part 3

[it was inevitable really - another week, another cut 'n' paste job - and here is EPISODE the THIRD of their collective ramblings. "Yeah! Talkin' 'bout the boys from SOLENT CITY!" On this occasion, Shelfy, Snilt, Goldlamé, Janet, Rathbone, Rockette and YOURS MINTILLY have all contributed stanzatics from the attic...]
OH NO! THE BUOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN!

The sailing club - "May I introduce the ocean, Cedric? Cedric Harbottle... The North Atlantic, The North Atlantic... Cedric Harbottle. Ah, there's Melissa... Melissa, Darling! (I leave Cedric and The Ocean to chat by themselves...)
"I'm in computers, actually, I sell them to Middle East customers. Would you like a drink?"
The Ocean quietly replied, "I don't drink, thank you."
"Well", said Cedric, "How long have you been a member of the sailing club?... you didn't tell me your profession... let me guess, you're in oil..."
"I am desolation!" boomed The Ocean.
"Mind if I call you Des..."

There is an old legend... a Narner will travel to the far west, beyond The City Of The Men With The Horned Helmets that is called, in the Elven tongue, Port Talbot. In a hidden valley, surrounded by poisonous Kalgorn trees, the Narner will find a piece of string, coated in the juice of the magical Mooncrane Berry. The Narner will speak to the guardian of The Gates Of Dunknorris, in a mysterious tongue used only on damp Thursdays.

What did you find
On the boating lake of your mind?
Thoughts like pleasure craft
Both fore and aft,
And after, did you go swimming with the swans
Or was it the professors and dons?
What were your thoughts
About castles and forts?
Rusting submarines and flourescent buoys
Further away, a road full of cars like toys. (pathetic! Ed.)

The guardian will say, "Welcome Narner, to the terrible Gates Of Dunknorris... Before you may enter, you must solve The Riddle Of The Pound Of Frozen Peas. Speak now or suffer the wrath of GOGOR, the many-warted stoat with the nameless uncle that is called Jeff!"

It is recommended that the Narner drinks from the phial of Viper Spit, lies down on a soft bed of dandelions and falls asleep... but what is The Riddle Of The Pound Of Frozen Peas?

The boy! The boy
On the burning deck, does stand
But burnest not one iota,
Nor indeed does he smoke
Since last Easter
On his birthday
When he coughed a lot.

If the Narner can answer The Riddle, he will be given The Enchanted Key To The Wizards' Executive Lavatory. Thrice shall he use the lavatory and thrice shall he wash his hands and thrice shall he seek Gilzean on the dank walls and thrice shall he urinate in the quest for enlightenment and thrice shall he recite the powerful - yet curiously pathetic - poetry chanted only by really clever Druids, Ovates and Bards...

Sail away across the ocean upon a breeze
But take your paper hanky just in case you sneeze
Beware of the jellied mermaids of the North Atlantic Seas
Take some Eucalyptus in case you graze your knees
In your light boat of fizzy-pop cans
Beware of the jagged coral sands
Take heed at where your boat lands
Because it could cost you lots of Krugerrands.

...and thrice shall The Giant Lizard That Is Named Benny After The Great White Mountain That Belches Forth Maroon Steam lash its razor tail, in a circular motion widdershins toward Marion The Wonder Cow that, in the ancient tongue, wears gumboots.

Some speak of Mr. Christian
On a warm breezy afternoon
Thinking of octopii
With the terns turning in the sky
Like paper hats falling
From tall buildings.
Our minds like trawlers
Smelling of fish
Hauling on our nets
To reap the rich harvest of anonymity.

The Legend gets wierd here... The Narner will meet a wonderful lady in a glade, beyond The Chasm Of Septic Armchairs. This awesome woman will be wearing an apron of solid televisions and her name shall be The Mum Of Debbie and she will know a thing or two about cooking haddock.

Do eels wear raincoats?
Can you see weed?
Can a crab tiptoe successfully?
Is it impertinent of me
To question the very fabric of water?

