In an average flat on an average street lived a surprising unaverage couple. Most couples chose to live together out of love or expedience. This couple had.. other reasons.

"Frodo must bring the ring to the Elves,
Aragorn fights off, the nine evil Ringwraiths..."

Aaagh. For the three millionth time in the short months that he'd actually had his King and friend with him, Merlin was at his wits' end. He kept starting guiltily when fantasizing about the rest and quiet that Arthur's involuntary psychiatric sojourn had brought his poor brain.

"The fellowship forms, Sah-ruman's a jerk,
Gandalf's tohhhrn from the group.."

'You shall not pass!' lined up in Merlin's brain unbidden. He'd heard the blasted song since Arthur's infatuation with Lord of the Rings about a dozen times. Daily.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!", Arthur predictably supplied.
"Boromir's embedded, Uruk-hai's beheaded.." Arthur spun and glowered at a pigeon on the window sill: "Like a boss!"
The Fellowship is broken, thanks for that J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo's gaawwnnn!"

Merlin idly wondered if the poor pigeon was in any way related to the ill-fated bird that Arthur had killed two years ago while practising with his sword.

"And Sam's coming with you," Arthur happily interjected another completely predictable line into Merlin's increasingly desperate thoughts.

Painful lingering death to Jon Cozart! And his far too happy looking friend! Merlin clawed at the faint hope left to him that Arthur would never discover fanfiction dot net. With any luck the prat's bell would chime soon and announce it was time for Arthur's dailly meditation, granting Merlin half an hour's worth of bliss as well.

My people!

I can't say I care much for the way you set up your society. Nine new prisons in England and Wales? Do you have so many evil-doers walking around? Surely that can't be what with all the policemen I keep seeing on the streets? Merlin says they're some sort of free-range guards that maintain order. Well. Hop to it! Merlin also says the word police comes from polis which is a word that means city in some language.. but he prattles far too much anyway and I didn't listen.

Really, it's all this machinery magic you have surrounded yourselves with. You people now have powers that an average wizard in my time could only dream about. Not Merlin, he's fantastic, I mean an ordinary average punter with magic. You then take it all for granted! Sure you can talk to someone ten miles away through extremely fine-grained light beams. What's special about that? You pull your little gadget from your pocket and you can instantly find out what the weather's like and.. this really freaks me out.. you don't even think of looking out of a window. Where I'm from we always had instant access to weather information: if you got wetter from above, it was raining. Honestly, people!

This goes on and on. You have healers that are so insanely knowledgeable that they can pull you away from the brink of death many different ways. So what do you do? Do you learn the basics? No, instead you pester them for useless pills every time you have a snuffle.

Let me talk a bit about learning the basics. Merlin is with an organisation of volunteers calls the Red Cross. These people basically just give their time.. to you. Or actually, to people who need them. For free. Despite its awesome and manly name, it is not, as I once thought, the armed wing of the New Faith. Far from it. They were instituted to help the victims of warring. Strange really beccause I had always thought that was the idea of war: kill and maim as many enemies as possible. Merlin and I had what he calls a talk about - which amounts to me listening while he talks rapidly and rolls his eyes - and I now understand every single human life is worthy. Which makes it even strranger that you lot ignore eachother this much of the time. Anyway, there isn't much warring going on right now in these lands so these Red Crossers help out people who need immediate medical help or even social help.

This is all to the good. Wonderful. Support those people. But since they actually offer courses in what they call First Aid, why not learn? I never knew you could keep people alive by pressing their ribcages really fast. Would this have helped me at Brwydr Camlan? Possibly. I never knew you could help a choking person by pulling on their stomach from behind. I never knew to cool burns on your fingers for that long. I can offer you some advice myself now: use lukewarm water. Cold water becomes exceedingly painful after five minutes or so. I even flinched!

So learn First Aid. Also.. why are there any number of organisations busy giving social help to people at any time? The Red Cross is just one of them. Why do they even need to when there are so impressively many of you today? This all comes back to what I said about you people surrounding yourself with gadgetry. You have no friends! Or far too few at any rate. I bet many of those evil-doers you are locking up in the new prison could have done with a few good friends. They might have not broken the law that much. Actually, as I now understand, many of the people we persecuted as witches were really isolated old women, living alone with neither chick nor child. They grew peculiar more often than not. Well, you don't need to be old to suffer from isolation, nor need you be a woman. Find some friends, people! Be a friend to another!

You walk around talking to the air or to yourselves. I see that all the time when I venture into streets. People walking on the pavement, seeing but not taking in anything, talking rapidly into the air, gesticulating as if they have someone with them. Are you this lonely, my people? The cityfication - urba-something, Merlin uses far too many fancy words - of the country is staggering and pretty frightening in fact. Where do you keep your farmland? It is illogical to cart around greens and meat and flour and such enormous distances when you could just as well all live pretty close to a farm. Stupid! Merlin showed me a packet of steaks that claimed to be from New Zealand. Well, I know for a fact that Zeeland is a set of islands a few days worth' travel off and just accross the Gray Sea. They've found another one now? That must be even farther away.

I saw it again, the isolated air-talking, when Merlin took me to a public library a few days ago. I was gratified to see they have many books about me. This all proper, of course. You should know and learn about your true ruler. Merlin wouldn't let me actually read them. I am convinced they are full of lies or fanciful elaborations. Maybe there is an historian among my fans who would benefit from having the record corrrected? I'll be happy to tell you what really happened. Well, if there isn't never mind. When I am king, I'll simply set up the position of Royal Historian and make it happen.

Maybe I'll even appoint my new friend Angel. You see, I make friends quite easily. Then again, I am a pretty awesome man. Merlin and I met her in a bar where we had coffee after visiting the library. She is one of those darkish people that your police apparently has not enough of. I asked but she said she wasn't interested, more's the pity. I didn't care much about the owner of the place, Katie, but Angel served us very well and quite gracefully. She says she is reading History at Yooney, wherever that is. Hence my idea to employ her when I become king in a few years. I noticed her looking at Merlin with a lot of interest. I'll have to nip that in the bud. Merlin may be an useless idiot but he is my servant and I intend to keep him.

Merlin says the number of adherents to the New Faith is not as high as it once was. This doesn't interest me that much. People should believe whatever they want to believe, as long as they acknowledge me as their liege and ruler of course. I've toyed with the Roman idea of putting a big statue of me in a building somewhere and have people pay their respects to it - surely not all their ideas can't have been bad! - but honestly I'd rather turn up myself on occasion. Also, Merlin got a nasty coughing fit when I talked to him about it. Anyway, there are apparently new New Faiths around. So why did Her Majesty have all these colourful men in dresses sing hymns when the country remembered its fallen yesterday? Surely honouring and remembering those who have given their lives in battle is solemn enough? It seems unfair to the people who follow other colourful men and woman, at least to me. They weren't really a part of it. Still, it is gratifying that my people are still thankful for the bravery of their knights. I liked the hommage paid by the visiting king although I don't care much for his far too flappy clothes. His queen was very pretty indeed, though.

Wesaþ hāle!

A/N: Sorry for only now updating. I've been ill. As always, reviews are love. And good for my ego, which is almost but not quite as big as Arthur's. Please leave me your thoughts and maybe your ideas for the next few blogs.