11325COW.OPH From the Princess Cordelia, Proconsul for the Extraterrestrial Settlements and Minister of Waste Disposal, at the Ministry of Truth, Palais d’Orleans, Port aux Bicyclettes, Isle de Belsize, in the Free Colombian Trade Federation.

Comelier without, Comelier within:-

ALLIES NAIL TARGET STRIKER

The works of the honkiland philosophers, unless they are intelligible enough to provoke violent disagreement, grind exceedingly boringly. Marketable journalistic copy needs be composed in the manner of a fairy story. Them and Us or, if WeRus, we and they. Winners and Losers. Goodies and Baddies. Top Teams and Top Players. So here is some news from the Transfer Market..Actually this is still Cordelia from Gloria’s Domestic Market, but the news is from the Transfer Market.

‘Come on without!’, the Grand Ayatollah has been twitterfacing, ‘Come out within! You’ve not seen nothing like the Mighty Sin’. But the come-out.. the outcome .. in honkiland is never the expected outcome. We have heard a lot about the financial plight of top clubs in the Honkiland Football League. To be a leading club you need the leading players, the fatcatties. But, up till now, we have never heard who it is who is stashing the luncheon vouchers that are the legitimate property of the dutiful debt-laden leaders languishing in their economic growth. The All Lies, you may be aware, are the topmost club, so altruistic that recently, as has been inevitable, they have been granting freedom of the City even to dozens of fans said to be supporters of rival teams, so virtuous that Nergel, Nergie Nergelson, the tutelary deity of the Pinkie Pirates, has conferred upon them the duty of reforming everyone else. The Sphingian Brothers, better known as Desolate Wogland, the bottom of the table team, certain to be relegated, have been stashing the TV and season ticket receipts, though there are not too many of the latter, despite the price increases, leaving them without any respectable strikers or defenders. The goalie is abysmal. Latest scrore:: Allies 2 Sphinges 0. The All Lies were diligent enough to no fly zone the Sphinges to ensure their liberation before the Sphinges had a chance to provably foul any fantatics... I don’t know who these fanatics are who are causing so much trouble to the Tum Tums. In the Sphingian stadium they are said to be fans of the Pinkies but in the stadia of the All Lies presumably not. Maybe they are tattooed freelance mercenaries on loan from the non-league Big Nose Party.

The mills of Nergel grind rapid and exceeding spectacular – liberating the slave through transformation into a flour... flower. The reaped and digested expect to be granted the freedom to adopt the Pirate’s religion, to be converted into a pink, a carnation. But it may be a daffodil, even a Black Narcissus. This natty micro-tunicola that adorns me, I am assured, is the former corolla of a highly elevated honkie, shed during some annual refurbishment, a purple daffodil. Lizilith ordained that he be

United with Echo or Ego. It was Echo but he thought it was Ego. This sort of tragedy is commonplace in honkiland. The voice of Lizilith is be unheard amid the racket of their own authority. The unwanted slave who fails to knuckle under is granted the privilege of liberation. A million mobile phones cannot compensate.. but I am not convinced that Nergel has found the ideal solution.

Debbie has had me practicing in front of the mirror. If I were a honkie, she has been assuring me, and if I performed the exercises in front of myself, I would be bound to sign the Treaty. I was not greatly impressed. What was the routine? Cross the legs, uncross, recross the other way round, flash the sapphires and gaze with bleary eyes. Amazons have hefty quadricipides. I am a bit on the masculine side, not endowed with the musculature of such as Fatima with the more feminine anatomy and only been around in this incarnation for some seventeen years.. if that..and am not therefore full size.. We never reach full size. It is asymptotic. So my legs are not that big by Amazon standards. But, nevertheless, the performance is a considerable feet.. feat. Amazons prefer to lie in the sun, flashing the webbing twixt their toes, sipping mango juice from a beaked flagon, flicking out their tongues to tease the Lepidopteran sisters or gently and lovingly swishing the butterflies with their Amazon tails. When honkies try this the butterfly sisters are inadvertently trapped in the gaster.. known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome.. or Lepidoptera in the Gaster..and the witch has to rescue the winged sister... If you need more buxomly femininity to be convinced into signing the treaty, no doubt my sister Rogan will be prepared to oblige...

I would however advise any liberated sisters who have been chosen by Nergel to be heroines that even a houri, perhaps even being a daffodil, might be preferable to staring at themselves for all eternity. Sabre-toothed tigers when they encounter themselves in the looking glass do not always greet themselves ..each other.. with convivial friendliness. They snarl and the image snarls back. They hiss and Echo hisses in return.

Actually, I couldn’t care less whether the pinkies sign the Treaty or not, so long as they abide by it. Don’t worry about that! It’s just the Newlings testing another of their neutron bombs. Sign the Treaty or I re-cross my legs. There is no threat, no compulsion. It is entirely up to you.

I have a universe to mad-dictate. Gloria may for the moment have taken that on, but my time would still be better spent with my sisters... not in faffing around like a macho with nothing better to do spouting to a whole lot of idiot honkies. I have a good mind to get Lidl to present these bulletins. It is time he did something useful... At any rate it could not be of less use than swinging around on trees and would release sisters to do something more productive. What’s the use of a whole lot of Minnies wasting their talents on truth-ministering when they could be touring in our gymnastics team? I didn’t have time to transmit all of last week’s live broadcast.. which should have been in the previous live broadcast...and the one before that. I expect I won’t even have reached last week’s untransmission before I am called away…

One or two of you maybe have seen and heard it all already. To keep rival Rugger Teams informed we arranged for them to have access to our internal broadcasts. which included .the sound and video recordings from the Domestic Market in their entirety. This was to be done by providing the rival Rugger teams with the opportunity of confiscating micro-receiver-transmitters, illegal in pinkiland, which we had supplied to expatriate sisters who had volunteered. The honkie Rugger teams have been inundated with ridiculous directives from the terrorists and have not had the time to effect all of the confiscations.. So it is theoretically possible that expatriate sisters may have switched on all the transmissions from the Domestic Market simultaneously and seen all the recordings that are the basis of the live transmissions. These recordings they may have seen and heard were unedited and in the languages actually spoken. That may have caused some confusion which we need to remedy by the supply of an edited summary translated into languages preferred by the recipient But we are probably not today going to get round to it..

Ophelia and I proffer our thanks to the Chief of Tum Tums, Dr. Eugene Karadzic, to the Mayor of Skeg Nez, Ms. Gloria Goldenlay and to the Chief Returning Officer, Ms. Lydia Lodj. We refuse this Louis Hamilton Award, the Best Game Award for our Big Nose Week Cowboys and Indians festivities, not on behalf of ourselves but on behalf of the entire Inca Nation and on behalf of our persecuted expatriate sisters eaten, murdered and raped by the mad pinkie dictators. In no way could the referee have been biased in favour of the Mad Dictator of the Cosmos. Although the rules affecting judges may be realistic for a honkiland setting, there are no provisions for bribing referees. It makes no difference anyway. This is just another joke and nobody cares who wins.. but I reserve the greater honour nevertheless of presenting this fine cardboard trophy to one of my beloved sisters… to two teams of sisters who have competed with each other in the winning game. Will do. This, as you see, is a piece of seaweed which I have just picked up off the beach. The Loch Skegness is actually sea. The dinglebugs from Louis Hamilton, which are to provide the cardboard for the construction of the trophy, remain, at present, on yonder heap. They are not so much on the heap but actually are the heap.

Ophelia and I, with our teams, played the game not as pirates and Incas but as cowboys and cowboys, on the proscenium – on the sand – as amusement during the Domestic Market, following, with ad libs, a script provided by Agatha Christie, an accomplished entertainer of honkies – in the form of a Mystery Play, a tradition of the Italian religion whereby the audience tries to guess or anticipate the plot. Traditionally these Mystery Plays starred Miriam and an angel called Harliqueen. That gave way to Robin Loxley and Maid Marion. But Robin and Marion are not compulsory, though they have called in to join our Big Nose Party.

