The Great British Tsunami of 1014
‘Anyone tipping a chamber pot into a bottel banke will be hanged’
AS HURRICANE Irma leaves behind her trail of devastation in the Caribbean and Florida, the usual suspects are predictably blaming so- called climate change.
But there’s nothing new about extreme weather events. Never mind the tropics, I wonder if the global warming alarmists bothered to read the story in Saturday’s Daily Mail about the great tsunami which hit Britain more than 1,000 years ago.
Scientists have discovered evidence of a massive tidal wave which caused catastrophic flooding along the west coast in 1014. It sounds every bit as frightening as Irma. Contemporary reports speak of ‘fiery dragons in the sky’.
According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle: ‘On St Michael’s Day, came the great seaflood, which grew to an astonishing size such as the memory of man cannot parallel, and spread wide over this land, and ran so far up as it never did before, overwhelming many towns, and an innumerable multitude of people.’
St Michael’s Day, which is believed to celebrate the founding of Marks & Spencer on a stall selling singlets and hose at Romford market in 879 AD, traditionally falls on September 28 — so the first great tsunami took place almost exactly 1,003 years ago this month.
Researchers found microscopic sea creatures from the period had been swept several miles inland in Dorset and Cornwall. One theory is that the deluge was caused by an asteroid crashing into the Atlantic.
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle is considered to be the most important source of British history between the late ninth and 12th centuries.
Today, there’s always someone to blame for natural disasters. Back then, such catastrophes were considered to be acts of God. They didn’t have social media, radio phoneins and rolling news channels to feed their hysteria and wilder conspiracy theories. But what if they had?
How would the Anglo Saxon Chronicle have reported the tsunami and its aftermath under modern circumstances?
YE CLIMATE change campaigners are today petitioning for the immediate abdication of King Æthelred, who is accused of leaving the realm vulnerable to an unprecedented onslaught of fiery dragons in the sky.
He is being dubbed Æthelred The Unready after failing to make provision for a great sea-flood, which sweepeth through Wessex last night.
Ye King should have mobilised ye army to evacuate persons from Dorset and Cornwall. Eye-witnesses among ye peasantry do tell that the flood — which is called a tsunami — did spread wide over the land so as to submerge many villages and drownded multitudes of inhabitants.
A spokes-crier for Greene Peace blameth ye man-made globalle warminge for the great flood and loss of life, proclaiming the science was settled.
Leading sages, academics and clerics all agree that measures introduced to bring the realm out of the Dark Ages have had a detrimental effect on ye environmente and are causing the climate to change. These must be reversed before another disaster of biblical proportion befalls our green and pleasant land.
Ye Friends of Ye Earth are demanding an immediate ban on the burning of peat and wood for domestic heating. These scarce sources of fuel are unsustainable and are responsible for the creation of a hole in the layer of ozone, the size of Gaul.
Some alchemists sayeth the tsunami was occasioned by a vast chunke of rock, called an asteroid, falling from the Heavens through this hole in the ozone layer and landing in the ocean beyond the area marked ‘Here Be Dragons’.
Activists also want the Keeper of the Royal Purse to levy punitive taxes upon bio-fuels such as hay and carbon- based materials, including sea- coal. It is believed that indiscriminate gathering of coal from waters off Wessex may have caused a seismic disturbance on the sea-bed which contributed to this great flood. Instead of throwing another log or lump of coal on the fire, ye citizenry should be encouraged to wear an extra tunic or hide, otherwise great cityes such as London could one day be enveloped in fog as thicke as pea soup.
Greene Peace is calling for a total ban on the use of new-fangled windmills for the grinding of corn. These hideous contraptions are not only an ungodly blot on the landscape but also cause a diversion in natural wind currents, thus contributing significantly to a harmful disruption in weather patterns.
Campaigners want a complete overhaul of transport policy, to eliminate all animal- drawn methods of conveyance. Such highways and byways as do existe are littered with the exhaust droppings of horses, donkeys and oxen, releasing noxious fumes which rise up unto the Heavens and further erode the layer of ozone.
To discourage use of such diabolical vehicular abominations, zones of congestion should be established around all settlements of more than 200 people, extending to a radius not less than one mile, and a tithe imposed upon all coachmen and Uber-carriage drivers attempting to enter said environs.
Urgent measures should be taken to invent ye bicycle, so that dedicated cycle lanes can be built across the land.
There should also be a prohibition on the keeping of domestic pettes and livestock, such as dogges, pigges and sheepes, which occasion much flatulence and poisonous emissions, sufficient to completely destroy the rainforests of Epping and Sherwood.
Once housewyves are no longer able to feed the wayste from their hovels to pigges, alternative arrangements for disposal must be imposed by law, backed by a draconian regime of enforcement and punishment.
EACH dwelling must be issued with a variety of wheelye bins and buckettes of sloppe, and instructions to divide all detritus into seven different categories, such as bottels, parchments and foodstuffs. Lords of the Manor will arrange for the collection of these receptacles not more frequently than once a month. Anyone discovered to be depositing materiels in the wrong receptacle — for instance, tipping a chamber pot into a bottel banke — will be taken to a place of execution (i.e: the nearest tree) and hanged by the neck until they are dead. Unless we act now, sayeth Greene Peace, climate change will devour the Earth. An extreme weather armageddon has been looming for decades. The soothsayer Saint Al of Gore predicted the great seaflood in his prescient sermon An Inconvenient Truthe. So did Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, in the ancient kingdom of Wessex, which was so gravely assaulted by the elements this week. But even Swithin, who died in 862, and forecast 40 days and nights of rain becoming a regular occurrence, could not have forseen this latest deadly deluge. Climate change activists now believe that our only chance of survival is for Æthelred to be removed from the throne, by force if necessary, and England joined in glorious union to an enlightened European power. Their preferred choice is Canute, King of Denmark, whose army is already gathered in the diocese of Lincoln and is ready to take over immediately. Canute, also known as Cnut, has promised that if he is crowned King of England he will personally turn back the tide . . .