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from attention deficit disorder. "
(Hello, Roger (VC & bar) is still on the Very Little Gravitas Indeed :rolleyes: . We however are in the south seas with master Footsore. )
Ahem now where were we. Ah yes ,
"Amazement?" interrupted the foil-clad Tam. "No. It wouldn't. I have never told this tale before and ..."
"...I'll probably never tell it again."
"Damn good thing," said Captain Roger VC & bar. "There are some things that should never be spoken of. The last person that spoke of the Twig of Orgasmo suffered....."
"What's this!?!" cried Footsore. "A naval person just materialised right next to me on this pile of rank-smelling seaweed!"
"Yerss," said Roger (VC and Bar). "I was going to mention the smell. I'm relieved to discover that it's this pile of seaweed."
"That's all very well and good," said Footsore. "But where did you come from? And what was that strange rending, tearing, ripping noise that we heard just as you arrived?
"Well," said Roger (VC and .....
...Bar). That was the fabric of the universe ripping again. It seems to happen every time I....
break wind"
"Ah ha" thought everyone that had anything to do with this tale. "That certainly explains a lot."
"Are you saying" inquired Footsore "that the very fundament of this, admitedly, rather silly tale comes out of your asre?"
"Well actually" said Roger ".......
... I wouldn't claim to be the only initiator of action. I can say no more, my lips are sealed!"
Footsore was, quite naturally, disappointed.
"Well," said Footsore. "I'm disappointed. However, I'm still all agog to hear why Tom's name is so Haile Significant to me."
Tam had been waiting patiently, leaning on the Twig of Orgasmo. Upon hearing Footsore's mention of his twin, he became animated.
"I'm animated!" he said. "And ...
...so is the Twig of Orgasmo." Even as he spoke, the selfsame twig began to take on a life of its own, first vibrating with a gentle hum, then thumping on the deck, leaping from Tam's hands and walloping Footsore around the ears.
"Goodness me.", said Mother Farquahar, who until now had kept a low profile. "I haven't seen that happen since....
"The timber and working with wood" show held in Sydney in 2004 when a certain rapscallion stole two very valuable hand made(actually zed made) muffins. I wonder if you'll escape the curse or suffer the same fate as Darren the hairy (from the little village beside the Silent Sea) did on that occasion.
Sally looked puzzled. Refraining from mentioning her puzzlement to the class, she gently placed a marker in the page and closed the book.
"Well children," she said. "This is a most interesting development. The narrative has been interrupted by a diversionary sub-plot, relating to this unfortunate Truelove person with the sore feet and the disastrous taste in young ladies. And then the main characters from the narrative have themselves intruded into the diversionary sub-plot! What are we to make of this, I wonder?"
Daphne leapt to her feet, brandishing her hockey stick.
"If any of the boys feel like making pseudo-political speeches," she warned. "I am ready. So are the rest of the team. Aren't we girls?"
Tarquin remained seated. His fingers twitched but he did not grasp his lapels. He looked as if he wanted to say something but he took a long look at Daphne's hockey stick and restrained himself.
Bartholemew, on the other hand, after a long and lustful leer at Daphne in her navy blue gym slip, hurled himself to the floor at her feet.
"Bite me!" he cried. "Thrash me, Daphne, with your hockey stick and trample me with your cleated hockey boots, I implore you!"
Susan was not amused. She saw no reason not to mention this fact.
"I am not amused!" she said. "Bartholemew! Go and stand outside the principal's office and when he asks you why you are there, tell him that you have transgressed against my rules! What are you waiting for? Go!"
Daphne was a bit put out.
She said: "I'm....
...a bit put out!" Sally snarled at her, but she was not to be put off so easily.
"I was hoping to hear the end of this interesting sub plot. In particular the incident involving Darren the Hairy and the predicament involving the Christmas Tree."
Sally roared at her "Get out and join Bartholomew!"
So, picking up her hockey stick, Daphne went to do as she'd been told.
Meanwhile...
back on The Very Little Gravitas Indeed, Roger broke wind.
Actually he didn't just break wind, he let go the almightiest rip-snorter of a fart
that'd ever been heard in Christendom.
The VLGI shivered from stem to stern, her bowsprit dipped and her fore ta'gallant wilted. It was that bad.
It was so bad that instead of opening up a mere rip, as was usual, he opened up a full blown tear!
The crew were flung hither and yon as the VLGI was rocked and rolled by the elemental forces of the universe.
Eventully she could stand the strain no longer and with a pitiful cry of "What'd he say?" from Groans was sucked into the vortex!
All was black.
