Tales of the Unexpurgated
Ah, Argent - brings back memories that does. It must have been the summer of '74. There were four of us living in that house at the time. I can't remember who started it, it might have been Sue, or even Tina, but we started calling each other by putting our favourite band's name in front of our own. Sue was Wishbone Sue, Jane was Floyd Jane (or - occasionally, Pink Jane), I was Zeppelin Dave and Tina's favourite band was - hence the recall of this particular memory - Argent.
Anyway, back in that long hot summer we never seemed to have that much money, so buying cheap food was always a problem. It got to such a stage in the end that the only meat that we could afford to buy were pig's trotters.
I don't - yet again - remember which one of us it was, although I expect it was Wishbone Sue again, who said that the pig's trotters seemed to consist mostly of pig's knees. So inevitably, it came about that they ended up being called knees.
The inevitable conversation was:
Wishbone Sue: "What is there for breakfast?"
Floyd Jane: "Knees."
Wishbone Sue: "Not again."
To stave off the tedium of only having the pig's trotters to eat we did experiment with different ways of cooking the 'knees'. I used to boil them and serve them with parsley sauce, Wishbone Sue used to roast them with stuffing, Jane used to grill them and Tina used to fry them in garlic butter.
I can still remember waking up one sunny morning and looking down at Wishbone Sue as she lay in bed beside me - the sheets thrown back because of the heat. I could hear someone in the kitchen, the sound of the heavy old frying pan banging against the cooker.
Wishbone Sue opened her eyes and looked up at me.
"I think Tina is about to make breakfast," I said to her.
"Oh god, no," Sue said. "I couldn't face another one of those fried knees - not after last night." She lay down and pulled the sheets over her head.
Sighing, I got out of bed and walked over to the landing. I could just see Tina in the kitchen, about to unwrap the pig trotters. I called out to her: "Don't fry four knees Argent Tina!"
Of course, we were not always that poor, occasionally one of us would get a job of some sort. Nothing special, nothing that would be classed as a career, just a job, just for a short time and just for the money. Floyd Jane once had a part-time job in an off-licence. She managed to get some Sake cheap, as no one seemed to be buying it and the manager wanted to make room for his Christmas stock.
The kitchen was the only warm place in the house, the only room we could afford to heat. We would sit around the old kitchen table as one of us cooked the pig's knees, drinking sake and chatting.
It was Argent Tina that first noticed the effect that the Sake had on us, no matter that we were all of different heights, builds and drinking experience the sake seemed to have the same effect on all of us. After her third one of the evening, she explained her theory to us.
"I notice how us.... How the sake affect us... same... effect on us," she burbled. "One sake makes us gig... gigglgigly. Two sake make us follopy.... Three sake make us speech wrongly. Four sake makes us unable to stand up at all. Five sake makes us unconscious."
I looked over at Floyd Jane who had already finished her fifth and the way she was lying spread over the table and snoring seemed to add weight to Tina's theory.
"I feel four sake Wishbone Sue said, about to get up to turn her frying pig's knees over in the frying pan. She collapsed to the floor and I giggled at her.
From that night on, as was usual for us, Jane's theory became a sort of in-joke, a code shared between us. Rather than say we felt pissed, or whatever we would say things like: "I feel a bit two sake tonight", "I got completely five sake at that party last week" and so on.
One morning, in the following spring, I found Wishbone Sue standing at our bedroom window looking out.
"You know," she said, leaning back against me as I wrapped my arms around her. "You know, we could make that garden into a really nice place, We could sit out there now the evenings are getting warmer, barbecue the pig's knees even."
"There are a lot of weeds and stuff out there," I said. "It will need a great deal of work."
"On Saturday then, Saturday afternoon. We'll make a start on it." Sue turned to look at me; I could see the look of determination in her eyes. I would not be able to get out of it. I sighed and nodded.
Saturday came around with its usual inevitability, and I had still not found a way of getting out of the gardening. It was slightly chilly, but otherwise a fine spring day. Floyd Jane was still at work at the off-licence - it was beginning to look like a permanent job - and Argent Tina had made some excuse about visiting relatives when the idea of doing the garden had been suggested to her. So, only Wishbone Sue and I were there.
As we waited for the knees to cook, I poured us some sake. A short while I poured us some more. We talked and laughed and then became almost incapable of speaking without laughing. I poured us a third and we drank it down as we ate our pig's knees.
After eating, Wishbone Sue pushed her plate away. I made to pour another sake for her.
"Oh no," she said. "Do not four sake me, oh my darling, on this our weeding day."
Actually, Tony's not that bad. I've known him for years.
I went round his house the other night to see if he wanted to come out for a drink, like back in the old days. I knocked on the door and Cherie answered it, as usual she was in her dressing gown and slippers, with her hair full of curlers and a half-smoked fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth.
"Oh, its you again," she said. "You might as well come in, but if you think you are going for one of those 'nights out' like you used to you've got another think coming. I've got him a decent job now and I'm not letting him lose it. Half a pint of shandy and that's it. Understand?"
I nodded, three times rapidly, and she let go of my testicles. I could feel them slowly unwinding as she stared into my eyes. "Yes, all right then." I gasped.
"Hello mate," Tony said.
"Hello mate. I wondered if you fancied coming for a quick drink?" We both looked over, warily, at Cherie. "Just for a quick half of shandy. I know you must be busy."
Cherie stood on the doorstep, her elbow resting on the roof of the BBC Political correspondent's kennel. She was slapping a solid wooden rolling pin into the open palm of her other hand.
"Remember this?" was all she said to Tony as we left. He nodded in silence; I could see his adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed nervously.
"Of course, she doesn't mean it, mate," Tony said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "I'm the boss in that house. I'm the boss of the whole fuckin' country actually. Do you think I'd let her push me around like that? Do you, mate?"
"'Course not, mate," I said, holding the pub door open for him. "Half of shandy was it?"
"Fuck off mate! Pint of bitter, as usual. Tonight I'm going to get pissed. First time since the election."
"Are you sure that's wise?" I could remember the look on Cherie's face.
"I said I was boss in my own house, didn't I mate?"
"Yes, mate, yes."
Anyway, it was just like old times. Just like the old Tony - except that the new jokes were a lot filthier than the ones he used to tell. Apparently, the queen told them to him in their weekly meetings. I don't think I will ever forget the one about Norman Tebbit, the vicar and the marmalade.
Five or six pubs later on Tony said he fancied going to a strip club. So off we went. It was then that I noticed we were being followed by a large black car.
"Oh, don't mind that," Tony said. That is my bodyguards, my protection squad. They follow me everywhere."
"Even when you go around to Melinda Messenger's place for a bit of...?"
"Oh, yes. They're sworn to secrecy." Tony smiled.
Anyway, it was about five in the
morning when
we were staggering back down
The light in number 10 was still on.
"Shit, I thought the old tart would be fast asleep by now," he said.
"What are you going to do? That rolling pin looked deadly."
Tony just smiled and raised his hand, signalling to the black car that was parked over the other side of the road. One of the bodyguards bought a pile of... a pile of something over to Tony. He grinned at me as he began to put it on.
"What's that mate?" I said as he fastened the last of the pads to his arm and slipped the helmet on.