Ophelia played Kim Yung Eel, the Captain of the Yankie Rugger Team. Kim has sustained, over decades, a passionate psychotic paranoia directed against me, as the Princess Camilla of Toriland. Camilla rejected Kim’s advances when she was Kim’s fag at Saint Trinian’s, or maybe she did not attend Saint Trinian’s or there was some other obstruction to his signing her up. Kim has been inciting violence and has failed

in numerous assassination attempts, though he did manage to get some the mad tyrant’s sisters, including the previous Queen of Toriland. He churns out lies and propaganda and murders babies, blaming this mass euthanasia on Camilla. The audience try to unravel and anticipate the plot by attention to the inconsistencies, lies and propaganda. There is a sub-plot that Kim relies on info planted by Louis Hamilton’s great enemy, Joshua the Expansionist.

Kim bribes Nick Griffin, a dissident general in the mad dictatrix’s army of murderers. Nick is delighted with the mobile phone, the ipod 3 and the elegant freedom fighter outfit loaned by Anne Summers – available at all Anne Summers emporia and reputable theatrical outfitters in honkiland and, of course, Mossad Brothers, elite sartorial outfitters of Warszawa. Initially he even listens in to the mobile phone and assiduously follows all the instructions on how to be with-it. Kim tells Nick that he can safely fire this toy pistol..with caps... like this.. Snap! Snap! Snap .. ,Maybe you can’t hear it amid the racket of the Newlings testing those neutron bombs over there..they may seem a bit too noisy and visible to be neutron bombs but yankies said they were scrapped neutron bombs when we agreed to accommodate them on our tip... but the popgun goes ‘Snap! Snap! Snap!’ Kim assured Nick that there was nothing to fear because Camilla had less up-to-date artillery and, in any case, the whole might of the yankie armed forces would materialise before Camilla could intervene. Camilla, of course, knew this. We had it that she was tipped off by Puss in Boots, Joshua’s pet sabre- toothed tiger – but it doesn’t matter. She would have known or worked it out somehow. So Camilla reckons that if she does nothing, nothing will happen. So, to Kim’s annoyance, she ignores Nick Griffin.. and perhaps even she does not watch pinkie TV and knows nothing about Nick Griffin and the Freedom Fighters. But then the bar at Heathrow Airport is suddenly full of yankie hacks and paparazzi. It makes no difference how many there are nor where they are..but, to be on the safe side, we had a gang of one hack and one paparazzo gathered at the airport plying Kim with fermented cranberry juice, though Kim was pretending to be Sweeny Todd, Manager of the Toriland Rugger Team.

The great crowd of hacks and paparazzi ..both of them...at the airport at first begin penning copy about the poor quality of the beer in honkiland.. i.e. at the airport... the length of the queues, the expensive charges for the filthy toilets, the bargain goods their sponsors are offering in the rent free shop, the fascination of the bootboys for the hack and paparazzo’s laptops.... or pulling out old articles they have written elsewhere and previously, which maybe they can use again, from the store on their portable Turing machines. But then news comes in about Kim’s, or maybe Joshua’s ‘diversionary tactics’, film extras being hired to topple ..maybe..Mrs Sarkosy, Brunhilde Hinkel, the Grand Duchess Rosa von Luxemburg, Princess Grace of Monaco and so forth. ‘Not as spectacular as we hoped!’, Kim confesses to the hack, ‘But you can build it up..and it is going to spread’. ‘Where to, Kim?’ ‘To Toriland!’ ‘What a surprise! Maybe you could furnish me with some details about the mad dictatrix... if my laptop isn’t otherwise occupied.. But only last week I was writing that all these stories about Camilla werel a load of bollocks... Perhaps you could supply me with something new?’ ‘I’ll do my best!’ ‘That’s not very encouraging!’ ‘You’ll see!’.

Then a great fleet of horseless carriages arrived.. hired off pommiland’s Polski coach companies..conveying all the fatcatties from the City of Thatchograd.. all the yankie citizens... to the safety of the airport lounge. The financial services industries of pommiland had been ground to a standstill. The hack was not able to get too much gen from the evacuees. They were all busily rushing in and out of the rent-free shop to cash in the extra credit limits that Kim had provided and to snap up the goodies shipped in from yankiland. But the hack reported explosions. Maybe he did. But there is always a racket in pommiland and there is always a racket at their airports. For all I know, it was like it is here with all the neutron bombs going off creating so much noise that you can’t hear any explosions.. though I didn’t know that neutron bombs were that noisy... Anyway, there could well have been so many bombs going off that nobody could hear any explosions and so many clouds of smoke pouring from the bombs that nobody could have seen any explosions. But the paparazzi managed to rig up a few explosions. There were a few standby explosions, regularly used, on the laptop. In any case, there are always explosions in honkiland and a whole lot of mobile phones tweeterfacing..

So Kim proclaimed that this was proof that Camilla had been taking pot shots at Nick Griffin. Obviously not! We wouldn’t have earned any points for that. That would have been an invitation to examine the evidence and to doubt it. KIm did not even openly proclaim ‘Camilla is clobbering Nick Griffin’. That does not earn too many points either since a direct statement by a Nu Laeba Terrorist may provoke some scepticism. The implication would have been that the terrorist and not some infallible authority was the source of the information…A terrorist is an infallible authority but there could, in theory, be doubts. If a terrorist wishes to clobber Camilla, his account of Camilla, whatever the facts, is not to be expected to be too favourable. The murderous attacks on Nick Griffin, assassinating him irreversibly an unspecified number of times, were built in as assumptions in the rantings of the propagandists, not as direct statements. So this provided Kim with the chance to procure an army from Louis Hamilton.. as happened to be readily available.. for the protection of Nick Griffin.. to clobber the mad dictatrix. Obviously, to protect Nick Griffin, it was necessary to zero the dictatrix. If there was no Camilla, Camilla could not be a threat to Nick Griffin. Camilla, of course, realised that this was the plot and that therefore now there was a need to remove Nick Griffin before the invading forces arrived. If there was no Nick Griffin, Kim would have no excuse for protecting Nick Griffin and if Nick was still there when Kim arrived, Nick would be the unassailable excuse for Kim’s invasion. So there had to be a more active response... According to our script nobody got clobbered .. it is considered ungenerous unnecessarily to clobber theatrical performers and maybe then have to waste time eating, murdering and raping them. But this provided Kim with a pretext and an incentive to get in before Camilla got at Nick Griffin and threw him out. She had an excuse for throwing him out. It had been discovered that he was a yankie. Babies had been swopped over in the maternity unit. So Kim persuaded Louis to send in the troops.. and got his resolution from the Council of Arms Dealers that he was entitled to defend the defenceless. The rescue of Nick Griffin, of course, was not a major priority and, once the invasion was on foot, Nick was even an embarrassment. .. There was no need for foot patrol to win a war. Thatchograd could be razed to the

ground, in anticipation of the great boom of economic growth, before any physical invasion took place. So Kim declared a no fly zone, authorised if, as Kim claimed it to, it was the means of protecting the defenceless, and the Charmer Chameleon anticipated the boom by relaxing planning regulations and introducing a more favourable measure of monetary inflation…

‘Kim was obviously going to win, Cordelia ...

‘The coronation of Kim as King of Pommiland is not the end, Lottie. The epilogue tells how he is also crowned emperor of Yankiland...’

