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was feeling very faded and even the presence of sixteen burly hockey girlies and the promise of a shopping spree could not rouse him from the doldrums in which he lay.
If it wasn't for the sudden appearance of the entire cast of the Rocky Horror Show sans foilies he might never have survived long enough to ...
... hurl himself over the gunwale and swim back to the ship.
The girls were so outraged by the appearance of Frank N Furter and his peculiar mates that they were instantly distracted from their efforts to row across the galaxy. They gripped their hockey sticks, the light of battle in their adolescent eyes. Just as they were about to hurl themselves into the fray, the bows of their small craft struck hard against a large unyielding object, lying semi-submerged across their direct path. The occupants of the vessel were all thrown off their feet and into the bilges.
"What was that?!?" cried Penelope, staring over the bowsprit.
The object slowly and ponderously began to surface. A great stirring and disturbance of the ocean became apparent. A gargantuan waterspout hurtled skywards, accompanied by several small fish and a startled and formerly inattentive crew member. The mighty creature's awful features became more clearly discernible. OH NO! It couldn't be, could it? But yes - it was......it was.... it was ... SHE!
(Don't forget to tune into the next post in order to learn which awful creature has been disturbed from its watery exile. Toodle pip! ).
Just then the whole thing started all over again.
'Twas the night before the night before Christmas and all through the ship ....
the crew were wondering why the captain was prowling about the quarterdeck (windward side, of course), with his handy-size patented Captain's All-Purpose Repair Kit clutched in his fist while he gazed intently at a particular patch of sky, low on the portside horizon.
"Quartermaster!" he called.
"Aye, Aye, Sir!" said Seaman Staines (for it was he).
"Steer three points on the North-East quarter!" said the Captain.
"Three points it is, Sir!" quoth Staines.
"And send for the cabin boy! Can't bring his name to mind." said the Captain.
Staines, with a distinctly evil leer, said ...
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'neither can I' but added, "I think his name is Neil of Ubeaut fame, with the shellawaxed......................
bugger me!
I think you must mean young ....
beating stick..............
Now "Young Beating Stick", was a character that hadn't previously appeared on the vessel. Being as he was what was once in less PC times called a Red Indian.
Nowadays of course, a Native American.
Young Beating Stick turned to Staines and said .....
"How!"
"Let me show you," said Seaman Staines, unbuckling his pantaloons.
Big mistake. Young Beating Stick instantly divined Staines' intent and proceeded to demonstrate how he got his name. His beautifully waxed stick rose and fell. Staines only fell. Rising was not on the immediate agenda for him, so he ...
decided to play possum.
Beating Stick cast his eye over the (very) motley group of onlookers and said....
"Right, anybody else unsure why I'm called Beating Stick?"
Frontbottom found he couldn't help himself, and perhaps unwisely, said:
"Yes, that's all well and good my man but how do you explain your...
terrible case of sunburn, don't you watch the young inventors on the ABC, surely you must realise that sunburn that bad will result in..
Thankfully for all listening (or reading) Beating Stick silenced him with a stickly equivalent of an uppercut, saying "Is anyone else interested in making a smart alec and totally non politically correct comment about my skin colour?"
The slightly wet Mother Farquar who had just crawled over the bowsprit said...
'cop this you pouncy little escuse for a red idian' and with that she released her over the shoulder boulder holder in an expert imitation of a bolo which caught beating stick round the......
... tomahawk.
"Ooohh, me tomahawk!" he gasped. However, Young Beating Stick was a proud member of his tribe and this blow, devastating though it was, was not enough to render him hors de combat ("Muy aye hoolp?" said Crabtree. "BUGGER OFF!!" yelled the crew).
Young Beating Stick shook himself down, carefully adjusted his tomahawk, grasped his beating stick and, moving menacingly towards the Mother Farcquar ...
... and when he reached her, some latin music broke out.
So they tangoed all night.
But was it the horizontal tango, the mind boggles..........
and once boggled fell out of Ians head and landed on the bare back of moby dick who just happened to fall thru the rip and onto the dancing couple to the.....
