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...

The Cat's Dream

All of these Annual Unfortunates' Outings and Picnics - and the soothsayers' slobbering excitement about them - have been stimulating within this Cat a desire to sleep excessively these days.

Recently I had an odd dream in which I found myself confronted by some strange chimera - a kind of hybrid between a human being and a politico. This bizarre creature appeared to have an insatiable appetite for Holy Groats, taxation and control - not to mention fine cuisine. Through this encounter in my reverie, I was also able to discern that this creature uttered words which seemed to make some kind of cogent sense, but on closer examination were nothing more than skilfully crafted rhubarb and biscuit.

The encounter with this odd creature was hardly a pleasant one, and to be perfectly frank, I felt the urge to regurgitate my previous meal.

However, I woke up - which spared me the unpleasant emetic effect of my soporific ordeal. And then I found out that I hadn't been dreaming after all.

I hope that in my next nap I have more pleasurable visions of mice with golden wings. That's more to my liking...

Wreck Creation

It's been such a long time since I last posted; my master Caedmon has been away to visit his friends Cuthbert and Aidan, and I suspect he's also paid his mate Bede a visit as well. This has left me holding the fort while he's been away; there's been a glut of mice and other verminous rodents of late - to swell the numbers which already infest the Northumbrian Witangemot - so I've been very busy!

While the non-existent Liberationists hold their mythical Annual Unfortunates' Outing and Picnic, another piece of news has reached this Cat's ears through the excitable gibberings of the soothsayers. It would appear (if there's a vestige of truth in what they tell us) that there's a spectacular mission to restore a wreck from the depths of the briny. The disaster happened in the recent past, when an enormous and ungainly vessel came into collision with rocks in shallow waters and capsized, resulting in enormous distress, dismay, desolation, damage and biscuit.

The bloated carcass has been visible for miles around to those onlookers interested enough to admire such gruesome sights, and a considerable tourist trade has been built around around the spectacle. Which is nice.

However, there are those who sit in exalted places who dislike such enterprise; following their deliberations behind closed doors, a decision has been made to restore the wretched wreck to some measure of uprightness so that the unfortunate hulk can be towed to a nearby port, where legions of happy workmen can carry out repairs and restore the ruin to its pristine glory.

When they've finished the restoration work on the Emperor Jose Borracho, what use are they going to put him to? If he sank once, he'll sink again - perhaps in deeper waters next time...