And in the eerie blackness came a voice that was distant, yet close and reverberated throughout the very timbers of the ship.
"Hey, y'all white honkey's wa'choo do'in in da brother's side of da uniee-verse"
Groans turned to the cook who just happened to be the closest to him and said "Argh!...Cook, did ye hear that?".....
To which the Cook replied "Yeah!...I'm not deaf ya' know!"...
Groans mumbled to himself "Grumpy dog!....Must'a burnt his gruel this morning".....
Then the voice boomed louder than the first time (if that was possible), "A say's wa'choo do'in here?"...
Frontbottom replied ".........
"I say! Have a care. Just who do you think you're talking to?"
The rest of the crew waited with bated breath, agog to see if Frontbottom's customary arrogance would get him (and them) into even more trouble.
There was a pause.
It lengthened.
Just when the tension was about to become unbearable, the Mother Farcquar's enormous bulk loomed up in the gloom on the main deck.
"What's going on?" she demanded. "Who put out the lights?"
She stamped her gargantuan foot. That did it! The entire vessel trembled from keel to burgee (that's the little flag that flies from the top of the mast, by the way;) - or is that bargee? ... or bungee?).
With a strange wrenching sound, the Very Little Gravitas Indeed shook itself clear of the Rip and floated free on an azure ocean.
However, there had been some changes .....
There was a newcomer to the crew,
the renowned
or is it the infamous
Buck R
in his everyday alias of .....
Buck Naked, that well broiled suntan lotion test pilot from the Cayman Islands, who has a habit of writing things on his skin with tanning lotion and then sun baking for hours on end only to then parade around with this script in stark white on a lobster red back ground of blistered flesh. In his off season he goes under the guise of somebody named Micheal Jackson!!!..
A fugitive from the darkside of the universal rip, who announced "......
"Read my hips!"
The assembled crew and supernumeries gave a collective groan at this atrocious pun. "Groan", they groaned, "What an atrocious pun."
"Don't blame me" groaned Groans, "It's that infamous, atrocious punster Buck Naked who's responsible for it. For all I know, he's been sitting there on the dark side of the universe flinging atrocious puns into this saga whenever he feels like it. He's probably responsible for naming Seaman Staines as well."
The expression on Buck's face clearly showed that he was both affronted and taken aback. With a flounce of his right eyebrow, he.....
...nearly ripped himself into three large pieces. The combined effect of being affronted, taken aback and seriously flounced about the eyebrow was enough to give him a severe attack of RSI.
He limped off in search of a physiotherapist.
"Ahem!" Roger (VC and Bar) cleared his throat.
"Right," he said. "Now that's clear, where were we?"
Lance Corporal Frontbottom and Regimental Sergeant Major Groans (See? - I told you some things had changed) - were gazing at their uniforms in amazement.
However, Seaman Staines (not everything had changed) was ready to respond to his commanding officer's question.
"We've been nearly every bloody ...."
where in this bloody uni..bloody..verse, and you, Roger are to blame for ninety bloody nine per bloody cent of them you little twat. Oh, yes I know you're a bloody big shot (VC and Bar etc) but the bloody truth is you're a git!
We all hate you and your shiny bloody buttons, you're....
Roger (VC and Bar) held up a restraining hand and interrupted him.
"Sponcracker," he said, conversationally. "Could you...?"
He waved his hand dismissively in Staines' direction. Sponcracker drew a remote control device from his pocket, pointed it at one of his droids and dialled in what looked like a complex code. The droid strode across to Staines, twassocked him firmly about the ears, spun him round and kicked him fair up the clacker - twice. Staines - after leaping in the air (and so would you if a droid had just planted his metallic foot firmly up your rear end - twice) - subsided into a grumbling but apparently non-mutinous semi-silence.
"Thanks," said Roger (VC and Bar). "Now, as I was saying: where were we?"
"Wait a minute!" protested Lance Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom. "What about...."
...Christmas? It seems that just a few moments ago we were on the creaking deck of the wind-driven ship the Very Little Gravitas Indeed, sailing merrily towards Christmas, when suddenly there was a flatulent roar, and the next thing we know, we've been stripped of our rank, the worm-raddled timbers of the VLGI have been transmogrified to some synthetic product and Christmas is vanishing in the distance, with a hiss and a roar and a cloud of chatter!"
Staines massaged his droid-bruised backside and ...
tightend his some what loose nuts, "Ahhhh!...that's better!"..he mumbled in a stilted robotic voice.
As he proceeded to look around the ship, he couldn't help but feel a little odd, as though something was not quite right but just couldn't put his finger on it.