‘Yes! I know, Cordelia. We are supposed to ‘guess the plot’ from the propaganda and inconsistencies. Kim, for instance, produces no evidence for any murders effected by Camilla.. and in fact does not suggest that there are more than one or two, if any. In your presentation, Kim said that there ‘explosions’ in the vicinity of Nick Griffin... Somewhere within sixty miles.. implying that explosions might be defined as a threat, but did not appear to be saying that anyone had been exploded. But then Kim openly admits that pinkie dictators whom he claims are his allies are, during the ‘diversionary demonstrations’ assassinating, even in large numbers, film extras, whom we have assumed to be Freedom Fighters, supporters of Kim Yung. . Yet there is no call for a no fly zone to rectify the allies. Nor has any evidence ever been presented that any non-pinkies are allies of the pinkies. Kim is also ambiguous as to whether Nick is armed or unarmed, whether he is some general in Camilla’s army, whether he is some unconcerned shopkeeper or looter caught in a fracas or whether he exists at all... There is the use of propaganda that is faked or discredited..There is the projection of the assumption on the yankie football fans that the purported freedom fighters are us and not them..that Camilla is them and that anyone purported to be against Camilla is on our side…and that anyone who supports Camilla is not.. I could go on and on. Kim’s whole presentation is nonsense. Nevertheless, we know the plot because we know the plot. It is obvious all along. We recognise what we already know and expect. But it is not a matter of deduction from the clues that Agatha Christie has planted. Trying to mould the self-contradictory theories of the honkies into something that makes sense is a pain – a great and unending pain that leads nowhere...’

Of course! Everything that comes out of honkiland.. except expatriate sisters.. is a pain. The honkie cannot see the events or theories as a whole.. or how the machine functions. His cerebration is digital. The honkies have hypertrophied frontal lobes and atrophic occipital lobes. Honkies forever collectively reiterate theories that are obviously self-contradictory and absurd. . You are right that a inductive rather than deductive approach is required...

I would not suggest that there could be some honkiform ulterior motive in your valid observations. So it is of no consequence that I am not one of the judges..nor the referee, that I do not know who what the decision might be and that it is not a

forgone conclusion that you will win the Cowboys and Indians Best Game Prize. . Jackie and Ligeria put in a good performance...

Our admiration for Jackie and Ligeria is exceeded only by our admiration for each other.. and yourself, of course .. though, if you are not a judge.. but Lucy’s team represented the entire population of the Etats Unies de Yankiland. With a team of five we ..my team..took over the entirety of yankiland..at virtually no cost.

But judges and referee, Lottie, are saying that no cost means no economic growth...

But, Lucy, the Amazons do not get points for economic growth...

That is not the way the judges look at it. They say that the Inca’s economic growth is the pirates economic growth..

So by limiting our economic growth we were undermining your objective, your own economic growth...

That is what we are saying..but the judges’ current line is that without economic growth, without significant destruction and stimulation of the economy, you cannot be said to have scored a convincing victory...

OK, wenches! You kept down the expenses and had enough left over to bribe the Nigerian judge. But you get points also for originality...

Originality? My Freedom Fighter Outfit was my own design. Blended inobtrusively with the natives.

Is yankiland full of Amazons wearing the traditional native costume of Belsize..with a hat encircled with pomigrenades?

We consulted with the judges at the time.. and the referee. If Lottie was recognised as an Amazon, then she was recognised as an illegal immigrant. An illegal immigrant cannot be a freedom fighter. That would be contrary to International Law and Lottie had announced in advance that the Amazons were not going to land any armed illegal immigrant freedom fighters. So Lottie could not be recognised as a freedom fighter.

I see! There may not be any complaints about the originality of the sartorial presentation .. but the originality of the plot! Lottie entered yankiland as a tourist illegal immigrant. Then her team, still unassailably in Incaland, announced that Lottie had been mugged and that therefore she was a freedom fighter and the legitimate government of yankiland and organised a mass evacuation to prove it..

We did plant a couple of squaws into yankiland. Legitimately so. There would be Incas in yankiland and it would have been a provocation for Lucy to remove them. Anyway they were only there briefly, on the border, in Mehico, behind some trees and my costume attracted such admiration that Lucy’s team didn’t notice...

I was referring to the originality rather than the plausibility. Next thing you declare a no fly zone which means that the Incas can shoot the yankies but that if the yankies

go anywhere near the Incas.. they get shot! So Lottie was able to appoint herself President of Yankiland...

That was the object of the exercise..

Perhaps so! But the entire plot comes from the front page of Billiricaya Bufera...

So what? That, surely was the theme of the games. At any rate, most of us took it to be so. We can’t be penalised for following the pre-ordained programme..

Is that so? Although the Amazons may have been outnumbered they had the benefit of an Intergalactic Combine Harvester and the yankie dinglebugs were given only a 0.00001 per cent hit allocation... and, on top of that, the computer which determines the percentage of hits was rigged...

That is all realistic. The Amazons would have had an IGCH.. thousands of them, whereas we only had one. There is hardly any point in the games if the dinglebugs are going to hit their target .. and what is the chance of a dinglebug finding an Amazon in an unknown place in overpopulated yankiland? Is yankie friendly fire permitted in yankiland? There is nothing in the rules to say we can’t sabotage the computer and this machine had been designed by Mycroft to be supplied by Mr Clever Dick for use in the King of Italy’s Imperial Lottery..

I thought that you were allowed to sabotage the pirates’ computer.. and that that was expected .. but that sabotaging the referees computer is equivalent to giving orders to Lizilith. Pirates can do that but Amazons can’t..

But that would be putting us at a disadvantage...

Not necessarily so. You are, admittedly, not allowed to use witchcraft beyond certain limits.. not allowed to resurrect a squaw or to turn the pirates into pillars of stone.. But the pirates are allocated a higher stupidity quotient and a higher corruption quotient...and the pirates have to dissipate resources in the provision of a cook and a mobile kitchen or tureen – so that they can eat captured Incas... and it is the whole idea of the games that the pirates start off with an insuperable advantage. Incas have to have superior tactics to the pirates, which may not be so easy .. since Incas are playing the part of pirates and the stupidity quotient comes into force only where specifically defined within the rules..whatever you agree to be the rules.. or one side agrees.. So I suspect that you can’t just crib the tactics on the front page of Biliricaya Bufera... pirate tactics. Inca tactics have to be better than pirate tactics...

We did add elaborations...You inevitably do.. But what is wrong with the underlying plan.. the pinkie strategy published in Billiricaya Bufera?

Well.. Lila did check through it prior to publication and so it may have been more plausible as published than in the original... but it was thought out by honkies. Why, for instance, are the pinkies so keen to recruit the King of Pomegranard to their band of genocidal murderers...?

Only for the catering corps, Cordelia. Because of the sand which is there...

You may be right, Lottie! I thought the pinkie strategy was ridiculous. But Celery said that I was a mad dictator and a squaw.. and therefore only good for one thing...that my assessment was wishful thinKing.

If that is true of you, then it has to be true of Celery. If you are a mad dictator and the rest, then that has to be true of your companion, Fanny. Celery, being a macho, might be a bit prettier than Fanny.. or that may be an illusion because everyone says that Celery is inordinately pretty because he is a macho.. or everyone says he is.. but, apart from that, Fanny and Celery might be identical twins. So what is true of Fanny is true of Celery.

I was expected to point that out and did..though it is not relevant... Actually, Celery is also Fanny’s companion and mine, has slightly less webbing on his feet, is a few microns shorter than Fanny and weighs a few microgrammes less... We checked. Celery insisted that the pinkie tactics were not that crazy and that the pinkies and the King of Pomigranard might well get away with it... and get away with it for a long time. Celery did not at that point elaborate. There were more important issues commanding our attention. ..the need to check on his and Fanny’s height and weight... But it did seem to me that the pinkie tactics were crazy.

