A Wintervaltide Greeting

While the politicos of the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria slink back to their prisons and lairs, the general population of the Realm are busy preparing themselves for the pink and fluffy Feast of Wintervaltide – otherwise known to the majority of Northumbrians as Christmas.

Amid some of the worst weather we've had for many a week, people are rushing to their homes and hovels to gather with their kith and kin so that they can partake of the festivities – which in Northumbrian custom consists of mead and ale in industrial quantities. Many intelligent conversations at a gastro-intestinal level will be taking place, while heads will be thundering and railing tomorrow morning.

However, the more pious members of the populace are attending masses celebrating the entrance of the Divine Light into the human sphere. To this Cat's mind, they have the better deal.

The importance of His advent can never be overestimated. His very name – Jesus Christ – or in Hebrew, Yeshua Ha Mashiach – means the salvation of God, and the name is descriptive of the person to whom it is given. At the time of the Annunciation, the angel told Joseph that His name will be Jesus because He will save His people from their sins; during His ministry, He announced that He came to seek and to save those who were lost. Even his Pharisaical detractors in their mockery of Him on the cross recognised that He saved others even though He (to their eyes) could not save Himself.

The salvation He brings in His own person (and through His work) is of infinitely more value than the measures and means of men, and that's why my master Caedmon will be at the Abbey in Streonaeshalh tomorrow. I'll be hunting mice and patrolling my own kingdom as usual.

Happy Christmas to all!

CC

Signs Of Intelligent Life?

The cult of Nil's Son the Man Dealer continues apace; since my previous posting, there's been no sign of Beeby See and her Redistributionist cronies losing even the slightest interest in the Great Man. Daily prayers and devotions are being offered with all due reverence, flowers and candles and a somewhat aggressive piety; any persons found guilty of maligning the Man Dealer are lovingly awarded the punishment of blasphemy, and are consequently either sentenced to death or exiled to some wind-swept craggy island to feed the vultures.

The other day marked the memorial festivities for the departed Chieftain, and all of the notable monarchs, politicos, princes, satraps, governors, aldermen and other hangers-on from around the known world were present, pathologically anxious to be seen by their admirers to be paying their respects to expired greatness. It was a veritable Redistributionist bean feast. Bless.

The highlight of the solemn festival was the giving of eulogies by the hundreds of dignitaries; these lasted for several days, and the snoring from the audience was deafening. At the climax of the solemn occasion, Bugrake O'Barmy - the Holy Patriarch of the as yet undiscovered land of Ultima Thule - delivered his own oration. At his side stood a diminutive  Bongolian man, whose role was to translate the speeches into sign language for those members of the audience who were hard of hearing and still wide awake. As ever, Buggy Boy delivered a superb tribute to the fallen demiurge, and his cascading tones, meaningful expressions and skilfully crafted rhetoric tugged on the heart strings of the gathered assembly, and there wasn't a dry eye in sight.

However, the speech contained nothing that remotely resembled coherent thought or meaning, and the poor sign man had no choice but to signify by has hand gestures what was construed by the deaf members of the audience sheer gibberish...

Mourning Has Broken

After a protracted period of relative boredom with the machinations of the politicos of the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria, a little light of sunshine has finally insinuated itself into this Cat's life.

It all happened when my usual source of the latest news - Feaxede the Fox - caught me on an evening patrol through my own feline kingdom in pursuit of rodents. He excitedly told me that the soothsayers had just announced A Significant Event in the course of human history: Nil's Son the Man Dealer was dead.

As a sit down to chew my freshly-caught prey in awestruck silence, my synapses worked overtime, piecing together the strands of information I'd gleaned over the years about this remarkable man. A humble lawyer from the southern kingdom of Outer Bongolia, he had helped to set up a liberation movement (the Bongolian National Council) in a bid to cast off the tyrannical yoke of the ancient Romans, who in customary fashion had ruled the place with a rod of iron, plundered precious resources for their own personal fortunes and treated the poor and penniless aboriginal population with loathing, disgust and contempt.

In the course of his quest for the liberation of his people, Nil's Son the Man Dealer embraced the magic mushroom-fuelled cult of Redistributionism, and because of his active resistance to the tender ministrations of Caesar, ended up in an oubliette for seventeen thousand years, while a significant folklore grew around his reputation, which helpfully surrounded him with a swirling, misty mystique. Meanwhile, his supporters - in the absence of more subtle argument - were applying gentle persuasion to their opponents by tying faggots around their adversaries' necks and cooking them for dinner. Personally, I like the gravy, but I'm not so mad on the herbs, and to this Cat's mind it seems a bizarre way of preparing them.

