Exorcising The Demons

I realise that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, but do you remember the illegal encampment of the Liberationists for their Annual Unfortunates' Outing And Picnic? Well, since those heady days of rhetoric, sweat, sacred shrooms, mountebanks and bongos, the main show dispersed to resume their blissful but cretinous delusions elsewhere. However, a hardcore of Liberationists, Redistributionists, yoof and indolent armchair revolutionaries from the ill-named Redistributionist Workers' Faction remained on the site at Rosedale Farm. They were intent on making a statement, but what they succeeded in expressing was quite different from what they intended to convey.. It's such a shame. I blame the fungi.

The landowners were anxious to evict these squatters from their fields, because they were getting rather cheesed off with the constant noise, which consisted of sacred Viking mushroom war chants, drumming, barking and the habitual yapping and the enthusiastic antics of ill-behaved, flea-ridden and libidinous dogs. They were also fed up with the smell emanating from thousands of crusty, unwashed feet, dog breath and evil armpits, combined with the fragrance of canine colorectal statements and cooking beansprouts.

They were also deeply concerned and unhappy at the fact that the presence of these ne'er-do-wells was deterring more refined members of the Anglo-Saxon classes from moving to this highly desirable part of Northumbria to take up residence, and the price of the land was consequently plummeting. Something had to be done. So the landowners appealed to the local Moot for a ruling to evict the interlopers from their ground - naturally, with the smiling cooperation of the local Costumed Thugs. Tragically, the Moot ruled against this, since the happy campers had already appealed to a higher Moot which had ruled in favour of a postponement of the eviction - until they could collect enough groats with which they could persuade the Moot to rule permanently in their favour. Sadly for the malodorous encampment, because of the dearth of money in the Kingdom, they didn't manage to muster enough of the readies, so the eviction is now going ahead. Hooray for Anglo-Saxon justice! Three cheers for the highest bidder!

Amid a great deal of shouting, fisticuffs and lunch, the temporary citizens of Rosedale Farm are being routed and rerouted to the highways of the Realm, from where they will have to peddle their clothes pegs, sharpen saucepans and make small fortunes by telling imaginary fortunes and lobbying for Edweird the Milliner and his shadowy Witangemot cabinet. The mess they leave behind will be gargantuan. But then, the mess the Redistributionists and their country cousins the Trees and Liberationists have left behind is worse by far. And nobody has evicted them yet..