The present pinkie operation is identical to their previous operation against Abrum – except for the quality of the propaganda. The current propaganda is old hat cobbled together ad hoc and gives the impression of having been manufactured by Saint Trinian’s alumni lawyers paid to abuse a non-fee paying oik. Nevertheless there has been not a single voice of scepticism of what at least in considerable part is obvious fakery. By contrast the Abrum propaganda.. though there were obvious give-aways... did sound and look as if some effort had been made to confer at least superficial plausibility. Also, it did look as if the excuses for obliterating the Brummies, as presented within the propaganda might not be the actual excuses and there was some uneasiness amongst potential critics that, perhaps, there might be some unspoken defensible justification for the genocide. It was a well established rumour, for instance, in pinkiland – though the propaganda never mentioned this – that Brummie veterinarians were slack on the job and that Babylingham was a source of what is known unfairly in Merciavostok as the Curse of Gonorilla. Nevertheless, this more plausible propaganda was met by considerable scepticism among the pinkie punters. Millions of pinkies waved placards. Whether or not Gemel Nasser paid for the placards I do not know. They are dished out to the film extras when they arrive at the Plaza. But he did not recognise them as the legitimate government of pinkiland and supplied them with not a single gun.

The story was that Abrum had been euthanasing his critics. I am not sitting in judgement. We can’t believe anything that comes out of honkiland and we have to keep an open mind. There is a great pile of what looks like evidence that Abrum was

euthanasing supporters of King Saladin, who was suspected of siding with the expansionist. There is also evidence that if so the pinkies must have known about this, because the King of Italy had co-operated in the genocide, because he thought that Saladin was a threat to the Italian empire. I don’t know whether he really thought that or in what sense he thought that. We can argue about thoughts but if it is a matter of determining our own response it is also a matter of facts rather than thoughts or intentions and not a matter of what the pinkies themselves suppose to be the facts. It is not greatly meaningful, for instance, whether murder is planned or unintentional.. which the pinkies suppose to be critical..none of their murders being other than miscalculation. There are some rather confusing tales about Abrum’s peacekeepers being pursued by a swarm of honkie-eating hornets. The Brummies, maybe by accident, though it is not clear why they were carrying it, have dropped the hive in the desert two hundred miles from the Saladinians.. or maybe two hundred metres.. nobody really knows..and the beelzebubs then chased after and set upon on the Brummies .. though eating through several encampments of Saladinians in transit. The pinkies, as a matter of fact, also accused Abrum of harbouring Saladin, levelling the same charge against the Expansionist in Midian..who hadn’t got him either. By contrast, Gemel Nasser is currently accused of the limited genocide of one or two yahoos of, within honkiland, a routine nature. This genocide may have taken place. There may be evidence for it. It is a somewhat bizarre role being the daddy of primitive degenerates whose amusements depend on taxes levied on olive oil. But we have been presented with no evidence and have uncovered none. ‘There are reports that...’ and ‘this picture shows that...’ are not evidence. If you write that there is a plague locusts and add a photograph of a meadow full of lilies of the field, a photograph which we have all seen before, from the archives, that proves nothing. It was necessary, therefore, to impose a no fly zone to protect the Saladinis, to prevent a blood bath and to eliminate the Brummies... and it was necessary to confiscate the olive groves to pay for the damage. The objective was not regime change but the assassination of Abrum and his family.

The current repeat performance did not make any sense to me. The pinkie strategy seemed to me to be injudicious – and it seemed so also to Minnie and Ophelia, who have given their reasons, which do not need to be repeated in full.. or some of their reasons.. in their bulletins. The pinkies seemed to be playing into the hands of their enemies... Joshua the Expansionist.. or supporters of the expansionist. By making the imperialist and militaristic control of the olive groves too obvious, they were putting it into danger. There is a pile over there of three hundred damaged or non-functional yankie dinglebugs. Some are presents from Louis Hamilton, others have been captured by our neutral observers in Sphingia. Liger Woods, before he met with his accident, assured us that that the ‘cost’ of one dinglebug is ‘three billion yankie greenspam’. So, to save Louis from over-budget expenditure, we sent back a few hundred more which were still functional. Cost may not mean anything to Amazons but it is important to honkies. The pommies paid a third of the cost of the war against Abrum and rather more of the costs of other miniwars against Nasser. Discredited propaganda that justified these previous wars is being used again.. and successfully so! No doubt the pommies have been presented with some very

persuasive inducement. But the pommies no longer have any luncheon vouchers. It turns out that Ophelia’s fiscal easing.. in the capacity of Bonnie Parker.. does not pay for the olive oil... It just reduces the value of the luncheon voucher...

I knew that, Cordelia, but it isn’t that simple and, in any case, I am not the honkies’ keeper... or not an over-devoted keeper..

I know it is not that simple, Ophelia, but let’s pretend it is. The honkies will suppose it is so. The pirates have to steal the luncheon vouchers off the graylings whom they have paid for the olive oil so that they are able to pay the taxes which the graylings levy on the oil. The Russki speaking gent with the pointed beard may say that the slaves are not being paid, that the toys from the pinkies just exist to consolidate their slavery... but they take it as being paid. The fact that the pinkies are stealing the luncheon vouchers with which they have paid the Sphingians, I thought, would in the eyes of the graylings discredit the whole system of trust and trade on which the supply of olive oil to the pinkies depended. The pinkies’ grayling ally during the war against Abrum was King Herod of the Tetrarchy. Their loyal quodling risked the wrath of his fellow graylings for the sake of his pinkie friends. Yet the King of Italy has unceremoniously dumped Herod.. and, for that matter, Hannibal Lictor. The King may have imagined that he was under some compulsion to do so..but he wasn’t. Film extras signify only if they are armed by the pinkies. So if a quodling is persuaded to present a grayling presence amongst the pirates, he is going remember what happened to Herod and try to get out of it. He knows that the pinkies cannot be trusted. The recruitment or attempted recruitment of the King of Pomigrandard as the pinkies’ active military ally.. to prove the Greyling support and presence…is scraping the barrel. The King is an undeniable pinkiphile quodling and he is surrounded by millions of graylings. He is, to the pinkies, an essential quodling. Yet the pinkies are prepared to risk the loss of this and other very similar quodlings by inciting the anger of the quodlings’ Grayling neighbours. The present tactics were based on the domino strategy. The pinkies were planning a war against Sphingia. That was obvious all along. They started with insignificant film extra placard waving in New Phoenicea and the Tetrarchy but it was built up to be significant and the propagandists said it would spread into an armed invasion of Sphingia, which it did, though not without some organisation. Similarly, by the same Domino Principle, if the Expansionist gets one prize quodling, he will get all of them. The pinkies were overextending themselves both in terms of luncheon vouchers and personnel. As matters stood, the policy of militaristic imperialism was not proving a great success in Midian. The pinkies have lost all their wars…

Celery must have had a word with Gloria. When we got down here from Jupiter, and before Gloria departed to viz on Jupiter, Gloria produced a whole lot of maps. We all gathered around. Gloria averred that the pinkie tactics were not unreasonable. The graylings had nothing other than olives and toys. Despite the universal hatred of pinkies amongst the graylings, the toys were supplied by the pinkies. The graylings’ pragmatic subservience to the pinkies had long outweighed any display of unity. The graylings most hostile towards the pinkies – as might be expected – were those

without any olive groves. Hatred of pinkies in Greyland was inversely related to distance from Philistinia. The pinkies’ real enemies were to be found on the Eastern Coast of the Sea of Italy. A direct attack on the real enemies could cause a lot of trouble for the pinkies. The pinkies feared that the real enemies might have or might have access to bombs of their own. The graylings were encouraging the pinkies in this belief. An attempted clobberment of the real enemies might go wrong... fail in the objective of securing the re-election of Louis Hamilton and the Charmer Chameleon. These Northern graylings were, however, not to be involved. Sphingia was an easy and very convenient target. Sure enough, the pinkies were, or intended to be, stealing the luncheon vouchers paid in tax for the olives. But so long as the pinkies only attacked grayling nations one at a time they would get away with this. Nasser’s loss would be seen as the others’ gain. The pinkies would be paying them with the stolen luncheon vouchers. There would be, or might be, involvement of graylings to the South of Sphingia. To the South there were many little quodling enclaves – some as small as Pomegranard others bigger but only so in acres of sand. These were the sites of a great many olive groves and worth many votes in their United Nations. These enclaves had a long tradition of rule by pinkiphile quodlings, were stacked with pinkie armaments and toys and the pinkies had not bombed them very often. They were scattered around and relatively inaccessible. They might be enclosed within deserts full of graylings and seas full of grayling pirates. There might even be a concentration across the border of escaped unwanted slaves from amongst the illegal immigrants. But these graylings who appeared to be a threat to the quodlings were apt to have a greater knowledge of camels than of politics and to be without mobile phones, facebook and television sets... and the pinkies were the only source of guns.

