If you've been paying attention (and I demand to know why not), you will know that I have an excellent summer and weekend job at an excellent gift shop on Weymouth seafront, catering for all your cuddly meerkat needs.
The other day, whilst blasting the meerkats with a hairdryer following a downpour, a tall, curly-haired man in a wide-brimmed hat came into the shop.
After several seconds patting down the pockets of his huge coat - completely out of character for a hot, showery summer's day - he fixed me with his wild eyes and asked: "Excuse me, young lady - do you sell sonic screwdrivers?"
We don't sell sonic screwdrivers. We only sell postcards, rock, cuddly meerkats and marshmallow sweets in the shape of men's willies.
"Sorry, we only sell postcards, rock, cuddly meerkats and marshmallow sweets in the shape of men's willies."
"Aaaah," he said, eyes darting around once again.
"You should try Toymaster down the road. Or Cash Converters. They've got a remote control dalek in the window."
"Have they really?" he exclaimed, lightening up somewhat, "Have a jellybaby."
I went against everything my parents told me about sweets from strangers and had a jellybaby.
On killing yet another childhood classic completely TO DEATH
Congratulations should certainly be aimed towards this website's favourite author - second-greatest living Englishman Neil Gaiman - over his forthcoming episode of Doctor Who.
This is, however, not Gaiman's first attempt at writing for the small screen, as a recent raid on BBC archives reveal. Where, marked "Not for Transmission, EVER" and "BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD", is this piece of work from the master himself:
Neil Gaiman's Balamory*
"What's the story on Balamory - wouldn't you like to know?"
"Given a long enough time scale, there is no such thing as a happy ending"
Shadow came to the island. America was a bad place for Gods and half-Gods such as himself, and he wanted to be somewhere that still believed. That meant staying away from cities where belief was measured by TV talent shows and the new deities of rational thinking; heading towards the fringe of society where old ways were still followed, uncritically, with all their souls.
He stepped onto the quayside and took in the brightly-coloured houses on the waterfront. And he knew. These people had ancient stories to tell. And where there were stories, there was belief. And with belief, power.
"We don't get many visitors," said the woman in the Green House. She told Shadow she was a teacher, although he saw no children as he walked the island; and the school-house echoed not with screams of play, but with something darker, far more ancient.
Miss Hoolie watched appreciatively as Josie failed to seduce Shadow with her "Jump a Little Higher" song. It had never failed before, musing that should this visitor pass PC Plum's test, then he would be the one. Pure.
"You'll come to the festival?" she asked Shadow, "Everyone will be there - Archie from the castle, Edie, Spencer, Penny Pocket. They'd all love to meet you. It's Wednesday."
Shadow's ears pricked at the sound of his father's name.
"Will there be a Wicker Man?" he asked, half joking. He knew the stories. Island visitors passing secret tests, presented to the chieftain, imprisoned in a giant human effigy before being burned alive as part of their fertility rite. These people had belief in their hearts, and Shadow knew the murderous intent with which it stalked. These rites never worked - he'd been dead once before and it wasn't an experience he cared to repeat.
Hoolie eyed him accusingly: "Och, who do you think we are? The only thing getting barbecued tomorrow are the hotdog sausages."
Good people.
They met the next afternoon in the sun of the waterfront, the brightly-coloured houses decked with bunting, the smell of burgers, sausages and onions filling the air as Spencer led the villagers in song.
And they sang of Musical Ladders, Great Inventions, Groovy Solutions, Following Clues and, of course, Jumping a Little Higher. Then they struck up a new, alien, unearthly song, with no tune, the words like fingernails down a blackboard:
The sky became black as night, the sun burning with darkness. Clouds billowed red as blood, purple as plague. The sea boiled, erupting with jets of flame, before finally tearing itself apart to reveal...
A creature as old as time and twice as awful. A creature that had spanned the planets, the dimensions, the very universe. A creature that was both there, in front of Shadow, and somewhere else. Somewhen else, its many faces, eyes, and what passed as mouths flitting in and out of focus, into this world and out again. Tentacles flailing, reaching, reaching, rising up from aeons-long slumber in old R'lyeh, time to feast.
