The Lords of Misrule

Well it rained cliches on Mr Khan’s parade. By two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon it was all over bar the shouting. Petards had been hoisted right, left and centre, the government stayed where it was in lieu of anything more useful to do, and the Khan-ites wondered where the party had gone and why it was that Khan-in-chief was busy consorting with honey-drinkers, miscellaneous floor crossers and some miserable-looking tosspots that were having bad hair days.

Those of a suspicious frame of mind might wonder at the speed with which it all came together. The Supreme Court delivered itself of a prescription that was distilled common sense and within minutes there was an unseemly scramble to abide by the rule of law, not something either of the feuding parties had at the forefront of their minds previously. In a trice there was a semi-orderly queue proclaiming the wisdom of the Supreme Court and why had we all not thought of that before and quick let’s have a Thanksgiving and all go home before the weekend.

Now I wonder where all that came from? A bit too slick by half for my foxy frame of mind, bit of a whiff of collusion somewhere along the way, arms twisted here and there in the dark behind the arras as in ‘C’mon now chaps, shape up, time to put the toys away and stop throwing them around the playpen. Toddle off home and let’s have a look at things in a day or so, shall we?’

Supreme Court upholds the dignity of the law; aggrieved parties tug their forelocks in the direction of the Justices and their Olympian solution to say nothing of the most elegant cutting of a Gordian knot I have seen for years and there it was… Poof! The Lockdown That Never Was hustled itself into not happening, everybody pointed fingers at everybody else for doing this-that-or-the-other, TV anchors went into barely concealed paroxysms of disappointment and the stock exchange all but spontaneously combusted so happy was it that the sky was not, after all, going to fall.

Come Wednesday morning it was to wake, butter my toast and ladle on the excellent bitter lemon marmalade purchased from a farmers market, warmly recommended — to find that victory was being proclaimed by all and sundry. There was a kind of political correctness about it, no pun intended. Everybody got — or kidded themselves they had got — a prize. Nobody had lost anything and, mercifully, it seems that no lives had been lost either as the PTI revised its casualty figures and decided that reports of fatalities attributed to government forces actions were in fact a fabrication of an over-enthusiastic media. No harm done there, then. Certainly not.

Assorted government figures were having a bit of a victory lap and a preen; and umpteen million people got on with scratching a living only vaguely aware of the fact that nothing of much importance in the overall scheme of things had happened somewhere a long way away and it was all over now and we can go back to discussing the wisdom or otherwise of doing press-ups having won a cricket match.

What won it for the government in the end was the deployment of the juggernaut of indifference, the tsunami of apathy, the vastness of a population that by and large would rather be doing something other than listening to and watching a bunch of overpaid and intellectually under-resourced snolleygosters ultimately all look… errr… somewhat foolish.

But back to those Lords of Misrule and medieval custom and practice. They were selected generally from the peasantry by drawing lots, a primitive form of election, and presided over the Feast of Fools at the winter equinox, the day when the worst of winter was over. They watched over the Bacchanalia ( …remember that honey?) or Saturnalia for those with a more scurrilous turn of mind and turned traditional hierarchies briefly on their heads, masters becoming servants and vice-versa. With the winter solstice on the near horizon and legal process now in train, one might be forgiven for wondering what the upcoming Feast of Fools has in store for us. Cooked goose perhaps — but who’s? Tootle-pip y’all.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2016.

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