...and Debbie's Mum will knit huge woollens out of real live crocodiles and she will keep Irish wolfhounds in an annexe, in the west wing of a rambling Victoria sponge... and the Narner will learn to spell "heiroglyphics" and then...

Would that flourescent buoys
Could holiday
In Mozambique
Or Fareham Creek
But during every summer's day
Off to the Holiday Inn they do sneak.

THIS IS A LETTER FROM THE GOLDLAME'S KILOTON: WELCOME TO THE WORLD

Rembrandt could smell burning... The Mona Lisa had burned his shirts in the tumble-dryer again... King Arthur sent me a post-card with just one word on it... GAYLORD... I just burned your shirts... a prolapsed Mount Etna liveried on a whelk stall... Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now standing in the universe... Art - plucked prematurely from the oven... Art - squelching over the sides of the glass and running over your fingers...

Good morning, huge amorphous denizens of the humourous desert! Welcome, residents of the green Falk reservoir! Welcome, little people with huge green goaty brains - read this warning carefully:

The Goats are coming! The Goats are coming!

Penned-up, rampaging in the back of two-tone Morris Minor vans... With horns as sharp as caterpillar teeth, mighty as formalin dye in a bath of acorn seedlings... Bleating like moss on Topic bars, tossing their bearded chins like fistfuls of Golden Syrup...

Maureen dribbled on Raymond's enkalin(?) spats... Clattering their horny teeth and grinding their toothy horns, like the bottom two potatoes in a pair of lurex pixie tights... All these goats, grinding immemorial hills into All-Goat-Bran... The ancient art of Moulding The Nun... Squirting yellow jelly over the breakfast-table in defiance of all the EDICTS... Saying "Bubblewort Clashe-pathalizon, Fliggy Coat-hoper, newt whelp newt whelp" on the bus...

Van Gogh's wife cooked mean ear-chip cookies... Stripy cats in suburban rubber-treejungles, sooner or later, tight trousers on huge tabby-cat goddesses of the Sumerians... cat-goddesses plummet to earth in space-stained blazing transit vans, with a trail of living goats in a variety of colours... blazing goats explode like shells on asphalt rooves.

I feed my name on the noses of goats and camels... cat-litter squirrels gambol by torchlight in the cinema aisles, acting out imaginary legends, casting out cheap plaster demons and glazer demons and heraldic aquascuta... How many legs in a sea-lion pool?

The Duke Of Edinburgh - We name the guilty men! Slack podium dentistry - Marble panic manswear, fabulous articulated jointless jelly thrushes... by the flickering orange video legs of feline dementia by the name of Nelson Mandela... by the Arctic Sunday dishwash of Swashswish, the biscuit's biccy buckles, the pom-pom hattador startles tiny sub-miniature children... safety cardigans and cranial protection units on a propulsion module... Distance comsumption by external confusion engines... The constant drooling black hyper-continuity of the motorway leading to the lumber-camp, where you go to catch Nun-spiders and Lorry-bugs.

Firm penguins, firm penguins, flaccid tench, bendy rubber people teaching you about THE ART THAT IS TO COME! The art of drenching symbolic women in symbolic marmite and stapling them together in a huge symbolic dripping stickyness - and that's my tribute to the last surviving uncle of Art - if Rooko the cat had been a paintbrush, many famous people's lives would have been ART!

SOMEWHERE IN EAST ANGLIA - "I did a Palaeo-gig with Gerry and the boys, the other night, down the Natural History Museum... Yeah, heh heh! Dinah-saurus and she thought we were great... Gerry can't remember it - he reckons he Mastodon it in his sleep... heh heh! Let's have a bite of your iguana, Don... Heh heh! Oh well, Plesiosaurus.. I mean Pleasioself!

"My son's just done one of those government training courses... Yeah, he's learning to be a palaeontologist... he's on a triceroTOPS course, heh heh!

"What was the name of the first Irishman to fly?... Heh heh, Archy O'Pterix!... Eeeh, it's a mammoth do tonight!

