Once upon a time, in the great and dark forest of Zippobarmitzvah, lived a strange person called Helen. She lived in a weird house, practically indescribable. In fact, the nearest anyone had ever got to describing the shape of her house was when a drunken troll passed by accidentally and, to no one in particular, uttered – ‘that thing looks like a pile of dirty washing…’ – then walked away and got into another, far more dangerous story.
Anyway, there lived Helen, who incidentally was a keen fan of the Pet Shop Boys.
She owned a ‘state of the art’ midi hi-fi (bought way back at a ‘back of a lorry’ sale in Peckham) but had never actually heard its spectacular quadraphonic sound because in her house there wasn’t any electricity.
Now, isn’t that a bummer?
Wrong!
That, my friend, is just a tiny little bummer, compared to the rest of the problems Helen has in the great and dark forest of Zippobarmitzvah. Like, for example, the seven dwarves who every evening try to break in for a gangbang.
Or the cat.
Stupid thing seems to be permanently on heat.
Last time she got pregnant the kittens were light green and had small chicken legs!
To top it all, the other day a letter comes.
Don’t ask me how, because I can’t figure out how a postman could get to her house without being eaten by wolves, murdered by nasty John Cleese look-alike brigands or acorned to death by giant squirrels.
Still, a letter comes, so you can imagine how excited Helen gets.
She sits in the comfy chair, opens the envelope, puts her sunglasses on and stares at the thing.
Then she remembers that she can’t read, with or without sunglasses.
So, as you can see, our Helen lives right at the bottom of the box God stores his disasters in.
Now then, what does one do when faced with such odds, to avoid general depression?
Or better… how has Helen managed to survive in the great forest of Zippobarmitzvah for the past six and a half years?

THE WONDROUS WORLD – CHAPTER ONE

Did you know that the great and dark forest of Zippobarmitzvah is Jewish?
Every bleeding tree, and most of them from Golders Green.
Drive everybody barmy every Saturday, because they refuse to work.
They do absolutely bugger all for the whole day.
They don’t do acorns, the leaves fold up so that there’s not a bit of shade, they block up all the squirrel holes and if you’re mad enough to start cutting a tree down on the Sabbath you can rest assured that the biggest available branch will suddenly come down from a terrible height just to make friends with your skull.
Very funny, ah-ah…

Anyway, where were we?
Ah! Helen!
Yes, Helen is walking about the forest one Saturday morning (she likes her constitutional after breakfast because it helps the digestion and all that) when, all of a sudden, she hears a cry for help.
Any reasonable human being, at this point, would at least stop and listen, just to double-check, right?
Of course.
But not our Helen, who chooses instead to sit on a large, flat stone (which happens to be the last remnant of an ancient temple built in honour of the obscure and often misunderstood god Zog) and have a cheese and onion sandwich.

Now, the interesting point is not Helen’s decision to totally disregard the cry for help but – and this has been a subject of heated discussion in the Philosophy Department of the University of Wisconsin – where did she get a loaf of medium-sliced Mother’s Pride bread to make a sandwich with.
Then, there’s the matter of the cheese.
Think a moment. She’s in the middle of a huge, great forest and out comes a slab of Mature Irish Cheddar.
I tell you, I’m flipping! I don’t even want to think about the onion!
Anyhow, there’s Helen with her sandwich, sitting on the flat stone and munching away when she hears the cry for help once more.
‘Did you hear that?’ – she says to the badger that’s just come out of the undergrowth to find out who’s sitting on the flat stone.
Naturally the poor badger, unaccustomed to being spoken to like that, empties his bowels in fright, does a frantic u-turn and disappears back into the bushes.
Well then.
Have you any idea how offensive badger droppings smell?
It doesn’t bear computing.
It’s so offensive that there isn’t a word in the dictionary to describe it.
Lethal!
Helen’s reaction is… you think Concorde is fast? That’s crap.
Helen is out of there so fast that the loud crack caused by her breaking the sound barrier kills several Canada geese flying overhead and renders the unfortunate badger permanently deaf.
Serves him right, I suppose, for sticking his nose in somebody else’s affairs….
So, there goes Helen again, breaking through the foliage with the grace and awesomeness of a demented gazelle, at an average speed of a lot of mph and with not a clue about where she’s heading.
She’s going so fast that the Earth has to rotate faster, to prevent her from falling off.
Then, all of a sudden, she stops.
Well, not intentionally, really, but stopping she does, because an enormous tree trunk (probably planted by some envious one legged person in order to stop people from showing off that they can run whilst he can’t…) comes unexpectedly into contact with Helen’s forehead and the lights go out.
All the lights.
Mmmm… it’s dark in the great forest of Zippobarmitzvah.

