part 4

[The story so far: Much of this stuff existed for decades on separate bits of paper, some of it in childish scrawl, some of it performed on old Olivettis. It was all heaped up in a cupboard in the corner of our Vicarage office. This forbidding recess we called, for reasons that should become apparent, "The Scary Snakes Cupboard". At some point in the mid '90s, I took on the task of re-typing out the entire contents of the SSC on Shelfy's old Macintosh LCII (which, incidentally, now sits gathering dust in my OWN Scary Snakes corner!). It was hoped that we would have the whole thing bound together in book form, but the printer we were working for at the time made Ebenezer Scrooge look philanthropic. Then someone invented the internet. We turned our in-house magazine "The Gridler" into a website, and posted all this sort of nonsense there instead. It's a lot easier cutting 'n' pasting this stuff from one place to another than having to type it all out again, I can tell you... Anyway, here's the fourth episode - lots of Shelfy and Sniltweasel in this bit - ENJOY!]

THE NARNERS OF GILZEAN PART TWO

Sharon spat keen, tracer-like instructions to the crew of RGAW 33. "Okay, you bastards, make like a platoon of geese! Load your special Zornon Pouches with the correct solution!"

As one platoon, the Wallabies of the Never Dimension adjusted the poppers on their safety cardigans. With almost Canadian precision, they fastened the Ten Zips of Kaltarth on their black... pronounced "bleck"... very sexual, very brief, OHGS briefcases.

"We are the loyal, unquestioning servants of The Cult Gilzean! We are the Wallabies That Set Up Home In Derbyshire! We speak with one tongue, which we have in our separate mouths! Rolf Harris is our blood-brother, his cousin Wilf is OUR cousin Wilf! Wilf's interest in rare starfish is OUR interest in rare starfish!"

"Time to jump, you bastards!" screeched Sharon, "Watch out for Katanganese women and pieces of wire called Skelton!"

The Wallabies of Gilzean floated down, on a pure sodium breeze supplied by Cecil Of Bond Street. It would take three days to pierce the hard, tin atmosphere of Normalienville. A badly-drawn Wallaby, called simply Tangmutalia Stintonwit, radioed electrically back to Sharon, the conversation is punctuated by volleys of crackle-pop static.

"Stintonwit to Sharon! Do you read me, over?"

"I have read you, Stintonwit, but I thought the ending was crappy, over!"

"Thank you, Sharon! We are approaching the Cuboid Astrodrain, over!"

"Activate your Ning-Ning trousers, over and out!"

"Pencil Sharpener With No Ears. over and out!"

The Cuboid Astrodrain is an unknown belt of fourth-dimensional Blanket Stars, creating the now-legendary blue colour that surrounds planet Earth... trouble is, the Cuboid Astrodrain is the ancestral home of the... No! I can't bring myself to type it!...

Yes I can! It's easy! It's the home... nay!... cold barracks of THE ART SQUAD! Yes! The Art Squad, those ignoble, Shoot-Now-Draw-Pictures-Later dread fanatics, total bloop-crazed negatarians, destroying anything unless it's nothing, the squaddies against all forms of creativity... In the Astrodrain, the Wallabies, even the badly drawn ones, would need the protection of their Ning-Ning trousers and safety cardigans.

"Beavers and crows! Beavers and crows! Squeaking paraffin pateel! Beavers and crows! Beavers and crows!" said the kind old hermit in the bluegreen cave, "It's tremendous to see you chaps, pronounced "cheps". Would you perhaps like to use my crayons?"

The Wallabies clung together in the gentle Cuboid non-rain.

"Perhaps you would like to sketch a quick illustration of a drawing? Do you like poetry and music, ballet, clog dancing, origami-sniffing, eh?"

"We don't know what you mean!" squealed the Wallabies, "We have no sketch pads, pole-lathes or mad uncles called Simon Teague! We can't really stay here, messing about with crayons! We're supposed to be delivering secret guff, written by an entity that shall be nameless, to Normalienville!"

The kind old hermit waggled his false beard and muttered to himself, "Snowcem is more like bleach than bleach itself... so why do these Wallabies speak as one mouth, but with separate tongues?"

"I'll tell you what, my young walleroos! How about a little nude modelling? Take off your Ning-Ning trousers and safety cardigans for a while. I'll do a few prelim' sketches and perhaps, between us, we could produce a decent set of roughs for a book about lighthouse-keepers? Would you like a throat tablet, by the way?"