"It's my Cherie Armour," Tony said.
Ah, sheep. That one sheep in particular. I always felt there was something special, unique, about Dolly even when she was just a mere lamb. The way she would look at me with those big dark brown eyes. The little 'Baa' of welcome when she saw me on the hillside. The way she would look away with some kind of hurt in her eyes when she saw I was wearing 'those' wellies and heading towards one of the older sheep.
Of course, one day she too was old enough and she saw me walking towards her wearing my special 'romantic' wellies. Unlike the others she did not run, she did not hide. She stood there on the brow of that windswept hillside, staring at me as she chewed on some grass. I'm sure she smiled.
Afterwards, she did not 'baaa' and run like all the others, she lay down beside me and rested her head in my lap, looking up at me with those eyes. Eyes that made me, would make you, regret that things like mint sauce, kebabs and chops had ever been invented. Eyes that told so much of long lonely nights on that cold bare hillside, of lonely baaing at an indifferent moon, at other sheep who just did not understand about dreams, about romance and... yes, about love.
I took her back home with me. I just had too. I could not leave my Dolly up there, not with those other sheep who just did not understand. Of course from that day on it was all different. I no longer had to make the long trek up the cold windy hillside in my wellies. I no longer had to bear the pain of the rejection by those other sheep, the running away, the struggle with the kicking back legs and the wellies. Dolly was always there, always ready, always willing. The wellies were always there at our bedside and she would be there waiting for me on the bed.
Those early days were the happiest of my life, and - I like to think - the happiest of Dolly's too. I would always rush back as soon as I could; a bunch of grass, or some flowers, gripped tightly in my sweating hand, always eager to see her. But those days passed, as they always do. I began to spend longer out on the farm; other sheep seemed to be looking at me in a new way, there were always fences, walls to repair. Occasionally I found myself daydreaming about roast lamb, new potatoes and mint sauce.
She would be there always, waiting. We tried new things. I bought erotic underwear for her: lace, leather, rubber. Split-crotch panties, half a dozen peep-hole bras at once, stockings, suspenders. Photographs....
Photographs.
I knew it was crazy. I knew it was mad and dangerous, but I just had to justify it; to the world, to myself, who knows? The beauty I saw in her, still saw in my Dolly, despite everything and the passage of time. In some sort of reverie, I posted off the photographs.
I can still remember the look on her face when she saw those photos of herself on the Reader's Wives page of Farmer's Weekly. I had thought - no matter how foolishly - that she would be as excited as me.
I was wrong. So wrong. So very wrong. She just stared at the pictures for a minute or two and then turned to stare at me. Without even a single 'baa' of goodbye she was gone, back to the field. For the first time in months I slept alone that night, tossing and turning on that big empty bed. Every time I thought of Dolly I had to toss again.
I woke up the next morning feeling as though I had not slept at all and feeling rather sticky too. The pile by the front door was a big surprise and - for once - the dog was not to blame. Never before had I received so much mail, nearly all of it fan mail for Dolly, forwarded from the magazine. There was a letter from them too pleading with me to arrange for Dolly to be their centrefold: 'Sheep of the Season'.
I couldn't believe it. I wanted to run upstairs and show Dolly all of it, and then - maybe, if we had time - the fan mail. I had a quick shower and got dressed. I ran out into the meadow looking for her. I called into the strong wind, I ran to the top of the hill. But I could not see her. Judging from the looks I got from the other sheep it seemed as though I had been condemned to the whole of the flock, heads down they moved slowly and sullenly away from me as I ran up to each one, the question dying on my lips.
At last, I saw her, under the old oak tree at the very edge of the field. I walked slowly towards her, but she just stood and walked away. For a few yards I tried to catch up with her, but it was no use. I turned and slowly trudged back to the farm.
For the next few weeks it was always the same; a night of tossing - waking up sticky and sad, a huge pile by the front door (only once - on the Sunday - caused by the dog); Fan mail, modelling offers, contracts and a free sample of mint sauce, a quick shower and the slow forlorn trudge up towards the old oak tree - only to see Dolly stand and walk away. I could not even get close enough to beg for forgiveness.
I remember, it was a Saturday morning. One of those early autumn days when there is a touch of frost giving a certain sharpness to the air, when the dull heat of summer is on the wane and the sunlight seems to sharpen itself on the air. The leaves on the old oak tree were starting to redden and brown. I saw that Dolly was not alone under the oak tree. I nearly turned back then, thinking that she had found someone else, someone new, someone who knew - almost instinctively - how to treat a ewe. When I moved a few yards closer, I saw she was with old Jacob. I felt a smile of relief. I knew that Jacob was no threat, not since that incident with the apprentice farm-hand several Christmases ago, an incident that made old Jacob too scared to go within a hundred yards of the holly tree, let alone even contemplate tupping.
Jacob turned his old head towards Dolly as he saw me come over the rise. As I refastened my trousers, I saw that he nodded to Dolly. She stood and stared at me. I wiped my hand on my trousers and stood waiting too, almost unable to breathe. She looked at me, around at the field and back at Old Jacob.
He nodded again and nudged at her flank with his greying nose.
As Dolly stood there, as I stood there, I looked up at old Jacob. It may have been a trick of the light, but I had the feeling he winked at me. He nudged Dolly again and she took three slow steps forward. I took one step forward and held my arms open.
Dolly 'baaaed' and ran towards me. I knelt down as she came towards me, her impetus knocked me over and we rolled, me holding her tight and swearing to never let her go, down to the bottom of the hill. As we rolled I cursed myself for the mistake I had made with Dolly and the mistake I had made in letting some of the cattle into that field a few days earlier.
Roll, squelch, roll, squelch.
Roll, squelch, roll, squelch.
Roll, squelch, roll, squelch.
I made a mental note to reduce the amount of roughage I was putting in the cattle feed.
We arrived back at the farmhouse. I was surprised to see that old Jacob had followed us down the hill, in his case wisely skirting past each of the cowpats. I thought about offering Dolly a bath - she was already starting to attract some of the flies over from the dog's latest pile by the door. But she had that look in her eye.
Meekly, humbled, I followed her up the stairs. The sight of her haunches rolling under the fleece as she mounted the stairs brought back the sweet memories; I could feel the sweat breaking out on my brow and the familiar tightening of my underpants.
At the top of the stairs, something made me look down into the hallway. Jacob was there, looking up at me.
"Baaa," he said and ambled off into the front room.
I wondered what he meant, but only for a moment. I could see Dolly in the bedroom, standing next to the bed. Sheepishly she nudged my 'romancing' wellies with her nose. Forgetting Jacob, I rushed into the bedroom, throwing off my dung-encrusted clothes as I ran.
It was the most erotic time of my life. Never before had I experienced anything like it. Not since Old Mad Widdlepants the shepherd had first introduced me to the carnal delights of his flock when I was a mere lad of 13. If there is such a thing as heaven, it could only be a mere shadow of that time I spent on that bed with Dolly. I'm sure I saw steam rising from my wellies at one point.
A full minute and a half after leaping on that bed I fell back exhausted. Dolly licked me on the cheek. I could smell the grass on her breath. I lit a cigarette and lay back, wishing I could tell her how I felt.
