The Country Curmudgeon: Unhappy days
By Roy Hicks
Thursday, February 21, 2008 10:19 AM PST
Things were not cheery in the Yorkshire manse. Former King and Lady McBubba had been suffering for the last seven years after getting kicked out of the Great White Castle at Dunce-Inane.
During all those years they had feverishly conspired and schemed and plotted how they might possibly be able to get back into the Great White Castle, but it would not be easy. Former King McBubba was politically a dead duck, not only prohibited by law from ever being king again, but the people of the land were so weary of his endless personal shenanigans they would never let him back into the castle by himself. But between the two they had hatched a plan.
Lady McBubba had managed to get herself elected Duchess of Yorkshire, and although she’d never accomplished anything in this position, she hallucinated being re-elected as Queen of Dunce-Inane. Then she and the former king could sneak back into the Great White Castle to continue their political mischief.
At first it seemed this should be fairly easy. Lady McBubba had terrific name-recognition all over the land at a time when no other challenger had yet appeared, and it seemed she might be a shoo-in. The slavish scribes all but guaranteed her anointment and coronation at their next political ball. Then came the whirlwind.
Out of nowhere came Brahma Orama, an unknown but charismatic young prince with a gift for mesmerizing speech, who seemed like a gale of fresh air compared to the public-weary McBubbas. In preliminary jousts, Lady McBubba’s seemingly invincible early lead in the march back to Dunce-Inane evaporated almost overnight.
Dinner at the long table was not pleasant that evening. “This is all your fault!” Lady McBubba gritted.
“Whutever do you mean, darlin’?” the bloated former king inquired.
“You know dam’ well what I mean,” Lady McBubba snarled. “You’re like a sea-anchor dragging me down. I could win this thing easily if only people didn’t think putting me back in the Great White Castle would mean lugging you back there as baggage. ‘Two for the price of one’, indeed!”
“But darlin’, you’re gonna need me,” McBubba whined softly. “Ah’m the ‘po-litticul genius’ who got us there the first time, and now Ah can finish the job by putting you up fr ... er, ‘advising you from the sidelines,’”
“Oh, yeah?” Lady McBubba barked. “How do you intend to get me elected? By attacking this Moorish prince who’s pretending to be the reincarnation of Prince Jayefkay who won 48 years ago by appealing to young people hoping for some kind of meaningful change? If they ever find out what an imposter he actually is they’d probably reject him, but who’s going to spread that message? Surely not you!”
Former King McBubba had no answer, but merely stared gloomily into his drinking cup. He reflected once again how this was a marriage made in hell he was powerless to escape.
“I should have listened to my advisers,” Lady McBubba seethed. “They told me seven years ago I should have divorced you for the philandering skunk you really are. I should have cut you loose and made a very loud public statement to the effect that ‘I am not Mrs. McBubba. I dissociate myself from all the stinking shenanigans of my former husband, and I promise a new and different kind of leadership dedicated to home and family and friends.’ Dammit, that’s what I should have done.”
“Well, it’s a little late for that now,” former King McBubba said.
“How well I know!” she snapped.