A buzz ran through the crew, I mean it a real buzz, it was the static created when the fateful flatulance was released into the air.
Groans said "Cor!...what is that 'orrible buzz, it stinks, makes all me innards feel like I'm about to slip a cog or sumfin'!".....
As Groans proceeded to bend over and disgorge about two pints of slightly discoloured 20W/50 onto the deck, the rest looked on and said "......
"I say Sponcracker, be a good chap and push the reset button on that Captain Cook-Bastard cook would you? There's a good fellow.
It seems to have some bytes loose in the belfry."
As he had been asked so politely, Sponcracker hurried to do as he was bid.
Captain Roger (VC and Bar) meanwhile was puzzled.
"I'm .....
"... reluctant to be perceived as predictable but it has to be said: I'm puzzled. Why is it that some of the more human of the humanoids appear to have suddenly acquired droid-like characteristics?"
"I mean," he continued. "Take Groans, for example. Leaving aside his apparent elevation to the very senior rank of Regimental Sergeant-Major, it seems that he is extensively (one might even say, excessively) imbued with a high-grade lubricant."
"Yes," interrupted Leading Nursing Auxiliary (formerly Bo'sun) Bastard, smoothing his (her?) crisp white apron. "I was about to mention that. Difficult to administer the right prescription when you don't know if it's a dose of salts or a couple of litres of machine-oil!"
Lance-Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom was affronted.
He felt compelled to say: "I'm ..."
"... affront....affront....a Frontbottom! No member of my family for the last seven generations has held a military rank lower than 2nd Lieutenant! I simply cannot be a Lance-Corporal. It's unthinkable!"
So affronted was he that he stamped his foot.
Now Frontbottom's foot was nowhere nearly as enormous, threatening or horrendously unattractive as that of the Mother Farcquar but, in its own way, it had (apparently) just as severe an effect.
The horizon, the gunwales and even the taffrail all appeared to shimmer. (Of purely incidental interest, this caused a certain visible frisson to run through the ranks of the hamsters - poised, as was they customarily were, along the taffrail).
But what could have caused the shimmering? Well, we shall see:-
Chapter Ten
'Twas the night after Christmas and all through the ship.....
all of the crew where sated with the customary double ration of ships rum, but as the night wore on the squabbling started.
Firstly, over minor things and quickly escalated too much more serious matter like, "Who stole groans crayons he got off Santa" or "Why was Frontbottom running around with a blue and a red crayon stuck up his nose"?.....
The droids where also acting strange, this was noted when one of them was found onthe poop deck showing the other droids his.......
crayon coloured butt
...chisel.
It turned out that this particular droid was of the darkside variety, and couldn't resist exhibiting his tools whenever the opportunity presented itself (or even when it didn't, come to that).
"Put that useless thing away," roared Frontbottom. "If you don't have anything useful, like an oilcan, you're wasting good bandwidth by being in this tale."
The droid shrunk into his carbon fibre exoskeleton and slunk away.
"Right," said Lance Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom. "now that that's sorted out, the rest of you can stop frissoning all over the place, and apply your collective intelligence, meagre though it may be, to getting us out of our present predicament, which is...."
"... as yet unexplained. What, for instance, is with all the shimmering?"
Frontbottom was puzzled.
"I'm ....."
puzzled. "well I'm not" said Roger (VC & Bar with bronze clamps(or cramps??))
"Everyone knows its showing the end of the Christmas season so back to work you lazy lot of wasted...............
...space."
With that, he peered down his aquiline nose at Lance Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom, and in his best parade ground voice, (which, mind you, was none to good) ordered...
.... a pepperoni pizza, family size with anchovies and extra olives!
There was a stunned silence.
Lance-Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom was the first to recover:
"Can I just confirm your order, sir?" he said. "That was a family-size pepperoni pizza with anchovies and extra olives? Would you prefer thin and crispy or a deep-pan base?"
Scarcely had the words left his lips when ....
With a shiver of her timbers, the Very Little Gravitas Indeed finally succeeded in pushing through the Rip.
At first glance, their new location didn't look vastly different to where they had been prior to Roger's prodigous fart that had opened the Rip in the first place.
They were still surrounded by a vast expanse of blue water that stretched from horizon to horizon unbroken by any feature.
However on bouard the VLGI it was immediatley apparent that more than a few changes had occured.
Lance Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom was amazed and not a little chuffed to find himself wearing the uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel of The Royal Marines!
"And about bloody time too" he ejaculated arrogantly "no Frontbottom has ever been brought so low as to be a mere Lance Corporal!"
