The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet – Chapter the Last

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TOM LEWIS writes:

Damned inconvenient. Cricket on. You’d think they could spice it up a bit by losing the third test just to get the odds up a bit and increase the take at the gate. Yes, a double, m’dear.

Now, where was I? Don’t really know since I died, but what was it I wanted to say to you lot? Oh yes, ran into Jack t’other day and he’s got a few tidbits of a yarn. Apparently that wheat thing’s over. No James, the massage is at 3, isn’t it?

Um, where was I? Ah yes. Well, old Jack tells me he’s got another yarn and I’m s’posed to see him next week to get the guts of it. Dunno, really. There’s a Chrissie party on and were having a memorial for Harold Holt over at the Chinese down the road at the Cheviot Beach Club so we mightn’t get a chance to get it all down before this bloody mob close down for Christmas. Journalists. I ask you. Always the same: never let a good news story get in the way of a holiday.

Anyway, here’s the last bit Jack gave me about the wheat thing. Happy Hogmanay and we’ll be back in the new year or so. Have to rush – the massage was at 2 after all.

Love to all and remember: vote Liberal. They may be a pack of incompetent bastards, but they’re our incompetent bastards. Mud in your eye.

 

 

The Chronicles of Nadir

As told from the grave by Tom Lewis

 

Tale the First

The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet

Chapter The Last

The Final Report

As clouds of smoke billowed around the Teak Table and the bush firefighters were gaining Labor [sic] pre-selection in droves, other momentous portents were occurring in the land of Nadir. While the snow melted and the water rose, rats were leaving sinking ships like a drawn treader and faster than the increasing drought could reduce stock numbers (or even numbats). Little Lucy’s husband was making a concerted push on the water front and had made so many feel-good announcements that she was, victory over the Lady Jadis apart, clearly flushed with success.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Cabinet, Little Johnnie, in a public relations coup the like of which had not been seen since Mrs Petrov was dragged screaming from a Lermontov airliner in Darwin, the coalface had been closed down as a gesture towards appeasing the lunatic fringe on global warming.

AW Board had escaped by the skin of his teeth and had them firmly sunk into the double board shuffle somewhere in the Channel Islands while his erstwhile colleagues slowly committed suicide pending their respective committals.

With the Christmas hols rapidly approaching, the children had spent useful time relieving the tension of their adventures by installing themselves on their respective thrones in the park outside the Goulburn RSL. Although it had caused a bit of a stink at the time, as is the way of these things, like the coalface, time heals all wounds and things are easily forgotten if not always forgiven or vice versa.

Alexander had become both Queen of the Faeries and Foreign Minister as a fully-fledged member of the Inner Cabinet (price $482 plus GST – the modern equivalent of 20 pieces of silver, or, a pound of flesh as it was known in Treasury, the portfolio the now enthroned King Peter had been given and the only kingdom he was ever likely to rule). As a further diversionary tactic a former Jewish journalist, and Middle East expert, Rosie Rosie (always a red’s red) had been appointed as ambassador to the newly created territory of Palestine, a traditional historical homeland the size of Monaco which now sat on a floating island half a kilometer above the ancient land of Brobdignag.

Queen Amanda, for her part, had become, well, slightly larger than she formerly had been in life, and was given extra responsibility as a new Australian Territory in the Great Southern Ocean about 50º 25’ E, 28º 45’S where she was now inhabited by a colony of lesbian sea lions, all of whom had passed the recently introduced dictation test, knew all about mateship, Australian values, bbqing in cold climates, and turkey basting as well as having promised to vote Liberal for the rest of their natural lives. The turkey basting had initially seemed odd and could have been scuttled until it was explained to Jeanette, a well known animal liberationist (after all she had taken Little Johnnie away from his mum) that there were no actual turkeys involved just a long plastic tube and a thing that looked like the business end of a Klaxon horn on a model T Ford. Jeanette had always had a soft spot for the model T and from time to time had fantasies about Corder and a dickie seat. She often had fantasies about dickie seats but that still hadn’t stopped THAT WOMAN getting pre-selection for Southern Highlands.

