Dangerous times for everyone.

At Christmas there was a radio show - I think it was the Now Show, I can't think the News Quiz would be so violent - with a silly ditty that went "I hope that Boris Johnson and David Cameron/have a bike smash" or something along those lines that scans better. Although I am no fan of either of them - both should have stayed in the Eton ghetto they came from - I didn't really think that a national satirical show should have broadcast such a stupid and horrible song with no real comedic value.

Since then, however, Cambo lost his bike again to another thief, and Boris has just narrowly averted being run over by a lorry.

I'm not really sure how it works - was the song-writer subconsciously psychic and peering ahead with the depths of his mind (and it would have to be the depths to have the audacity to write that lyric) - or was he willing something nasty to happen to both of them?

In which case, fate has conspired to stick two fingers up to the songwriter, and rightly so. Neither man, lightweights they may be, deserves to be killed in a road accident. It didn't get anything like the number of complaints the BBC got over Sachsgate, but I did complain at the time and am surprised at how much life does narrowly escape imitating art.

There is a song in this manner, though it is more cryptic and more gentle. It uses animals - and the odd farm implement - to get across a seemingly nonsense rhyme, yet to me a few years ago it began to make eerie sense. See if you can spot the allusions to recent times in this bit of lyricism from a 19th century Welsh broadsheet (of the balladeers' kind). Let your mind relax, and imagine the words of the song, and see whose face - or faces come to mind. I first heard it while doing A-Level Politics in 1998 and wrote a cartoon of the first stanza.

Other animal nonsense songs occur, some more cryptic than others. Of course, with this stuff, you have to remember that although I was - aherm - foxed by some of the verses here in 2006 when I drew the song more completely in my cartoon diaries, all of them now make reasonable sense.

The Seven Wonders - from the singing of Maddy Prior and June Tabor

I heard it sung yesterday morning
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too
That a ship of lead swam o'er the ocean
Ta-la-ring-ting...
And a ship of cork sank to the bottom
Ta-la-ring-ting...
That is one of the seven wonders
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too

I heard it said that the partridge
On the shore was playing stoolball
And the balls were made of sand
That is two of the seven wonders

The pruning hook got in the meadow
By itself it was reaping
And in a day it cut an acre
That is three of the seven wonders

I heard it said there was a pig
And on its cart it was loading bracken
And its load it was making ready
And that is four of the seven wonders

I heard it said that in Llangollen
That the moon was teaching reading
And an excellent verse it gave there
And that is five of the seven wonders

I heard it said that on the rock
That the dove it kept a tavern
With its little cup to test the drink
And that is six of the seven wonders

I heard it said the swallow on the sea
That he was making an iron horseshoe
With golden hammer and silver anvil
And that's the last of the seven wonders
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too!

They have, hinting at the moon verse, used a bit of license in the name of the Welsh town. And to get the dove verse, you have to remember why Charlie Kennedy left office.