I looked across at Dolly. "Baaa!" I said.
There was a strange scuffling sound and then a sharp yelp from downstairs. Sighing, I stubbed out the cigarette and took off my wellies. At the bedroom door, I turned to look back at Dolly. I almost went back to put the wellies back on.
Downstairs the dog was cowering in the corner. I looked around but there was no sign of a fresh pile. Jacob was over in the corner where I kept all my correspondence. (The pile of letters reminded me I was running low in the bathroom and I needed to take some more of Dolly's fan mail in with me next time. It wasn't that soft, or that long, but it was cheap and the dog was not even tempted to steal it.) There was what looked like a scrap of the dog's hair caught on one of old Jacob's horns. The hair seemed to be the same colour as the fur around the dog's bollocks.
At first, I couldn't quite make sense of what Old Jacob was doing. He was standing on the pile of modelling offers I had received for Dolly and tapping his foot at a couple that had, somehow, seemingly become dislodged from the pile. He looked up at me and 'baaed'. I walked over to him.
"What are you trying to tell me?" I said. I felt a bit stupid, after all this was a sheep I was talking to. Mad Old Widdlepants did used to talk to his sheep, that was true, but then - that was why we called him mad.
Old Jacob just inclined his head to one side as he looked up at me. I had a sudden desire to check how much mint sauce I had in the cupboard. The moment passed and I realised what Jacob was attempting to convey to me.
"Do you reckon Dolly might be interested in this kind of thing then?"
Jacob nodded twice. I looked down at the money they were offering: £300, that was enough to spend the night with Gladys the Barmaid down at The Ewe and Wellies three hundred nights in a row. For that kind of money she would even leave her teeth in - all three of them.
Jacob 'baaed'. I could see he had some idea of what I was thinking.
"Of course, it will be Dolly's money," I said. I thought of the life she could lead, a rich young sheep in the nation's capital, surrounded by the beautiful people, young and glamorous. I thought about the hectic nightlife; the sex, the drugs, the wild parties, pop music and gardening programmes on the tv every night.
For the first time, I was scared of
losing
her. The glamour of the
Or....
It was almost too horrible to
contemplate. I
could hardly bring myself to think about it, but once it was there in
my mind I
could not stop thinking about it, it worried at my thoughts like a dog
chewing
on a postman. What about if...? What about if some, some politician
fell for
her? How would we ever be able to bear the shame, the horror? There
would be no
alternative. We would have to leave the valley, change our names, start
a new
life somewhere. Maybe we would, if the worst came to the worst, even
have to go
to
Eventually I looked up; Dolly was standing in the doorway. She had been for a dip and looked stunning, radiant. My underpants immediately became three sizes too small, despite the fact that I knew she was going and there was nothing, nothing at all I could do to stop her.
"So, you've made up your mind then?" I said.
"Baaa." She nodded.
"You know I love you."
"Baa, baa."
"Isn't there anything I can do, or say, that will make you change your mind, make you stay?"
"Baa."
I cursed myself for taking those photographs, for sending them off to Farmer's Weekly. But I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her now. She looked back only once as she and Jacob left the house.
Homing Wasps
My grandfather had trained wasps.
Yes. It used to be traditional among ex-miners to have a shed out on the allotment to keep their wasps in. They used to breed them and race them - you have seen the great swarms of homing wasps on the big race days haven't you?
My grandfather, of course, was not satisfied with just breeding and racing the wasps - even the almost legendary 'Speckled-Blue Vicious Bugger' that old Stan 'Stained-vest' Megglethorpe was rumoured to have bred back at the turn of the century.
My granddad wanted a wasp that could: 'do something, instead of sitting around looking pretty like those poofy bloody show-wasps, or just bloody racing.' He wanted a wasp that could help him with his beer; a task that kept him so occupied that sometimes he did not emerge from his cellar for several days. It was only from the muffled sound of his singing that prevented us from fearing the worst during those lost days.
So, after many seasons of heart-breaking failure, he - at last - managed to breed a wasp that could carry a hop back from a field. Only one at a time, but he planned whole swarms that would leave the shed first thing in the morning - and using that wondrous homing ability that wasps have which enables them to locate a jam-encrusted child from the whole crowd on a beach - to seek out a hop field and then to strip whole rows of the plants before returning back to the allotment shed as dusk fell.
On the morning when he felt that his first 'hop-fetching' wasp (My grandfather had an uncanny knack for picking the apt and memorably descriptive phrase. For instance: the shed was known, wittily, as 'the shed' and the allotment as 'my allotment'. Many was the time he would leave us laughing and smiling as he said, with a straight-face, that he was 'going down the bloody cellar to get pissed'. Not, I think it is safe to say, since Oscar Wilde have these islands produced such a naturally witty man.) Anyway, it was a tense time as he and I stood watching the wasp fly off into the early morning sunlight, watching until it was less than a speck in the distance - even my grandfather with his keen wasp-racing eye, lost sight of it after what could easily have been a dozen yards.
Needless to say, that seemed to be the longest day of my life. Countless cups of tea were consumed by both of us as we waited - at one point I was even sent out to buy another bag of sugar. Even with the retelling of all of my grandfather's favourite stories about how the world had been such a far better place when he was young, about how good it had been during the war and how ungrateful the younger generations were these days, time seemed to crawl slowly and cautiously much like, in fact, the way my grandfather himself would crawl from the cellar a few days after 'just popping down to check on the beer.'
Eventually evening came and the sun began its long slow descent towards the summer's horizon. My grandfather paced backwards and forwards along the full row of his prize-winning cabbages, pausing at each end to scan the sky with his sharp wasp-racers eye and listening intently for the tell-tale buzz. I stood on the step of the shed, glancing back every now and then to see if the kettle was boiling, as we waited... and waited.
"The bugger's coming back, get the tea on," my grandfather said. I still could not see or hear anything, but I trusted his word. A few moments later I was testing to see whether the tea had stood for long enough, by seeing if the spoon would remain upright in it, when I heard the buzz, faint and distant.
Something was wrong! The buzz was not right! It sounded more like a teenager on a moped than the proud full-bodied roar of a thoroughbred racing wasp in its prime. I raced outside to the landing window, where - it seemed - all the other wasps had gathered too.
My grandfather was there too. "Bloody fly-spray! I knew it," he said as he gazed off several feet into the setting sun. I could see it too as it flew erratically towards the shed window.
"He's not going to make it!"
Before grandfather had even finished speaking, I was racing down the row of cabbages towards where I had seen the speck tumble from the sky. When grandfather arrived, I was easing it off the cabbage leaf where it had fallen.
"Bastard!" I screamed as the wasp managed to summon the strength, from somewhere, for a final sting. I dropped the wasp and to my surprise granddad stepped forward and brought down his heavy miner's boot on the still trembling form.
"Why?" I said. "He was dying, he didn't know what he was doing. It was a reflex, nothing more." I stared up, through my tears, into my grandfather's hard and uncompromising stare.
"Once they go that way, there is no bringing them back, no saving them," he said. "Once they get the taste of stinging human flesh then that is the way they'll allus be." He turned away and trudged heavily back up the row of cabbages to the shed and a consoling cup of tea.
