After the Rout

The sound of the licking of wounds pervades the Northumbrian air in these post-apocalyptic days. An ambience of gloom and desolation hangs like a heavy black pall over the entire Kingdom, as elderly and young alike mourn the tragedy that unfolded over this last couple of days, and count the bitter cost.

Dagwald Caedmeron - the Supreme Maid of the Midden and Commander-in-Chief of the Tree/Liberationist Alliance Administration - is parading an empty, haunted expression as the recent events inscribe their indelible marks on his care-worn physiognomy. The flags and banners - put up in such eager anticipation - droop languidly in the searing heat.

The Great Battle has been valiantly fought - and lost. After a vicious, bloody and protracted battle, the Northumbrian Kingdom came last but one in the Holy Roman Empire Song Contest. Anglebert Gimperdonk, the ancient warrior from the Kingdom of Leire and the man in whom all Northumbrian hopes were invested - fought a brave fight, and nobly acquitted himself in the conflict. The remaining contestants - all seventeen thousand of them - were a bizarre mish-mash of the pathologically deluded, the vacuous, the charming, the eccentric and the criminally insane. The most peculiar entry was unquestionably the one from the Illyrian singer - a Gorgon-like woman sporting a serpent around her neck; she was evidently given to the practice of dark esoteric arts, and her offering to the malignant gods she served consisted of a litany of screeches, clicks, whistles, barks and dog-like coughs. The audience was transfixed in a mixture of horror and morbid fascination. I took opportunity to go outside for a dump, and thus cast my vote.

The singers of Kievan Rus were a troupe of six elderly peasant ladies, whose aggregate age was seventeen million years. In contrast to the Illyrian dragon, their contribution was cheerfully melodic, and the sound of creaking and cracking arthritic joints could be distinctly heard accompanying their dance routine. They were very popular with the seventeen billion viewers.

Thence followed a catalogue of the dull, the predictable and the turgid contributions as the battle lumbered towards its inevitable conclusion. By this time I decided to chew some blades of grass and have a good colonic clearout.

The voting followed along well-worn lines; old political allegiances - lovingly encouraged by a spear, conquest or a friendly threat of recriminations - ensured that Viking nations voted for each other, Westphalian and other Allemanic tribes also supported each others' efforts, and the Slavs and Latins also voted for their kinsmen. As usual. Only the Northumbrians voted according to the relative merits of the entries.

The resulting victor following this impartial partiality was one of the Viking tribes, whose offering was delivered by a man carefully dressed as a woman, whose anthem to euphoria was a celebration of misery and desolation. The other tribes loved it.

And now Caddy Boy's Plan A has been seen to fail spectacularly. He is now considering his severely narrowed options. I can hardly wait...