Time to feast on a god.
And Shadow was gone into the dark loneliness of death, his body devoured, his soul doomed to walk the void for eternity. Cthulhu, sated, rose to rule again.
Miss Hoolie smiled. The dank, joyless smile of the long dead, as the village sunk into a burning pit of tentacled, feasting, fornicating beasts.
Much celebrations as Our Pal Fanton gets not one but two - count' em TWO - strips in the newly-relaunched Dandy comic which hits the news stands on 27th October. But what - you ask - will he be drawing for the UK's number one inoffensive comic book? Our Pal Fanton will be drawing his EXCELLENT George vs Dragon strip for the title, plus one other story.
YAY! For Our Pal Fanton!
To help him with his work on The Dandy, we had a bit of a brain-storming session and came up with a few ideas: Tyrannosaurus Rex: The boy who thinks he's a flesh-eating dinosaur! "See those kids run and run / Because young Rex is going to eat his chums!"
I'm Blogging This: Billy Bloggs can't stop blogging about his life. Unfortunately he works on a flying hit squad for The Samaritans - with hilarious results!
Harry Otter and his non-copyright-busting adventures on the magical riverbank: Also starring Ron Weasel. And Lord Vole-demort. And Severus Snake.
Dignitas Dingo: Thrills and spills as a wild dog gets a job at Europe's number one suicide clinic
Pope Kid: Little Benny Brown is the luckiest boy in the world - because his dad's the fucking Pope!
Elton's Johnnies: Young Elton Smart saves the day with his hilarious prophylactic-based escapades
Lobsterman: Eric Potts is an innocent schoolboy by day - crustaceous fighter for justice by night, battling wrongdoers in the seaside town of Fulchester-on-Sea by tying them naked to a stake at low tide and leaving them for the crabs. With his trusty canine sidekick Winkle, no criminal is safe from LOBSTER JUSTICE!
And if we're going to pull in the older generation of Dandy readers…
Desperate Dan: Laid off from his cowboy job after the Brokeback scandal, Dan sets up shop as a barber. But where's he going to get the filling for his favourite meat pies?
Yeah. New Dandy. 27th October. It'll be excellent. Hopefully.
Some uncharitable people suggest that master of horror and suspense Stephen King hasn't published a decent body of works for some years. Cobblers, I say. Feast your eyes, if you will, on the first draft of the storyline for a landmark television series. A story which will make you soil yourself in fear. We present:
Stephen King's Bob the Builder
Wendy Cunningham looked up from her ledgers and surveyed the building yard through dirt-smeared office windows. She had only worked for Bob for a few months in Derry, Maine, but had become his de facto business partner, ensuring his operation ran smoothly.
[Skip 150 pages of Wendy's life story, in which her childhood sweetheart is killed horribly in mind-numbing, visceral detail by an alien spider disguised as a clown, explaining why she can never love another man again. Except, perhaps, Bob]
And Bob was a good builder. The best in Derry, Maine, where folks' word of mouth ensured work came in steadily. Yet, while he was always busy, Wendy's employer seemed to only work alone. Just Bob - the only man she knew who didn't call her ...untingham - and the machines.
The machines. Oh, how she worried about Bob and his machines.
The big, yellow back-hoe. The bulldozer. The crane. The mixer. The Roller. He had given them all names, personalities, painted faces on their radiator grilles and talked to them incessantly, while they sat mute in the yard with some sort of hold over him. They never went out on jobs - they had adventures.
She sometimes saw Bob arguing at length with the old scarecrow on the Pickles Farm, while the machines were driven up to their latest contract - the new estate on the Indian Massacre Burial Ground, down the end of Indian Massacre Burial Ground Lane, in the Derry suburb of Indian Massacre.
People, as a rule, didn't go there much.