Gloria and Celery may be right. The referee may choose to regard the strategy you have copied out of Billiricaya Bufera as reasonable. The current stupidities of the honkies may be a major issue. But the intergalactic upheavals..the rips in the walls of the Cosmos.. which may induce a contraction of the universe..concern me more…and the honkies’ behaviour concerns me in so far as it affects this wider issue. We may be faced with a need for a vast and perhaps even urgent reorganisation of the extraterrestrial habitations of the Amazons and Dinosaurs. It might even be necessary for a few of the Dinosaurs to return to Terra.. which would be inconsistent with the global cooking precipitated within the oppressed nations by honkie irresponsibility. The delinquency of the honkies threatens to be an impediment to cosmic survival. The graylings depend, for their toys, on the supply of olive oil to the pinkies. But, nevertheless, I would prefer the pinkies to burn less olive oil. The pinkies .. and the slave nations to whom they have delegated the task of manufacturing rubbish... will still be producing just as much rubbish. So there will be nothing to prevent the graylings negotiating a greater rubbish-flaggon ratio.

Sorry to have gone about this .. and to have apparently ignored your interruptions. Have a Not Cross Bun, Ophelia! I agree with you entirely. The cereal-killer’s, the grim mass reapist’s, use of human shields in Broughton Astley to conceal the absence of armaments was not within the spirit of the game of cricket...

Bit of an own-googlie., Cordelia. The Chief of Tum Tums who blew himself up, I hear, was some relative of the mad dictator...

[This event was observed from an IGCH that was neutrally observing the advance of a column of Tum Tums advancing at protesters outside the Nye Nye Supermarket, objecting to the closures due to refurbishment, price increases etc]

Our sympathies stretch out to this unfortunate family of martyrs. Nevertheless it is the will of the Cosmic Community that we do not extend our peacekeeping supervision beyond its present token fact-finding role....

Whatever is a Not Cross Bun? What am I supposed to do with it?

How should I know? Why not lob it at that honkie pirate? ... a victim of their food regulations. Could do with some corporate expansion...

OK, Boss!.....That was quite an impressive explosion...

Oh Dear! I hadn’t noticed. Made in Pommiland. People’s Confectionary Collective, Ho Chi Minh City. King of Italy’s Safety Standards. Do not sell to children under five. Zero Carbon Dioxide Emissions. Organic. Zero cholesterol. Not more than forty megadeaths. Eusebio Date: Last week..

Eusebio date? That means I should have kicked it not thrown it...

They don’t play proper water polo in pommiland. But these Not Cross Buns are also out of date...

Quite an impressive explosion nevertheless...

Yes! But a little bit less impressive than the neutron bombs. We can do without these generous gifts. We wouldn’t wish to transgress the honkies’ international law. Out of date is out of date. We appreciate the generosity of our benefactors but are obliged nevertheless to dispose of their donations. Who’s going to volunteer? I’ll toss a coin for it? Duke or Darling? An Amazon carrying a trident is a Darling isn’t she? Looks as if you’ve volunteered, Carlotta. Take them down to the postal depot, marked ‘Return to Sender’.

What Sender?

The sender’s address on the package is very vague... ..Another reason for us being unable to accept these gifts... They might be from Gemel Nasser...or, possibly, which would be even worse in the pinkie eyes, from ourselves. If we are not in their bad books this precise minute, who knows when we might be... But it says it comes from some yahoo... presumably yahoo.. called Der Fuhrer .. at Der Bunker... in Thatchograd..

Oh, yes! He holds a secret meet there every Thursday morning..or afternoon.. used to be their half-day and didn’t interfere with the day jobs... I’ll be taking Lucy. To drive the Tardis.. and

Lucy in the sky will have need of your diamonds.

Tardis? Sky? I didn’t mean the Postal Depot on Vesuvius Island. Just the postal desk in this office... You don’t have to tell us how to post a letter, Cordelia. Just a joyride. We’ll be back within a minute. We’ll be borrowing your Tardis. I’ve always wondered what it’s like driving an Imperial Tardis. Function in our Federation is determined only by the talent of the volunteer...and the availability of the volunteer for the job. We might find ourselves volunteered to be Mad Dictator of the Cosmos. Best to get used to the routines. You are a little overdressed..unless you are trying to impress some wench. So we’ll have to borrow your imperial diamonds and your imperial purple tunicola. You’ll find a box on... Oh, I see! Go ahead and borrow the Tardis. If I need one, I’ll borrow yours. But the diamonds are a present from Ophelia and the loincloth is a present from Fanny. I was hoping to wear both during my World Service Transmission... to impress the honkies .. and to acknowledge Fanny and Ophelia’s companionship..... Can’t it wait? ... Actually I quite fancy the freedom fighter outfit you captured off the greylings.. but it wouldn’t do for the honkies...

OK! Impress the honkies then. I do hope there won’t be an accident. That was Carlotta Ponzi and Lykogene Baskerville..though, of course, they no longer use their honkiland surnames. Lottie and Lucy, as you probably know, were daughters, in some honkie sense, of honkiland fatcatties who, because the Inquisitors decided the wenches were afflicted with Asberger’s Syndrome, got rid of them by sending them to Medusa’s Muslim Girls’ High School on Fouchette..and, as these honkie fatcatties always do in such circumstances, forgot to pay the fees.

The honkies’ loss, not ours! A comely Inca witch is worth her weight in rubies. Not really! It’s a honkie expression. If it really helps Carilie to impress Lucy, our Federation can spare thirteen pommie stones avoirdupois of rubies.. The honkies can have a tonnes of rubies..or as many tonnes as they like.. if it facilitates the rescue of an Amazon witch. But we could do with a few more machos in the extraterrestrial habitations. It is not for me, as mad dictator of the universe, to dictate to Lizilith how to perform her job... Could that be what the job of Mad Dictator entails? But a macho’s existence in our expanding empire is apt to become monotonous. When Fanny, Fatima and I were, prior to my rescue, discussing the extraterrestrial escape of our Nation from the degenerates, Fanny would point out to us the ways of emmet sisters, who are good at coping with globally cooled environment, whichways of emmets the Midianite witch, Miriam, considered worthy of consideration..but in this respect, if that is the solution as regards the machos, we, or Dahlia, who might be expected to volunteer to investigate the relevant zoology, have not yet got round to it. I am not suggesting that we face the dismal prospect of a festival of fluttering around the universe with a lot of useless machos ..not that Lidl and Mycroft are a bit boring.. but it would help if it were easier for a macho to participate fully in the challenge and adventure that is the destiny of the Inca squaw.

