Back to the Regency Future

  Sir Roger Migently, as you must surely realise, has been quite unwell. He has been managed like an unlucky skier in an induced coma these many months since September 2013, when the floor of the Migently Mansions entertainment complex collapsed beneath him and he landed heavily on his Conservatory, hitting his head repeatedly against the wall. It should be understood that “the Conservatory” is not the cheery, sun-washed place it seems. It was conceived by the Abbott in the Dark Days of John Hunt, “the Coward”, as a place for torture; a place of despair, where all seemed bright and beautiful but all the exquisite plants had deadly thorns, and all the bright things when touched turned to dust, and the wafting perfumes of such sweet and seductive promise turned dreams into terrifying incubi. Anyway, Sir Roger was rushed to the Migently Mansions bathroom cabinet where medicines were administered and soothing unguents applied, but to no avail. Sir Roger swooned and would not unswoon. “So a coma it is,” said the Doctor. Not necessarily surprisingly, attempts at his gentle revival seem always to coincide with yet another dreadful jolt in a string of momentously stupid and dangerous utterances from Canberra and Sir Roger falls back into his protective deep sleep. However, so many people have been at sea without his mentoring and discourse that his staff have tried what they can to evince some guidance for his adoring public. And yet in one’s daily attempted mind-meld with Sir Roger one has been unable to rouse Sir R from his slumber. Perhaps the whiff of Abbott the bigot (of course there’s nothing wrong with that) protecting his cute friends (nothing wrong with that)  Sir Andrew Bolt, Sir Alan Jones and Dame Gina, from those nasty decent-and-intelligent-people has drained his remaining energy and convinced him to continue to emulate a plank. Nevertheless — or perhaps more — one is certain that, had he seen the old queen Flint, in anticipation of his own impending magnificent elevation to glory, go onanistically red-in-the-face [“EIIR! I love you! I love you! … Oh! Oh! Oh dear! … Unnhhh … “]  it would be Sir Roger’s view that surely we have lived through the monochromatic 1950s already and have moved on, leaving the Womens Weekly behind. Sir Roger clearly is not against imperial honours per se — or ought that be qua honours? — but he would surely feel that the value of his own cherished knighthood (bestowed, he dimly recalls, by some German inbreed or other) would be debased by the addition of random honours gifted for political sycophancy and party donations to the riff, the raff, the nigs and the nogs. Unless . . . unless . . .  . . . Given that Sir Roger was the “natural” son of Lord Lummy and Lord E. Lordy, “Roger, Lord Migently”  has an appealing ring to it, a siren song, the seemly snugness (smugness?) of a perfectly fitting glove lost in the garden for generations and new-discovered; a rightness, a coming-home, a certain comme il faut. A peerage is an honour for which Sir Roger, like Courtney Bryce and General Storr, or whoever these stiffs are, would in a moment, as Bill Hayden infamously did, repudiate his democratic and republican instincts in favour of the narcissistic rewards of personal aggrandisement, and assume an air of indulgent condescension toward the lower classes.

“EIIR!” can’t you almost hear him panting, “EIIR! I love you! I love you! … Oh! … Oh! ……… Oh dear! … Unnhhh … Zzzzzzzzzzzzz …..”

 

[for Sir Roger Migently, in his absinthe absence]