At around 7pm Helen wakes up.
Obviously, she doesn’t know what the right time is, because her digital Casio watch has run out of batteries years before, but trust me… it’s 7pm and that’s that.
Now, when a person who’s been unconscious for x hours wakes up, the most likely thing they do first is swear.
- ‘Pisspot!’ – mutters Helen.
Then she passes out again, but not for long, because all of a sudden a strange noise comes out of a nearby clump of gooseberry bushes.
I personally haven’t heard a noise like that in my whole life, so I can’t really tell you what may have caused it, but the nearest I could get to describe it would be ‘a cross between a bull’s fart and a walkman playing a Pet Shop Boys song on very low batteries’.
Awesome.
Startled out of her slumber, Helen assumes the ‘self-defence posture’, which involves lifting the left upper arm to shield the eyes and crossing her legs.
A small leaflet from the National Health I once read in a dentist’s waiting room describes this technique with a simple, terrifyingly cutting phrase: ‘ if you can’t see it, it cannot hurt you’.
Never says anything about the success rate of said method, though…
What can I say?
I mean, what can you expect from something you’ve picked up in a dentist’s waiting room?
A lot of words and bugger all useful information.
And after reading all that, all that springs to mind is the Pound Sterling equivalent you pay in taxes, so that some mindless moron can sit in a fat armchair dictating it to some equally brainless secretary.
Mind blowing, to say the least…
Mind you, I’m moaning and groaning and, as it is, I’m only knee-deep in shite.
Look at poor Helen, she’s swimming in it!
I mean, look at her!
She’s on the edge of oblivion, teetering on the thin blue line that separates existence from non-existence, and the stupid leaflet tells her bugger all about what she’s supposed to do.
And it’s not even Friday the 13th or something.
Imagine if it WAS!
That’d make a great horror movie.
But seriously, though.
I think it’d be wise to take a close look at what’s actually happening to her, before she wanders off somewhere else or decides to do something irregular.

Ok, last thing she did was to assume the ‘self-defence posture’, right?
Well then, that’s not a stance a person can maintain for a long period of time.
After all, if you cross your legs whilst standing up and your left upper arm is covering your eyes (i.e.: you can’t see a thing)
you may safely assume that the chances of something rather violent happening to you are quite fair, yes?
Disagree with me at your peril, baby.
Sadly, that’s exactly what happens to poor Helen, just when she’s utterly sure of being invisible and totally unassailable.
One minute she’s up, the next she’s not only down but out again, and several yards south-east of her original standing point, with her right upper-arm half buried in a peat bog.
The funny thing is that one of her reasons for going out this particular morning had been to find some peat to repair the roof of her house with.
By the way, the fact that peat is indeed a great insulating agent and excellent for repairing leaking roofs, is something not many people know, so there…
Come to think of it, our Helen is quite a resourceful little sod, isn’t she?
Actually, I have heard that she’s supposed to have invented this new kind of glue, so strong you can even stick tree trunks together! Quite a rapid thing, if you ask me.

