Oh I have been a wild rover for many a year,

And I’ve spent all me money on whiskey and beer…

It’s not terribly accurate – I have spent disappointingly little on whiskey and beer, and I feel the side down, somewhat. But the theme of the song… coming back, having finally triumphed “with gold in great store” despite the pillars of the establishment/society having regarded and treated the character as a loser, finding that they have that job now. I think if you’re selling attractive daydreams (and yes, attractive daydream stories SELL.) that’s not a hard one to sell. Like the spinster finding the dream man, or the man being the rearguard that gets his family safely… we want to believe this even if we know it isn’t likely

I think why this works, is that, realistically, so many humans harbor precisely this daydream. We’ve all been there – whether it’s the boss kicking us out, or bigger kids laughing at our underwear, or any one of a myriad scars picked up on the way through life.

A lot of them, of course, we know only God will ever weigh up. That doesn’t stop us wanting to hope that is not the case. I’m sure a lot of people voted the way they did for that reason, and are just hanging out for that payback. And this of course is why it works so well in fiction.

I’m fairly sure that’s why I have so many petty bureaucrats in vast power… getting my come-uppance in so many of my books…

May 2025 be the year of a good many paybacks…

I am still fighting the bank BTW. I predict a nasty fate in a book