The ruins of his dream lay squashed and shattered at my feet. I looked down, and there, half-hidden by the deepening shadow of the cabbage leaf, was a single hop. Smiling and laughing I picked it up and ran to the shed.
Well, as most people know the Great
Crested Peccadillo was a large flightless bird (only slightly
smaller than
the average Welsh canteen Manageress) which lived on the
Anyway, few people beyond the cognoscenti know of the distant relative of the Greater Crested Peccadillo - the Frankly Not Very Well Crested at All (or Sexual) Peccadillo.
This bird is much smaller than the Greater Crested Peccadillo being, on average, the size of a settee cushion resting on a roller skate. It got its name (the Sexual Peccadillo) because it was not very choosy at all over who it mated with, as it was not so well-feathered as its larger cousin it was - of course - much more popular with 16th century sailors (although the legend that Francis Drake married one has been soundly disproved by recent historical scholarship). So, unlike its unfortunate cousin, the Sexual Peccadillo thrived - many were bought back to this country by very happy sailors where the birds thrived too. Soon there were reports that the birds had been breeding with the indigenous population and there were stories of crosses between Sexual Peccadilloes and chickens, Peccadilloes and Blackbirds, Peccadilloes and Sheep and - of course - Peccadilloes and Cost Accountants.
It was the overtly sexual nature of these beasts that - inevitably - brought them to the attention of the church. Although the church kept rather quiet about what its monks and nuns got up to with their own poultry flocks, the dalliance of people with their Peccadilloes was roundly condemned from the pulpit.
Soon, in those times when the notion of witchcraft had taken such a powerful hold on the minds of the general populace. Stories abounded about witches using Peccadilloes as their familiars, and riding on their backs across the night sky. When some brave souls pointed out that the Peccadillo was a notoriously flightless bird they were hung, drawn and hacked up into bite-sized portions as a precaution.
So, in those hectic and dangerous times - it is reported - that several thousand Peccadilloes were burnt at the stake (and served with orange sauce later as the main attraction -the witches - were put to death).
Peccadilloes became an endangered
species.
They were still kept - in the greatest secrecy - by travellers,
itinerants,
strolling players and -interestingly - musicians for those lonely times
that
all such solitary travellers suffer from every now and then. Of course,
rumours
abounded especially about those musicians widely regarded as the most
accursed:
'The Playeres of the Base'. Stories were told about how the Guild of
Base
Playeres kept a secret flock of Peccadilloes somewhere
in the depths of Gloucestershire, and how, when a Player had reached
that
special level of incompetence that is the jealously regarded preserve
of
the well-inebriated Bass player, he (or, on occasion, she) is presented
with
his (or her) own special flock of Peccadilloes.
It all started, I suppose, that time I was up near Sellafield on a... a sheep-spotting holiday. Early on the third day of my holiday I saw a very interesting ewe. She gave me 'that look', the old 'come-on. One look into those deep eyes and I very nearly did 'come-on' the spot. But Spot was a faithful old sheep dog and I couldn't do that to him, I'm no pervert.
Anyway, she strolled, trying to be casual, trying to be nonchalant, off the hillside and down into the valley. I zipped up my trousers and followed, almost hypnotised by the seductive roll of her hips under her fleece.
My first instinct had been right, she was a tease. Pausing every now and then to look back over her shoulder to make sure I was following. She led me down into the valley, then through the battered fence and into the maze of buildings that made up the nuclear power plant.
As I searched in vain, down what seemed like yet another featureless corridor, that so easily could have been the ten, or twentieth, such corridor, I thought I caught a glimpse of the ewe up ahead.
Suddenly an alarm went off. I was convinced that my unauthorised presence in the high-security buildings had been discovered somehow. Looking back in hindsight, I can see how foolish a notion it was considering the reputation of the place, but none the less, I panicked.
I opened the first door I could find and dived in. With a shock, I discovered it was a dead end, some kind of store cupboard. Then the lights went off and I realised that the alarm was not for a run of the mill security alert. The red emergency lights flickered into life and I saw that I was in a cleaner's storeroom. I turned to run, feeling the typical male terror of close contact with domestic cleaning materials.
But it was too late.
The sudden blinding white flash as I opened the storeroom door almost blinded me, and the force of the explosion a split-second later propelled me backwards. I flew through the air and landed hard against the shelves of cleaning products. A tin of furniture polish hit me on the head and I was knocked unconscious.
I woke up, what seemed like hours later, to find a yellow duster clutched tightly in my right hand and my left foot stuck in a mop bucket. Slowly, unsteadily, I got to my feet. There was no noise, no sign of any activity at all. I opened the storeroom door and peeped out. The corridor was deserted.
After a moment, I felt I was sufficiently alert - despite a tingling all over my body - to attempt to sneak out of the complex. As I looked around the corridor I realised that I could see dirt and dust everywhere I looked. I discovered that if I stared hard enough at a patch of dirt I could project a beam from my eyes that could - somehow - clean the entire surface of dust, fingerprints and even pet hairs. I could - just by staring hard at it - remove several years worth of accumulated sheep's wool from my trousers.
I glanced back up the corridor and then I noticed that wherever I'd stepped the floor was shinning, glistening clean. I put my left foot down and wiped the floor with the sole of my shoe - I could almost see my reflection in the floor afterwards, and I was sure I could detect a hint of fresh lemon scent too.
Somehow, I managed to get out of Sellafield undetected. Although over half of it was in flames when I left, there was no mention of any accident on the News. Rumours of a giant radioactive ewe that was terrorising the whole area were dismissed out of hand, despite the evidence of several mangled corpses, wearing only wellies, that were bought to the attention of the authorities. A spokeswoman from the Nuclear industry said they corpses were obviously from some sort of suicide pact by a welly-wearing religious sect and that linking the deaths to the ravages of a 'so-called' mutant ewe was deliberate nuisance-making attention-seeking propaganda by anti-nuclear activists.
Back home, I found I could wash-up at the speed of light. I could shoot out a washing-line from my wrist (with the washing already pegged out on it). I could walk up walls and across ceilings to get at hard to clean areas and I could detect cobwebs with a special sense.
Later that night I decided that I would dedicate my life to fighting grime, to cleaning up this god-forsaken city, to righting wrongly-angled pictures.
That I would use my new special powers for the good of all mankind.
That I would become a Super-Hero!
I would become PINNY MAN!
Well, thanks a lot. That wasn't a very nice thing to say. That's the last time I invite you over to my lily pad to share a nice fresh fly - not that I suppose you'll be interested, not anymore.
What upsets me most was that it was me, I saw her first. I remember it was a nice sunny day, gentle ripples on the pool, a nice breeze and the promise of many flies.
"Look over there!" I said.
"What?"
"It's - unless I'm very much mistaken - a princess."
"Right." You said and hopped off.
You sat right in the middle of the path. I was sure she would just tread on you or run off screaming when she saw the horrible slimy green blob just sitting there and croaking at her. That is, until I saw what you were doing.