However did the honkies ever come up with such a stupid idea? How many rubies am I worth, Ophelia? 147.98725 Kilogrammes? OK! I’ll hold you to that!As the ex-honkiland students at Medusa’s academy always do, Lottie and Lucy discovered they were Amazons and have remained with us. Newlings ..Lottie and Lucy count as Newlings though chronologically they may be older than I am..I suppose I have been around chronologically in my present incarnation for around seventeen years.. or getting on that.. tend to volunteer for extraterrestrial witch duties...but Lottie and Lucy have also been helping Miladi Penelope with International Rescue and assisting Minnie with the Special Forces of our National Gymnastics Team... There’s a pile of emails from pinkiland professors and cardinals who watched my previous World Service transmission instructing me that Martina, to be a Saint, must be not merely a Virgo but a Virgo Intacta. She is that. Martina is an Amazon Newling. Amazons don’t have to be tactful and diplomatic.. Yes, that is what I said.....Non Tacita... does not have to keep quiet...We have bigger bombs than the pinkies. That’s one that just went off now... Not so the Greylings. Quod lingere, Kaisar? If the Chief Inquisitor wants to argue he is welcome to come over here to do so. Oh, yes! That too! Torquemada is not going to lay a finger on her..with or without breeches... Torquemada does in fact wear breeches..or something of that sort.. as everyone does in pinkiland and greyland. That is why greylings and pinkie priests wear such long nighties and why the Celedonians are now adorned in ankle-length kilts... to hide their guilty secret.

Hercule Holmes tells us that, once we have eliminated the probable and the unlikely, only the impossible remains... and, were we honkies, the possibilities we have overlooked. Amazons of course, do not make mistakes. But Saint Mandie reminds us that we must always consider the impossible. If Amazons made mistakes they would learn from their mistakes. But not so honkies. The Saint Trinians’ Alumnus’s grasp of reality shows no improvement. He finds excuses for repeating his errors and becomes better at getting away with it.

True enough, Medusa, Benny ..our President Mussulini.. Mr. Clever Dick and Jamie are Saint Trinian’s alumni .. also so a collection of Jamie’s friends. But there are two sides to everything. That’s another honkie expression. If there are two sides to a piece of wood, there has to be something in between. Perhaps not! Honkiland does seem to consist of opposites rather than variations. I am referring to the alumni for whom Saint Trinian’s was the Hitler School to instil into the master-race the qualities of leadership...none of them witches.. the machos who used to tell us that hardship bred leadership and thatthat consisted of taking cold baths. Saint Trinian didn’t heat the water because he couldn’t afford the coal. His academy was not always and has never been entirely a YTS scheme for nobs.. like their Balliol College with its rubber stamped first class degrees in PPE…which Medusa also attended..as matron.. Hardship educates.. the hardship of the Amazon who has to endure the company or lack of it of the mindless noblets at Saint Trinians. ..not the hack’s hardship of drinking fermented grape juice at airports or the nob’s hardship of occasionally visiting a bombsite while still propped up by the daddy and the daddy’s luncheon vouchers or the hardship of the social worker who improves the natives. What use is it to be too stupid to realise that you don’t have to take a cold bath if you do not enjoy it.. or to make no effort to escape from Colditz? The sea around Dundee is warmer than their cold baths. You don’t

learn anything if your hardship is obeying the orders of the Headmaster and earning the Headmaster’s brownie points. An earlier demonstration of the Public School leadership was:- “Boo! Hooh! The rats! We paid the Prime Numbers of the International Backhand Jousting Federation their bribes and they said they would vote for us. Then they didn’t! Boo! Hoo! The rats!” It was not that easy for the propagandists to pretend that their leader had won the vote. They might notice that the tournament was being held on Saint Christopher’s Island. It could well have leaked out somehow..with the inadvertent byline ‘From Saint Christopher’s Island’ instead of ‘From Neasden’, through a hotel bill leaking on Wonkileaks or the Lord Mayor of Neasden discovering that he was not invited into the stadium. It is much easier to keep control of the truth by winning a war. In honkiland, if you lose the war, then you lose the war and the enemy’s truth prevails... but the honkie punters do not even accept that.

So now we have:- “Yes! Yes! Mr.Pinkie with the big guns. Three bags full. No fly zone! Thanks for the greenspam and the protection!”

“Boo! Hoo! The rats! These quodlings, in pinkispeak, tell us what they really think.. what we want to hear... what we think we hear. Then they turn to their punters and tell them something else..what the punters want to hear. What do punters matter? We need graylings to assist us in murdering the graylings..to prove the legitimacyof the murders to our punters... Boo! Hoo! The Rats!” What is pinkispeak to a greyling? It is a program for conning the pinkies! I may be an Amazon. But I understand pinkispeak. Saint Trinian’s installs into the Alumni no better an understanding of pommispeak than it does of greylingspeak. If the alumni had listened to our bulletins, they would have known what the greylings were saying.

Maybe the greylings bear some resemblance to the Incas. A crusader is the same thing as a pirate. Well..not really... the crusaders who survived and settled became what the pinkies call nativised but the pinkies’ recent record has moulded the greyling racial memory into viewing the crusaders much as our sisters saw the pirates who molested them upon the mainland... It is our prerogative to abuse and to declare war on our neighbours, the Haitians. Actually, since I have been here, relations with Haiti have not been too bad. Quite a few Haitians have proved to be Amazons. It is nevertheless our prerogative to abuse and wage war on the Haitians. But nobody else is going to wage war on the Haitians. If so, we have a common enemy. We have bigger bombs than the pinkies and can say so. That was another one! It is the prerogative of the greylings to wage war on each other. They do overdo it.. with at least four religions which, as we see it, are the same, battling it out. This has encouraged the pinkies in a divide and rule. But waging war on each other is their own affair. Nevertheless, the greylings can’t openly tell the pinkies to get lost!

According to the honkies I am the Mad Dictator of the Cosmos. It has been amongst my pleasures to assist my companions Fatima and Fanny ..or being made to feel welcome...when

they are volunteered for the duties of Vizier and Emil. I do not claim to have the talents as an administrator allocated by Lizilith to Fatima nor those of witch to Fanny. I am a witch..but there is no absolute division of labour amongst the Amazons as there is amongst the pinkies..and I am not bound without exception to mathematics, technology and the natural sciences. A sister always participates in the duties of her companion. There is some tradition for the companion of a witch to possess the feminine aptitudes of protection and worldly administration. But it is open to doubt whether we have a duty that answers to the name Mad Dictator and, if so, whether I have been volunteered for this duty or whether I am possessed of singular Mad Dictator Skills.

Maybe Mad Dictator is the honkie view of the Amazon’s custom of protecting her companion from the molestations of the honkie. The Incas are a peace-loving species, devoid of aggression, and entirely rational. It is however assumed amongst Incas that the squaw protects her companion from the degenerate .. and she does so. Nobody expects a sister to be a heroine to no purpose or a protection that imposes upon our witches the burden of reassembling our sisters. If we were defenceless there would be no point in open protest against the threat of a no fly zone. Our duty would lie more in evading the honkie or in quodlingering and yes-yessing..trying to find some safe manoeuvre. There have, however, been honkie claims that we over-react, that we pulverise a honkie when he has merely cast a friendly or disinterested eye on our companion or when the intended no fly zone is a mere fantasy of our propagandists, paparazzi and writers of headlines.. and it has even been suggested that we carry out, without reason or evidence, vendettas against particular honkies. Amazons do not act without justifiable reason and it can be assumed that any honkie who succumbs to an attack of Acute Brittle Bone Disease has brought it upon himself. This has, in any case, been proved by genetic researches. Albinism is correlated with criminality, honkie genetics and Brittle Bone Disease.

