Luckily We Have Empire- Part 2 of 3

Check out Part 1,"The Hickey."

The Horse Hunt

Upon hearing of Charles’ death from one of the caretaker’s in the stables the next day, Wanamaker resolved to act on her desires, as Charles always told her to, and the next time she took The Mum for a ride, she ran feverishly, neighing wildly, and jumped the fence at the northeast corner of the royal horse yard. In effect, she kidnapped The Mum, much to the latter’s absolute delight. This unleashed a horse-hunt the size of which had never been seen before in the history of the British Empire.

Wanamaker and The Mum were able to evade the authorities through the help of a series of resting places and good Samaritans who believed in the power of love. They called themselves “The Rainbow Coalition against Britain” or RCAB for short. For several months they traveled through the British countryside in this manner, staying with other horses and some people, eating delectable country meals and neighing all night under the stars, until one day they reached their destination in northern Scotland, in a desolate sound, where the people there, all Scottish nationalists, had a long history of aiding fugitives from British rule.

This, however, was the first time they aided a runaway horse and monarch, and they were understandably tickled at the idea of having The Mum herself stay amongst them, which she did, until she died peacefully in her sleep, with Wanamaker at her side, seven short years later.

The English authorities never did gather any credible information as to the whereabouts of The Mum, and after two weeks of searching, the Royal Family released a brief press release declaring that the Queen Mum had died in her sleep the night before at the ripe old age of 105. They preferred this option over explaining to their subjects, that, in fact, their prize-winning filly, who loved The Mum and her now deceased trainer dearly, had kidnapped her, and that they had no idea where to find either of them.

The queen was so upset at the turn of events that she became quite paranoid for her own safety and that of her grandchildren. On the eve of The Mum’s funeral, she called the British Prime Minister and ordered him to launch pre-emptive war against three of Britain’s largest former colonies, as she suspected they had something to do with her mother’s disappearance.

The Prime Minister dutifully responded. That afternoon, he got on his Blackberry and ordered air strikes over Calcutta, Mumbai and New Delhi on Saturday, over Nairobi on Sunday and over Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver on Monday. At his press conference on Tuesday after the impromptu bombings, he muttered something intelligent about the British military only using smart bombs that limited casualties in highly populated urban cores. When a Canadian reporter asked him why Britain had bombed Canada, a long-time ally and a member of the elite club of Anglo countries that dominate world politics, the Prime Minister almost shuddered in disbelief.

“Canada? Oh sweet, sweet Jesus! That wasn’t our intention at all. That was a mistake, we didn’t mean to bomb other white people. I mean, we were…aiming for somewhere else, but there was a miscalculation, some misinformation that led to a decision that wasn’t quite what we were looking for. In fact, it was credible information about the whereabouts of a very important person, a VIP, and I acted on it somewhat in a haze, and I really thought that our smart bombs would just scare them, you know, smoke them out, as it were. I hope that those evil-doers in Kenya, Canada and India, with their shady, dangerously unpredictable transnational network of, well, like I said, we had credible intelligence about the role the Canadian Prime Minister was playing in fomenting things we don’t like here, and I can’t really say much more, except we regret that thousands of innocent civilians died in Canada, and of course, we think that India will be fine and that place in Africa we bombed will probably recover in the very near future. But the important thing is that we just made the British people feel safer, and if my Mum in Lancashire will sleep better tonight, then, you know, strategically bombing Toronto’s transit system was most likely worth it in the end. Next question please.”

Everyone in the room looked around in utter disbelief. The Prime Minister had once again forgotten to do up his fly before this all-important press conference.