"'Ang on a minute tosheroon! Does "dilt macooba" mean anything to you?"

"Dilt macooba? Wha'd'ya mean?"

Tangmutalia was worried. How come a friendly hermit didn't know what dilt macooba was? For goodness sake, it's the only stuff that friendly hermits eat! That's why they're always skinny... this guy wasn't exactly a bag of bones... in fact he was a bit of a fat slob...

"Come on Wallabies, have a go with my stencil set!"

Tangmutalia hopped forward. "Have you... er... been a kind old hermit long then? I mean those crayons look a bit new to me?"

The hermit picked up a laser pistol and spoke quietly and purposefully. "I've been a professional hermit for long enough to recognise when I'm about to be mugged by a bunch of safety-cardiganed Wallabies carrying briefcases. If you don't try out my acrylic paints, I'll phone for... Oh fuck it!"

Tangmutalia yelled, like a washing machine on heat, "Run for it lads... No! I mean, hop for it!... Move! Move! Mauve! Move!... Shit! Why did I mention a colour? The so-called hermit is a SQUADDY!"

The Wallabies railed and careened and spiled and glagooned down the Astrodrain, chased by the hermit, who was now showing his true black, pronounced "bleck", art-hating blind fanaticism.

Fazzzang! Fazzilch! The laser pistol gobbed blue death-rays at the messengers of Gilzean. Kathryn washed the last of the workmen's mugs. "Phew!" she sighed, "I wonder how long the decorators will be here?"

Fred and Colin were pretty good workers, always clearing up after themselves, never eating their sandwiches in the lounge and always making sure that the lights are switched off in the evening. I mean, if you pay someone £300 for a job, you expect a pretty high standard. The Wallabies hid in a wet crevice, awaiting the inevitable, hammering boot-splashes of the Art Squad.

"Hey Tang!" said Galtkeradin, "Have you got any ten-pees?"

"W... w... what do want those things for?"

"I want to phone my lawyer!"

"What? At a time like this?"

"I think I'm gonna sue myself for being so stupid!"

"Sue yourself?"

"Yeah! I'm a right prat, I'll have to sue!"

"What have you done that's so dumb then?"

"I got into the fuckin' wrong story! I'm supposed to be in a KRELT NORGIN horror magazine! I mean, I'm not really a wallaby at all, not in the true sense of the word! I'm more of a Klorgan Animal From The Nightmare Of Olivia Drake!"

"Yes!" agreed Tangmutalia, "You'll have to sue!"

GOSH! HOW ANNOYING!

Desmond loathed Thursdays, especially when the supply boat didn't arrive. It got lonely in the lighthouse with only processed cheese and and baked beans for company. His diet hadn't really improved during the five years he had been on the rock. It was quite a comedown for a freemason light welterweight contender to be living on a hunk of the Cornish coast.

"It'll do you a power of good!" - he remembered the Grand Wizard's words as he slumped back into his padded semi-reclining seat.

"We'll put you in amongst the natives for a bit, before you are called to The Golden Cauldron."

"Ha!" expleted Desmond. He imagined he might be sent to the lucrative Upper Basildon posting. His illusions were really shattered when he finally realised that what G.W. meant was the Treglumstorm Lighthouse. He pulled another ball of fluff from his woolly Danish pullover and contemplated the meaning of humour.

Some hours later... Stuff "work"! This is more fun... and Janet has just come in again... or is it a green balloon with a stethoscope covered in paper aeroplanes?... Anyway, Debbie's mum is Gilzean incarnate!

If most of the world is water
Is most of the land not sea?
Can all of the humans be bivalves
Except, of course, for me?

Whilst deep in his thoughts, he hardly noticed the gradual change taking place around the lighthouse... he was asleep within a matter of seconds, dribbling floods of dribble down his crumpled hessian pyjamas, poised on the verge of eternal bliss, dreaming of distant lands where lighthouses were a thing of the past. He dreamed of times when men were men, women were substantial and no lighthouse came between them.

The wind issued in rivulets through shuttered windows, chasing a thousand broken beams of light across carpetted parapets, disturbing not his sleep, banishing from his mind all thoughts of freemason lighthouses and intrinsic ambient connotations. He slept the heavy sleep of the experienced somnambulist: in his world of dreams, he could forget the problems of tomorrow and, instead, elaborate on the trauma and degradation of today.

