage-Looking

Your Cat - in his customary fascination with the current race for the coveted Seat Of Power in the forthcoming government - has been fascinated by the latest developments in the political climate of the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria.

Apart from the usual and traditional runners and riders - the Tree Faction, the Liberationists and the Redistributionists - there are newer political trends coming to the fore.

One of them is the Northumbrian Independence Faction, headed by the ale-swigging, charismatic and slick-talking man of the people, Nigwald the Forager, whose political group is gaining a great deal of attention by virtue of its professed concern at the burgeoning increase in the numbers of Bactrians, Phrygians, Moors, Huns, Cyrenians, Cappadocians and other exotic nationalities, whose dietary, religious and linguistic habits and traditions are at variance from the plain food, religion, manners and speech of the indigenous Northumbrians. His following is noticeably at its highest in those areas of the Kingdom located nearest to the ports, where shiploads of these foreign hordes disembark daily to find a comfortable living away from their ancestral lands. Owing to the popularity of the Northumbrian Independence Faction, the Tree, Liberationist and Redistributionist Factions and their hangers-on and camp-followers have mounted a vigorous campaign of opposition, since the Forager's followers are painting apocalyptic pictures of overcrowding and strife, and growing national groups in an increasing population compete among themselves for the services of the Northumbrian Herbalist Service and the benefits coffers. Since this doesn't mesh with their pink-and-fluffy view of brotherly harmony and biscuit, they feel under some measure of threat, and for this reason they do their utmost to paint them as a Faction of xenophobes.

However, the most surprising development is the advent of the Green Faction, led by a female citizen of the as yet undiscovered land of Antipodea called Nutty Bandit.

The Green faction - named after the legendary Green Man, a representation of the infernal Prince of Darkness - is a collection of disenchanted Redistributionists and other masticators of the hallucinogenic fungus whose principal ambition is to forbid the lighting of bonfires and the cutting down of trees in the interests of their Green goddess, Mother Earth.

These beansprout-chewing bongo players are prepared to make any sacrifices - of other people rather than themselves - in the interests of their fantasy-fuelled religion.

The Green Faction is gaining a large number of disaffected followers of the feckless Edward the Milliner, who - according to their twisted theology - is not doing enough to save the polar bears in the allegedly melting Arctic regions.

With such growing interest in this new and fanatical religion, it must be a great comport to their acolytes that their beloved leader doesn't even have a command of such pedestrian issues as facts and figures when questioned. The mushrooms are evidently doing their work...

Klaxon Call

The gripping events surrounding the forthcoming Northumbrian Great Count are unfolding before our eyes, and your Cat has been enraptured by the fascinating interplay of rhetoric, ideas and ideologies being played out to the populace through the able and completely unbiased services of Beeby See and her half-baked country cousin Guardy-Ann. For me, it's been somewhat akin to a slow-motion circus with interminable pauses between the acts for deep meditation and sleep.

However, the occasional shaft of light finds its way through the soporific gloom, and recently the developments around the career of the Jar-faced Klaxon have grabbed the attention of all Northumbrian humans.

The Jar-faced Klaxon is an entertainer under the employ of Beeby See, whose purpose is not only to soothe the public with horror stories, scaremongering, climate scams, miserable diseases and other delights, but also to entertain. This is Beeby's appointed role by Royal Decree, and her services are similar to those of King Alhfrith's court jester, but on a significantly larger scale.

The Jar-faced Klaxon is employed to take the most modern carts and chariots available and to test ride them in the most exotic places. With two henchmen who are similarly occupied, he makes his business to entertain in the most outlandish ways, and to express his thinly-veiled contempt for the conventional forms of behaviour and speech. His acts of derring-do and his opinions - which are pungent and as contrary to the pink and fluffy bias of Beeby See as is humanly possible - have won him a widespread following among the adoring Northumbrian people, and have by the same token brought him many enemies among the delicate Redistributionist flowers of the Beeby See establishment.

Thus the impasse - adored by many, and hated by a precious few. However, recent events have proved to be a gift to his detractors, since he allegedly thumped a Beeby See flunky up the bracket. Needless to say, the Jar-faced Klaxon has been removed from office.

But as you Cat writes, the predominant sounds heard in the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria are the hammering of the blacksmiths, as citizens take up arms in defence of their disgraced hero...