Chapter Thirty-Eight “Squirts” While TP was up in orbit, he decided to do the logical thing and zip round the Earth for a bit, sight-seeing. After a few dozen circuits, things were starting to look a bit samey and he began to think about lunch but, just as he’d fished his protractor out of a side-flap to calculate the angle so as not to singe his tail on re-entry, his heel-blasters put-putted to a sputtering halt. Gravity reached out zealous fingers and our noble hero found himself plummeting downwards with a whistle. He landed with a splat, slightly bruising his coccyx on a rock. Having neglected to work out the whereabouts of his fall, being too busy patting out the flames on his posterior protrusion, TP was confused as to what particular part of the planet he’d arrived on so got busy striding about searching for clues. Whilst casting about, he came across a bush in full fruit with racehorse berries so, it being half-way between half-way between elevenses and lunch, he plucked a few handfuls and munched them down as he strolled. Aha, a path…evidently formed by bi-pedal creatures with a habit of walking in straight lines down regular routes – a pretty sure sign of two-legged beings who walked in straight lines…regularly – down routes. TP stepped onto the path and walked with his customary 1-step forward, 2-steps back gait, backwards until he suddenly detected an ominous rumble emanating from his nether regions. He bolted in haste to the side of the path, dropped his kecks just in time, then exploded rear-endedly. Right in mid-squirt, a group of birdysaur folk appeared from nowhere and laid objects on the ground in front of him: ‘Special offer today on these granite boulder shoes! NEVER have to worry about loss of gravitational physics and consequent floating off into space EVER again!’ said one. ‘Look! Look! Buy this pork-pie hat! If you’re ever feeling peckish or get caught in the situation of having to eat your own hat, you’ll guarantee yourself a lack of dietary misfortune!’ said another. ‘I HATE to have to point this out but can’t you SEE that I’m busily engaged in the execution of a case of the galloping TROTS?!’ TP complained. The birdyfolkoids seemed not to hear TP’s stern words and continued to ply him with useful everyday items like bollock-scratchers and legless trousers. In the end, the caught-short catanoid bartered a roll of loo-paper he’d been saving for a box of sharp, spiky, rusty iron desk ornaments with a magic carpet thrown in…well, more of a rug really. With TP thoroughly cleaned out, the passing traders melted away as quickly as they’d appeared. Feeling a little drained, TP spread the rug out on the ground and slumped down on it: ‘Flippin’ ‘eck but my ring smarts a bit!’ he exclaimed to no-one in particular. Coincidentally, the phrase “Flippin’ ‘eck but my ring smarts a bit!” happened to be the trigger command for the rug to rise into the air and accelerate forwards at full throttle. TP would’ve been propelled straight off if the claw-foot nails on his right foot hadn’t gotten enmeshed in the strands so he was instead swept along trailing backwards. Unable to see what was going on and there not being any sign of a steering wheel, the pell-mell pussanoid found himself being dragged through many a tree and prickly hedgerow until a voice chirped loudly: ‘Cor blobs! I think I must’ve left the iron on after pressing my plastic pantaloons since my house has burnt down about my very ears!’ This precise phrase is universally recognised as the command for “emergency stop” in magic carpet/rug language so it screeched to a halt, throwing TP forwards and rolling him up in it. He lay there, dozed and in a cylindrical state, while a different group of traders appeared out of nowhere, trying to persuade him to buy rug maintenance manuals, backwards moving sun-dials and other everyday handy things. Before he’d even had a chance to barter the pap-plyers down, TP found himself being lifted up and carried along. Like some memoryally-challenged partaker of the forgetful weed, history often repeats itself and things were afoot back at QT Manor. Evvy’d strolled into the breakfast room one morning where one-n-all were seated and munching semi-consciously on some half-baked beefosaur bits off of one of the half-baked beefosaurs which Jailbird and crowd’d rustled half-bakedly the previous afternoon: ‘I am hereby founding a new religion,’ announced Evvy (the wolfanoid make-over’d worn off by this time as it made his speech mannerisms a lot easier to write down). ‘It is called “The Church of the Irresponsible Chucklehead” and is based on the irrefutable premise that no sentient being on Earth is without at least a smattering of “ridiculously stupid,” no matter HOW smart, talented or capable they might be in other ways. I hereby make it my solemn life’s mission to celebrate and nurture this admirable quality, which we all possess, to the exclusion of all the rest of the daily futile exploits which we have up to now been guilty of indulging in – For it is only by developing and refining that which is weak that it can be made strong and lead us all along the righteous and, yea, pointless path to perfection…Is everyone WITH me?’ Being as the rezzies were still pretty hung-over and wondering where the ball’d gotten to, they all readily agreed and it was soon hats off and line up for Evvy to baptise them in a bath-tubful of Witless Water. QT was unhappy with the nature of the new faith and was running back and forth in a panic having kittenoids so Evvy delivered the invisible little darlings one by one, smacked them each firmly on their figuratively furry backsides, wrapped them in swaddling clothes, tucked them into a row of smart cots then appointed QT as “Chief Assistant to the High-priest of the Church of the Irresponsible Chucklehead.” He gave her a peck on the cheek and a pat on the bum which was proved MORE than enough to persuade her to whole-heartedly embrace the revolutionary new religion. Meanwhile, back at wherever TP’d found himself, the jolting action of being plonked down on the solid feather floor of a strange nest triggered off another round of Tia Maria, at the end of which TP uttered: ‘Flippin’ ‘eck but my ring smarts a bit!’ By pure chance, the rolled up rug happened to be angled in such a way that it took off rocketedly in a gentle arc and orbited Stool Mountain for a few days before splashing down half-way round the world in the exact centre of the ornamental lake at the bottom of the QT Manor grounds. TP sluiced himself down thoroughly in the lake and waded to shore, pushing aside the piles of floating fleaosaur fish which’d all abruptly died. Getting to the front door of the Manor, he found his path blocked by Chickette and Longtens who bound tightly together at the waist, facing away from each other. Since Chickette was bent on heading indoors for a wee and Longtens was determined to go out for a frolic on the front lawn, they’d gotten themselves push-me-pull-you’d in the doorway and’d evidently been there for some time as Cleb’d been unable to get to the doorstep to collect the daily delivery of milk which was piling up in clay pots. After a quick calculation on the calculator embedded in Longtens’s forehead, TP shinned up a drainpipe and dropped down a chimney to the living room. Being as it was the middle of the afternoon, TP ducked past Luca who was bouncing off the walls and cackling in a mad, ball of lightish sort of way, and headed up to the master bedroom for a siesta. It was pretty dark in the room so he ripped the duvet off the window and turned to see QT and Evvy, dressed up as a circus clown, laying under the bed, all snuggled up in the curtains. He demanded to know what the ching-chong was occurring. QT unravelled herself from Evvy and patiently explained the ins-n-outs to the perplexed pussanoid: ‘…You see, it all makes perfect, ingenious SENSE…The Book of Randomly Asinine Stipulationary Sentences which our gloriously idiotic leader penned whilst on the loo this very morning quite specifically states that no personal relationships are to be taken seriously in any way whatsoever and I was volunteered by everyone to be today’s shining example to all by sleeping with Evvy, thus casting a healthy veil of triviality over mine and your longish term serious relationship…isn’t that deliciously CLEVER?!’ TP stood and regarded QT with a kind of blank stare. Religion is a complex beast at the best of times and the catanoid’s cogs whirred maniacally while he rushed to compute the import of what lay before him: ‘Well…I…Well…Errr it’s all a bit RADICAL and I need time to assimilate the whys and the wherefores and the how’s yer father’s,’ muttered TP. ‘When Coco wakes up, tell him I’d like a quiet word in the study, would you?’ With the envelope upon which was inscribed the sacred BRASS manuscript clutched firmly in a paw-hand, he slowly made his way downstairs to the hallway, stepped over Quibbler who was on all fours fetching a stick for Gob who stood on hind legs with his chest puffed out pontificating in lordly fashion, got to the study, strolled in then quietly closed the door. TP sat in the swivel chair, swivelling round in a lazy oblong. He felt strange…HE was on the moral high ground?? MOST confusing, indeed…things felt as though they’d flipped upside down, or was it just that the chair’d come off its pin and flipped TP over backwards? He lay on the floor, glancing up at the recently renovated wall-clock which now showed 20 minutes past Giggle pm. Evvy finally came tumbling into the room, honked a bulb horn and somersaulted into a chair: ‘Hoo-hoo!! Mrs Sticky-bun tells me you’re wanting to share a joke with me!’ he grinned, causing the down-turned clown mouth to rise a little at the corners. ‘Well, YES, as a matter of fact…although not so much a joke as a crinkling of the brow in puzzlement at the logics of this here philosophical ludicry wot you have scribbled down. For instance, this sentence here: “A tree is purely Mother Nature’s way of sticking her fingers up at us.” Or this one: “The Sun is merely a giant whoopee cushion farting its way across the sky.” Evvy’d bounced up and was proceeding to juggle 5 balls: ‘Does THIS answer your question?’ Evvy had very astutely found TP’s main weakness…he’d always harboured a burning desire to be able to juggle. He’d been trying, every morning, whilst no-one was about, since he’d been a young kittenoid but’d never gotten past keeping more than 1 ball in the air at the same time: ‘Can…can you show ME how to do that?’ TP blinked pleadingly. ‘Hee-hee hoo-hoo ha-HAAA! Yes I can! Yes I can! Yes I CAN!...But only if you fully subscribe to and embrace the superior creed of Irresponsible Chuckleheadism in FULL and withOUT question!!’ ‘Um…I’m NOT 100% on that actually, Evvy, old bean. I mean, we ARE talking about my very mode of being here which is very dear to my heart…’ Evvy stopped juggling, squirted TP in the eye with his joke rosette then grabbed him by the arm to steer him towards the recently installed full-length mirror on the study wall: ‘Now…tell me what you see!’ said Evvy. ‘Well…I SEEM to be abnormally squat and wide although my head appears to be shaped like a wobbly “S”.’ ‘NO! NO! NO! NO!! That is merely a false self-perception conjured up by your wishful mind…What I see and, consequently, what is ACTUALLY there in front of you, is a young female kittenoid, a toddler if you will. Do you SEE it now?’’ ‘Yes. Yes I THINK I’m beginning to get it…’ ‘Look closer still…do you see it now? You’re just the CUTEST thing…all pink frock with a big ribbon in your hair!’ said Evvy, pinching TP’s cheek good-naturedly. ‘I wanna, I wanna, I wanna BIG bowl of ice-queeeem!!’ TP said excitedly in a small girlyoid voice. QT came cha-cha-ing into the room: ‘Hey, Mr Plobby-nose! I’m getting all lonely! Can’t we go upstairs and play some more silly sausage pies?!’ she asked. ‘Ha-ha! Hee-hee! Hoo-hoo! My billy play-whore of Babylon! Yes, yes…we shall proceed directly up to the wacky-fun room as soon as I’ve made sure little Floppy Bunny here’s OK.’ They both looked at TP who’d found a toy puppy and was chattering away to it merrily, in between sucking on a paw-thumb. Oh, TP! Oh NOBLE catanoid! You really ARE in titanic trouble NOW! What on EARTH’s to become of you, you sweet little bunsy-wunsy YOU?!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:43:38 +0000
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