I doubt if she would have paid any attention to you at all if you hadn't started doing those tricks with your tongue. Catching that fly inches from her nose, then unbuttoning her dress with just the curling tip of your tongue like that. I suppose it can be come a bit frustrating being a princess, shut up in the tower all day with just a spinning wheel and an old maid for company - dreaming about knights and their long lances and princes doing heroic deeds for half the kingdom and all that.
Anyway, after she'd recovered and got her dress back on, I remember, she asked if there was anything she could do for you.
"All I want is a kiss," you said.
Well, we all know what happens once a princess kisses one of us, don't we?
There was a flash of light, a small explosion and an embarrassing puff of purple smoke (I told you not to eat so many bluebottles).
"What is that sticking out in front of you?" She said, once she had got over the fact that what was once a scaly frog was now a (almost) handsome (in a poor light) prince. She pointed down to where your codpiece was resting like a saucepan lid on a broom handle.
"Ah, that is part of the curse put
upon
me by the evil witch," you said. "Unless I can get a princess to kiss
me there, then - at
I fell off my lily pad when I heard that, the bloody bare-faced cheek of it. I must admit I didn't think the daft cow would fall for it, but that's princesses for you.
I must admit I haven't seen you smile like that since the time you swallowed that dragonfly - whole - but she did bring a certain amount of enthusiasm to the job. I always wondered why the guards up at the castle called her Princess Dyson.
Anyway, after I'd clambered back up on to my lily pad, and you had reassembled your codpiece, I sat up ready and waiting. I knew you would not forget me. Me, your oldest friend. Me, who had introduced you to that sexy little minx last spawning season. Me, if it wasn't for me you wouldn't have been the proud father of 250 healthy, bouncing tadpoles.
I knew you wouldn't forget me. Just a quick whisper in her ear. "A kiss for my oldest, dearest friend. No - there is no need for the 'special' kiss. His was a different witch." A quick peck on the cheek would have done.
I closed my eyes and puckered up - waiting.
When I opened my eyes a few seconds later, you had gone.
If you had hung around for a while I could have told you that it wouldn't last, that it would all end in tears. I could have warned you.
Going out in a magical coach so
near to
Ah well.
On the whole, life isn't so bad here. It is a bit damp on this lily pad I suppose, but there are a lot of flies, and some of those tadpoles of yours have grown up into quite pretty females.
It will soon be spawning time again.
I was trying to forget that time, way back in the summer of '79. I was sitting at this bar in the Lower East side. I was drinking. Drinking hard. Drinking to forget. She had been the only one I had ever loved. I had thought that, at last, it was the real thing. I had thought that she and I would be together for ever.
But, the zoo closed down and all the llamas were sold to some mysterious rich recluse that lived deep in the forest. There had been talk of what he got up to with his chopper and the gnomes, but nothing had ever been proved.
Anyway, I was sitting there at the bar, listening to the sound of a city carrying on without me. The city didn't need me, didn't want me. I sighed and lit a cigarette. I apologised to the man sitting next to me, and then lit my own cigarette instead.
"Is anyone sitting here?" She had a voice that grabbed the front of your trousers and squeezed. I turned and gasped in wonder. It was like looking at the photo-finish in a zeppelin race. Eventually I managed to peel my eyes away, although they kept wanting to go back, just to check.
"Phil, I need your help," she said as she poured that body onto the stool next to me. I wondered if it was too soon to ask if she would prefer to sit somewhere more comfortable - like my face.
"I'll be glad to help," I said - hoping she was having trouble fastening her bra in the mornings. "But my name's not Phil."
"Oh," she said. She stood up and my underpants stood up with her. "Forget about it, then. Sorry I bothered you."
"Wait." I yelled as she undulated out of the bar. "Maybe I can help!" I chased after her as well as I could, feeling like a pole-vaulter as I ran.
Out on the street I looked around. I couldn't see her anywhere. Then, just a glimpse, shining blonde, off in the distance. I ran....
Professor Tongue moved on, northwards along the great thigh plain. There in the delta he could see the thick dense undergrowth. Somewhere down there he knew he would find the fabled lost city.
Many had spoke of it, written about it, down the ages. Most people these days thought of it as little more than a myth, a fabled lost city - like Atlantis. No-one really believed the stories, believed it existed. Everyone dismissed it as legend, everyone except Professor Tongue. Tongue knew - somehow - maybe instinct, maybe intuition, that the fabled lost city was in there somewhere. Somewhere deep in that dense jungle he would find it.
Cautiously, Tongue moved down the steep slope of the thigh plain and up to the edge of the jungle. There in the depths he could see the fabled valley. He moved forward cautiously until he was easing through into the narrow tight valley.
He had to be careful. He had read the memoirs of Dr Penis who had once explored this same valley. Penis had told how he had stumbled headlong into a seemingly bottomless pit - only to come out far too soon; limp, drained and defeated.
Tongue skirted the pit carefully, his mind full of the dire warnings of the local tribesmen about the sudden monthly tides that could erupt suddenly from that very pit. Strangely, the locals regarded the floods as significant events, entering great depressions when the floods did not appear.
Sighing and relaxing from a tension that left him shivering he moved on past the great pit. Soon he came upon the next obstacle, the geyser. This too was - according to the locals - prone to sudden eruptions, far more unpredictable that the monthly floods from the pit. Although the locals said a flood from the geyser would usually occur about an hour or so after a particular ceremony they called "Lotsalager".
Safely past the geyser, Tongue examined his map. It should be somewhere near. If the myths and legends were true, he should nearly be upon it. He stumbled forward, his despair growing as he realised he was almost out of the valley.
Suddenly he saw it!
He stopped, dead in his tracks, there just in front of him; right at the end of the valley was the fabled lost city. All the myths, all the legends were true! Professor Tongue had found the fabled Lost City of Clitoris.
He dropped his rucksack and ran up the slight incline and touched it carefully, he ran around it and touched it again. He could hardly contain himself. He stroked, licked and nibbled at it.
Suddenly the ground beneath him
began to
shake and tremble. Tongue looked around confused. He picked up his hat
and his
rucksack. He knew he had to get out, out of the valley now. He recalled
how the
local tribesman had warned him of the dangers of the time of
earthquakes,
floods and strange eerie gasps and moans that echoed down through the
jungle
and into the heaving valley. A time known to all of them as The Orgasm!
Tongue ran, he knew that if he stayed he would be crushed by the thighs as they crashed together. He ran, dropping his precious map and his rucksack. He just managed to force his way through the undergrowth as the thighs spasmed and crashed together. From his safe vantage point Tongue watched the fabled lost valley disappear from his sight.
He turned and began the slow sad walk back up over the undulating stomach. In the far distance, up above, he could see the two hills of home and the city where he lived, pink and welcoming, standing proud on the left one.
Now and then, I expect the protractors. I can hear them in the jungle at night, rustling in the undergrowth at precise angles.
One day, one day - and it will be soon - the drums will stop, the twanged rulers will fall silent and then... then it will be all over.
We have - somehow - survived the attacks by erasers, dividers, pencil sharpeners and - the worst of all - the sheer bloody horror of the onslaught of pairs of compasses. We have survived though - just.
I fear, though, that there are just not enough of us left, not any more, to survive an attack by the protractors. There are too few of us and just too many of them. We are low on ink and paper too, isolated out here in the corridor of no-man's land, far, far from the stationary cupboard. Any hope of reinforcements, or of any relief is out of the question. The secretary is on holiday.
