The Rip in the Fabric of the Universe ...

"... that's right, you. Fellow wearing the kilt. Could you assist me in extracting my head from this enormous hat?"

Frontbottom - whose forward vision, as previously mentioned, was impeded by an enormous set of ovine wedding tackle, had failed to recognise Dogsbreath.

"Algernon!" quoth the Rip Lord. "Algie, mate! Is that you wearing the full dress uniform of a Galactic Admiral of the Agnurian Nebula Starfleet?"

"What?" said Frontbottom, pushing the ram's scrotum to one side. "Dogsbreath! Can you help me remove this hat? It's giving me a terrible neck ache. And what's this dangly bit in the front? It looks like...I mean, it can't be....Hwar, hwar! It looks like a....a....Bloody Hell! It looks like a bloody ball bag, a blasted goolie sack, I mean, Hell's Bells! It looks like a bloody great scrotum! ....What the hell is going on?!?"

Dogsbreath and Shorty carefully lifted the ram helmet from a relieved Frontbottom's scone. Placing it carefully on the deck of the starship's command bridge, they revealed to Frontbottom the disconcerting fact that he had had his head up a ram's fundament.

Frontbottom was disconcerted.

"I'm disconcerted!" he exclaimed. "I mean the rest of the uniform's rather splendid but what the hell is the idea of wearing a bloody great ram as a hat? It's really quite undignified to find that your head is halfway up a ram's bottom!"

"Yes sir!" said a starship rating, saluting as he came to attention. "You called, sir?"

"What!" said Frontbottom. "Who are you?"

"Ramsbottom, sir. You called for me, sir."

"No I didn't! I ....

was merely discussing this rediculous hat, dismissed Ramsbum, er Ramsbottom" His mind wandered back to Dogdbreath's cluster. " I say Dogsbreath, how did you come by that fine looking "sporan"? ho ha .Looks like you got the damn thing caught in a super jaw! "
Dogsbreath inhaled deepley and retored....................."

"Never mind that! The rip in the fabric of the universe is closing up for good. We are the only ones left, everyone else has dissapeared. What are we going to do?" Ramsbottom said " We can only................"

hope that some one will come ad rescue this much loved story before Miss Susan and Roger the Ready marry and beget more of those strange things called

...hamsters"

"Hamsters!" yelled Dogsbreath. "That's what's missing! Where are the bloody hamsters? They're normally lined up along the taffrail!"

He spun round, searching for the chubby-cheeked little chorus line, prominent because of their absence.

"Ahem!" coughed the Galactic Admiral of the Agnurian Nebula Starfleet, Algernon Frontbottom. Relieved of his quite remarkable headgear, he had assumed his more normal demeanour. "Ahem! It has clearly failed to register with you, Dogsbreath, old chap, but we're not on the sailing vessel Very Little Gravitas Indeed, we are on the starship Very Little Gravitas Indeed. It hasn't got a taffrail."

"Ah, yair. Thanks Frontbottom, you're right. So where do they go when there's no taffrail ..... just a minute! Frontbottom ..... and didn't you ...."

He turned to the young starship rating.

"...didn't you say your name is Ramsbottom?"

"Aye, aye sir!" quoth he.

"So that means ... that means I'm surrounded by...."

He paused.

Hieronymous Hamster popped his head out of an inspection hatch near the after portion of the navigation bridge.

"It means, Dogsbreath," said Hieronymous, "That you're surrounded by Bottoms. Or, putting it another way, by @rseholes!"

"Nothing new there, then," said Dogsbreath.

Meanwhile, just to the rear of the VLGI, and hidden from her after viewing screens by an impenetrable Image Dispersion and Diffusion Beam Generator from the Nemo Corporation's Department for After-Market Spacecraft Accessories, lurked the malevolent presence of .....

...the Mother Farquahar, accompanied by the inscrutable Nakalaka san and the estimable Speeya-chaka san.

"Orright, you scurvy fundaments, what have you done with my little Roger?" asked the large lady in her usual polite fashion. Behind her, in chorus, Nakalaka and Speeya-chaka added the refrain

"Yes, where is our rittle Lodger?"
"Jeez," pondered Dogsbreath, "this is all getting too much for me. Just when things couldn't get any worse, they did."

