The Angry Exile: Idiot du jour

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday 27 January 2011

Idiot du jour

James Glen is, depending on the source, a British national or an Australian resident, and he is the one currently attempting to explain to Chelmsford magistrates what the fuck he was thinking of when on Monday's Etihad flight from Melbourne to Heathrow via Abu Dhabi he got pissed and told a fellow passenger that he had a gun and a bomb, resulting in the plane being sent to the wilderness that is Stansted airport under the eyes of a couple of RAF Typhoons.

Two RAF Typhoon jets were scrambled to accompany the airliner before it landed shortly before midday.
An Essex Police spokeswoman said a 37-year-old British national was arrested at Stansted Airport.
She said: ''A 37-year-old man, a British national, has been arrested following an incident onboard an Etihad Airways plane travelling from Abu Dhabi to Heathrow."

An Australian resident has pleaded guilty to a bomb hoax on board a London-bound flight that sparked fears of a terrorist attack over British skies.
James Glen, 37, made the false claims on Monday on the final leg of a flight from Melbourne to London's Heathrow Airport, on the same day that 35 people were killed in a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.
...
Glen, who was "intoxicated", told a flight attendant that a fellow passenger had a gun and had "threatened to blow himself up", prosecutor Vivienne Perry said.

Good idea, James, you complete numpty. Way to go if stuffing up other people's travel plans was the idea, not to mention costing Etihad money and making the RAF use up some valuable fuel (they're on a 30 day account with the local Texaco these days, you know).

She said the diversion had a "considerable financial cost", including charges incurred from the military escort, additional fuel and the cost to other passengers who missed connecting flights from Heathrow.

And this could cost him in a big way.

Glen ... was remanded in custody until March 10, when he will probably be sentenced.
He faces up to seven years in jail.

Oh, yes, that. But I was thinking of something else. As I said at the start, he's being described alternately as a British national and an Australian resident. It seems he's from Ayr originally but moved to Australia, and although it's reported that he's lived here for twenty years and this was his first trip out of Australia since emigrating I haven't seen anyone say yet that he's a naturalised Australian. So it seems a fairly safe assumption that his family and friends and pretty much his whole life are all here in Australia. And now he's looking at a possible seven year sentence for being an überknob on a passenger aircraft, which seems unlikely to play well with the Australian authorities, especially if he never became a citizen.

Right now James Glen is in his late 30s and locked up in a country he hasn't set foot in since he was a teenager, and his biggest worry should be that 10,000 miles away the place he probably now thinks of as home might not let him back in.

PS - for JuliaM, I think The Mail will cover this story once they find a picture of a fighter plane that isn't a Typhoon. ;-)