So, we sit out here, huddled around a fire made from the last few scraps of our once proud desks and we wait. We wait.
The silence when it comes is shocking. Stunned, we realise - the drums have stopped.
Well, I saw your posting in the newsgroup and I've seen Pythonesque postings several times you see, and I decided this was for me.
Yes, I quite agree with you, I mean what's the point of being treated like a sheep. I mean I'm fed up with reading Pythonesque postings and being treated like a sheep, what's the point of reading the same old sketches posted by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their Monty Python T-shirts and their cardigans and their Life of Brian Videos and their Monty Python's Little Red Bok, complaining about the BBC, 'Oh they don't show it properly, like they used to do' stopping at every alt.* group posting about Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the Dead Parrot Sketch and Summarising Proust and sitting in checked shirts singing about being a lumberjack in a tedious flat, out of tune whine!
And being reminded again about the bit in The Holy Grail, or Life of Brian or The Meaning of life and that bit about the Pirate Insurance Company and the Dead Parrot Sketch and the Complete waste of Time CD-ROM and fat Americans pretending to be John Cleese and doing silly walks and frightening the children and barging about pretending to be E.C. Gumby and if you are not on the sofa spot on the start time you are not real a fan and you haven't got an autographed copy of Grahame Chapman's Autobiography then you are a neophyte, the first item any real fan would have and every Thursday night they are re-showing the third series on UKGold and how it is never quite as funny as you remember it with Eric Idle as some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and Terry Jones as some big fat bloated tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.
And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with keyboard diarrhoea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged computer programmers called Nigel and then once a week there is some retrospective about how it became a cult where you can send off for some book about the Dead Parrot Sketch and then one night you are taken to some local down at heel flea-pit for a showing of Now For Something Completely Different and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keep singing Eric the Half a Bee and complaining about the Cycling Tour sketch and complaining about Michael Palin 'Oh, he's so greasy, isn't he?' and then you get into a long e-mail debate with a drunken grocer from Luton about The Knights Who Say 'Ni' and he drones on and on about how John Cleese should be running the country and how many foreign homes Michael Palin has and he throws up all over his keyboard.
And posting obscure quotes from sketches from the second series that no-one can remember:
'Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets.'
And the Dead Parrot Sketch and the lumberjack song and your start-up sequence plays the theme tune and you screen saver is the foot coming down and a .wav file of the Dead Parrot Sketch.
And you can't get to sleep because you can't remember who said 'it's tattooed on the back of the neck' and you can't remember what number The Larch was and you know it will be on in another hour, but someone else has reminded you of the Biggles sketch and you can't remember what happens in the restaurant in The Meaning of Life and all you can remember is the Dead Parrot Sketch. And then it finally starts at eight and you find there is a film you would rather see on the other channel and the newsgroup is filled up with sex and make money fast scams and twelve threads all about the Dead Parrot Sketch and you decide to unsubscribe and........
Once upon a time, there was a sweet and helpful little girl called Little Red Riding Hood. One fine summer's morning her mother asked Little Red Riding Hood to take a basket of food to her grandmother who lived in the woods, as the grandmother was not feeling very well. Gladly, Little Red Riding Hood did what her mother had told her. She also kept to the path in the woods because she had heard, and believed, all those stories about what happens to good little girls if they step off the path.
Halfway along the path to her Granny's house Little Red Riding Hood met a wolf.
"Where are you going, little girl?" asked the wolf. Not being too surprised by the fact of meeting a talking wolf, after all she knew how fairy stories were supposed to work, Little Red Riding Hood replied: "Mind your own fuckin' business, dog-breath!" and walked on, musing on the notion that understanding the conventions of a narrative formula doesn't mean that one cannot subvert those conventions in order to frustrate expectation and the conventional form.
The wolf, being a more conventional - if not conservative - fairy tale character, decided that he could not let Little Red Riding Hood frustrate traditional folk-tale forms in such an arbitrary manner. "I'm buggered if I'm going to let some mere slip of a girl indulge in post-modern textual games with this mode of discourse," he muttered as he took the short-cut to Granny's house.
He knocked on the door of Granny's house.
"Who is it?" said a voice from inside.
"It's me, the wolf. Come on Granny open up, you've read the script."
The door opened slowly. "Pah, not much of a part for me, is it?" Granny said. "Hardly a speaking part. When I first started in this fairy-tale business I was promised all the big parts: Wicked Queen, Evil Witch, Wicked Step-Mother, the lot." She smiled at the wolf. "Couldn't we... y'know... maybe... improvise something. Perhaps bring in some kind of sub-text... perhaps hinting at society's disregard for the elderly, man (as symbolised by the wolf) and his callous disregard for womanhood once she has outgrown the societally-constructed notions of feminine beauty, the advertising and fashion world's valuation of femininity as being only one of youth and beauty, the denial of the mature woman as a complete thinki... aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrgghhhh!"
A bit tough, but still the wolf regarded it as one of the better meals in his life. However, he had always regarded the next part as a bit problematical. As an embodiment of the macho, the aggressive, the wild, the untamed and untameable he always found the idea of dressing up in the old-ladies night clothes as a bit... a bit... well... He heard a few sniggers from the undergrowth at the edge of the forest.
"Hey, you squirrels! I heard that," he growled, and grinned as he saw the grey and red blurs fleeing towards the tree-tops. "I've still got it, though," he said to himself.
Now he was wearing the nightdress it didn't feel quite as bad as he had feared. In fact.... Guiltily, but quickly, he entered the cottage, drew the curtain and slipped into the bed. It still felt slightly warm and the room smelt of old ladies, lavender and moth balls. Maybe, just maybe he would have the time, before Little red Riding Hood arrived, for a quick....
Little Red Riding Hood rapped firmly on the door. This time, she hoped, perhaps there would be a chance of introducing some variation in what was now, frankly, a tired and tedious genre. This was the modern, urban world for christsake! What was the point of these rural and, mostly, medieval tales at the end of the second millennium?
"Come in." said the voice from inside.
No, still the same old shit: Little Red Riding Hood thought as she sighed and opened the door. "Why Granny what big eyes you have," She said without enthusiasm.
"All the better to..."
"Oh, fuck it!" Little Red Riding Hood said and pulled the pump-action shotgun from her basket. "You bastard! You killed Granny!" She pulled the trigger. "Bye bye, dogbreath" She grinned at the bright bloody splatter all over the rose-patterned wallpaper. The wolf's headless corpse fell over pumping blood all over the pink sheets.
The door burst open and the wood-cutter ran in with his chopper in his hand. He stared at the girl, blushed, and ran out again. He came back in a moment latter with his trousers zipped up and an axe in his hand.
"Sorry, I thought we were doing the continental version," he said. "Shit! What happened to the wolf? I was supposed to...."
"I just thought I would strike a blow for the feminist cause," Little Red Riding Hood said. "Personally, I'm getting tired of the way how these tales always seem to end with the women, girl, princess or whatever getting rescued by some sort of stereotypical male protector figure." She casually reloaded the still smoking shotgun. "Have you got a problem with that?"
