Toy Story 4 – general release (UK) 21^st June 2019.

“So, where we going this time?” asked Action Man.  “Loft, car-boot or play school?”
“It says ‘Dump’ on the box,” said the small knitted Elf as it scrambled back through the lid that was being held open by the ageing soldier.  The one-time man of action looked startled (although the Elf was not able to see this as the military mannequin’s head had been reinserted backwards at a party some years ago and he had never been able to turn it back around since) but his voice remained steady.
“Dump?” he said.  “Are you sure?”
“Certain,” said the Elf who had started to unfurl slowly as he hauled himself back over the lip of the box and was currently pulling on a severed leg that hovered some six inches below him.
“Nothing else,” the soldier persisted.
“It says ‘Made in China – Do Not Stack’ but I don’t think that’s relevant.”
In the silence that followed, Xylophone began a doleful rendition of The Funeral March, but had to stop when he reached his missing note.
The plastic infantryman stroked the ragged transfer scar on his cheek, popping his arm out of the shoulder joint as he did so, leaving it to hang dejectedly in the sleeve of his combat jacket.
“Would you like me to put that back for you?” said Elf.
“No point,” said the commando, sitting down heavily on a Jack-in-the-box, his reversed face being pressed tight against the cardboard wall.
“It might just be a mistake,” said Elf, tugging hard on a strand of wool in his attempt to retrieve his fast unravelling leg.  “It might just be an old box that they’ve used for something else before.”
“Yes, like the last time they took all the old toys to the dump.”
“I suppose it had to come,” said a tag-along duck, whose tag-along ducklings had long since become detached and fledged.  “We’re none of us what we were.”
“It’s alright for you,” said the Elf bitterly.  “You’ve got rid of your kids, but you’re pretty much sound yourself.”
“And retro,” said the Clitter Clatter Caterpillar.  “People don’t mind you having a wheel loose when you’re wood.  Can just screw you a new one on.  Doesn’t even matter if it leaves you waddling, being a duck and all.  Doesn’t even matter if you abandoned your children.”
“They were cut from me,” shrieked the duck.  “By that ginger girl from next door.  Nothing I could do.  She tied ‘em to the back of her Wibbly Wobbly Dog and wheeled them back home with her.  I never heard from them again…”  Her voice trailed away as only a wooden duck’s voice can…
“Yers, well, just saying,” said the Caterpillar.  “It’s alright for you; you’re salvageable.  Nail on a new wheel, quick lick of paint, some yummy mummy will pay twice the going rate with delight because you limp.  Some of us,” he continued, surprised by his own sourness.  “Some of us lose a wheel and it’s the end of the road.  Clitter more than clatter and it’s a future full of yoghurt for me.”
“Once upon a t…  Once upon a t…  Once upon a t…” said the talking book from the bottom of the box.
“His battery leaked,” said Duck, quietly slipping the button to ‘mute’.  “He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going these days.  I’m not sure he even knows the stories he’s meant to tell.”
“Well, if you want my opinion,” said a large, green, five-legged spider.  “He’s the lucky one.  Take his batteries out and he won’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“What does happen down at the dump?” asked Elf, who had by now given up on rescuing his leg and was slowly unpicking the features from his face.
“No-one knows,” said Action Man.  “No-one has ever come back to tell the tale.”
In the silence that followed an inflatable frog sighed gently and his back leg deflated.
Caterpillar began a frantic search for his missing wheel, even though he knew that it had been eaten by the dog some months before.

“Looking back…” began Action Man.
“Which is all you can do,” interrupted a voice from the bottom of the box.
“Who said that?” demanded the soldier, leaping to his feet.
“It was me,” hissed a rubber snake from his position wound around Threadbare Ted’s head where he was held in place with a rubber band.  “I wouldn’t want you to accuse me of speaking behind your back – although, of course, it is all that you can do…”
In the depths of the box somebody sniggered briefly.  If the Taiwanese moulding had allowed, Action Man would have gnawed his lip.  “Looking back,” he continued.  “We have all had some good times.”
“Speak for yourself,” said the spider, who had found himself hidden in more knicker drawers than he cared to remember.
“Ok,” replied AM.  “Maybe we are not, any of us, what we once were.  Age has affected us all, but we still have value.”  His voice swelled even as his detached arm slid slowly from his battle dress.  “We still have much to offer.”
“He’s right,” said Xylophone.  “I can still bang out a good tune, providing there are no G’s in it.”
“We all have to adapt,” said Caterpillar, wedging a small Lego wheel in to the space from where his own wheel had disappeared.  He smiled triumphantly.  The wheel fell off, as did one of his little spring antennae.  The silence that followed was profound.  All of the toys looked at themselves in quiet contemplation, suddenly aware that they were somehow less than they had once been: less clean, less functional, less complete, less use…  Caterpillar stepped back, as only a many-wheeled caterpillar can, catching Talking Book’s switch as he fell.  “We’re doomed,” he whispered.  “Doomed.”
“… and they all lived happily ever after,” said Talking Book.  “… and they all lived happily ever after…”

