Saffron Jack. Rishi Dastidar

‘But didn’t we give them our democracy and shit, so there wouldn’t be any more kings?’

      31.2.4. ‘So what’s he doing here with a crown on his head, pretending to be one?’

      32. Good question.

      33. You are not sure how you got here either.

      33.1. But before you tell that story, you should say where ‘here’ is.

      33.1.1. For all you live-action battlefield tourists.

      34. What you see, that’s just the appearance. What something looks like. Not the truth.

      34.1. Your eyes don’t tell you what’s true.

      34.2. Remember – it’s the lie of the land.

      34.2.1. You find the real story under the contours of the map.

      35. A map unrolled from the heavens, swamping you in topography.

      36. So, before the fighting started –

      36.1. entirely predictably, by the way –

      36.1.1. two over-proud and under-clever populations rubbing each other up the wrong way for three-quarters of a millennium.

      36.2. This little ol’ hamlet where I’m now reigning had been a governmental nightmare.

      36.2.1. A continental oddity.

      36.2.1.1. An administrative anomaly.

      36.2.1.2. A legalistic fuck-up.

      37. It’s hard to see why. It’s hard to see much here.

      37.1. Some squares that mean something to someone.

      37.1.1. A few coloured lines making a collection of villages.

      37.2. Or maybe a power play.

      37.3. An aborted archipelago, that forgot where the sea was.

      37.4. The dangers of irrational geography.

      38. What do you see here?

      38.1. The future history of humanity.

      38.2. One endless, individual bun fight.

      39. It was – was – a town where two countries intertwined.

      39.1. Not met, but mixed.

      39.2. One house was in one country.

      39.2.1. The neighbours in another.

      39.3. No joke.

      39.4. One door, Crazyland.

      39.4.1. Next door Barmylandia.

      39.4.1.1. Not that I can call them that any more.

      39.4.1.2. Because somebody will shoot me

      39.4.1.3. for being an insult of a neighbour.

      39.4.2. And yes, in some of the houses a border right through the bathroom too.

      40. Three thousand people, living as two.

      41. Or they were.

      41.1. With double of everything.

      41.2. Many secretaries of foreign tongues.

      41.3. Two traditions, both heartfelt, both ridiculous.

      41.4. Two churches, two schools.

      41.5. Two town halls for parading past.

      41.6. Two sets of lights, road signs, post boxes.

      41.7. Electrics, telephone systems, even double drains.

      41.7.1. Twin natural monopoly fun.

      41.8. Two lots of media, because a uniform babble wasn’t enough.

      42. Each side its own newspaper too.

      42.1. Each used to be content to stir the pot,

      42.1.1. to keep things a little spicy, entertaining.

      42.2. But that was before ‘prevailing economic imperatives’ meant things had to get hotter.

      42.3. War sells papers, they thought.

      42.3.1. That they weren’t wrong about. Pity it wasn’t a long-term redoubt.

      43. Like they’d been planning for it, two sets of policemen became two armies.

      43.1. Small armies, sure.

      43.2. But when you’ve got a grenade without a pin at your feet, who’s counting the infantry wandering past?

      44. Everyone pasted their particular allegiance on their front door,

      44.1. the good citizens, the loyal citizens, patriotic citizens.

      44.2. So it wasn’t hard for the opposing team to find them,

      44.2.1. deal with them.

      45. A gap in the crack of history.

      46. No one steamrollered these little parcels of land, these little statelets into one empire’s pancake.