"Eh, it's amazing how the cavemen kept their cars clean... of course, they never took them out of the garage... well, they hadn't invented the wheel yet and there was no point in carrying the damn things down to Sainsbury's...

"How do you know those rocks are going to have fossils in them?... Sedimentary, my dear Watson, heh heh!"

...and then, the Narner will hear the voices of the universe singing, "I had a sword-fight with old Pete, in which he cut off both me feet..."

AN ODE TO LUDOVIC SIMPKIN VAN NOONAN / ATTRIBUTED TO MUSTAPHA M'LA AMOEBA / BUT REALLY A PATHETIC ENTRY / BY BASIL "ALDEBURGH CRAB-BOAT BOY" RATHBONE / Oh! Mr Van Noonan! / I love your artwork! / I think you're a brilliant artist / Others think you're a berk! / Your work on the canvas / Was brilliant at best / And as for Van Gogh / Well, he's just a pest! / My favourite of all / Is Louis the camel / And I share your love / For this humpty-back mammal / We get insights of your mind / Through your great use of mud / But your drawings of dogs / Were a bit of a dud / I really don't understand at all / Your love for Le Maccaque Blanc / And this begs the question / Did you and he bonk? / And so, Ludovic darling! / The whole art world mourns you! / And if you proposed to Miss Biscuit / Then she'd say, "I do!" (really pathetic! ...Ed.)

A SPOON-BILLED FLY-BISCUIT? The Narner will say "Shit! I mustn't be fooled by the willy, or lack thereof of this woman, this being seated majestically before me, on a deckchair, wearing a blancmange that, in the ancient tongue, is called a marrow, this wondrous beast is... is... No! It couldn't be...

Bad dum pah - one two
Rinky ta tah - three four
Baddum pah - five six
Rinky ta tah - seven eight
Rinky tidderly tinky tum - nine ten
Bad dum pah - eleven twelve
Rinky tidderly tabbaty bah - thirteen fourteen
Rinky-tinky rinky-tinky rinky-tinky - fifteen sixteen
Bop pah!

...is definitely not Archie The Stork! Brer Kumferthousing and Harold Ite, Nurg aquatic Newt-Dog, read me I am in Switzerland. Dirk Stigmata of the Battersea Mafia, Reesus Welshmen, my mummy says, "Don't talk to him, he throws grenades!"

Porpoises In Action - The Psychedelicodfish and The Spontaneous Bodily Emission Ensemble in "Trauma City By Quakelight". I just wanna be something in The News Of The World, I could've split my shoulders!

Good evening Gridler fanatics everywhere! First of all does anyone know what NOL MUUN MUNUD means? Best interpretation wins half-a-pound of parsnips signed by Johnson's Gridling Band. Doesn't time fly when you're scratching your knee? It only seems like yesterday that it was today and here we are... I'm afraid I've lost the original notes for this bit. It was really good; incredibly funny and it featured reams of giraffe anecdotes... The rest of The Legend, as Peter Gabriel used to say, is up to you, because Stan just phoned about some work...

Man of destiny!
Warrior of the thin red line!
Who does make haste
When they send in the heavy horses,
Or when they invented the tank,
That was the last straw.
Personally, I don't blame him.

Cavers go for airfield, Prince Cezanne Putsa Moron, I'll play the principal bean, Allah Right Now! I sit in my bath and think of Mang Mang Screlt...

...announcing ANOTHER MUSICAL INSTRUMENT REVIEW BY NIBBLEJINSKY TJAERBORG... The Fairlight 77-77 "Gold" Keyboard Computer... We have been privileged to obtain a brief "hands-on" test of the forthcoming top-of-the-range Fairlight product. Its range of facilities is unprecedented. The 30-note polyphonic keyboard will allow as many as three people to play the unit at once. The sequencer has been running for nine months in the Fairlight labs without repeating itself once.