For Little Lucy, being a Queen was little different to being a Little Lucy really. After all, once one was born to rule, one was born to rule (although there had been a tad of trouble about that combined with being a Roman Catholic in 1688). Still, time heals all wounds, even being thrown over at your fist popular election as Lord Mayor for a bedraggled chook the age of Methuselah with the brains of a herring (and personal hygiene to go with it).

Mr Patel, on the other hand had struck up a clandestine correspondence with Mr Lodhi. Both were planning a break-out known to the law as an appeal. The thin-lipped veinless Ruddock had his eye on them like a, well, not like a hawke, (he, after all, was from the other side) but more like a Caldwell (come to think of it, he was from the other side as well but, it was an old saying: two Wongs don’t make a white and there was no point in playing with a Lodhi weapon.) Of course, every cloud has a silver lining and at least Mr Patel knew he didn’t have osteoporosis – he could now see the bones in his wrists for himself.

So, as the fire gutters and sleep draws on, gathering the loose ends as any good children’s story does, we find the four at the end of their particular adventure, returned from the Land of Nadir, blessed by the Scion and happily ruling over a grateful populace seemingly forever. Yet, while this is a children’s’ story, we live in an adult world with the dangers of war not yet receded. Home by Christmas becomes yet another casualty of realpolitic if not of a terrible war. In fact, in the time it has taken in the telling of this tale, the dangers only increased. ‘Tis but the way of the world (and of tedious, crude, laboured, Christian allegories) that the struggle never ends.

Unbeknownst to them, the children, Little Johnnie, Jeanette, Corder and all their fellow travellers were about to face their greatest challenge since the days of the Communist Party Case.

From the North, suddenly, unannounced, except by himself, had come the threat of Prince Crispian now allied with the Wicked Witch of the South, an evil, fire-breathing, unmarried, childless, whining, grating, gyrating, combinationalist, red both in hair and craw, Jules of the Galliard, who was to Dowland and courtly Elizabethan dancing what the rulers of the Peoples’ Republic of China had been to Tiananmen square. Suddenly, crocodiles were developing Hawke eyes.

Like the endless ebb and flow of the big bang cycle, force against force was aligned and the ever to be repeated battle loomed. Once more unto the breach, the mettle of their pasture was again to be tested: this time it would not just be about wheat.

770 thoughts on “The Scion, the Wheat, and the Cabinet – Chapter the Last”

  1. Tony Abbott is a troll.
    He seeks out ways to get a reaction from “lefties”, for no bigger reason than his own amusement. Why else would he have reintroduced imperial honour, and then knighted Prince Philip? Or led a pro-apartheid protest? Or dropped the term “holocaust” in Parliament, in any context other than Nazi genocide? He simply likes watching anyone to his left (which includes most of Australia) squirm.
    An unpleasant characteristic in a uni student, utterly indefensible in a 57 year old man, and outright destructive in a Prime Minister.

  26. I had a go at adding up the 2 party preferred vote for the Queensland election and so far it’s in at around 51/49 to Labor.

    So if that’s right, Labor got around the same vote it had in 2009, only missing out on some marginals.

    Also it meant that preferences added another 3% to its vote compared to 2012, so that’s something.

  30. BK,

    I’m delighted Our Truly Amazing Leader (aka Joe6pack) took such decisive action.

    It would have been appalling to face tomorrow without your wondrous summation of what the papers say.

  32. Fiona
    Never fear, BK is here!
    It has been quite arduous lately as there has been so many good things to link in the Dawn Patrol. Must be the subject matter that is available.

  33. BK,

    You know how much you are appreciated, but it never hurts to use the best butter.

    And how is the absolutely gorgeous Alarm Clock Dog?