Eventually, Nil's Son the Man Dealer was released from his confinement, and to cut a long story short, he ruled over reunited the remaining Romans and Bongolians in a New Era of Fluffiness. Which was nice. The legends around Nil's Son the Man Dealer continued to proliferate until his recent demise.

Beeby See - in conjunction with her numerous Redistributionist bosom pals - has organised co-ordinated mourning events and has already launched a new religion based on the mythology of Nil's Son the Man Dealer, and she's quickly appointed priests and priestesses to serve the new deity, who's expected to return from the Elysian Fields and usher in a global rule of peace, prosperity and biscuit.

I'm sure he was a thoroughly good egg, but I have my doubts about his divinity. Caedmon just rolls his eyes heavenwards..

The Great Award

I still remember it to this day, even though it happened earlier this week. It's funny how you associate commonplace events with sudden life-changing events; I recall that I was busy tucking into a mouse pie (rare to the point of raw - sans pastry and gravy, of course) when my vulpine friend Feaxede the Fox approached me in a high state of excitement.

Fearing that I'd have to share my fine cuisine with him, to my shame have to confess that I bolted it quickly while I waited for him to arrive and tell me what he'd heard. My jaw almost hit the ground when he animatedly informed me that Streonaeshalh has been awarded the Holy Roman Empire Settlement of Culture for next year.

When we'd finished our frantic rejoicing, Feaxede delivered the momentous question: What exactly is it? I told him that this is a Most Special Award, reserved for the most deserving places in Christendom. How wonderful. My heart sings for joy.

I also informed him that this prestigious privilege was only granted to towns/hamlets/villages that were run down and in need of some Holy Groats. Although the title of Settlement of Culture presupposes an existing propensity on the part of the citizens towards high and noble artistic and aesthetic endeavours, this wasn't actually an expected prerequisite; all that is required for the aspiring place is to provide favourable enough inducements to those esteemed members of the Panel of Selection. Indeed, the most beautiful settlements of the Northumbrian Realm don't even bother applying for such a prize, since they regard the whole enterprise as infra dignatem.

So what can we look forward to in this humble, fish-odorous backwater on the coast of the North Sea? As your Cat understands it, we're likely to be visited by hordes of wood-carvers, finger dancers, loblolly men, mountebanks and performing bears, who will be gracing the quayside with their artistic skills. We'll be seeing hosts of the Northumbrian Redistributionist Workers' Faction with their bongoes, beansprouts and dog breath; there'll be obscure Saxon folk singers, delivering anthems about about obscure folk while holding mugs of the local mead and ale; it will be a vertitable Redistributionist travelling circus. The hordes of visitors will boost the inns and guesthouses, and the local alderman will be grinning inanely from ear to ear as he bathes in the glory of a Day that has come. The Holy Groats will clink into his bag. Happy days.

As for the ordinary Streonaeshalh dwellers - they'll be unnoticed, and the clinking of Holy Groats won't make a ha'porth of difference. Life goes on...

A Candid Confession

Your Cat has been greatly intrigued of late to hear that the former Redistributionist Northumbrian Secretary Of Home Affairs - Chad the Chaff - has frankly admitted that the Redistributionist Faction Administration had made a terrible mistake during its seventeen thousand year reign of terror of this beautiful Kingdom by allowing unlimited ingress of Barbars, Turks, Idumeans, Rastafarians and Venusians, as well as assorted exotic professional layabouts with curious religious propensities and unusual linguistic and dietary habits into the Realm.

Since the Redistributionist Faction - along with its staunch henchpersons - the soothsayers Beeby See, the Windy Pedant and Guardy-Ann - follows an ideological narrative which declares its own perpetual perfection and inerrancy (and this - like the Law of the Medes and Persians - is irrevocable), this marks a bold departure from the hitherto inviolate orthodoxy. Will he be henceforth taken away and stoned? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, your Cat is now looking forward to hearing from the aforesaid Redistributionist politico as to how he expects them to win over the hearts and minds of the long-suffering Northumbrian populace in time for the Great Selection in a couple of years' time.

I only hope that his magic mushroom supply is up to strength...