Now, excuse me if I change the subject but I need to ask you something.
Have you ever been unconscious?
No?
I have. Several times.
The most spectacular time was when I got hit by a wild boar whilst taking care of my little necessities behind a bush.
Anyway, when you’re unconscious, two things usually happen.
One.
You forget everything.
Two.
People looking at you see a number of little birds flying dementedly in a circle, around whatever part of your body has been hit. Little birds, I mean, not huge, great condors or something.
Well then, ten or twelve is the usual number, depending on the seriousness of the injury.
The most I’ve had, personally, like the time with the wild boar, is seventeen, and once I’ve counted twenty-seven on an idiot
who got thrown off a tree by a bunch of baboons for stealing bananas.
Impressive, right?
Get this, then.
Helen, at this very moment, has eighty-six of the buggers flying around her head like crazy.
So, there she is, in the middle of pandemonium royale, with her upper arm still stuck in the peat and her eyes firmly shut, when
this ‘thing’ arrives on the scene and starts prodding her with a small pointed stick.
Must be a ‘thing’, surely, because it bears no resemblance whatsoever to anything I have ever seen, heard or read about.
Doesn’t even look organic.
A bit catholic, perhaps, but that’s about it.
Well, obviously, when someone prods you with a small pointed stick, your first reaction has got to be at least one of mild surprise, no?
Followed, naturally, by an overwhelming desire to smack the offending party as hard as possible, yes?
Right.
Then we all agree there.
Good!

Incidentally, the laws of probability state that the chances of laying an unknown entity flat whilst semi-conscious and weapon-less (thus gaining the all-important psychological and physical advantage) are in the region of minus thirty-two, a significant number in various parts of South America, known to possess magical qualities.
Reality, though, can be a real bitch sometimes.
Just when you’ve got it all worked out and you feel really, really, really confident, something unexpected happens and back to the drawing board you go.
Like right now, for example.
There’s the ‘thing’ tampering with Helen’s body, and it’s just about to bend down to inspect her a little better when, all of a sudden, Helen socks it a big one in the nether regions.
That was unexpected and different!
This is also the moment when, were we at the cinema, the music from Indiana Jones would come up and thousands of innocent bones would be broken and the hero would go absolutely bonkers until there’s nothing left standing.
That kind of thing.
Man, you should see Helen go for the ‘thing’.
She must really, really hate pointed sticks because within 20 seconds all that’s left of the poor, hapless creature is a leg and
a packet of Marlboro Lights.
‘Fags!’ – she exclaims – ‘Brilliant!’ and promptly sets about to scour the surrounding area for other bits of the ‘thing’, hoping to find other interesting things like matches, lighters, cigarette papers, money and so forth.
Sure enough, she spots the other leg (complete with trouser leg, of course), but the pockets are empty.
Further up the tree is the head, sporting a funny yellow helmet with a chinstrap.
Better investigate… she mutters, and starts climbing the tree.
She’s almost up there, where the head is, just about half a yard away, when a nice, hard coconut hits her on the back of her head and almost pushes her off her precarious stance.
‘Hey you! – yells this voice from down below – ‘have you seen a green ‘thing’ with three arms and a yellow bicycle helmet?’

(TO BE CONTINUED)

His main problem seems to lie in that vast field where women usually graze.
He desperately wants to jump that fence, and jump the whole shabang as well, for that matter, but he simply can’t.
His confidence legs are just not long enough.
In fact, you could safely state that he almost hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
Tell you what, I’ll get on with the yarn, and then you can blabber your miserable opinion.
Greg has always had a thing about little white socks.
He used to get quite worked up at school cause the girls wore them as part of their uniform.
Every morning, in class, the guy spent 90% of his time looking at girls’ feet and the remaining 10% figuring out a way to score.
Greg had NEVER had a date.
Eighteen years old and virgin in every possible sense of the word.
Bloody Hell, I am longwinded, aren’t I?

