The Ballad of Boris, King of Scotland

A Story

Presenting the opening 'teaser' to our serialised 'alternate history' story, 'The Ballad of Boris, King of Scotland'

Travis knew the story off by heart. He'd listened to his Gran tell it often enough. He wouldn't hear it again now, his Gran finally succumbed to the twisted, horrible, cancer overnight. Travis knew that his Gran was no longer in pain and that she was now in peace but the tears streamed down his face anyway. He was not just sad, but bitter and very, very angry. Cancer these days was curable but almost no-one in Scotland could ever remotely afford the cost of the treatments. It was completely different South of the Wall of course, where there was still a free universal health system.
Travis tried to calm his anger by imagining his Gran telling the story one last time :
"It all started with that Salmon chappy", he could still hear the scorn in his Gran's voice. "He wanted to rule Scotland and somehow engineered a vote on Independence, to this day I still think he must have had something on all the UK leaders. No-one really believed that we'd be foolish enough to vote for Independence, after all how could Scotland possibly manage alone. The UK Government certainly didn't seem to expect what was coming, though of course we now know differently. Somehow, whether as a result of the campaigning, or something else, the Scottish people joyfully voted to become an Independent Nation and celebrated long into the night and following night when the vote was won. Nobody stopped to think what it actually meant, nobody could possibly have known what was coming."