... surprise of that couple.
If Moby Dick had fallen on anyone else - Captain Ahab, for example - he would have flattened them. However, as has been frequently observed throughout this narrative, the Mother Farcquar was made of very durable material (and bloody huge quantities of it). Her new terpsichorean, tomahawk-wielding partner, Young Beating Stick, was also a tough and uncompromising sort of a cove.
Consequently they were only surprised, not flattened by the sudden intrusion of the Great White Whale into their tango.
Moby Dick, on the other hand, was more than surprised. He was flabbergasted.
"I'm flabbergasted!" he said. "What the hell am I doing on board ship, being trampled upon by this terrible-looking woman and bloody Chingachcook here?"
"What'd 'e say?" said Groans.
"Never mind what he said!" said Sponcracker. "The fact that he spoke at all is the main issue here! He's a bloody whale, for heaven's sake!"
"Here!" said Moby. "I would like to ..."
Sadly, what Moby would have (or of for SC) liked to do, we'll never know. Because on the instant of that unecpected utterance, he was hit by an exploding harpoon form a Japanese whaling vessle that had hove into view unnoticed.
"Arrrggh, gurgle,splutter" went poor Moby.
While meanwhile, on the whaling ship Hirahito, Toshiro Mafuni was about to say...
"Oh, *****, missed!" Toshiro san had been tracking Mother Farquar for months, hellbent on vengeance after MF had bitten off his left knacker- now replaced by a whale ivory prosthetic excellently scrimshandered with a saucy likeness of Amanda Vanstone and gleaming with a coat of...a nad-specific polish of which the name escapes me :rolleyes: - turning from his mounted spyglass he barked an order to the helmsman...
woof woof woof but as any one with knowledge of inscutable orientals the helmsman fired up the BBQ and headed for the inscrutable.......
Professor Takahashi, and asked him which scientific experiment he'd like from today's menu.
Meanwhile, the harpoon crew manned the capstan, and retrieved the harpoon, grunting with effort, as it was stuck through a huge lump of ...
Whale.
"Bloody hell" said Shintaro "Whale meat again!"
However, as luck would have it, it was not whale but simply an anchovie on steroids...........................
"Would you like to up-size that and take it as a Special Meal Deal?" said Rodeeuro-san, the Nipponese cabin-boy-san. "What drink would you like?"
Professor Takahashi shook his head and said ...
I'll have a Sake thick shake.
Meanwhile on the Venus Maru the skipper was contemplating what he had just stumbled upon, 'Aaah, onnable ship massa' he said half expecting a response in BBC Fronch................
... and, never one to disappoint, Crabtree loomed into his vision, his normally lugubrious expression slightly softened in anticipation of the sort of welcome he had been denied during several recent interjections into the narrative:
"Good moaning!" quoth he. "Muy aye hoolp?"
"Arigato!" said the skipper. "Need help unnerstanding insterructions for use of new non-digital, non-electronic navigational device!"
He pointed to the compass binnacle topped, as it was, with an ornate 19th century magnetic compass.
"How, prease, is this working? Where are the "On" switch?"
Crabtree gazed at the compass for a moment and then ...
discreetly stuck a magnet on the side in the hope of reducing the cast in this overcrowded set.
The needle swung to False North and the Venus Maru headed off into the sunset, well, it wasn't really, it was the glow from a large bushfire in the distance as the sunset was in the East (remember boys and girls, anything can happen here).
The skipper shouted 'Nor Ho' and was never seen or heard from again, except for a small obituary in the Tokyo Rising Moon which read......................
"Sayonara, loser-san."
The obituary was written by the skipper's brother-in-law, a fat bastard without a seagoing bone in his body. He had always envied the skipper for his laconic maritime manner.
Meanwhile ....
MF rid herself of the anchovie on steriods and Beating stick and as she shook herself the whole ship .........
