The pond watched PMQs last night entranced - it had already sat through the new Chancellor getting a burly grilling - and then woke to the news that Gove had gone.
Where had this wilfully destructive new interest come from?
The pond realised the reptiles had been right. As an innocent, the pond had started on the colonial invader, the Graudian down under, but soon the pond had gone hard core, and immediately clicked on to the UK version to sup on Crace and Hyde and the like, and Boris in full, flustered, chaotic flight ...
It was all the fault of the damned Graudian, even worse than the days when the pond used to read Punch for the cartoons, and occasionally get Muggeridged, and the New Statesman for the Webbs ...
The pond also learned that a good guy with a gun might not be much chop, if caught loitering in the wings, or unable to spot a loon armed with a military grade rifle taking pot shots from a roof ...
But there'll be time enough for a distraction from the killing fields with the Killer ...
First to Boris, and who better to say an elegy than the bromancer?
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
What a deal-maker. Do a deal and subs and get nothing out of it. As for Shakespearian tragedy, the pond knew immediately what the bromancer was getting at ...
Falstaff: “To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit but the true and perfect image of life indeed.”
Yes, Boris had to be Falstaff ...O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag – It’s so elegant So intelligent
Enter Falstaff and Bardolph
Falstaff: Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an old applejohn. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking. I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewers horse. The inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me.
Bardolph: Sir John, you are so fretful you cannot live long.
Falstaff: Why, there is it. Come sing me a bawdy song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous enough: swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy house once in a quarter of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well and in good compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.
Bardolph: Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.
Falstaff: Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the knight of the burning lamp.
Bardolph: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
Falstaff: No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a deaths-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face. My oath should be By this fire, thats Gods angel. But thou art altogether given over, and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou rannest up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, theres no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandlers in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years, God reward me for it.
Exeunt Falstaff and Bardolph from the pond so that it might enjoy a Graudian cartoon ...
Yes, that door knocker is distilled essence of Boris, unless the pond got it wrong, and the bromancer had moved on to another metaphor ...
The captain of the Titanic! Be Boris British.
Why didn't the pond think of that, in a Brexiting bromancer way ...
Indeed, indeed, such an astonishing success that Brexit, and yet strangely Britain has never been more embroiled in Europe and its dismal affairs, thanks to the sociopathic Vlad the impaler, such that the pond even overheard a British politician talking of "our Europe" ..
What else?
Well there's Jimbo doing his bit to ensure nothing might happen to trouble the reptiles, and there's another minor Milner, doing his best to downplay Covid, but the pond resolved not to go there with the Pooh of the deep north, and so it had to be the Killer, seeking to douse all that talk of gun trouble ...
And so on with the distraction, because when not celebrating the Covid killing fields and showing a dire fear of masks, the Killer knows how to be distracting ...
How good of the Killer to avoid all the other distractions ...
And so for a final distracting Killer gobbet ...
Indeed, indeed, and let's not worry about any of those other distractions ...
And usually the pond would end it there, but the pond must note that today petulant Peta verged on treason and treachery ...
It fair set the pond's teeth on edge, it did ... petulant Peta in with a chance with Albo?
And that set the pond to musing, because it had been a near run thing as to whether the mutton Dutton or the beefy pure Angus boofhead should have made it onto the revolving spot in the pond's mast.
Sure, the pond was prescient, the pond knew that the mutton Dutton would win through, but there have been some great efforts of late, great contenders still striving for the top spot, so that their visage might sit aside Dr. Strangelove, as noted in this Crikey story ...
On ya Charlie, (paywall), that sent the punters into a News Corp frenzy, such that the pond might have missed beefy Angus boofhead doing what boofheads do, but you also came up with this one ...
And those splendid outings by the beefy purebred Angus allow the pond to do the right, decent, and proper thing, and finish with a celebratory Wilcox ...