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...