Chapter Sixteen

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Lozenge-Shaped Object and The Great Rubbery Creatures

Less than two and a half minutes after Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and Daff Maud Bunkum departed the library in search of a refreshing cup of tea at Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy, a giant, white and fluffy, lozenge-shaped object was seen zigzagging through space, bound for the moon. As usual, it was Old Lorenzo de Luna’s middle son, the one they called Piedmont (but whose given name was Alphonse) who saw it first. He ran to alert his father, for the old man lived for calling in tips to newspapers and collecting rewards, thereby depriving widows and children of their two seconds’ of fame and pocket money. And as usual, thanks to Piedmont’s bright eyes and quick reflexes, Old Lorenzo de Luna was the first to ring the editor of The Daily Bog Dirt, for which won the customary Free Bowl of Soup for One at The Sunday Buffet operated by Miss Gwladys Wimple’s Bountiful Udder Public House (located behind The Miss Havering’s Bog Mosquito Hatchery and Sweatshop and accessible only to consenting adults).

It was not the first time unidentified and interfering fuzzy projectiles had flown over Miss Havering’s Bog, and while none of them had ever caused irreparable damage (if you disregard the several incidents involving rumoured weapons of mass destruction from an Unknown Enemy during The Great Bog Massacre), not one denizen was in favour of inviting uninvited and mysterious objects to land, much less to remain long enough to snack on little children. However, a majority of the more adolescently inclined did think flying objects to be well cool, and not nearly as boring as the usual Saturday night at the disco. For this reason, these ‘juvenile delinquents’ (which is how Ms. Delilah Zonker and her sister Bedelia and Missus Ridglet-Grassworm referred to them) scandalised their betters by proposing that the frequently defeated Bog United Football Club (Motto: Victory is Fleeting, Mud Eternal) adopt, as a new mascot, one of the more interestingly mysterious of the Unknown Unknowns. According to eyewitness accounts, this particular UFO was seemingly comprised of a large number of hamsters in a net, all of whom hissed very loudly as they passed overhead. On its forward proboscis was a flashing sign proclaiming, “Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.” As it turned out, this turned out to be no more than an infantile prank on the part of the ‘juvenile delinquents’, and not for one minute did the instigators think there was anyone naive enough to take it seriously. However, as to be expected, they reckoned without the usual stalwart majority among the older and crankier denizens, especially those who met every afternoon at Donacia Beetlebum’s Public House (also known as ‘The Blackened Gargoyle’, for reasons best known to MacTavish MacTurf, the absentee Landlord). “There ought to be law against those dastardly flying monsters. Dash it all, they look like chamber pots, and you know where THEY have been,” was their accustomed rant whenever the mysterious objects were brought up in conversation. After which they would happily whinge on and on, but being who they were, none among them quite agreed if action should be taken to solve the crisis. “What if we do something and it comes back to haunt us? Dash it all, what if the opposition is voted in and council estates are built next to our piggeries?” they argued. “Idle chatter and such is all very well, but action could get a chap injured for life.” Such was their considered opinion in all matters to do with Miss Havering’s Bog, and it was not for nothing that the current Lord Mayor, Sir Horatio Nipple and his redoubtable Deputy, Mrs. DaFarge, had campaigned under the slogan, “We Shall Ignore All Problems Until Hell Freezes Over And They Disappear”. And it was also not for nothing that they were annually re-elected for life plus twenty-nine years.

Still, a threat posed by any invader from without the boundary walls was something to be taken seriously, whether it came from white, fluffy objects flying through the air or from the horrible and foul-smelling rubbery creatures that every so often destroyed everything in their path. “What if,” gasped miniscule Gazondia Sawfly, quaking under her green and black mouldy rooflet, “it’s them dreadful sisters, the Welliffomething-ffomethings, flying up there in that great white bloaty sluggy thing and be coming to bash us intae the slurry pit! What if it be poisoning our Jam Sponge Orchards? What if it be wanting to hover over us ‘til we’s took by apoppleplexy?”