"No, not at all," the woodcutter said, nervously eyeing the shotgun. "But won't this damage the traditional image of the fairy story as a mode of reassurance to children that the world can be restored to order and safety?"
"Bugger that," Little Red Riding Hood replied. "Think of what Hollywood will pay, strong-chick flicks are big box-office these days... then there are the computer-game spin-offs...." She took the woodcutter by the arm and led him from the room. "We could do sequels; Little Red Riding Hood II, Dragon Wars, or something... the possibilities are endless...."
"Yes," the woodcutter replied as they took the path back through the woods.
"Stick with me and you could end up a rich man," Little Red Riding Hood said. "No more getting your chopper out in tacky low-budget XXX-rated videos.... I was thinking, maybe 10%?"
The wood cutter eyed the shotgun; she seemed to have a finger resting on the trigger. He swallowed. "Deal," he said.
Well, you know. It is not easy. I don't know if you have ever experienced anything like it, but it is never easy.
We first met out on the street. It was an ordinary Tuesday and it was raining. I stepped out to cross the road and the big black car seemed to appear from nowhere.
The next thing I knew I was lying in the gutter and a chauffeur was holding my bleeding face out of the wet stream. I looked up and.... there she was. It was love at first sight. How I remember those first sweet words she said to me.
"Get up you malingering bastard!"
Of course, from that moment I would have gladly done anything and everything she asked of me. Love made me strong and I staggered to my feet. I stumbled towards her, but I fell to my knees. I looked up at her with desire in my eyes.
She looked down at me and almost smiled. "Are you an MP, one of ours?"
I shook my head. I took her hand in mine; she almost jerked it out of my grasp. I kissed her hand.
"Get in the car," she said to me.
Of course, it all happened the way these things usually happen. Secret meetings in number 10, where she would throw me down on the cabinet table and ride me to victory until I lost my deposit. The - supposedly - trips abroad to the European meetings. We would spend all day alone and naked together in those hotels in Paris, Brussels, Bonn, Leeds - all the great romantic cities.
The trips to America. Ronnie Ray-gun was just a cover for us - of course. I once asked my darling Maggie about him, she just laughed and held here thumb and fore-finger an inch apart.
"Why do you think he wants an arms-race," she laughed before grabbing hold of my mandate and making it the enemy within herself. Inevitably it had to end, as these things always do. She started believing all the myths and legends. She began to wear iron-lady underwear. It is not pleasant when a mature lady tries to sit on your face while wearing wrought-iron knickers.
Dennis got suspicious - eventually. I can remember him asking why her meetings with her 'special advisor' always seemed to leave the sheets damp.
As her hold over the party slipped from her grasp, so my manifesto slipped from her grasp too. No longer would she make a grab for it under the cabinet table as John Major droned on in the corner, or 'accidentally' drop her pen on the floor and ask me to crawl under the table to retrieve it for her.
She turned to drink, and started to call me Jimmy Young when we were alone. She developed a new sex-game where I had to dress up as a sheep and pretend to be Geoffrey Howe while she rode me around the number 10 bedroom, whipping me with a riding crop.
Then, in Paris, it ended. She just walked out of my life as she walked out of number 10 and everyone else's life. I would like to think that those tears were tears for me. But I know they are not, and - now - do you still have to ask why I seem obsessed?
In the private sector too 'Big is beautiful' became old-hat and the 'lean, mean and efficient' became the new fashion.
So, now, instead of your problem with the goods, service or whatever, getting lost in a maze of bureaucracy, it gets farmed out to some know-nothing-and-care-less brain-numbed flunky at a distant call-centre who can't deviate from the script without getting a cut in wages, who can't sort out the problem because there isn't an appropriate category in the software that was written by someone with no knowledge of the business and English as a third language, and they can't deal with it in writing because the office where they could solve it all in a couple of minutes no longer exists and all the staff have been made redundant and now all work selling bland processed pre-packaged meat-flavour sandwich-type meals in the massive retail park that used to be an iron foundry, while the product itself is mass-produced in some tiny third-world country by unschooled children who work for the equivalent of 3p a day and make thousands of the things during each 16 hour shift, then the goods are transported half-way around the world in some leaky, polluting rust bucket before being dumped on some nameless dock in the middle of the night to be transported overnight by half-asleep underpaid and harried truck drivers in knackered totally lethal unroadworthy trucks and delivered to some vast out of town hyper-mega-market where the night-shift of working mothers who've been up all day with junk-food-overdosed hyper-active toddlers and bored sullen older kids who can't go to school because there is no-one insane enough to teach the un-socialised little psychopathic sadists that video-game morality is no way to cope with a complex modern society, and especially not for teachers wages that wouldn't be enough to get a mortgage on a condemned rabbit hutch, and then the hyper-mega-market opens 24 hours a day so that you can drag yourself, half-asleep after working 13 hour shifts to produce some information-rich pile of paper that you know no-one will ever want or need to read using technology that makes the job three times as difficult as it used to be while using six-times as much electricity and ten-times as many scarce trees, your brain is throbbing with commercial jingles that cause an almost Pavlovian response in your tired fingers as weary eyes fall upon each bright package that offers you financial, sexually and worldly success just by heating up its contents in a microwave - a microwave that you still are paying for on your credit card - and sitting down in front of the tv to some massive-prize giving quiz for those who seem to be able to fill their minds up with all manner of useless context and relevance-free trivia, before falling asleep on the sofa, then waking with a start because you remember that you have to cal the 'free' 24 call-line because some company you've never heard off - and suspect don't really exist beyond a heading on their letter paper - are saying that they are a debt-collection agency and they are taking you to court to because you haven't paid a credit card bill, which only last week you explained to the credit card company's own 24 hour call line, you hadn't paid because in fact it was a credit, not a debit, that they themselves had cocked up when you complained a week before to someone else on the cal line who had confirmed that the matter had been fed into the computer and was - therefore - rectified, but when you pick up the phone to make the call you get a pre-recorded message giving you a number to ring where a pre-recorded voice will tell you why your phone has been cut off, then seventeen phone calls later - all made on your mobile because your landline has been disconnected and even though it is not your fault the company can't re-connect you because 'the computer is down' you discover it is because the credit card company has double-debited you bank account for the outstanding debit that is really a credit - or was that a credit that was really a debit - and therefore sent your bank account into the red, but you can't sort that out because the bank only now exists as an internet site and you can't get to the web page because your phone has been disconnected, so you give up in despair and go and get a beer from the fridge only to discover it is past its sell-by date, but you no longer care and drink it anyway, only to wake up in hospital because some third-world sub-contracted brewer discovered that it was cheaper to use anti-freeze rather than hops or malt to make beer, and then hospital sends you home early because no-one is insane enough to be a nurse on the wages they pay, so you head back home with an upset stomach from the cook-chill food not being served at the correct temperature, a viral infection you didn't have before you were admitted, only to find that your house has been repossessed and the bailiffs are just leaving with your state of the art telephone in lieu of payment, leaving you with a 24 hour help-line number, so you sit down in the street only to find you mobile has a flat battery.