Over a thousand built-in sample sounds include: Congas Full Of Mud, Congas Half-Full Of Mud, Congas Next To Mud, Plain Mud, Dog Barking, Dog Not Barking (and seven other kinds of silence for all you John Cage fans), Flushing Toilets of all nations, Nagging, Full Orchestra (Normal), Full Orchestra (In Public Toilet), Full Orchestra (On Tour In Vienna, Instruments at Stockholm Airport) and every other sound that could be imagined by the designers at the time. Supplementary disks of further samples will be issued, when Fairlight find more sounds to sample. Fairlight also provide the facility to sample sounds from nature yourself, as this can be quicker than finding the ready-sampled sound you want in the computer index. But there is more to the "Gold" than sampling - full quadrophonic mixing and panning facilities exist: with a good quad system, you can close your eyes and be transported, to feel as if you are sitting in the middle of the Berlin Philharmonic, a forest full of bird-song, in the cab of a JCB, or in a hoover. With the panning effect, you can almost convince yourself that the birds are flying east, or convince the neighbours that you are doing the hoovering.

A simple speech unit is provided and, while only the lightest opera should be attempted with it, it is very adequate for humming newly-composed tunes and for dictating sheet-music. Used in combination with the sequencer, very effective "rap" records can be created in just a few minutes, with "scratch" effects courtesy of the "backwards" facility on the sampler. Sounds can, in fact, be played backwards, upside-down, inside-out, yes, even erased, but they will come back later...

Interfacing facilities? Yes, we got interfacing facilities! The MIDI interface can happily control up to 26 on-stage keyboards (26 is the maximum number of actually different keyboards that can exist at one time) and run a medium-sized hospital and a taxi firm all at once - although the taxi radio broadcasts tend to cause awful crosstalk and sound-degradation throughout the system. The "Gold" also introduces "Live Music Interfacing" for the first time, with a 126-channel output to enough individual personal headphones for an entire symphony orchestra and Welsh chorus. The "Live" musicians can then be rehearsed, digitally, in newly-composed musical works and the system will even criticise the musicians individually for errors (Three settings, Tactful, Normal and Scathing, are selectable).

The manufacturers promise full cross-compatibilty with the Casio Bimbotone. The price for the "Gold" has not yet been announced, but it will be comparible to the VAT on a Tornado Multi-Role Combat Aircraft.

We had to hand this prototype unit back to Fairlight, but they did allow each of our review staff to be photographed standing next to it. Fairlight stressed that the unit we had was a prototype and that was said to be the reason why 79 of the 123 keys sounded the same note, 18 of the 207 knobs were found to be glued onto the console and 8 out of 10 VU meters proved, on closer examination, to have no "needle" indicator. Only the keys that sounded the same note would sound polyphonically and only the samples BLORP and SQUODJ worked. One of the legs was missing and the instrument fell over if notes at the right-hand of the keyboard were used. Only the Arabic version of the instruction manual has so far been finished and the technical aspects of this review have been deduced by looking at the pictures. The unit will be available, in Black, Mahogany, Pine or Artex finish, "anytime soon".

The trees that fell before us
Lie still but do not ignore us
Space to go and see us
The envy is all mine
I have a mutant bee
That feels we don't adore us
The clock of hair bends slowly from the waste
Frozen egg beats up, warm melon treats us
The only clockwork haven
Seen east of Alabam'
Treads slowly on the dawn fruit
To shake hands with the clam
Lucid tales of Erinmore
Fall on the tales of cheese
We shout, applaud and speculate
Honesty doesn't pay
If your mother has a moped
And is painted blue and grey.

The story sofa... I've decided to call Richard "Sniltweasel", he seems to have taken to it like a duck to fishpaste... and I thought Big Pete could be called Epilogobradleyonefablist IV of Croatia - he likes it, but has a problem saying it...

Carnex Of Bee Egrets to anyone with a limp in Haverfordwest-No-Thanks-I've-Just-Put-One-Out... May I liken "work" to having your left ear covered in loganberry jam? What is life? Life is a vest! Don't talk to me about Art, Freshwater Crayfish! I will idolise The New Idol... Waiter, there's a Last Thursday in my soup! Crane! Snake Yon Brylcreem! The Legend continues...