As The Chronicler has already stated (categorically), very few of the denizens had actually seen the horrible and foul-smelling rubbery creatures. Two of the few who had were Olivia Spider and her Rumpus and Raucous (and now missing) daughter, Tiny Libbedy. In an interview televised throughout the bog by the BBC (Bog Broadcasting Corporation) several months previously (or it may have been the day before the incident concerning Owld Misther Bucket’s holes), both mother and daughter had agreed that, as the hideous creatures had stomped their way through the bog, they seemed inclined to leap and jump or otherwise lift themselves to a very great height, although never at the same time. Furthermore, although the sisters mood could only be described as ‘extremely baleful’ (as befitting horrible and foul-smelling rubbery creatures), the actual leaps and jumps seemed, in actual fact, to have cheered them considerably. This in spite of the great effort they were forced to expend every time they moved as much as two inches. Olivia recalled that they actually celebrated each jump, and there certainly was no denying that their progress was a most commendable and hilarious accomplishment (at least in their own considered opinions). However, to observers (specifically Olivia and Rumpus Libbedy) it was spine-chilling to stand by helplessly and watch as the ancient gumboots kicking their way through the Luna family’s carefully laid out dust garden, a paradise which had in years past had been awarded silver gilt medals at Chelsea. Thanks to the sisters’ incursions, it was now irretrievably ruined. On an even more ominous note, it was apparent that they knew whose garden it was, for they were heard to refer to the owners as “Those Moons”. Smirky, smirky they were, as though implying that they, themselves, were far too superior to speak in a foreign language, and that to enunciate the word ‘Luna’ was both a solecism and an affectation too far.

At the time of the broadcast, there had naturally been lengthy discussions over numerous pots of tea in Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy concerning this horrible vandalism, and it was eventually decided that the rubbery monsters had been none other than fiercely competitive gardeners, rivals of the Luna family in the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Small Garden’ category. Perhaps by destroying Old Lorenzo’s lovely and perfectly formed dust garden, they thought they would have a chance, after years of defeat, of winning a medal themselves. Perhaps even a Gold!

What mortified the Lunas more than anything else, which was saying something since they were a most litigious family and given to funding charitable foundations under the protection of The Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Solicitors, Barristers and Funny Wigs, was that the horrible, beastly, smelly Rubbery Monsters persisted in sticking a strangely sharp pole with a metal spike on the end into the most sensitive region of their water feature (which had as it centrepiece a statue of intertwined golden salamanders cavorting in a lavender-scented bed of dried vermicelli). This aforementioned stick, although extremely long and extending to a nearly impossible height (its top end and no-doubt decorative knob having vanished into a vast, dark cloud), appeared to have no other function other than to savage the countryside. There was certainly nothing aesthetically pleasing about its base (and what was the reason for existence if one was ugly?), but the mere fact that the upper regions were not visible to the naked eyes of Bog Dwellers prompted much speculation as to its possible merits and demerits. Perhaps (providing it had an upper end and wasn’t simply endless) the upper regions of the staff were extremely gaudy and with appended tasteless something-or-others. If that were the case, then perhaps whatever they were had been affixed for the purpose of attracting fish (known to be gullible and slightly uninteresting creatures at the best of times, and quite unable to carry on even the most one sided conversations). If that were true, then perhaps the stick was, in fact, a great snout, and the metal point at the end of it a tooth. Was the ghastly and ominous cloud hovering above in reality the body of the beast on the top of the tooth, and were the horrible horrible smelly rubbery monsters, the vile sisters Wellingffomething-ffomething their hounds of Hell?

The family of Lorenzo de Luna had yet another theory, as did several of his near neighbours and the little old pensioner ladies living under the tea caddy behind his compost pile. They asked themselves if, perhaps, the wombley monster wasn’t simply terribly terribly hungry? Could it be using its primitive fishing lures in hopes of attracting a moonbeam? And were the evil, vile and urgently smelly sisters Welliffomething-ffomething in actually fact his slaves? Whatever they were, it was obvious to all that they were hopelessly inept, an opinion which was almost immediately confirmed when one of them gave a stump speech to the gathered assembly. “Why, they are nothing but politicians,” snorted Filigreena de Luna, Lorenzo’s much older sister (who was nothing if not wise beyond her ears). “Politicians on the hustings,” roared the crowd, which to a man hurled a great many canapés on sticks and buckets of prune dip at the hapless sisters. It really was most annoying! The Luna’s dust garden was not even a marginal constituency, nor was it anything like an election year (or it might have been, given that politicians and other such primitive creatures campaigned most of the time, thus preventing them from getting any work done).

What it really boiled down to was that the destruction of their prize-winning garden was a most disagreeable experience, the merest memory of which set the collective Lunas to fuming. ‘Luna’ their name was. Not ‘Moon’! Nothing whatsoever to do with some great round cheesy object, even if said cheesy object was, in actual fact, The ‘O! Mighty and Omnipotent Controller of The Tides and Women’s Personal Bits and The Unforetellable Moods of Grandmamas’.