100 YEARS OLD AND TAKING A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE...

IT WAS a Tuesday around 8000 BC, give or take a few thousand years or so, and the glaciation that had spread through most of Northern Europe had begun to melt. The valley between Britain and the rest of the continent was filling with water. It was only possible to walk across in a few places but soon, if nothing was done, Britain would be cut off from Europe.

On this Tuesday, however, the leader of the Brits was making a long-awaited speech on the problem. “This great country,” she said, “faces a brighter future if we make a clean break. We shall clean our future in the waters that flow between us and Europe.”

Her supporters cheered but delegates from the northernmost parts howled in protest. “Have you seen this water forming the North Sea?” said the northern leader Stur-Jon. “Have you put your hand in it? It is muddy. It is dirty. It is cold. There is no prospect of a clean break in such dirty water.”

“A break with Europe will bring great opportunities,” said the leader of the Brits. “The new North Sea will offer fine prospects for the fishing and shipbuilding industries. Our British trees may be cut down to make boats needed for fishing and maintaining business with our neighbours.”

“What if all the fish swim across to Europe?” Stur-Jon asked. “What if the European shipbuilders counter our plans by building their own boats? Before we know it, all our fish will have swum away and there will be a vicious trade war over shipbuilding. Such channel filling has never been propitious for international relations.”

“I suggest,” said the leader of the Brits, “that the attitude of our northern people is heavily influenced by people named after fish, such as yourself and your predecessor Sal-Mon. What’s this about channel filling being unpropitious? Where is the evidence?”

“Until about 175 million years ago,” Stur-Jon said, “there was only one land mass on Earth which was called Pangaea. Then the western part of it broke off and drifted away into the Atlantic. And now it has gone so far that it will not even be discovered for another 10,000 years or so, according to our best soothsayers.”

“Be that as it may,” said the leader of the Brits, “the separation of Britain has been decided and must go ahead. Nothing can stop my triggering it.”

“Trigger,” said Stur-Jon coolly,” will, according to our soothsayers, be the name of the horse ridden by a cowboy called Roy Rogers. And the horse will subsequently be stuffed.

“I therefore propose that we block the channel with stuffed horses and continue to walk across, and that is what I shall give the northern people a chance to vote on.”

“Would you deny our people the chance of a prosperous future for our fishing and shipbuilding?” the leader of the Brits asked her. “You, who are named after a fish?”

“And what are you named after?” Stur-Jon countered. “All you have to say is that trees may solve our boatbuilding problems.”

From that moment on, the leader of the Brits became known as Trees-May. And the debate continues.