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Lifestyle
Victor Billot

An Ode to .. 2022

Jacinda Ardern at Harvard's graduating class of 2022. Photo: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Gazette

Bard Billot farewells 2022  

The Crystal Ball of the Red Queen

Your Majesty: the talking crows have returned

with reports from all corners

of our misty and uncanny lands.

In the north, Barbarian King Alaric the Brown

holds sway in Occupied Auk;

in the south, the yeomanry rumble menacingly

in their air-conditioned 96 wheeler carts.

To the west, Baron Luxon provides life advice

to the little folk in their humble garages.

To the east, beyond the Fifty Eight Waters,

the tribespeople co-govern and send orders

to you from the Mighty Taniwha Nanaia.

In the Badlands, rebel saboteurs roam

in search of the legendary UN Agenda 2030.

The plague is over; or rather, it never happened,

and no one will talk of it on pain of cancellation.

There have been fierce and merciless battles.

There was the Battle of the Palace Lawn,

when Sheriff Coster banished the Pure Blood dervishes;

then there was the Battle of Nadia

when King Simon was trampled by the Eurasian Fluff.

There was the Rampage of Sir Lancelot Uffindell

and his magic bed leg Excalibur,

before his conversion to Christian ways.

There was the Battle of Monetary Policy

when Head Necromancer Adrian simultaneously

inflated and deflated the Royal Air Force balloon

before a bemused crowd of serfs.

There was the Struggle of Tron West,

where the Amazing Illusionist Sharma turned himself

into a rabbit and disappeared back into his own hat.

There was the Crusade of Yahweh Brian,

who rode off into the sunset with Yahwehness Hannah

on their glowing stallion, Late Model Harley.

And at year's end, the outing of Court Jester Seymour

as the capering Prick.  

This week's Ode concludes the Ode on Sunday series for 2022. Victor Billot will return around about March 2023 - and there are rumours he is in talks with publishing executives at Luncheon Sausage Books to produce a Book of Odes at the onset of the general election.  

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