  37. I know it’s only a TV show but this new one on ABC has a family in witness protection. So far so good.

    But why do they write characters who are so STUPID, like the mother, who – having forgotten her daughter’s birthday – declares she will access her forbidden bank account to make up for the omission, thus betraying her location?

    And then here’s the son, who is pissed off because he doesn’t have an iPhone to take to his first day at the new school.

    They have a very nasty bunch of nogoodnik, drug-dealing thugs after them, bent on torturing and murdering them. They have cops dedicated to keeping this fate at bay by completely disappearing the entire family at taxpayer expense.

    And all these complete and utter turkeys can think of is birthday presents and iPhones? When their lives depend on following instructions to the letter from people trying to help them?

    If I knew where they were holed up I’d dob them myself. And I dob the ABC scriptwriters who invented these idiots.

    These people are like the regulation brats in Spielberg movies who always cock everything up for the adults, and who, if I had my way, would be fed to the velociraptors/aliens/Thugee heart ripper-outerers post haste, thus rendering the movie to an enjoyable 7 minute short subject so that at least it had Trop Fest potential.

  38. BK,

    One of my next-door neighbours has been known to describe his two resident cats as sharing the IQ of half a lettuce leaf.

    On that scale, our pm might – if we’re lucky – have the IQ of one lettuce leaf cell.

    More seriously, his behaviour is becoming increasingly disturbing.

    I don’t even want to canvass the possibilities as I want this site to survive without defamation threats.

    However, I’m all sure you can imagine the various diagnoses I’ve been considering.

  39. Bushfire Bill,

    I love your ability to skewer people / incidents / films with consummate ridicule!

    Thank you for my best laugh today.

  40. BK

    As did our mooo cows eons ago when NZ introduced daylight saving. In addition to panic over fading curtains there was a huge panic over cows stopping giving milk.

    Day 1 turning up in the wee hours for the morning milking the herd would be crowded around the gate. They looked very much “where the fuack have you been” ? By day three it was “Hoy! you lazy mob , time for milking”.

    NZ was like Australia when it came to the introduction and all the same curtain fading horrors were spread about. However it was different as after the three year trial public opinion was such that to stop it would cause a revolt.

  42. Now the idiot son is on Facebook trying to contact his girlfriend.

    The mother attempted to open up a credit card under her own name.

    She also ran into another car due to nervous driving. The car was a Mercedes that belonged to a judge.

    The husband, upon finding all this out, is being conciliatory.

    I’d have broken a pot over both their heads, and then turned them out into the street with a “Come and get me” placard hanging around their necks.

    As I said, I know it’s only a TV show, but if they want punters to watch it, they’d better invent some realistic characters who actually accept the premise of the show – that their lives are in danger – and that they should go out of their way to co-operate or else be killed immediately.

    I mean, if you were in protective custody under an assumed name, in a different city, with completely new identities, you’d twig that things were serious, wouldn’t you? That’s pretty basic, isn’t it? There’s plenty of room for character development outside those fairly obvious parameters, isn’t there?

    GET REAL ABC!

  43. P.S. The same goes for Yank couples in movies who, faced with imminent extinction by man-eating shark, collapsing building, multiple gunshot wounds, gutting and/or garotting, stop in the middle of all this, in their one brief second of safety, to pash each other off and sometimes even tell each other that they love each other

    FFS, if HI was like that, love her or not, I’d let the piranhas and the angry ants get her.

  44. Hello all, back from a near death experience to match that of the PM.
    Fiona, you should have two emails from me to forward on to BK if you would be so kind.
    I will bring you up to date with my situation tomorrow, when I have sufficient energy and concentration to write.

  48. So our NE is now an International Embarrassment and it doesn’t rate a mention on TV?

    Catalyst – that stopped being news some time ago.

  49. Kambah Mick,

    Have forwarded (BK, you should have two emails).

    I hope all is well with you now – was wondering where you were.

    Best wishes.

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