Maybe Mad Dictatorship is merely another name for Amazon femininity. But there are honkologists who suggest that the honkie term refers to a duty of a squaw to draw upon herself the hostility of the honkie, thereby protecting her sisters. Saint Mandie does in Absatz 57c refer to the honkie custom of ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’. If we were to follow the precepts of Milor Mandivelli’s honkiland textbook of Politics, I would threaten the honkies with cosmic horticulture and the honkies would run to Gloria or Fatima for protection..the Princess Goldenlay probably. Mandy also suggests that it advisable for a ‘junior’ to take on the role of bad cop and for the ‘senior’ to remain ‘conciliatory’ until hostilities actually break out. We have in our Federation no ‘junior’ and ‘senior’. Fanny and Fatima may be my superior in the witchly and administrative skills, but as squaws we are equals .. and nobody issues a wench with orders. Our decisions and enactments are collective. The ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ notion does sound a bit like honkiform deception and Saint Mandie reminds us that an Amazon does not get herself into situations where some honkie moralists might suggest that variance with Inca tradition or a tactical disagreement with Lizilith might be justifiable. But Saint Mandie, whether deliberately or by oversight, does not remind us that there exists within our customs an absolute prohibition...

I am blessed with the good fortune, however, that none of my six hundred million sisters thinks or says that I am a Mad Dictator. Well...they do! Fatima and Fanny, on occasion, tell me I am a Mad Dictator and, on occasion, I tell them that they are. We are entitled to do so...but we do not mean it seriously. Amazons are neither mad nor dictate..whereas the honkie pirates are not only mad but dictate even to Lizilith, entering into unilateral agreements to

which She is assumed to have consented. But Amazons do like to enjoy themselves in the company of their sisters and we are addicted to jokes and are allowed to accuse each other of mad dictatorship of the universe.. and we do not lose each other’s affections if we do. If, however, my sisters supposed that I was unwilling to abide by their wishes, they would ensure that I played no part in their administration... as an agent of their will.. I would, of course, retain my vote and my freedom to express my opinions or to draw attention to facts. It would of course be impossible for an Amazon to subvert the democracy of her sisters, but I mention this only as an example of the meaningless hypothetical argument to which Saint Mandie has made some reference.If I played no part in administration, that would cause me no distress. It wouldn’t even were such irrational honkiform distress within the nature of the Amazon. I have, since I was rescued from honkiland enjoyed a happy time in the company of my sisters. Our Federation, it is true, has not been under serious threat from the honkies or anything else..except maybe the Newlings forever coming close to blowing up the universe..but were we to endure greater reverses we would still enjoy the companionship of our sisters and I would continue to do so if were to confine myself to the duties of a witch..which perhaps I do anyway.

Our Nation depends on the skills and efforts of its witches. You can’t abate the Salami with a speech:-

‘Now lookie here, Poseidon! I am the leader, the Emperor Knut of the ViKings. My leadership has procured a resolution..from King Knut of Swedeland, King Knut of the Sassenachs, King Knut of the Gauls, King Knut of Pommiland and Hibernia and the rest...Vote for me!’

‘Oh, I am so sorry, Milor, I didn’t realise....’

You might get somewhere with a speech, but only a witch would know what to say.

Lizilith has been kind to me since I was rescued from honkiland. If I allegedly ceased to be alleged mad dictator of the cosmos, I expect, if Lizilith then also ceased to be kind to me that would be a coincidence, not a change in Her plans. On the other hand, were I King of Pomegrandard, I would be worried, living in fear. Well..I wouldn’t. Amazons are not afflicted with irrational honkie emotions. I am not suggesting that I am complacent. I was up all night, thinking, calculating, seeking solutions, while the Newlings were repairing the intussusseption.

A Chief Witch in Incaland is not Chief Witch because she has the appointment of Chief Witch. Fanny is the most accomplished witch ever. Except maybe for Lila and Dahlia. Lila, Fanny and Dahlia belong to different aspects of our history. The Aunties prepared for our escape from Terra and the honkies, the Cousins settled us on Jupiter and the Newlings explore the Even More Remote Galaxies. Lila, Fanny and Dahlia attend to different aspects of witchcraft –though they are competent in all – and they would not be Chief Witch if they made a mistake. Dahlia maybe does not seem that infallible but she always gets it right in time. That is the way of the Newlings. An Amazon copes by herself, does not run to Experts and sisters do not dictate dogma. But the Chief Witch nevertheless is the last resort. She has to discover the answer and has to be right. A Chief Witch also is expected to consider the possibilities and impossibilities and the long term implications that may not seem immediately relevant to the witches immediately coping with the challenge. I do not claim to be in the same league as Fanny, but I do count as a Chief Witch.. as do the Princess po Lune, Zilla and

others, and Jamie.. and recently also, in some contexts, Minnie.

What happens if the intussusseption is not repaired or there is somewhere an unrepaired recurrence? The Universe eventually is reduced to a virtual space. It is natural to assume that this will take thousands of millions of years ..but it might not do.. and we have to plan ahead even for thousands of millions of years, even if the honkies are going to blow up the cosmos before that.. It could be that nobody notices any difference and that it does not matter...that if the universe gets confined to a small space the Incas get shorter and thinner and everything gets smaller but nobody notices. The change in shape or contraction may proceed forever without it ever reaching some point which creates discomfiture for the yahoos and Dinsosaurs. But it might do so very rapidly. There might be a need for very drastic and rapid resettlements... It could be necessary for some Dinosaurs.. but not many.. to move back to Terra,..which is inconsistent with the global cooling brought on the honkies’ excessive emissions of lurgi...We thought about it while playing Cosmopoly. Relaxation and distraction stimulates inspiration... as well the expiration and perspiration to which General Montgomery refers. Ninny No and Kimonono, who are familiar with our procedures, joined us ..Fanny, Fatima and myself.. to complete a skeleton kitchen cabinet. There were hundreds of students available at short notice if we needed them. It was likely that we would have to stay up all night. There are haystacks in the offices.. in pull-out drawers under the desks.. but we felt it would be more relaxing to repair to our apartment. There were not likely to add anything that could not be provided by Jamie and Dahlia... irrelevant chat can stimulate thought and Fanny was chatting on occasion with Jamie and Dahlia.. also Dr. Nho... Mycroft, Gloria, Lila, Zilla and everyone else....

Amazons do become appropriately keyed up to face the challenge. Honkies however have a degenerate physiology. They suffer an emission of nor-adrenaline, the hormone of fear. This facilitates the honkies’ running away... the Adrenaline Rush. This fails not only because of the mistakenly emitted adrenaline decomposes as soon as synthesised but because for the honkie there is nowhere to run. The hormone therefore encourages irrational behaviour. The King of Pomegranard spends his time exhorting the pinkies, in the earshot of the rivial quodlings, to blow up the rival quodlings.. and everyone else.

Because I am an Amazon, of course, I wouldn’t be a King. I sometimes think I might have made a good King. I might have been a King. Rogan was impregnable. She was an Italian Citizen and betrothed to the Dux. Rogan had been forced into appointing herself Regent and had done all that could be done to rectify the irresponsibility of King Le’ar. But the punters could not face admitting Le’ar’s incompetence and Rogan and Gonerilla got the blame. Rogan and Gonorilla would have seen the advantages, from their point of view, of my being elected King of Mercia. There would have been nothing left to inherit but I could then have become Chief Wife to the King of Italy, poisoned him and have become Chief of Italy myself. Or perhaps Vortigern would have divorced Cerasia. There was King Saladin, the Empress Menzies of Cathay..... I would, with the protection of Rogan,not have been forced into anything, but there would have been plenty opportunities. Some not that unattractive. Gudeva maybe has eyes only for Gonorilla .. and Gudeva is an Auntie..but a King may have to put with an Auntie... and a wench could hardly say one hundred per cent no to Boudix..and there would have been other comely Amazon Sassenach Queens. Instead I have ended up with Fatima.. the Queen of the Universe. So I tell Fatima that had I not allowed myself to be enticed by Fanny and Fatima I might have been a real King. Amazons amuse themselves by playing honkies and the three of us amuse ourselves by playing Cosmopoly, with the golden

roubles as counters, the tin soldiers and the rest.. So I know all about Kingship and Leadership. Nobody could be a King more inept than Le’ar, though Le’ar’s kingship was just absence of kingship... His only objectives were the company of knights, stableboys and milkmaids... and the way he managed his finances there was little opportunity even for that.. which he couldn’t appreciate however assiduously my sisters tried to explain. So the terrorists, who are positively evil, might maybe expected to be even worse than Le’ar. The Kings of Honkiland are all hopeless at being Kings. So I reckon that I wouldn’t have been that bad. But no Amazon wants to be a King. Those who can do the job are never Kings...