... shook violently waking up the hamsters who rushed out enmass. They promptly picked up MF and threw her overboard again. Then they picked up all the ships garbage and threw it down on her until she sank out of sight, shouting that you find another ship to haunt and leave us in peace.
but unbeknown to the hampsters amongst the rubbish was a brace and 1" bit boardwhich MF grabbed and proceeded to drill a hole in the hull which did not auger well for the hampsters and other denzions on the sinking vessel. Suddenly Roger DC VC and Glenfiddich on ice said....
Something that he regretted as soon as he saw the leer on Staines' face. But quick as Al, he added "me ship" to his previous unprintable utterance, and Staines always ready to follow an order went below unbottoning his pants to fill the hole in the ship.
As soon as she saw Staines' willy plugging the hole the Mother Farquar said something unsavoury under water and wished she hadn't just dropped the augur. Then she sighed and climbed back on board.
And thus ended another chapter .....
Chapter Six (I think?)
"Is there any possibility," said Sponcracker, "that we could now get on with the search for Nemo, as you promised?"
"Good idea," said Roger (Vc and Bar). "Unfurl the main t'gallants! Set a course for the Roaring Forties! Haul away! Heave Away! We're bound for South Australia!"
"Don't you mean South Antarctic?" said Sponcracker as the crew engaged warp drive and the ship accelerated to Ridiculous Speed across the galaxy.
"What'd 'e say?" said Groans, cupping one hand abaft his right ear.
"Something about South Antarctic," said the leading droid. "A gross tautology, of course. Antarctic is by definition in the South and requires no further directional qualification."
"On the other hand," said another droid. "He may simply have been attempting a bit of poetic licence. After all, Roger (VC and Bar) had quoted a line from that old nautical song about South Australia and ..."
The droid came to a sudden halt as Sponcracker pressed a button on his remote control.
"They're useful for some tasks but they could bore you to death when they start their bloody hair-splitting arguments," said Sponcracker. "Now ..."
put a magnet on that compass and we can go anywhere we want, like south to the North Pole, or in this script, even the east or west pole.
A magnet was duly presented and...............................
...and, by the Lord Harry it was presented well!
It sat in a snugly-fitting depression, cushioned in the rich velvet lining of an exquisitely crafted box. The box was made from a beautifully grained and figured selection of the most exotic timbers. Although it was impossible to see this detail, anyone with an understanding of woodwork would just know that the corner joints of the box were secured with secret mitred dovetail joints (hand-crafted, of course - what else?)
The lid of the box, in closing, sighed gently to a stop against the sides, moving silently and smoothly on tiny hinges fashioned from a dense, dark wood.
"What a magnificent box!" cried all who saw it.
"Pity about the bloody magnet, then," said Roger (VC and Bar).
He was right. The magnet itself looked like something that might have fallen out of a particularly ill-favoured Christmas cracker. It was bent from a thin piece of metal into a shape meant to represent a horseshoe. It was painted red with black ends. The paint had been unevenly applied with a very coarse brush.
"Well," said Frontbottom. "It was all I could find at the time."
"What'd 'e say?" said Groans.
"Y'know," said Sponcracker. "I could probably arrange for a robotic ear."
"I 'eard that!" said Groans.
"Knock it off, you two!" said Roger (VC and Bar). "We're ..."
expecting visitors from...
The Dark Side.
And right on time, who should push throught the rip but none other than ....
Lord Protestor of all universes the Lord Varth Daver who said in a deep booming..............
voice......owwwha, I like the pink frills on the curtains.........................
they match my pink frilly knickers.
MF was incensed by this as she had the largest frilly knickers ever made, as attested to by those clog wearing whatevers who used them a communal hat................(bugger, how do you spell communal, just looks wrong)
(well it's spelt right but it's still wrong because .....)
the Hole In The Drawers Collective wore them as a collective hat.
Meanwhile, Leading Artificer Groans was gazing fixedly at the Lord Varth Daver. Instead of his usual conversational gambit, Groans shocked everyone by gasping:-
"Daddy! It's me, Fluke, your long lost baby boy!"
He ran across to the helmeted and cloaked figure and grasped him about the knees.
Varth breathed heavily, as was his wont, and ...