The King Is Dead, Long Live The Squire - A Regal Romp (Part The Last)

Part The Last – A Squire Reinstated


My time in captivity amongst those heathen brutes was a torture that no civilised man should have to endure. Inadequate cutlery, sub-standard cuts of steak and a distinct lack of a decent drop of cognac were just some of the many hellish torments that your poor Squire was forced to endure. Really, rarely has a man been so shabbily treated. They only pressed and laundered my clothes twice a week. It was like the Renaissance had never happened, really it was.

However, having little else to do with myself, I eventually fell into conversation with some of my captors and began to get to know them a little better. There was the Hairy One, the Even Hairier One, the One With The Beard, the One Who Knew Stuff About Sports and the One Who Looked A Bit Like A Woman Except For The Moustache. I began to realise that they weren't such bad blighters after all. I mean, obviously they were Welsh and, as such, would never reach the lofty heights attainable by a solid and true Englishman, naturally, but they had their good points.

The One With The Beard, for example, was a fair cook when he put his hand to it. The Even Hairier One had always wanted to be a concert pianist but had been let down by his unnaturally stumpy fingers. The One Who Looked A Bit Like A Woman Except For The Moustache… well, to be honest, he was a bit odd. Never quite got on with the fella, shifty eyes, far too close together. Plus he looked like a woman except for the moustache.

As the deadline for imminent parts severing approached with still no sign of any interest from my bounder of a brother, they confessed that they weren't really violent men at all and that they had thought that their demands would be acceded to by now, what with me being the Prime Minister's brother and all. I sympathised with them – after all, I myself had thought that The Younger might have been feeling guilt-stricken at having embroiled his beloved elder sibling in such a beastly hash and done his utmost to extricate him at once (alright, I may be laying it on a bit thick here but I didn't think the cad would leave me to a grisly dismemberment). It looked like I was here to stay…

As we neared the end of my second week with the chaps, they confessed that it didn't look like I was going to be either paid for or rescued and they'd have to let me go. The food was pretty low and, more importantly, so was the booze. Besides, while we'd been cooped up here, the Welsh had decided that they missed the comforting tight stranglehold of the yoke of British imperialism and had given up on the whole "separate sovereign" thing anyway, thus rendering the Welsh Liberation Front redundant. And, really, who can blame them?

A free man and no longer king of all I surveyed [1], I trudged, hitched, stumbled and, at one point, swam my way back merry old London town, intending to have rather strong words and even stronger fisticuffs with my duplicitous brother. However, upon my arrival at Downing Street, muddied, bruised, soggy and bedraggled, I was informed that he was busy having a really good shout at the other politicians and couldn't be disturbed. Deciding that this could wait for another time (and not wishing to be knocked to the ground once more by a suit-encased slab of beef), I retired to my own quarters, freshened up somewhat and poured myself a decent drop of brandy. The not-inconsiderable wheels of my frankly fearsome intellect began to turn. My revenge against The Younger would be slow, cruel and merciless and he would rue the day that he chosen to make a sop out of the eldest sibling. Oh yes, my friends, he would rue…but that is a tale for another time…




Here Endeth The Tale


[1] Even if all I surveyed were valleys, sheep and more valleys