Well.... You know what kids are like. All that idealistic nonsense he used to come out with; 'the meek will inherit the earth' and all that idealistic bollocks. I didn't work my arse off for six days separating the sodding firmaments just so that he could give the whole place away to some sandal-wearing pinko time-wasters without the gumption to get themselves a decent standard of living. I bet they are all vegetarians too.
I had high hopes for that boy too. When he did the thing with the loaves and the fishes, I thought - that's my boy! Imagine the mark-up on something like that? But the dozy sod just gave them all away. Did the idea of a fast food franchise even enter that hippy head of his? Did it buggery.
I thought - y'know, get the lad in there early, start him at the bottom, get him to know the business. Then an aeon or two down the line the missus and I can bugger off to Bournemouth, nice little bungalow on the coast while we are still young enough to enjoy our immortality.
But I was buggered if I was going to leave the place in his hands - 'love your neighbour' - bloody unnatural I call it. Smite the bastards mightily - that's what I say. I mean what is the point of having an almighty wrath if you are just going to pat the miserable sinners on the head and let them go?
So, I fetched him back. Sent him around to visit the wife's relatives in Valhalla - that put the cat amongst the pigeons. I'd like to see the soft sod try to forgive a thunder god for a malleting around the earhole.
Do him good. I think.
Last Saturday, I was walking in the woods, when I heard a noise from behind me.
'Psst.'
I ignored it and turned to carry on.
'Psst, hey you.'
I turned and walked back to the tree that I thought was talking to me.
A bear stepped out from behind the tree, looking around nervously. 'Hey mate,' he said. 'Have you seen the woodman?'
'You're a bear,' I said.
'Well spotted.'
'But not only do bears not talk,' I replied. 'They are no longer native to this country.'
'Tough shit mate,' the bear said, still looking around nervously. 'You're in a fairy tale now. A different bleeding reality, innit?'
'Oh shit, not another fairy tale. The doctor told me that if I laid off smoking that stuff it wouldn't happen again.'
'It's nothing to do with what you've been smoking, mate,' the bear said with an element of disgust. 'Some dozy sod's been arsing around with the whole space/time continuum whatsit. Everything's gone to buggery.' The bear sat down on a convenient tree stump. 'Take last week, they only had me - me - up the castle giving that Sleeping Beauty a kiss. Do I look like a sodding prince?'
'Well....' I said carefully, noticing the size of his claws.
'Anyway, like I said. Have you seen the woodman?'
'What do you mean the one that used to leap out from behind the trees and show the girls his chopper?'
'Naw,' the bear said. 'I can see you haven't been here for quite a while. The fairy godmother soon put a stop to that - it was ruining the whole reputation of fairy tale land that was - she banished him from the magical forest. Last I heard he'd gone into politics.' The bear spat in disgust.
'No, I haven't seen the woodman. Why do you want to know?' 'He's after us - me and my mates.'
'Why?'
'You've heard of Goldilocks.'
'Who hasn't,' I spluttered. 'Is she still...?'
'What, the forest bike?' The bear said.
'Well, I wouldn't put it like that,' I said. 'Anyway, I never believed those stories about her. The only time I went out with her I never even found out if she was a natural Goldie.'
'Oh, she is, she most definitely is.' The bear nodded his head wistfully.
'Anyway, what's the problem?' I said. 'The Goldilocks and the three bears story I head didn't sound too serious - as far as I recall everyone lived happily ever after.'
'Weeell....' The bear shifted uncomfortably on his stump and scratched. 'I think I might have a hair up my arse,' he said.
I took a couple of steps back. 'Yes?'
'Well, you know the Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear and Baby Bear bit?'
'Yes.'
'Our agent's idea. She thought three male bears sharing a cottage deep in the woods, flowers around the doorway, rustic antique furniture and so on.... "Sends entirely the wrong signals," she said. We could see her point, fairy tales have been getting a declining market share ever since Watch with Mother, and since those bleeding Teletubbies stitched everything up... Well, a bear's got to eat, and we've all got families back home, y'know?'
I nodded. 'Go on....'
'Well, a bear gets lonely too, y'know... far from home. We do a bit of moonlighting on the side... black market honey. Well, these days every bit helps....' He sighed. 'Anyway, there we are all three of us hanging around one morning, reading the papers, talking about who we think'll get the England managers job. Y'know... just three bears with a bit of spare time on our paws....' He shifted on his stump again. 'Do bear's get piles, do you know?'
I shook my head. 'I have no idea.'
'My arse is giving me some gyp this morning,' he said. 'I think it is all this shitting in the woods.' He shifted himself again. 'Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. She came to the door, y'know - you could see she was up for it, peasant blouse unfastened right down to her... leaning on the doorjamb, you get the picture?' He shrugged. 'I mean we are normal bears, y'know... with a bear's needs... a long way from home and our families... and she was more than willing, y'know?'
'Yes.' I nodded. I knew what Goldilocks could be like when she was in the mood. Trouble was she was only in the mood on days with a 'y' in them and she could be hotter than the jam in a microwaved doughnut.
The bear could see from the look in my eyes and the submarine surfacing in my trousers that I knew what he was talking about. 'Well, you know the bit in the story about the broken furniture?'
'Y...es.'
'Well, you know one girl and three bears, a chair is not going to last long is it?'
'No.'
'Or a bed come to that.'
'No.' I hesitated. 'The porridge?'
'I don't have to draw a picture, do I?' The bear said. 'Suffice to say it wasn't too hot for her to swallow, if you see what I mean?'
'Yes, right.'
The bear sighed. 'So there you are then.'
'But, what does this have to do with the woodman? He's not her father is he?'
'No.'
'He's not he lover, brother husband, fiancé or anything either?'
'Oh no... let's just say he swings his chopper the other way, shall we?' The bear put his paw on his hip and fluttered his eyelids. 'Know what I mean?'
'Oh, right.'
The bear stood up, brushing down his fur. He looked over my shoulder. 'Oh, fuck! It's him. I'm off, see you.' The bear dropped down to all fours and began to run.
'But why is he after you? ' I called after him.
'It was his bloody cottage and we wrecked it!' The bear called back over his shoulder. 'He's after us to pay for all the bloody damage.'
And with that, the bear was gone, with the woodman chasing after him, crashing through the thick trees. A moment later I saw the pope emerge from the trees, pulling his robes back down as he stepped back on to the path that led from the woods.
I took the other way out.
Of course, back in those days we had to provide our own sheep. There was none of this corporate sponsorship, not in those early days. Only the other day I saw some one whose wellies had been sponsored by PlungenPuke Sheepdips. Bloody good wellies they were too, designed so that once the sheep had her back legs in them there was no way she could wiggle free.
I wish I'd had a pair like that, back when I was young enough to get up to the top of Torfellbank hill when all the young ewes used to gather up there.
Anyway, I blame the television money. As soon as they get hold of a sport, the money pours in. That brings more money in and before you know it, the sheep have adverts for banks and suchlike dyed into their fleeces. 'Do to this sheep exactly what our bank has been doing to you all these years.' I remember that one.
There's drugs as well. So many shepherds these days are on Viagra, it makes going into the dressing room like trying to walk through a turnstile.
All these writings are (c) David Hadley 1999-2001. Not to be used without Permission.