My Latent Troubles

CHAPTER 29
The Journey Begins - The Other Leg - The Joys of Cribbige with a "d" - 24601 - The Long Signature - Tommorrow we'll do the Jay's - Endings

Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce...

"Forget Regret, or life is your's to miss!" (Lease Rent) Well, it's been a while. But back I am indeed. I have spent the last while traveling to far off and sometimes distant landes (which is like 'lands', only more exotic). I have traversed and indeed travel'l'ed to the deepest reaches of the land known as Tencendor (a silly sounding name), wherin dwell the Acharites (another silly name) the Avar (silly) and the Icarii (silly silly). I travelled there for many a long while, and explored most (but not all) of that wonderful, yet strangely named) place.

But my travels were not over, oh no! After a brief pit stop, as it were, back at home, I was feeling like somewhere different. I had seen the exotic and beautiful land of Tencendor, and so felt that instead of travelling to another place, what if i travelled to the same place in a different trouser of time? So I went to a place where Adolf Hitler hadn't been born. I thought "what the heck. Let's just see what things would have been like!"... they were interesting. Gay's were against the law, blacks were still obscenely low class, someone else had risen to power in Germany and had succeded in not only killing all the Jews, but had taken over ALL of Europe (including England)! On the upside, cars were cleaner, computers shat all over our ones, cities were safer (especially New York) and Nickson hadn't resigned... All up, things were kinda crazy!

And then I came back to reality... Yes, those funny, witty, high jinx adventures were inside none other than a group of Novels! You see, gentle reader, I have had the 'misfortune' of having to quickly and rather unexpectedly move house. This has taken up a lot of my laboriously wasted time and turned me from a pitiful mouse of a creature, to an exhausted pitiful mouse of a creature. But fear not for either my health or sanity, as I shall say hale and whole, and my snaity is far gone (yes, my mind is indeed frazzaling and gesticulating wildly, even as we speak). Due to this constant state of exhaustion, I have of course been reduced to reading many many many many books well into the wee hours of the morning. I can't help it! Things are so drag-some that I have been reduced to mild attempts at escapism through literature and the occasional battle with the game Cribbige (or is that Cribbidge? Either way it is a fiendishly difficult game to play... so don't). Most of the second part of that last scentence was a lie. I just want to play Cribbidgdge, but can't, so I don't.

The world will end on the twenty-fourth of June, 3001. This is the message blasting forth from the Gates of the Pneumonic Monks' temple of Grand-(yet-inescapably-orange)-Design. It was originally ending in the year 2001, but when that passed and things didn't go quite as Kaput as they were hoping (things did go Kaput, but only registered as 3.4 on the K-Scale) they sheepishly re-worked the calculations, then repainted the sign above their opaque welcome mat. How do I know this, you ask ponderously? Well, gentle reader (or 'read-ess' for all you politically correct femenenenists out there), the story is a short yet time consuming one, and it started in Joe's Garage... or rather in my father's garage (who is not called Joe)...

I was looking for something. I don't remember what because my Dad had told me to look for it, and like most things my father tells me, I soon forgot about it. Stumbling around in this Labrynth of car parts, boat parts, bike parts, scrap, scum, nuts, bolts, blowers, busters, screws, seats, chairs, parts, pipes, flues, 'fings', crates, boxes and other miscellaneous junk/stuff/fings ('things', but pronnounced differently) that clutter up his bizzare creative space, I came accross something so bizzare and wonderful that it out shone all others in the room. It was a knot board. Now I hear you ask (in the same way I always hear such voices ask), "What is a knot board, and why is this particular one so special?" Well, gentle and frequently understated reader, a knot board is made when one is in Scouts. As a scout (or sailor) you use knots a lot. So you have a board of them should you forget what they look like or how to form them. This particual knot board was mine. It was from 1998. Now the astounding thing is what I saw on the back. I turned it over and right there on the back was my signature, preactically unchanged from what I have now... I have had the same signature since I was eleven, if not before, but definately since then! Well, at least I'm consistent.

Now you are pondering, quite possibly aloud by now and if not then I encourage you to do so, what that has to do with a bunch of Monks. The answer, genteele reader, is quite simply 'nothing'. The monks and the garage are two separate things, which I suggested were conjoined to enforce your continued reading. Well done, have a biscuit. Ultimately, you may choose to believe however much of this you wish. Some of it is fanciful, some true. Some of the fancies are dressed up as truths, and some of the truths are dressed up as Goths fancies. Take it or leave it, it's all in the mind, you know...

An old favourite, the 'hidden' things...

1. The Road goes ever on and on - was going to be the alternative for "the Journey begins".. oh well...

2. Trousers of Time - like the title thins, it's a Pratchett saying.

3. Cribbidge - Stephano (Count Olaf in disguise) played by Jim Carrey, in "A Series Of Unfortunate Events", mentions this several times in the special features of the DVD and once in the background on the movie.

4. The pic is from Don't Hold back by the Potbelleez. Good song.

5. Tencendor is from the Axis Trilogy by Sarah Douglass. The non-hitler world is Stephen Fry's Making History.

6. The monks are from my head... sometimes my brain dones strange things. That whole apragraph was merely to do the eld of the world thing, which is 24/6/01, ie 24601 JeanValJean's prisoner number.

7. Joe's Garage is a really good song by Frank Zappa.

8. well, at least I'm consistent - whenever I have revealed this to someone (Glenn, dad, whomever) I have always said "God I'm boring" to which they have replied varients of "well, at least you're consistant." hence the mentioning it there.

9. well done, have a biscuit - this is from Bill Bailey's stand up show Part Troll, refering to Bush's idiocity. Also, "Tommorrow we'll do the Jays" is from that too. Also, I call biscombe biscuit...

10. It's all in the mind you know - this is a favourite saying of the Goons, especially from one of their episodes (I think it may [or may not] have been "The Silent Bugle-er").

11. The quote at the start is from Rent. THere is a struck out "Lease" there, which is the 'pay-out' version of Rent in "Team America"

Thanks for watching, see you when I see you!