There was a tiny wild rabbit eating the nasturtiums. I’d planted them in three long containers to add some colour to the trellis I’d built last year to shield the growing number of beehives at the bottom of the garden.They’ve just begun to bloom are proving to be a tasty breakfast for this wild youngster.He’s standing up on his hind-legs , the better to get to grips with his meal.The wife thought it was a rat until she saw it hop.
Norneverland is the kind of place where something like this can happen or where someone will pipe up on the radio and say something either in innocent naievity or simple, outright foolishness, like ..”They shouldn’t be building houses near these bonfire sites, anyway!”
The astounded , almost speechless reporter or commentator has obviously missed the back -story here. These houses take second place to everything else in his worldview.There the “fact” in the speaker’s mind that the “bonfire ground” is a sacred tract that should never have been sullied by something as mundane as a housing complex.To this individual that is akin to building homes on the very bones of his forefathers . Their heaving and restless souls are unquiet.
Meanwhile, the government is busily handing out free “Holiday Passes” to any destination of choice except Tunisia, as home-owners abandon their houses and teeter down the road dragging small-wheeled suitcases behind them. Right on cue a specially- trained squad of officials and artisans begin to board- up the abandoned homes with specially designed “Kulture Shields” which they pronounce to be both fire-proof and sophisticated anti-vandal devices.These shields will remain for the duration of the ceremonials which may take several days or extend for another few weeks.
This is a more economic option than declaring the huge towering eighty feet high bonfire structures as health and safety hazards and arresting everyone involved . No one, as yet has been able to discover the magical source of the sacred wooden pallets and magically -infused rubber tyres. There is talk that they are made in a series of underground factories hidden deep in a cavern beneath the Mourne Mountains and then blessed by a coven of monks, but as they appear unheralded every year , no one has ever been able to actually see them arrive . There is talk that like the wild rabbit rising to feed, they appear mushroom-like as dawn breaks .
The Housing Minister has washed his hands of the affair , as have the police , fire department and the security forces.Some things ,such as the black arts of magic, are still an unknown quantity to them .Best be safe than sorry though. The Kulture Shields and the Holidays Passes will have to do for now.
Meanwhile in another part of Norneverland …far …far away …the wee wild rabbit has moved into my neighbour’s garden. He has possibly heard about that particularly fine crunchy lettuce that is currently growing there.
I always wondered where those pallets came from. Some of those structures appear 3stories tall and tires! The toxicity boggles the mind. Are they brought in by boat?
Well …sarah, …As i implied , there is some arcane magical process at work whereby the pallets and tyres appear in the hours of darkness and create a sort of hypnotic state in the citizens. This creates a social amnesia too so that from year to year no one anywhere remembers anything from the previous year and so continually repeat the process forever.If this was not the case and sanity prevailed ,everyone would know of the waste, the criminality and the obvious danger of lighting a huge 80 foot bonfire beside a row of homes. Unfortunately no one is aware of any of this .It’s as though it is a huge open lunatic asylum run bt the inmates.