Rain Games

After all the recent excitement about the Holy Roman Empire (which is neither remotely holy, Roman nor an empire) Football Competition and the Liberationists' vain bid to reform the House Of Earls and turn it into a sandal exhibition centre and rest home for failed and retired politicos from the Witangemot, the Northumbrians are excitedly preparing for the next Big Event. This year has been a memorable one in the history of the Anglo-Saxon tribes of this island, and the advent of the Holy Roman Empire Games is a once-in-a-lifetime event, as the Great Sporting Bandwagon visits this lovely Kingdom once every thirty thousand years.

Already the entire Northumbrian realm has been treated to the sight of the Venerated Holy Roman Empire Games Flame, and on cue, the crowds have crawled out of the darkness of their hovels to gape in awestruck wonder and business at the passing flame as it passes through their hamlets - or simply to catch flies.

The adulation and devotion to this pagan emblem of vanity and rhubarb has been remarkably intense; when I commented about it to my master Caedmon, he opined that the worshippers were in desperate need of a Christian education, since those who abandon the worship of the Almighty are condemned to honour silly and worthless things instead. My own take on it is that they simply require a thick ear - as do the corporate enterprises like rat pie sellers, brewers, moneylenders, master bakers and sorcerers, whose hard-nosed beneficence is sponsoring the vainglorious show in these perilously bankrupt Dark Age days. But never mind.

I'm so looking forward to the Lighting Of The Sacred Bonfire and the underwater sprinting; it hasn't stopped raining for the last fifteen months..