Scottish Independence

 

Sometime in the future, when a new world order emerges from the soup, I predict that Scotland will see sense and will break away from being a colony and seek independence from our unkind rulers in Australia. Of course, as we're a nation of serfs and cap-doffers we'll need to employ a decent and well inbred royal family to worship and hold up as we inhabit some kind of golden age of deference. So here are my suggestions for their titles (above and mainly going clockwise):

The Queen of Fruit Cake. The Prince of Whales. The Duke of Kirkcaldy (seen here in the form of a mutant sailing ship as he is also a shape-shifter) and of course the spoiled and glamorous Princess Crud. We'll be prosperous, strong and true in their benevolent hands.

"There was a boy, he lived in the hills with his family. Let's say in Glen Glen, near to Ben Ben. He rode around the hills on a small motorcycle. The locals thought that he wasn't quite right, something was either missing or extra. One day he took a bag of blue sheep dye up the hill with him. He emptied the dye into the stream up in the glen. As it turned a bright blue the water flowed down the slope, over small waterfalls, across marsh and heather until it joined a larger river. The stream was now blue. 

When people noticed it they said it was an act of environmental terrorism, or maybe Toryism or perhaps he was just a Rangers fan. The river flowed blue for a while. People took photos with drones and posted them here and there. A blue river running across a dull piece of Scotland and nobody could really agree on it's meaning, if it even had one. Was it just a piece of fun or protest, was it some destructive and dangerous thing? What did it represent?

The press and media asked the boy what his intentions were. He struggled to answer but eventually said that he just did it because he liked blue and blue was Scotland's colour (like the football team) and he liked his blue motorcycle. Eventually they left him alone and the blue dye just faded away in the water, bit by bit. 

In the end nothing was really harmed and the boy didn't put dye into the river ever again. The blue was there for a while, strong and bright but then it was gone, as if it had never been. That's how things go, we get distracted for a bit then settle down again. It's just that people do thoughtless things all the time, and deny and misunderstand the consequences and meanings of their actions. But as for the boy, he is still up on the hills, on his motorcycle, just surveying the landscape, dreaming into the blue yonder."