PAGES FROM THE HAVERFORDWEST GILZEAN NEWS - Bore da, Team! Can the Wallabies be the saving of the Gilzean Race? What is this unidentified national emergency? What do they carry in their ON HIS GILZEAN SERVICES briefcases? Why the umbrellas? What is contained in their buttoned-down pouches? What has happened to our intrepid reporter? Why has Rolf Harris got nothing to do with this whatsoever? All of us hang on, praying the answers will arrive with the HUMAN CRAIG DOUGLAS's reply to this daft buffoonery...

I met a girl who sold me drano!
Sing Hi! To the goose on a dark red lilo!
So I gave her a tin of blue emulsion,
With a Hey ho! Fweet! And a dark red lilo!

LOCAL MYSTERY PUZZLES WORLD: Katanganese Woman Avenue, the area of the reported dragon sighting - shortly before filing this report, our correspondent made a strange telephone call, requesting a copy of yesterday's Daily Telegraph. He has since been missing. Would anyone finding him, please tell him that his pet echidna is pining away.

Who owns this expensive footwear?...

"My name is Pat!" said the girl with Drano,
Sing Ho! To the duck with a beak so yellow!
"So who's the bugger on the milk white tractor?"
With a Hey Ho! Phweet! And a bladder full of cyder!

WELL KNOWN S.AFRICAN DIGNITARY VISITS H'WEST: Renowned pillar of white S.A. society, Rudy Diamondbloemfeld, paid a surprise visit to Haverfordwest today, to drum up support for his anti-guerilla campaign and to show off his shiny new Jaguar-engined Scorpion tank. He delighted innocent bystanders by demonstrating the anti-terrorist capabilities of this wonderful vehicle, completely annihilating them. Afterwards, he popped into the local undertakers for coffee and a brief cheque-exchange. Let's hope you see us again soon, Rudy!...

THIS THURSDAY'S NEWS IN BRIEF: Today, being Thursday the day after yesterday, which was Thursday, brought the inevitable problem, to the city elders, of what to call tomorrow. Quite unexpectedly, they decided to name it Thursday, a surprise to all of us here at The Thursday Club. The Thursday market will be held on Thursday instead and the monthly council meeting, normally held on a Thursday, will now be held on the last Thursday of the year, triennially. That's all for now, until next Thursday, which will fall on a Monday...

HOME NEWS: from our heroic war correspondent (fresh from his divorce case)... To avert national disaster, our wonderful "Axle-grease Boys" of the ROYAL GILZEAN AIR WEAKNESS will drop wallabies to the distraught populace, bringing the solution to THE RIDDLE OF THE POUND OF FROZEN PEAS... a pretzel-makers' nightmare...

Her name was Pat and she sold me Drano!
Sing Cardboard Eel! In a sink so fine-Oh!
And fourteen sailors from Llandeilo
Danced in the wheat with a buxom lilo!
As I went walking in the morn-Oh!
I saw a fair stoat in a field of barley,
So I took off my smock and smoked a klern-Oh!
And sang to myself, "Pa un yw'r ffordd orau i' Abersoch!"

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Sut rydych chi? Sut dywydd hi? Mae hi'n boeth here! Diolch for the communication received Dydd Mawrth. Bara gwyn, bara gwyn past danedd eli hadog? Dear Sir... Regarding these parrots and all this sand... but first let me remind you:

The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking close at hand,
They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand
If this were only cleared away, they said, it would be grand!

...and parrots are, as you know, highly symbolic and mystical creatures, whose depths of meaning none but I have plumbed. Taking this into consideration and reading from the Third Book Of Leviticus, starting at the 37th Chapter - "I felt cold lead crack over my cranium and knew no more." I have decided that the hour is ripe for communication between our worlds and will phone you today in an essay at effecting said result... And here's your ring back, I don't ever want to see you again!

