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Regrets, I've had a few…

Bellocks the Badger [BB] was coming up to ‘retirement.’ The inhabitants of the wood had voted him in three times, and he decided it was time to go. Bluster, his main rival was itching to replace him.

BB could be heard for miles around belting out his version of ‘My Way’:

“Regrets, I've had a few…

But then again, too few to mention
I did what I was told to do and saw it through without exemption
They planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And less, much less it seems, I did it my way.”

Bellocks had conned just about everyone that he was his own Brock. Yes he took advice, but always he made the final decision. At least that’s what the weasels wrote in their newspapers.

Bluster needed a ‘big idea’ to boost his bid for power. His ‘advisers’ told him to make the state of the wood-plants blossoming too early, near tropical varieties of shrub growing wild, the mildest winter since time began-as his main focus.

Despite the fact that Bluster was as ‘green’ as a crude oil spill on a Mediterranean beach, he saw this as an opportunity to shake off his dour and boring image. A number of scams issues were assembled for him to pronounce on-nettle ‘flu, Cheshire bark disease, salt shortages and the polluted stream.

Of course, many ‘green issues’ were common sense, and were caused by laziness, pre-occupation with technology, corporate greed and apathy caused by no choice in the wood’s political system. The wood’s inhabitants could ‘choose’ from BB & Bluster of the Badger Alliance, Bribery, leader of Badgers Against Sensible Trees And Racoon Domination, and [very] lastly Bedlam of the Terminally Useless Tribe. It was said all they disagreed about was the number of acorns it took to fill a hole. And of course, despite the weasel propaganda again saying the opposite, the Badgers were all from the same sett.

And so the brainwashed clones and bused-in sheep went to work. Nearby vets from the Ministry had agreed to microchip all the animals if they volunteered for an anti-nettle flu jab. Bluster’s ‘Boys’ would have access to Ministry info. on the microchip, and could ‘help’ the unsuspecting dupes avoid all kinds of deathly afflictions. It was sold as the biggest benefit for wood welfare since Agent Orange and Myxomatosis.

 ‘Vote for us and we’ll sett you free!’ was Bluster’s slogan. Bribery’s was a compromise ‘Vote for us and we’ll free up your sett!’ Bribery had tried to weed out old reactionaries from his party who believed the only animals worth appealing to were fellow badgers. That badgers formed only 5% of the ‘electorate’ had been lost on some of them. Secretly the old Brocks hated the other 95% of animals and the other badger, Blake. Bribery would sometimes despair.

Bedlam used both slogans just to confuse the other animals, his party ‘workers’ and himself.

Lifelong rebel Blake sat back and wrote poetry:

To see the wood in a Grain or Seed,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity between your teeth,
And eternity in an hour.

Blake knew what his fellow badgers were up to, and he hated how they lied and conned the wood’s honest creatures. Yet rather than let it consume him, he used his influence wisely. Because he was the wood’s biggest celebrity, he could get away with it. The weasels ignored him, and his wisdom could only be accessed by trips out of the wood to the neighbouring forests, where Blake’s ideas reigned supreme.

Bluster, conscious of Blake and his ideas, made it compulsory to get a signed pass to travel in and out of the wood. The microchip told his boys who flouted the new rules, and he was waiting for the moment to denounce those doing so as ‘the enemy within’. He was toying with the idea of using the ‘chip’ to awaken the dormant anthrax strain the animals had been given years ago in return for an acorn off wood tax. Terry Wooden, the crippled old owl, had fronted the campaign.

Wooden had led everybody to believe he had given his time voluntarily for this ‘good cause’, but Blake knew he was getting paid by Bribery.

In fact, so confident was Bluster of his ‘succession’ that he decreed if no other BA badger stood against him, there would be no need for a vote.

BB’s regime had used alcohol from a bumper fruit harvest and his special relationship with the Raccoons to manipulate the electorate in equal measure. The animals were either p*****d or sacred to death or both. The raccoons had virtually taken over other woods, and used the spectre of freedom, peace and universal love to cow the animals into submission.

Chief raccoon rabble-rouser was Donald Duckfelt.

‘Who wants freedom when you can have bliss from this year’s and every year’s fruit harvest? Freedom to do what? Listen to Blake and his nonsense, worry about how peace will turn your offspring into brain-dead non-entities, lying about doing nothing?’

‘And worst of all, love. Love corrupts, leaves you wide open from attacks by nettle flu, Cheshire bark disease and a life without salt. Can you imagine a life without salt? Did our forefathers die in vain to bring salt to our shores? These peace and loveniks have to be taken out of the wood for their own good.’

Duckfelt was very good. Despite being in constant pain, with his face permanently distorted from the ill-fitting leg braces he wore, few could argue that freedom, peace and love would bring life in the word to an end.

Despite the Orwellesque lies, Blake knew all it would take was about 500 creatures to wake up and realise what had being going on for millennia. He knew that the Great Cat would never allow the nightmares so loved by the badgers, raccoons and Duckfelts of the world to become permanent.

However, they would all have to wake up first, work out they were in a dream, start to use their universal connection to each other and realise they were powerful beyond measure.

He was confident, but it might take some time.

“Regrets, they’ve had a few…

But then again, too few to mention
Finally awoke to what they had to do and saw it through without exemption
At last they planned each careful step along the byway
And now for all to see, they’re on Great Cat’s highway.”

JS, March 07.