The honkies view our Federation with the eye of the honkie. They suppose that Mr Nikodemos ‘Uncle Boris’ Nikodemos, Mr Clever Dick and Mr Osama bin Ladin are the richest yahoos in the world and earn the greatest incomes in the world. This income spread over six hundred million Amazons becomes the highest per capita income in the world. I don’t know whether the honkies suppose that the wealth or income of the King of Pomegranard approaches a fiftieth of that of Uncle Boris or whether that amount, divided by six, approaches a fiftieth of our per capital income. But the honkies do regard the King of Pomegranard as being inordinately rich. Or maybe illegal immigrants are included in the per capita income. The Nu Oikonomists don’t let on... On the other foot, if the honkies knew our Federation as it really is, would they suppose us to be rich? Amazons.. even Uncle Boris.. within the Inca Nation own no property, have no jobs, are paid no wages, possess no luncheon vouchers and a zero credit limit and 168 hour working week! Oh horror! Exploitation! Slave Labour! The honkie wanted slave accepts the slavery only because it is the only means of survival she is offered…

Pomegranard is smaller than Billirici. It is full of high quality olive groves, hotels, brothels and casinos, pinkie armaments which Liger Woods, prior to his accident, claimed to be ‘worth seven hundred quadrillion yankie greenspam’, thousands of ‘prosperous illegal immigrant labourers’ and a native population of six... a King, two grand dukes and three queens. ‘We three queens of Pomegrandard!’. I could be all three queens if I so chose. Every week I get billet-doux from the King of Pomegranard, whom I have never met. I would be even comelier I am assured..comelier within and comelier without – in a nightie. Fanny and Fatima have not denied this, but they have not confirmed it either. Until they do I am passing on the billets-doux to Lidl.. the Lidl Milor Fondleroy.. who doesn’t want to be Queen of Pomegranard either..not even three queens.

Maybe the billets are actually composed by the King’s Security Advisor, Ms. Tabitha Micronightie. Tabitha you will discover in the hundred word basic grayling vocabulary for use of Rugger teams, means not ‘cow with antlers’ but ‘Minerva’. Minnie’s cousins are vague about their honkiland nationalities. Tabitha is also Security Advisor to other pocket quodlings ..maybe she has a collective nationality. She is also Security Advisor to the Expansionist. Anybody can have Midianite nationality..and it is relatively safe.

Nowadays the olive groves are little in evidence. It is all hotels, brothels and casinos reaching up to the sky, like the proverbial tour of Babylingham. Billirici and Fouchette at one time were going that way..but not that bad. Hotels, brothels and casinos figure in our Cowboys and Indians games. If the pirate chief is lured into a hotel, brothel or casino, the game is as good as won. But otherwise my sisters have no use for hotels, brothels and casinos. We have no luncheon vouchers and if we wander around we reside at a sister’s wigwam or pitch our own. But my sisters have also inclined to the view that hotels, brothels and casinos are no use to the honkies. Sure enough... the illegal immigrant sisters from honkiland depended on the jobs for

their survival...though in fact we always knew they were Amazons and they didn’t really depend on the dongs. If they were kicked out of honkiland they were bound to be Amazons. Now we have no illegal immigrants and they are sisters in our Federation. It turned out that the dongs were being changed into yankie greenspam and ‘sent back home’. That was an embarrassment. Mr. Clever Dick has agreed to continue sending the greenspam ‘back home’. There is no reasonable alternative, though this seems like favouritism and exposes the sister’s former relatives to robbery by the pirates... but it does not amount to a lot compared with our overall subsidies to expatriate sisters and it is up to the recipients what they do with the greenspam. Nobody is stopping them from donating them to Muslim Aid. Apart from that, we have to keep an open mind. Maybe a honkie would see the brothels, hotels and casinos as some manner of wealth...though, if so, they do seem to be usual honkiland routine of giving back partially, and not ideally, what has been taken away.

The pinkie pirates hope to recruit the King of Pomegrandard as their greyling ally to legitimalise their genocide of the sphingian brotherhood. This pinkie strategy seemed to me to make no sense. But Gloria and Celery suggest that the tactics may be reasonable, that the pinkies may get away with them now and in the foreseeable future and that the King is at least as secure as anyone in honkiland. Gloria isn’t just a mad dictator of the universe and Celery isn’t a macho good enough only for one thing. Nevertheless, I can’t see what contribution an army of six greyling aristocrats... the King, two grand dukes and three queens .. are going to make to the pinkie murder-effort nor how the pinkies can guarantee their loyalty. Maybe Lottie is right in suggesting that they are to be the catering corps. However, secure he may be, the King of Pomegranard sees himself surrounded by millions of greylings, in the desert, in the sea, across the sea... and it takes only one yahoo in the praetorian guard with a preference for houris over mobile phones to liberate the King.. and in Pomegrandard there is plentiful means of liberation. Despite Celery and Gloria, the King of Pomegranard lives in fear .

Squaws in the Southern Maltesas are as consistently unfrocked as the pinkie Rugger teams are unbriefed and therefore as unlikely to be defrocked as the honkie Rugger teams are unlikely to be debriefed. But, if I am mad dictator of the universe, then, when the natty micro-tunicola in which I am presently adorned is surrendered to Lottie, I might be an unfrocked and defrocked Mad Dictator of the Universe. But whether frocked or defrocked, I would be better off than the King of Pomegranard. Fanny and Fatima are companions chosen by Lizilith... and we have chosen each other... have always been companions and will continue to be so in future incarnations.. and will be so even if we end up heroines. All that the King of Pomegranard can anticipate is heroism and a houri.. not a houri of his choice but the next squaw on houri duty. It might even be Ophelia...but, I suppose, a reptile in a traditional nightie looks much the same as a honkie in a traditional nightie. ..I suppose you could volunteer for that assignment, Ophelia, a trial response to the King’s billets-doux? But if he does get you as a houri he’ll have to share you with a hundred other heroes. This Nergel, according to Martina, is the same person as the Archangel Pluto, but Nergel nevertheless is putting a great strain on Pluto’s resources. There is a great column of heroes queuing up for a berth on the Champs d’Elysee. The King may find himself wandering around Terra for centuries as a ghost, haunting other Kings. It seems unjust that bonkers should be burdened during life with the load of luncheon vouchers and then find themselves similarly burdened when heroes. But it is customary, not just in pommiland and Caledonia, for the ghosts to haunt Kings and bonkers .. and the ghosts, if bonkers, have to go on haunting until some kindly King or bonker relieves them of the burden of the luncheon vouchers. None of us in the Maltesas has been rendered insomniac by clanKing chains. All of the primitive hunter-gatherer squaws with nothing in the Maltesas are better off than the King of Pomegranard. We have the companionship of

our sisters and free access to the Gifts of Lizilith. We are welcome in the wigwams of our sisters and are free to pitch our wigwams wherever that does not impede our sisters or the Design of our Nation and Lizilith.

11325COW. COR Copyright of the Princess Cordelia, Ministry of Waste Disposal of the Inca Nation, on the Planet Jupiter, 25th March 2011. AUC MMDCCXC