And that's the tale of a maid with Drano
With a fair young stoat and fourteen sailors
Romping around in a barley field-Oh!
Teaching the lambs to swear in French-Oh!

Rotring pens are a load of old zeerdomonkeys' excrement compared with MarsMatics. Sick Squid is too much for a crappy old Rotring. Sometimes even I can't find anything funny in what appeals to my sense of humour, but anyway, throw another log on the radiator and turn up the wick on the old radio, it's The Robin Day Christmas Show! Isn't it nice to have Christmas records in the shops again, after all these years? It isn't very, is it? Why don't they write songs like that Jimmy James & The Vagabonds classic, "Peggy Sue Got Run Over" Christmas record anymore? Remember "The Rise & Fall Of Flingel Bunt" by The Shadows? Do you wish to purchase a large and seaworthy ocean-going grey boat, all good ex-navy stuff? If not, I won't nick one!

You may be saying to yourself (very, very subconciously), "What a nice shade of notepaper!" If you aren't, I don't want to know. It was a choice between this and a sort of pale purple colour and my nerve went at the last minute, so I got this rather conventional monochromatic design.

I don't understand traditional folk music either...

Janet has just arrived and he is in an EXTREME mood... Put whitewash on the windows, lock up your agoutis and put your infirm Uncle Streltner under the floorboards. Great to hear about the chimney... Ah! Here's Janet now... I'll sign for Janet... No I won't, let's send him back...

Under the circumstances, that is to say... announcing Zeerdo And The Curse Of The Throat Tablet People... Hi there! All you lucky little expatriates, glad to see, hear or grapple with the merry tunes that...

About your problems, Rockette, you know the ones, the putting of limpet mines on a haddock with GT stripes... Hey baby! Don't forget that we are The High Priestesses Of Lunacy! This could take hours. My mother has a name for it, but she doesn't let the cat into the kitchen when we boil dead relatives to make the glue for PO Torture Bandages!

Talking of The Nyffe Grinders' Hosier Cellar... my mother hasn't got a name for that either. She don't know a lot, but she has got RHYTHMMNMNN!

Anyway, as the twiglight (sic) butterflies paint the evening sky, Goodbye Hi Hi, it's time to say Ashby De La Peter Marinello, because that's all the foreign I know... Do you realise, at this very moment, I can hear two owls outside my window? In credible sound thay make, waiting in the trees to swoop down on some unsuspecting car or small van. I hate all those selfish motorists, who are using up all of Britain's petrol, so I'll have nothing to clean my false teeth in, let alone my false beard and eyelashes which give the kiddies such a thrill. Do you have a cassette machine out there? Can we speak to you, using our tongues as The Mystical Transport Of Alphabets?

Things get a bit strange around here, at this time of day. The viper spit has evaporated from the bodies of the followers of The Great God Gilzean... even if the typist is Mo But-I-Can-Get-You-Some.

Who are you anyway, I've forgotten? Okay, you try asking for a Ferry Ticket Swan Flavour Yoghurt, in Sonnet at half-past bloody-early...

Is there a Goddess Gilzean, when Thigy gets a heavenly loblet on?

Pschaaat! There's an ovate of birds to see you, Rockette... and it's got your name written on it! Lovely day for a cold bath and a Spanish Windless round the block...

Janet's gone now, so I'm just going to read what he wrote... Blimey!

Is an "anonym" anything like Ano-Fresh? I will visit The Hall Of The Mountain Thing that is Haverfordwest-No-Thanks-I've-Just-Put-One-Out as soon as I can.

Rover rover rover dog rover dog rover dog, the story so far...

Anyway, a well-filled sweater to you all, this Noel and you'll be hearing from my solicitors in the morning... Yours Everlovingly, Colonel Fireball, XL5 and bar... or as Mimi La Grandbatfilthopera used to say, what else can you do in the evenings for only 7/6 these days?... A thought has just occured to me - SUPERCALFRAGILISTIC PNEUMOCONIOSIS (sing it, it really works!)

That's it for this week - stay tuned! Thanks To All The Gridlers All The Time