journey to the outer islands - VI

The first day was no more than could be expected: waves above the vessel, sharks the size of whales and whales the size of hillocks. The hillocks we spied at the bottom of the ocean with the radar were the size of hills, and the hills as big as mountains. You possibly get the idea and I would only elaborate were I being paid by the word, which I ai-not.

The tiny craft tossed and turned on the water and I do declare Old Rogers looked quite green, and not the usual gammy green but something far more rancid. I felt a punchline was in order and giggled ‘if you think this is bad, wait till we get off the canal!’ How he laughed as he vomited, though with Old Rogers it is always hard to know where a vomit ends and laughter begins.

The second day his eyes were alive with wonder as they darted about the new landscape surrounding our canal. ‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I must of died and gone to hivvin. For look! I’ve nivver seen that tree before. Nor that ‘un, nor that ‘un, nor… nor that ‘un, ma’am. I cunnot ‘magine names fur all these trees, ma’am, though I think that ‘un might be called Nerrida, ‘n that ‘un, Cassie.’ He passed many a moment thereafter assuming possible names, just as he had named all the trees in his previous experience, most of them Bunton. ‘Look at that tree thar, ma’am!’ he’d say. ‘Some of the branches much the same shape as Bunton’s.’

The third day, we came to the open sea. Of course, I was used to the journey, and Old Regansett used to do the paddling with some enormous, ill-shaped oars and I would naggivate – a special kind of Lax tradition, where one motivates the worker by nagging incessantly. And I have never been known to let up in my duty in this regard. Old Rogers was not quite the paddler I had imagined he would be, being of peasant stock, and it took quite some explaining. He seemed befuddled largely because there were now no trees, and only large waves to name. I was quite relieved when, by some kind of oblique process too complicated to relate heretofore, we arrived at the Outer Islands.

To be continuaciously extended

journey to the outer islands - V

‘Hey, Old Rogers’, I carped twittingly, ‘have you packed the tea?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he puffed, in a way that suggested a positive response. ‘And also the biscuits. Does they… does they have mouths, the people where we are going? Y’know, for putting things like biscuits inter?’ Even at his advanced age, he had a very punchy attitude and a desire for knowledge, despite being, quite naturally, terrified and fearful of anything new, strange or tangible.

‘Do you know, Old Rogers,’ I laughed, ‘I really never cared to look, for fear of seeing some toothless, misshapen, rabbit-hole-like distortion of a… oh, I do beg your pardon Old Rogers,’ I corrected myself, spying the dimensions and proportions of his own yaw. I must have been feeling sorry for him, because it is most unlike me to apologise to a servant, in fact last time I did it Labor got in and I had a lot of apologising to do at the Tory Club. ‘I imagine they probably do, though of course they may gather nutrients from the sun, or the soil, like you.’ On his nights off, Old Rogers loved nothing better than to stand for hours in the mud in the belief that he was receiving sustenance; I encouraged this, as it saved on the weekly gristle bill, and of course kept him svelte and lithe.

‘Now, I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything,’ I wondered, possibly-forgottenoratively. I had, of course, the usual list on an illuminated scroll, and had ticked everything off as Old Rogers had laded the burro with it. At the bottom of the list was, as usual, the words say goodbye to husband, which in this case I absent-mindedly ticked while not actually doing anything about it. It was Mr. Lax’s day for helicopters, and he would usually be in the good room building an enormous helicopter model out of smaller, attentively-constructed, meccano helicopters, however circumstances had since changed slightly as he had died during the week. ‘Now, affix the sofa, Old Rogers’ I yapped, authoritatively, and he bolted the sofa to Carlo’s load along with four more of those very useful helium balloons. I lay on it gracefully yet appropriately and prepared for the trip with a dish of improving novels on my left and a dish of cruskets on my right. Old Rogers climbed atop of Carlo’s neck and directed him three metres to the canal which runs behind the house and leads to the sea. There the poor beast would stand, for four days as we travelled westwards, laden with baggage. A horrendous cruelty, but what can you do?

To be, as Rev. De Witt Talmadge would say it, continufied…

journey to the outer islands - IV

Every year, ever since I was a gel (once again, I refer you to my manual on sexual instruction if you need explanation of how all people begin in gel form) the Laxes have travelled to survey their kelpery properties at the foregone conclusion of the known world, the Outer Isles. The enormous riches I generate from my books, media appearances and Grace Lax xtreme moral inaction figures are not, you see, sufficient for me to retain my all-important status as a rich person, so it behoves me to run other exploitative enterprises elsewhere wherever possible. It is also part of my good work for the poor. Just as my readers are dependent on me for knowledge, I find it most appropriate to run industries in remote places where I can extort maximum labour from people with no other options; it works so well, frankly, I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t do it, including the buffoondiots I employ.

Formerly, my companion on these travels had been Old Regansett, my woman who does, but she had developed a bone tumour which had made her annoying and she was no longer willing, able or unugly enough to draw me along in a cart, so I decided to put her out to pasture, tethered to a cherry tree. Instead, it seemed behovery to recruit Old Rogers for this important work. The old fool, doddery, bewhiskered and dirty as he was, had never been out of the shire, indeed, he had been known to hold forth on the belief – based, admittedly, on his own experience – that nothing at all existed beyond its bounds. I admit, little fat reader, that I wished to expand his horizons rather as one might expand a child on a rack; more importantly, I needed a man-who-does to do, and I imagined he would. Do.