Anyway, one fateful Tuesday, yer man’s last ounce of common sense went on holiday and Greg completely lost the plot.
He did something not even geeks with permanent acne and computer screen burnt out eyeballs would do for love or money.
What he did altered his life to such an extent that should you meet him today, you’d probably think me a terrible liar for saying that he’s indeed the same person.
He somehow managed to hide in the school and after everyone had left the building, he made his way to the gym. That was where the girls changed into their uniforms each morning.
After raiding every single locker, he found himself in possession of some 600 pairs of little white socks and a frightening collection of underwear.
Now, he had to get out of the place, of course….
He chose a window at the back of the building, which looked onto the playing fields.
He opened it, careful not to make any noise, and was about to crawl out when a cruelly sharp 2-inch wooden splinter on the window ledge made friends with Greg’s most valuable assets.
Now, what usually happens when someone’s testicles meet a 2-inch splinter is not that difficult to imagine, and our man kept logic alive by means of a ponderous jump onto a row of metal garbage cans and a scream not even Meatloaf could manage.
Dazed by the pain, Greg staggered in the general direction of the basketball pitch, but was almost immediately apprehanded by none other than the headmaster himself.
The latter marched Greg straight to his office where Greg learnt five important things.
• 1. The Headmaster was very, very gay.
• 2. The Headmaster had every intention to prove that to Greg.
• 3. The Headmaster was going to call the police and subsequently expel Greg from school, unless Greg complied with one or two little experiments the Big Cheese had a mind to try out.
• 4. The Headmaster also liked little white socks, but not on girls, really…
• 5.The Headmaster was actually a very reasonable person, when things went exactly his way.
By the time our guy had grasped the value of Item Number 5, he had become an OK Guy.
By becoming the Headmaster’s steady boyfriend, Greg earned rights to a much improved lifestyle, as well as excellent academic grades.
Ok, he lost the cherry. So what? He drives a BMW and has enough pocket money to go to Cuba.
I must say, he’s still extremely shy around anyone belonging to the opposite sex, and every now and then he seems to walk a bit funny, but heck…. he’s an OK Guy in every gay club on the South Coast, and that proves you that there’s still hope for anyone, no matter how ugly!
The point is quite simple, really. Try hard enough and you’ll get somewhere.
You don’t have to bend over backward to get from A to B… forwards will do.

There is no police station. The town’s Chief Constable, Mr Greens, operates out of a make-shift office in his garage and the Post Office is in fact the home of his next-door neighbour, Miss Platt.
There is a school, but it’s not functional, for reasons which will become obvious a little later on.
There is a Church, but it’s also empty because it’s Catholic and everyone in Bottle is one hundred percent C of E.
For you foreigners, that’s “Chuch Of England”.

Streets criss-cross one another with Pythagorean symmetry and houses are uncannily identical, down to the last petunia in the front gardens. Hence finding anything is quite impossible and getting lost is an absolute piece of cake.
All in all, the cemetery seems to be the only place likely to be regarded by everyone as a reasonable gathering place.

The people of Bottle are as dull, unremarkable and pointless as their town.
They are unsociable to the nth degree and boring beyond belief.
All, that is, except one: Mr J Crotch, of 24 Cuckoo Road.
Mr Jockling Crotch is a bit of an oddity on several counts.
To start with, he’s a foreigner from north of the border, which makes sense really, since no self-respecting Englishman would move to Bottle unless under mortal threat.
No one knows how he got here in the first place, nor where he comes from, but since this is not a town renowned for being friendly, not many give a hoot.
Nevertheless, Mr Crotch is possibly the most important person in town for a really queer reason: he is the only inhabitant below pensionable age.
Everyone else is over 60!

This annoying little detail makes Mr Crotch the sole holder of EVERY job in Bottle-On-Sea.
He is the town’s postman, fireman, dustman, plumber, electrician, doctor, dentist, undertaker, taxi driver, psychologist, taxidermist, beat policeman, coastguard, mechanic, builder, demolition expert, accountant, insurance broker, driving instructor, roof thatcher and Protestant priest.

Seeing that after practicing so many professions his salary must be somewhere between astronomical and stratospheric, and allowing for the fact that there is no easy way of spending any money in Bottle, Mr Crotch is viewed as someone ‘quite well off’ and, as such, not a person to mess around with.
There are many other obvious reasons for keeping on Mr Crotch’s right side, but I won’t insult your intelligence by listing them.
Let’s just say that, should Mr Crotch decide to have a couple of hours nap at the wrong time, all sorts of terrible things might happen, such as floods, forest fires, virulent infections, roof collapses or stress-related acne. Not to mention the trouble provoked by the sudden absence of basic facilities such as functional telephone lines (yes, he’s the telephone operator as well) or garden pest control.
Jockling Crotch is the sole reason why Bottle-On-Sea still exists and prospers.