While the lower ranks, e.g. Dogsbreath, sank into a blue funk at the slightest hint of adversity the Galactic Admiral of the Agnurian Nebula Starfleet, Algernon Frontbottom, was made of sterner stuff. Years of leadership training in the finest Agnurian Starfleet Military Academies enabled him to react appropriately without even having to think (which was just as well, because, as thinkers went, he didn't go very far). Drawing himself up to his full height, he retrieved and replaced his previous headgear in a vain attempt to salvage some dignity, and striking a valiant pose, said.....

He was momentarily nonplussed as his head disappeared up into the capacious internal volume of his Merino ram facsimile headgear.

"I am only momentariley nonplussed!" His disembodied voice emerged, slightly muffled from inside his hat. Thrusting the hat upwards to reveal most of the lower portion of his head, Frontbottom peered out around the enormous ram's scrotum dangling in front of him and said:

"Madam! Don't think you can throw your appalling weight about in your customary manner aboard this vessel. You are addressing a Galactic Admiral of the Agnurian Nebula Starfleet!"

He placed one hand on his hip and stared down his upper-class nose.

The Mother Farcquar was unimpressed.

"Stand aside, Front@rse!" she said. "I was talking to the organ grinder!" (She pointed at Dogsbreath). "But, just for future reference, you'd probably get more respect if you didn't have your head jammed up a ram's bottom."
The afore-mentioned starship rating came smartly to attention. He didn't salute, being unsure of the Mother Farcquar's rank but he did respond:

"Yes ma'am." quoth he.

"Go away sonny." The Mother Fracquar made a dismissive gesture. "Who rattled your cage?"

"You did, ma'am." said Ramsbottom.

"What? No I didn't." She was distracted by the youth's serious demeanour.

"Yes, ma'am. You did. You called my name."

"What? I didn't call your name. I don't know your name. Go away!" She flapped a huge hand at him.

Undaunted, Ramsbottom held his ground.

"Ramsbottom, ma'am. Able-Bodied Starship Rating Ramsbottom."

The Mother Farcquar stopped flapping her hand and stared, open-mouthed. She lifted a hand to her mouth and slowly pointed a forefinger the size of a Cumberland sausage at Ramsbottom.

"You!" she whispered in horror-stricken tones. "It's you...! You're .....

...standing there on Talk like a Pirate day, prattling on as though you're little Lord Fauntleroy. Git yer scurvy tongue around the vaaarghnacular and start talkin' the talk, yer scummy little son of a beached walrus, or I'll have yer."

The grand dame's adoption of a gutteral north-country accent confused the oriental duo, whose command of the English language was none too good to start with. Nakalaka San, in particular, seemed perplexed by her instruction to Ramsbottom, perceiving it to be an order to start licking him. Grasping hold of the catching thing of the Edo era, he struck a beligerent pose and said.....

"Belay that, ye swab!"

Everyone was totally gobsmacked by Nakalaka-san's apparent grasp of Pirate Talk. As one, they all chorused:-

"We're totally gobsmacked!"

All, that is, except Hieronymus who, with his customary sharp instincts, had cottoned-on. Peering out of his inspection hatch, he said:-

"It's Moichael! That upimself Oirish gobshoite is either channelling himself through our scientific researching ship's captain here, or he's throwing his voice!"

With that, Moichael ....

started to put his head through the rip but spied Hieronymus watching him with an evil glint in his eye and baring his teeth so he could

wish him happy birthday:D

but he knew it was not Moichaels birthday as the uphimself demon dancer( a term used loosely) so called for the mad butcher of Ank-Morpork to remove Moichael once and for all. When Moichael saw him coming he quickly..........

looked over at Mother Farquahar and beckoned her to come closer.
Mother Farquahar, he cried, as he waved his wooden leg........"for you..a merkin...a merkin for your quim" and she said......

merkin MERKIN ....I'll give you merkin you bleeding'pretend irish pillow biting woofter take this' and with that she aimed.........

a pillow at them but then the sleeping gas hit them and they all fell asleep.....
Quietly Miss Sally closed the book, turned out the light and headed home thankful that another day as super nanny was over...........