There was a knock at the window. Desmond heard it, but as his room was 72-feet above the ground, he assumed he was still dreaming. There was another knock.

Desmond thought it rather strange that, in a dream about black aluminium unicorns, someone should knock on a window. There were no windows in the dream - plenty of transparent scaffold poles filled with helium and oranges, but no windows!

"Rat tat tat tat tat bonk!" Someone, or something, was at the window. Desmond gurgled into a semi-awake situation. Peering thruogh one red eye, caked in an avalanche of sleepy-dust, he opened his sticky mouth and grunted, "Who's there?"

"Not to worry, young Smedley! Matron's here! Here, little fellow, ingest this crystaline alkaloid!"

"But... but... b-b-but it's not Ovaltine! Sing, Matron, sing, Goddam you! Sing for NAYSMITH!"

Ovaltine, Ovaltine
A meal in a cup
Don't play rugger 'cos
You'll only bring it up!

"The drain is hardly leaking," said Jeffrey.

"No," said Arbin, "But it could have been!"

"Debbie's Mum is Gilzean incarnate!"

The Narner must speak to Flaftogunk The Unshavenik in the hidden grotto, beyond the last shed, where the attendant wears a fur coat on his head. If the reply is "Every time I think of Goole, I have an asthma attack", the Narner will be given a knife, a fork and a road-map of Cardiff with all the roads obliterated.

The narner must find 23 Katanganese Woman Avenue, that is called, in The Ancient Book Of Devination, 23 Katanganese Woman Avenue. Here the Narner will find Joey Stentoria, the meanest artificial limb maker east of The Waterfall Of The Fanged Banana. The Narner must kill The Firey (NOT the furry) Dragon that guards The Secret Cupboard where Joey keeps his Model Walnuts. The Dragon may be killed with the knife, the fork or the road-map, according to taste.

No man has ever killed it with the road-map, by the way... that's just a hint though... you could be lucky this time... I heard of a dragon that was killed by choking on a Daily Telegraph once... the choice is yours... If the Narner kills The Firey Dragon with the knife, he will score twenty points that, in The Ancient Tongue, would win a goldfish in a plastic bag or a floral brooch. By killing The Dragon with the road-map, the Narner will attain The Intermediate Certificate For Gilzean Narnerdom.

If the Narner survives the ordeal of The Firey Dragon, he will gain the most dangerous knowledge of the incredibly strange Gleern Pixies. This knowledge is so dangerous that it is kept caged in a ghostly hollow where no mortal man has ever lived or breathed. The incredibly strange Gleern Pixies ride on thrice-legged Cortinas through cloudy veils, in the ghostly Mang Mang Screlt Ether, in the enclosed hollow. General knowledge drips like pus from their artificial beaks, comical statements ooze from pustulent boils on enchanted Gleern Pixie elbows.

The Narner must pass through The Zygomatic Arch, using only jokes about France as his means of transportation. In this haunted hollow on The Soft Earth Of Amusing After Dinner Speeches will be found The Tree Of Comedy, surrounded by the most terrifying poems about pigeons and essays about Drake, the size of oil tankers. The words to "I Met A Girl Who Sold Me Drano" and "If Only I'd Remembered To Spray Yvonne" float by, on rafts, daft rafts, pulled by The Greek For Swan.

In this filigreed hollow lies The Throne For Debbie's Mum That Is Gilzean Incarnate.

Yong hoodle plummeting pipefish, army rungs are hooting. Jurdle plate ung trumpet tree, the ornament needs dusting. The tiger has style and a red thile on his back of needs, wasn't it? Werg crumflog doop oodle, drarn kolin bagbag, tresting torn voting tongue? Robert is a flughorpton. A nuclear gut-reaction, I live in the future of 1964. Quo marine cowboys playing in a dewy meadow, be apathetic while you've got the chance.

The Narner will be offered a Kent by a vile clown wearing very black alphabets as mittens...

And the Narner will say, "My kite is great, why don't you see it?"

The minx in dotage and a leader's thin blue "cigarette vous monsieur", what is flesh when Mervyn finds a Greek and The Secret Seven attract dusty fishes? Yes! I know! Pencil shavings! Yes! I knew pencil shavings! If Life is Art... and Art is Life... and Art is Art... and Life is Life... and Life is reflected images scrawled on a sheet of A4...

