The Cuckoo Clock

AS my closest friends will know, I have had a cuckoo clock on my wall for a good number of years now and my little feathered friend has always been very reliable. Until this afternoon, that is, just after five o’clock.

Having exited the double-doors of his ornithological abode to make the anticipated quintet of synchronised calls, the confused cuckoo inexplicably failed to reverse after his fifth appearance and thus found himself completely frozen to the spot. Thankfully, the situation was easily resolved and one firm push on the little chap’s beak sent him whirring backwards through the double-doors and into the comparative safety of his mechanical nest.

However, although he successfully appeared one hour later, performing his six o’clock duties in a quite impeccable and unflustered fashion, it did set me thinking. Imagine if I had failed to notice that he was helplessly perched above the clockface, unable to return, and that the remarkable suspension of both time and space that had taken place earlier in the afternoon had caused him to make the traditional ‘cuckoo’ sound in reverse. Instead of one high tone followed by a lower tone, therefore, he could have made the lower tone followed by the higher tone.

It then occurred to me that this unfortunate event would make a useful analogy for the hardcore Trumpists and their sudden, overnight repudiation of the God-Emperor himself. After all, when you ‘buy’ a clock you expect it to work and when something goes wrong with the mechanism you need to fix it. Instead of giving Trump a great big slap on the beak, however, resulting in him temporarily disappearing back into the White House to crush the Zionists before they’ve had a chance to hatch, his disillusioned ex-supporters have been forced to halt the cruel sway of the relentless pendulum by attempting to ‘oo-cuck’ their way out of a very embarrassing situation.

Time is running out and at some point in the near future we will be approaching midnight, so unless you want to end up completely plucked or as dead as the proverbial dodo then stop paying attention to the discordant sounds coming out of Cloud-Cuckoo Land.