Catnapped

I'm so terribly sorry not to have posted for so long. While a litany of excuses could be provided as to my absence from the blogosphere, a pedestrian explanation will have to do, I'm afraid.

The reason for my silence over this last month is down to a curious experience which befell me. In a word, your Cat was abducted - much, it transpired, to the distress of my poor master Caedmon.

It all happened one morning as I was doing my territorial rounds; a couple of large Vikings approached me - one of them with a sack in hand. The next thing I knew I was inside the aforesaid bag, scratching and struggling to get free from my abductors. However, my escape wasn't possible, so I had to resign myself to the fate that awaited me.

To cut a long story short - and to spare you a myriad of trivial details - I was taken to what I gathered to be a large building in some unrecognisable village, and found myself along with a host of humans in some kind of a school. It was explained to me that I'd been specially chosen - along with the humans present - to attend and participate a training course for future leaders - and they needed to include a literate Cat.

The purpose of the training was to help us all to appreciate the value of the Redistributionist religion, and for that purpose, copious amounts of the Sacred Fungus were available for consumption whenever they were needed. For most of the human trainees, this was pretty well continuously... The one redeeming feature of this new location was the quality of the meat and fish dishes presented to me - at the Northumbrian taxpayers' expense, of course.

There were lectures, seminars and times of what I would describe as a cultic form of worship of the goddess Redistributia, whose high priests wore red robes and nasally droned their invocations. Bones were thrown and augurs consulted. All the ususal tedious stuff.

At the end of my education, I was returned to Streonaeshalh in the same bag in which I'd been originally transported, and henceforth released at the identical spot from where my abduction took place weeks previously. I returned to the joyful welcome of my master, who treated me to a splendid fish supper and asked me what had happened.

The one question you'll all doubtless be wanting to ask is: Did the 'training' experience have any effect upon me? Let me categorically assure you, dear reader, that my core values and opinions haven't changed one iota.

The politicos of Northumbria are wonderful people, who've seriously taken the good of the ordinary people to their hearts - they are not self-serving, posturing cretins. Caedmeron, Clegge and Edweird the Milliner are paragons of saintly virtue. As for the Holy Roman Empire - it's a veritable earthly paradise, whose elders love the myriads under their charge.

Now - I must sign off and go to sit at Guardy-Ann's feet; I believe there's some wondrous wisdom to be found there... I can't wait!

Complaint of the Cat

Ever since I was elected Beloved Leader and Guiding Light of the Feline Redistributionist Faction (Jobs for the Faithful, Magic Mushrooms and Equal Rights for all like-minded Cats), I've been more than aware that there have been significant forces working tirelessly against me since I donned the mantle of high office. This is most upsetting, since all a Cat want to do is to carry out his public business to the best of his ability and obtain a few Holy Groats on the side - what on earth is wrong with that, for goodness' sake?

A number of soothsayers have particularly had it in for me - particularly those whose ideology aligns itself with those depraved Tree Faction types, who make me singularly sick. Things have got to a pretty pass recently when one of the soothsayers - none other than the ranting and hysterical Dellimell - published scurrilous information about my late father (blessings and mice be around him). Now of course, he's no longer around to defend the honour of his name, but I can certainly vouch for him as a cherished son and heir.

While it must be said that he did have rather eccentric views about the world, feline society and the redistribution of fish and mice to the common cat (i.e. any active Redistributionist Faction member), his extreme world view - contrary to the poisoned narrative of the obnoxious Dellimell et alia - made no room for violent struggle with claws and teeth in order to achieve universal poverty and biscuit. I know for a fact (for I studied his mannerisms very closely) that he never bared his teeth in anger to tear off the ear of another cat. And he certainly never was known to use the natural sharpness of his claws - and I have the scars to prove it.

Furthermore, I refute the allegation that my dear old father hated the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria, King Alhfrith, the feudal system, the Christian Church and the costumed thugs. He was more than happy to affectionately adopt the Kingdom which welcomed him as a stray, put fish in his bowl and gave him the abundant leisure and thence the opportunity to develop his formidable intellect. He simply didn't like them - in fact, he loathed them.  And, contrary to popular belief, he didn't redistribute thousands of Holy Groats into his own personal hoard. My own considerable wealth has derived from other quarters, and I'm not prepared to discuss that matter any further, as it's none of anybody else's business.

So therefore I'm determined to destroy those soothsayers who gainsay me and oppose my political position, and I'm prepared to grind their bones to powder. My late father taught me a great deal...