Excuse me, I'm bored with you. I will go on tomorrow.

journey to the outer islands - II

It wasn’t planned, well, it was planned in meticulous detail, but what I mean is, it wasn’t planned to take the course it did at the end. So in fact you’d have to say it wasn’t planned. It just happened, and in the most unusual way. Settle in, as I am (as the poor people say) goanna tell you all about it, in ways you are sure to find most instructive and worthwhile, with just a frisson of usefulness and a soupcon of, er, instructivity.

Ah, Lax Manors, my family pile! Its extensive, thick columnadery, its bronze tarnishing, its statuesque sculptures of St George slaying, sledging and slamming various dragons all around; its topiary, hedges and bushery; its five-lane, eleven-mile driveway and the unique follies all through the grounds – the fifty-foot marble tardis, and the enormous wedding cake filled with spiders. This is the place where I was born, grew, grew again, continued to grow and, I imagined, would die, if such a thing were possible. But fate, or should I say I, was ultimately to decree otherwise.

You can easily imagine the sumptuous façade of Lax Manors and the elaborate turning circle at its frontispiece which keeps the local police completely occupied directing traffic, and its hedgerows moulded to a tableau of Colonel De Groot belabouring the petit point at Aubergine. Now, can you imagine Old Rogers, loading up Carlo, the manor burro, with boxes and packages all tied with string, rope, and lacker bands? Puffing and panting, he hoists yet another parcel in place with the manor pulley, and carefully – always carefully – he straps another hydrogen balloon to Carlo’s head and tail every time his back concaves and his legs start to shake and buckle in a comedic fashion, and you can almost imagine him looking ththerwards and expressing the opinion ‘ay, caramba!’. For today, you see, is the day we journey to the Outer Islands.

To be continuated…

journey to the outer islands - II

It wasn’t planned, well, it was planned in meticulous detail, but what I mean is, it wasn’t planned to take the course it did at the end. So in fact you’d have to say it wasn’t planned. It just happened, and in the most unusual way. Settle in, as I am (as the poor people say) goanna tell you all about it, in ways you are sure to find most instructive and worthwhile, with just a frisson of usefulness and a soupcon of, er, instructivity.

Ah, Lax Manors, my family pile! Its extensive, thick columnadery, its bronze tarnishing, its statuesque sculptures of St George slaying, sledging and slamming various dragons all around; its topiary, hedges and bushery; its five-lane, eleven-mile driveway and the unique follies all through the grounds – the fifty-foot marble tardis, and the enormous wedding cake filled with spiders. This is the place where I was born, grew, grew again, continued to grow and, I imagined, would die, if such a thing were possible. But fate, or should I say I, was ultimately to decree otherwise.

You can easily imagine the sumptuous façade of Lax Manors and the elaborate turning circle at its frontispiece which keeps the local police completely occupied directing traffic, and its hedgerows moulded to a tableau of Colonel De Groot belabouring the petit point at Aubergine. Now, can you imagine Old Rogers, loading up Carlo, the manor burro, with boxes and packages all tied with string, rope, and lacker bands? Puffing and panting, he hoists yet another parcel in place with the manor pulley, and carefully – always carefully – he straps another hydrogen balloon to Carlo’s head and tail every time his back concaves and his legs start to shake and buckle in a comedic fashion, and you can almost imagine him looking ththerwards and expressing the opinion ‘ay, caramba!’. For today, you see, is the day we journey to the Outer Islands.

To be continuated…

journey to the outer islands - I

Dear reader, can I make the funniest confession. Don’t judge me too harshly, please, for though you have probably bought most of my previous books for large sums of money when you could, perchance, be feeding the poor or yourself or your offspring, it’s not as though you could have spent it on anything better or more improving – on occasion, sometimes, I have periodically got in a ghostwriter in to fill up the word count on a book or two. There, I said it. Or three or fourteen.

But my newest book – to be published by the goodly Godly golden good golly religious right down at Affirm Press in February 2010 – I am pleased to say, represents a tried and tested piece of work. It is a compendium of advice and value entitled Advice to Young People on Leaving Home. It really does contain quite a bit of advice on leaving home, for young people. And I know it works rockingly phat well. For you see, just as I laid down my diamond-studded typewriter and considered the book at an end – I merely had to roll up the manuscript and tuck it into the canister that slips into the spring-triggered vacuum tube – I left home myself. I did. I will tell you all about it tomorrow.

merry christmas

There is no accounting for foreign tastes. I do believe this eskimo is perfectly happy in his teepee. No doubt he has harnessed his reindeer to go and help Santa (anagram of Ansat, a particularly devilish airline) make 'toys'.

He has probably never heard of Christmas. 'Bully-o,' I hear you say. 'A fine thing. More nosh and presentiments for me-dee-d'dee!' I wish you wouldn't talk that way, but never mind.

You should spare a thought for the less godless in our troubled times. I know many a young man and wo-man who have been inspired by the spirit of a christly christmas to really seriously think about accepting a missionary position in somewhere distant and ungodly, such as Alaska, the Belgian Congo or New York.

Have you ever thought perhaps it's time to ruin your so-called life and go over to God?