However, a dark cloud is looming on the horizon, a terrible cloud, harbinger of a fate so dreadful that it almost doesn’t bear to be put into English words.
On October 13th 2008, only a few months from now, Jockling Crotch – the pillar of Bottle-On-Sea, saviour of a great multitude for two whole decades – turns 60 and is planning to retire.

That’s it. No more work. No more responsibilities.
Now that, in my country, would be jotted down as a pretty large calamity, especially
since the guy is the only one who knows about it and has no intention whatsoever to tell anyone about it until the last minute, maybe even the day after.

Hallelujah.
Ten out of ten for timing.
Seventy-five out of ten for surprise element.
Two hundred and fifty out of ten for sublime callousness, total disregard for public welfare and evil countenance.

For yes, our man is quite evil.
Beyond the benevolent, ‘always ready to serve’ façade, lays a mind twisted with gruesome plans for the blissfully unaware citizens of Bottle-On-Sea.
He’s got a host of things planned for the Big Day, none of which is remotely pleasant.
He’s looking forward to watching a whole town go to the dogs.

At this point, you’ll be thinking ‘oh dear, it’s a foregone conclusion.
I might as well read Cosmopolitan’, and who am I to butt in, but if you were to stop reading now you’d probably regret it.
For starters, you’d never get to know what THE END really looks like.
And then, there’s one small but vital detail which is likely to spice up the situation quite a bit.

You see, someone KNOWS about all this.
Someone has been watching the proceedings from the very beginning and is monitoring the whole thing very closely.
I can hear you thinking ‘oh, my god… it’s GOD! THANK GOD!’
Wrong…
God has nothing to do with Bottle-On-Sea.
He doesn’t even like the place and he’s unlikely to fit such a drab little hole into his holiday schedule.
Who would, anyway?

No, the person who knows about all this is called Marvin.
He’s a postman from a quaint little village in Essex called Broddle who has studied programming at night school for the past three years and is a bit of a wizard with computers.
His wife, Linda, is a really good cook, but that’s totally immaterial.

Marvin is the ‘goodie’, the big hero.
He’s not Tom Cruise, or Sean Connery, and he’s unlikely to feature into anyone’s secret fantasies, but he’s got something no one else has.
He’s one hundred percent, twenty-four hours, seven-days-a-week LUCKY.
Everything he does turns out right in the end, and no matter what deadly peril he finds himself in, something great always happens and he gets out of any situation unharmed.
He’s invincible, indestructible and almost totally fearless.
The only thing he doesn’t like is rabbits, especially the white, fluffy ones.
He had one when he was a kid and one day the rabbit bit him in the nether regions for no reason at all, hence the little phobia.

Marvin is about 5 foot seven and has no hair whatsoever.
He’s the most hairless thing on the planet.
He has a pair of abnormally large blue eyes which always look red in photographs, and weighs between 140 and 160 pounds.
That’s about 75 kilos in metric, but you don’t really need to know that unless you’re going to the Continent on holiday, or something.
He has small feet, size 6 I believe, and a tattoo of Madonna on the right shoulder, which he got done on his 18th birthday and regretted ever since.
All in all, Marvin appears quite ordinary, perhaps bordering on the boring side a bit.
Being a postman, he knows an awful lot of people, but has very few close friends.
However, don’t worry too much, because he’s about to become as popular as fish and chips.

This is where the ‘real’ story begins, in fact. So, let’s recap.
In the red corner we’ve got Marvelous Marvin.
In the blue corner, wearing striped corduroys and a Marks & Spencer tweed shirt, there’s Evil Crotchety Crotch.
In the middle, nobody, cause in this kind of fight there are no rules and the loser is not likely to be seen again afterwards.
The funniest thing, though, is that neither of the protagonists know that they are about to meet in a deadly duel.