...and Art is just echidnas, frozen momentarily on a philosophers beard... Why are shoes so expensive? Mason? Kent! Meet The Scattergun Seven, meet the tie of fives, Energen mice for slimming snakes, shopkeepers on a hollow log. A punitive soiree looking down the barrel of the Cosmic Spandau, Beluga eel, fast as chrome lightnin', do you slouch when Kaine is in the room?

Does it matter if I can't count?
I could, but an accountant can't.
A country could, but won't.
Why then could I count not a Count?
Do Earls? Should a Duke?
Would a fount not count?
Does it matter if we shant?

Hear the strange screaming of the Electric Starling, like a vandal slashing a Royal tour of Ceylon, trembling Wwaterboroughs for a lame astrologer's cauliflower radii, radish anchor saline candy bar philodendron, stealing sunshine, charismatic chasms and intensions... EMI tea LDBVT, reconnect me with electric winter sunshine and sing "Talk Ward White Whaling Boat Far Card Burr Amesbury"...

Muscular rodents stirred his tea with satin melon spiders, card-paper aunties demand cucumber sacrifices, stretched out on top of a duplicating machine full of crocodiles and clothes-moths, reading Ray Dean's "Ratio".

May I draw the attention of the sun to Clause 8 of its contract? May I collect the broken noses of famous Tamla singing groups? Chintzy patricians say, "No!"

Lost Golf Stromboli Overcoats, comb below Denise Crow, Belinda Genistes! Can doe! Malicetroni fan dire masticosis - hard bar for a father of lights! Spend the winter lying comfortably below the warm record racks of HMV, get a hurricane tableau and hear how Raggadean once almost lost himself among the computerised machinery of a Mark X phonebooth...

AN ANSWER TO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING IS URGENTLY REQUIRED
Gerald had always been confused by the concept of Christmas, ever since he had swallowed his carol sheet as a small boy in Hull. The aspect of yuletide that most disturbed him, however, was the enigmatic, high-cholesterol thing known as "The Christmas Pudding". He had been collecting sixpenny-bits since the age of five, not out of some conscious desire, but mainly because he kept swallowing the portion of pud that contained the silver coin.

So, one evening in November, Gerald decided he would work late at the factory, to try and solve this mystery once and for all. He set to work at his milling machine, to try and construct a Christmas pudding from all the ingredients he kept in the cupboard under his workbench.

Gerald busied himself for much of the evening, constructing this culinary masterpiece. He had a fair idea how to do it, because he had once seen it on "The Generation Game" back in 1976. As Gerald worked busily in the workshop, his brain was getting excited by the prospect of, at last, finally, unravelling this last great Christmas mystery. Indeed, he barely noticed, in his excitement, that it had begun to snow outside.

He heard, in the distance, the clock on the town hall chime ten. Soon, this appetising bowl of fruity liquid was ready to go into the furnace. He remembered Bruce and Anthea advising gas mark five, but Gerald hoped they wouldn't mind him using a German-built industrial kiln.

"This'll show those cynics in Hull," he mused, as he settled back into his easy chair with a copy of "Centre Lathe Turner Monthly". Gerald was something of a crossword fiend, so he made instantly for the prize crossword, flicking swiftly past November's Miss Iron Filings.

As he became more engrossed with thirty-one down, he began to sense the unique aroma of his creation gradually wafting through, from the workshop into the restroom. At this moment, Mr Forbes, the night shift manager, joined him.

"Evening, Ramsbottom!"

"Evening, Mr Forbes!"

"Having trouble with thirty-one down?"

"Yes?"

"It's "Christmas Pudding"."

"Of course! "Two words meaning Seasonal Filling"! You're a genius, sir!"

"Not at all, young Gerald. I've peeked at the answers!"

They both giggled for a moment - it was a factory famous for its momentous gigglers. Gerald explained that the smell was not his socks, whereupon both he and Mr Forbes went to the industrial furnace and, with great care, removed the steaming pudding. They then carried it into the restroom and sat down to eat it. After digesting the pudding, Gerald related the whole story to Mr Forbes.

"Well? Do you feel like you've swallowed any money?"

"No?"

"There you have it, my boy!" said Mr Forbes. "To avoid swallowing money at Christmas, don't eat a pudding with money in it!"

Gerald was proud of himself. He could now approach the festive season with a new purpose.

"Just wait till I tell those rotters in Hull," he mused.


To be continued, well, sort of. Acker Nollidge-Ments to Shelfy, Sniltweasel, Goldlamé and anyone else whose prose popped up this week.