ALL SPACED-OUT

“Good morning Mr Magpie …and how is your wife today?”
Show the old beggar a bit of respect. That’s the ticket. Keep him sweet and mention the wife too. One for sorrow ,but two for joy .Just hope that he and the wife are still together and all will be well.Magpies are birds of magic , carrying a drop of the devil’s blood on their tongue and bringing death to the home.When you see one you’d better spit over your shoulder three times.. They can predict the future , of course and manage all the secrets of the world. In parts of China they are considered sacred.
There ‘s a big magpie sitting across from the house on a wire .He’s rocking back and forth with his balancing pole of a long tail swaying in the slipstream of smoke coiling up fuggily from the chimney , his chattering call chittering and clacking that this space is definitely his. He’s hanging like some black and white flag on a waving flagpole. It’s a gloriously bright and crisp September day and all is well with the world.
Meanwhile……
What a week that was. The pantomime continued with our government ministers signing on for duty and immediately signing off again. They are going to do this every week for at least three or four years. It’s a running joke in Norneverland and it would take much too long to explain the gag to any inquisitive stranger, but needless to say , it’s the kind of ribald cackle that passes for humour in this land of wonky wonder .We expect some of our less- well mentally- endowed politicos to act like this .We’ve become used to silly stunts and crass flummery after lifetimes of this kind of thing .
It was a fortunate , though, that our Junior Revolutionary Jamie distracted us all away from studying the stale joke too closely….some might say that he spoiled the “punchline” of the weekly joke, by dropping the so- far unexploded bombshell that Our Grand Vizier …er, First Minister might actually have his fingers stuck in some greasy financial till called the NAMA scandal. Jamie arrived in the nick of time to take our gaze away from the fact that the political vehicle is stuck, unmoving with its wheels uselessly spinning off the ground. As the clowns and jugglers stood around watching those spinning wheels, scratching their heads in unison, Jamie claimed that he had some evidence of the Grand Vizier’s wrong-doings but they were actually invisible and could only be seen by him alone , using a special ultra -violet light of his own devising. This is much like the same magical lamp that the Chief of Police uses to read all the Very Important Evidence he receives . You might almost believe that the Grand Vizier and Jamie set this stunt up together, such is the interlocking jigsaw quality of the ruse .He also seems to know an awful lot about the inner workings of the Grand Vizier’s office and his party, the DUP. Some say there might be spies operating in the palace but you can never really tell. He has past form at this kind of thing with the Haas talks of last winter , where he had insider information handed to him and a lot of people assume that he’s either a puppet of the Grand Vizier or that the Grand Vizier is actually in his small , squeaky pocket…..tucked away with the fluff , the bits of string and the bag of coloured marbles.
Nobody really knows the truth of it because in Norneverland nobody actually knows what reality or truth mean. Our police services don’t actually have to provide any evidence about anything .As long as it sounds nice , they say whatever pops into their minds . That’s always worked very well for about a hundred years now and nobody thinks that it should be changed. If it’s not broken why would you fix it , right? No forget I said that last bit .Roads in Norneverland are dug up and re-tarred on a never-ending rota basis whether or not they need to be fixed. It’s how fair employment is maintained and why there is always work for everyone , everywhere . There is absolutely no unemployment anywhere in this magical land for that very reason .It makes perfect sense doesn’t it?
Some good news has arrived just today in Norneverland ,by our specially trained magpies.In Norneverland we have trained all these magical , intelligent birds to talk ,just like parrots and being much more intelligent than silly carrier – pigeons , they have become our main means of communication, speaking with a slight Norneverland burr, carrying important messages across the land. Word has it that NASA scientists in far-off America have just discovered that there is a very strong possibility that water exists on the faraway planet Mars. Many simply believe that there are no planets at all , of course …merely little holes in the canopy of the night sky, but some have other ideas. There is whispered gossip that beyond this realm this news has appeared already , some months ago , on some magical device called a television.
This is the news our Grand Vizier Peter has been waiting for this past four weeks .He has been forward -planning his escape from politics and Norneverland itself, for a very long time .Years ago he bought up a series of properties in the land of Florida. These properties are close to Florida’s Cape Canaveral , the home of the Kennedy Space Centre, where legend has it , huge rockets were shot at the moon long-ago during the last century .They say that during the very same year of 1969 when Norneverland’s natives revolted when the authorities had the temerity to shut down all the public houses and were put under martial law with troops brought in to quell their passion, there is talk that they actually sent some men in a huge rocket into space and even landed them on the moon. These events apparently happened within weeks of each other. This loose talk is hard to believe. Such things are thought to be nigh impossible since it has been long -proven by our own great scientists in Norneverland that the moon is actually a flat cheesy disc, no bigger than a china tea- saucer. The thought of men pretending to land on it fairly beggars belief and is presumed to be the tales of madmen.
Our Great Leader has witheld any information to the contrary, lest it frighten those who still believe that the entire world is a flat disc held up by four large brightly coloured dragons and he has pretended to vacation in Portrush while in reality spending these past years in Florida insinuating himself into the Mars space programme. That first rocket to Mars may set off for the Red Planet sooner than the world has been led to believe .I have it on good authority from our Junior Revolutionary Boy Wonder himself that Peter has already been measured up for his space-suit and has been in strict training these many months . He had a small accident recently in the centrifugal chamber which left him feelin nauseated but a recent short spell in hospital sorted that out .An entire blood -change can really work wonders too …just ask Keith Richards.
So there you have it .Our Great leader is soon to be “not of this world” ….Mars is his ultimate destination …There he intends to set up the first outreach colony of spaced -out space cadets of the Red Planet. He’s even bringing along a special Flat Earth Society flag to place atop the geodesic dome of the space station.
What do you mean I made this all up and need proof for any of these far- flung fables ?….I’ve got a set of invisible copies filed away ,plus audio tapes and several disc drives full of filmed evidence all neatly locked away in the Chief Constable’s safe .Just ask him to let you have a wee geek at them .Not all of us are conspiracy theorists, y’know…..