TO BE CONTINUED

Come to think of it, you shouldn’t attempt to convince me at all.
See, I’m a sensitive soul, who takes umbrage easily, and God only knows what I would do if you picked an argument with me on this one.
You may, on the other hand, try to understand the nature of my statement.
How? I sense you ask…
Simple.

Given the notion that there is usually a damn good reason for just about anything, it may perhaps spring to your clouded mind to investigate the roots of the matter first.
If done correctly, this course of action may well produce surprising results.
You never know. But, I repeat, it must be done correctly.
Well, how then?
All right.
Let’s start with the basics.
I’ll set up a little scenario to help you grasp matters more easily, ok?
To start with, I’ll give us both names.
Let’s see… I’ll be MARTIN!
Yes, that’s good, ‘cause it’s not too fancy and not too common either.
Unless, of course, you’re from East Sussex, where Martins are fifty to a penny.
You won’t believe how many bleeding Martins I know down there.
One day I might introduce you to a few of them and then you’ll understand what it’s like to be confused.
Anyway, I’m Martin too, now.
I’ll call you… Trevor.
And we’ll assume that you’re from South London.
Camberwell maybe, or Peckham, if you like. You choose.

Ok… Hello Trevor.

At this point you say ‘hello’ back (because it’s the polite thing to do) and then sit back patiently, so I can explain to you what’s going to happen next.
I’m going to write a dialog between you and me.

You read it, then think a bit, and if you’re not a complete dodo you might see the light.
Not a big, huge, piss off neon light.
Perhaps not even a 40 watts light bulb, but at least you won’t feel as if you’re in a coal cellar with a balaclava on the wrong way round.
Ok, ready? Here we go.

Martin – PIGS FLY!
Trevor – Begging your pardon, sir… I didn’t quite catch that. Could you please repeat?
Martin – Pigs fly.
Trevor – I see…. Really?
Martin – They do.
Trevor – That’s interesting.
Martin – Is it?
Trevor – Well, it is…. I suppose…
Martin – Why?
Trevor – Er…. Dunno, really.
Martin – You don’t know? Do you usually say things for no reason?
Trevor – No, really…. Well, I just said it was an interesting concept ….I don’t know. I think I made a mistake….
Martin – A mistake? What mistake?
Trevor – No, really. I was just being polite.
Martin – So if I were to tell you that you were a brainless git you’d be telling me that it was an interesting fact just because it’s polite to acknowledge a statement, right?
Trevor – Well… I don’t know about that…
Martin – Let’s try! You’re a BRAINLESS GIT
Trevor – Pardon?
Martin – You’ve heard. You’re a brainless git.
Trevor – Why?
Martin – Because I think you are.
Trevor – That’s not a nice thing to say!
Martin – Nevertheless, it is my honest opinion. Come to think of it,I also happen to believe that you are an utter imbecile, acomplete fool, the champion of moronity.
Trevor – I say! That’s very RUDE! How can you be so rude to me? I did nothing!
Martin – Exactly! You did bugger all to question my statement and focused on feeling sorry for yourself instead.
Trevor – I did?
Martin – You did.
Trevor – But you started on me!
Martin – Did I? When?
Trevor – When I told you that the notion of pigs flying was interesting.
Martin – Interesting to whom?
Trevor – To me, of course!
Martin – Who gives a damn about you?

At this point, Trevor (that’s you) takes a hyper jump to Coventry and sits on a lonely bench to ponder about the unfairness of life.
He ponders and ponders, until all aspects of his ridiculous existence have been thoroughly out-pondered. Then he completely breaks down.
He screams dementedly at the top of his voice, searching for the most vitriolic insults.
He doesn’t care about the throng of people that, attracted by the sudden noise have gathered in a curious circle around him.
He doesn’t see them, actually.

All he can see is thousands of pigs, streaking across the sky, doing cartwheels just above the cathedral.
And all he can hear is Martin’s voice – calm, collected and painfully clear.
“Told you so…..”