Bob wrote. Bob wrote when he was alone, every evening. And every evening, the machines singing to themselves in the yard, it was the same:
Dear Fiesta, I didn't think I stood a chance with the hot blonde who worked in my office. That was until she invited me to inspect her damp course... then, our moans reaching a crescendo, we collapsed into each others arms, promising to do it again - but that's another story! Bob, Derry, Maine.
This time he might even send it in. Or, he would just lock it in the desk drawer with the others.
Wendy knew about the letters. She found them while searching for some invoices from Derry Builders Merchants of Derry, Maine. She was shocked, excited, flattered in equal measure, confused over her feelings for her employer, especially since she could never love again after her childhood sweetheart was killed horribly by an alien spider disguised as a clown.
She smiled as she put Bob's lunch into her bag, climbed into her red 1958 Plymouth Fury, and – Derry's WGUY playing vintage rock'n'roll on the radio- headed up to meet him at the building site on the Indian Massacre Burial Ground right down the end of Indian Massacre Burial Ground Lane, in the Derry suburb of Indian Massacre, Derry.
[Skip four hundred pages in which we learn the life story of a tramp, subsequently torn inside-out in mind-numbing, visceral detail after stumbling drunkenly onto the Old Indian Burial Ground]
Bob was there, driving the bulldozer. So were the other machines, driving themselves, glowing with a ghostly luminescence. Bob - a different sort of Bob - whooped and hollered as he crashed through mounds of dirt, and Wendy gaped as what she thought were rocks and sticks were, in fact, human remains. Some ancient. Some fresh.
Then she realised - Bob wasn't driving the bulldozer, the bulldozer was driving him, ploughing onward, its human passenger reveling in the destruction but playing no part. Then... it turned.
"You!" the orange devil cried, "YOU!"
It bore down on Wendy. She tried to flee, but her heels became lodged in the cavity of some dismembered torso - the tramp who came to the yard looking for work just the day before - and she fell.
Bob, with a cry of "Muck, NO!" tried to stop the machine, but either couldn't - or, Wendy thought in her dying moments - wouldn't.
Then it was upon her. Crushing her feet, her legs, the skull-popping pressure mingling with the screaming agony as the merciless tracked vehicle worked its way up her chest; then she was gone, thinking of the man who used to be Bob, her brother, those far off days before Derry, Maine lost its innocence.
And Bob, at the mercy of the machines, waited until he was alone in the empty office before he cried.
"My name's Julia," said the figure in the doorway, "Derry Employment Agency sent me."
"No it's not," said the unkempt figure, scribbling away at a letter to Derry's foremost adult publication, "It's Wendy. Wendy. And if you want to keep this job, you'd better be blonde."
For reasons that escape me, I found myself in a shack on the seafront of a popular holiday resort, in the company of one Gypsy Rose Lee Harvey Oswald.
He lifts his rather fetching veil, fixes me with a furtive look and utters words as ancient as time, as powerful as the spirits of the long departed.
"What the fuck you want?"
"Aren't you supposed to be a woman?"
He is unfazed.
"You crossin' my palm with silver or what? And by 'silver', I actually mean 'gold'."
Against my better judgment, money changes hands, and I ask for my palm to be read.
"Hold yer hand up," he asks.
I obey.
"If yer hand is bigger than your face, you are ...err... rewarded with the wisdom and fortune of the ancients. Yeah."
My hand is, indeed, bigger than my face.
And I know this because Gypsy Rose Lee Harvey Oswald took the opportunity to punch me one and nick my wallet. Blood. Everywhere.
"I bet you didn't see that coming, eh?" he guffaws, helping himself to my entire worldly fortune, to whit: five quid and a Nectar Card.
"PLAW!" I reply, covered in blood and snot.
"And - HAH! - you said you wanted your palm 'RED'," he continued, showing me the door. Then he showed me the curtains, and then the pavement, with extreme force.
Funnily enough, I'm a psychic too. And I can tell you that Gypsy Rose Lee Harvey Oswald's immediate future holds a steaming, fresh turd through the letterbox, it being the only language these curs understand.
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