Roger however had not quite fared as well. In fact, it appeared that he'd been reduced to his former position of Cabin Boy!
"Oh no" groaned Groans to Captain-Cook Bastard "you know what this means don't you? We're going to be subjected to endless puns again on the name Roger and the words cabin boy"
'Well that's as maybe" replied Cook-Bastard "but if Roger's the cabin boy, who's in command of this ship?"
"Funny you should ask that" interjected .......
... the lowly Roger. "I've just been down to the captain's cabin to see if he wanted a drink or something. But there's no-one there."
"He must be somewhere else then," said Groans - ever the master of the bleeding obvious.
A search of the ship was instituted to find the captain. The entire vessel was combed from bowsprit to taffrail and from bilges to burgee - with no success. The vessel appeared to be completely leaderless!
"You know what this means," said ....
Staines (who was still a seaman by the way) "It means that we're just like the Marie Celeste, only different"
"What?!" thundered Lieutenant Colonel Frontbottom "explain yourself man if you please!"
"We-ll " began Staines nervously "you see ......
However, before Seaman Staines (to give him his full title) could continue, he was shoved rudely to one side by the ever-imposing figure of the Mother Farcquar.
"Just a minute!" quoth she. "If Roger the Cabin Boy is no longer Lt Commander Roger (VC and Bar), Master and Commander, indeed, Captain of this vessel, then who is?"
"We don't know!" wailed the assembled crew.
"You don't know?" said the Mother Farcquar.
"No! We don't know!" chorused the crew.
"So who? I say - who?" said the Mother Farcquar, sounding remarkably like Foghorn Leghorn (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course). "Who were you looking for when you conducted your extensive search of the ship?"
"Well .... the captain," they all said.
"And how would you know that you had found him if you don't know who he is?"
In the face of this devastating demonstration of logic, there was ....
a general gobsmacking.
"I'm gobsmacked" offered Groans to absolutely nobody's surprise.
"Just a minute" interposed Frontbottom "perhaps we should have an erection?"
I'm sorry, I'll read that again.
"perhaps we should have an election?"
"Ahhh, an election" quoth the mother F. "vote for this then, and she..
... (very rudely, it has to be said), turned round, flicked up her skirts, bent over and hauled down her drawers to reveal her gargantuan buttocks.
A frisson of horror ran through most of the crew.
However, there was one amongst their number whose reaction to the sight of those great wobbling glutei maximus was very different.
Yes! It was ....
...very different indeed. The Well Known Suntan Lotion Test Pilot, Buck Naked, far from frissoning in horror like the rest of the crew, burst into tears of joy.
"Mother", he sobbed, "at last I've found you. Ever since the day of my birth, when you abandoned me in the Caymans, I've been searching for you in all the luxurious dens of iniquity on this earth. I knew that one day our paths would cross, but always feared that I wouldn't recognise you when they did. However, only one tiny gene pool could have glutei maximi like those in it, and we're both in it. If that were not enough, we also share the same...
But before he could reveal what characteristic it was that he thought he shared with the Mother Farcquar, he, like Seaman Staines before him, was interrupted by Herself.
Smacking him backhanded around the chops, she felled poor old Buck.
"So, it was you!," she hissed. "People have been telling me about a little brown nudist who has been following me about and asking questions about me. I'm not your mother, you twerp! I'm Farcquar's mother! Your name's not Farquar, is it? Of course it isn't. Farcquar wouldn't be so crass as to prance about with no strides on! You're a disgrace, that's what you..."
She paused to draw breath and ....
...pull up her knickers, which in the slight prevailing breeze, had billowed like a spinnaker on an 18' skiff.
In his foetal position on the deck, Buck whimpered and trembled. His formerly buffed, steroid-assisted torso wobbled like a blob of peanut butter flavoured jelly and the side of his face where his putative mother had thumped him had started to turn nice shade of purple.
"Well hold on a second," said Lieutenant Colonel (formerly Lance Corporal Major) Frontbottom, "there is certainly a family resemblance between you two. In fact, apart from a certain careless mis-sorting of chromosomes, you could be identical twins. Are you sure you aren't the poor sod's mother?" Seeing Mother Farquar taking a backswing and getting ready to take a swipe at him, Frontbottom took a quick step back ...
and bumped into Fellatio Hornblower.
"Belay that backswing madam if you please" said Fellatio
"for you see I am the one you seek. (Well not just mother F of course but the whole crew of the VLGI).
Yes, that's right I am your new master and commander and the captain of this ship!"
The crew were absolutely slack jawed at this devolpment.
Seaman Staines approached Fellatio and.....