If I lose a sequin here ane there
And take my time on every stair
Can I rely on you
When this whole thing is through
To be for me the everthere? – ‘The Everthere’ (Elbow)

First published 20.06.2019

I have always been a fan of the Toy Story films as they appeal to my enjoyment of simple storytelling and sentimental tosh. They also make me laugh. I rather like the melancholy air of this little tale though…

Somehow I don’t feel as if my current publication routine is quite working (this post coming at the end of my worst blog week for readership ever) so I will return to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule from tomorrow (for the time being I will set Wednesday aside for some little fictions including a repeat of the Dinah & Shaw saga leading, I hope, to a new instalment at the end.) I am beginning to settle into my new surroundings and I hope, by then, I may have enough to say to fill three posts a week. If I don’t, I’ll say it anyway…

For crispinunderfelt.

These characters were all created by myself and my great buddy, Chris (the afore-mentioned Mr Underfelt) for a long, long ago radio series called The Globetrotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt (which I have written about briefly here).  In keeping with the ethos of this blog, I felt that it was high time that I looked in on them to see how they are all coping with advancing years in this age of ‘New Normal’ – in short, how they are getting on.  This is what I found…

Super-Nigel Tritt tucked himself tightly within the folds of his tartan ‘Slanket’, becoming increasingly agitated as he fiddled with the buttons of the TV remote.  ‘Corinth, Corinth!’ he called, ‘Can you do something with this TV?  The remote is not working and all the programs seem to be in Bulgarian.’

Corinth walked into the room.  She still held the pneumatic promise of a twenty-something, although it did appear to be deflating in places.  ‘That’s the telephone’, she said, taking it from his hand.  ‘The TV remote is on the coffee table next to your glasses and your pills, which you haven’t taken as usual.  The man on the TV is Danny Dyer – he always sounds like that.’

Nigel shifted uncomfortably in his chair: his leotard was giving him merry hell.  ‘I don’t suppose you could just…?’

‘Again?’  asked Corinth, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing that thing these days.  Just wait a minute whilst I go and get a couple of spoons.’

‘Remember to warm the cream,’ Nigel yelled at her retreating back.  ‘You know what the cold stuff did to me last time.’

‘How could I forget,’ Corinth mumbled, with an involuntary shudder.

Covid isolation had proved to be particularly difficult for the retired Super-hero.  Granted, his globe-trotting adventures had become increasingly rare in recent years – particularly since he now found it difficult to dodge anything more lethal than a speeding marshmallow – but this enforced isolation from his friends, How, the Professor and Freddie the Spy had left him low.  They had tried Zoom calling on a number of occasions, but never with great success.  The Doctor, as How preferred to be known, was struggling with his electric wheelchair – assembled from the bottom half of a Dalek – which had developed an alarming tendency to do exactly as it pleased.  He suspected tampering by Davros, or possibly Huawei, but whatever the reason, he was seldom able to be at his laptop when the call came through – especially since his ‘assistant’ kept leaving it upstairs.

The Professor, the most technically gifted of the team, had become deeply suspicious of any post-millennial technology, believing that it was responsible not only for Covid, but also for the financial crash of 2008, the ceaseless seep of the gourmet coffee shop and a particularly persistent carbuncle with which he had been engaged in battle since 2013.  Frankly, when they did manage a virtual ‘get-together’, his extreme moodiness ensured that he was never the best of company.  Like Nigel, he desperately wanted to get back out into his world of do-gooding, but he had become, of late, concerned about How’s ability to pilot his time craft in anything approaching an acceptable manner; indeed, their most recent adventure, back at the dawn of time, was a perfect example.  If Corinth had not somehow managed to bang two stray atoms together, Lord knows what might have happened.  Besides, the on-board toilet arrangements were appalling and in no way equal to the requirements of four men with failing prostates and a woman whose pelvic floor was practically subterranean.  In the Professor’s mind, it would be no bad thing if Nigel were to hang up his super-leotard for good.

The one member of the team who could always be relied upon to be present for their on-line chats was Freddy, although his paranoia had blossomed to such an extent that his many layers of auto-encryption meant that, in practice, it was almost impossible to see him unless you viewed the screen through a colander, and his voice emerged sounding something like a man-sized cockroach, which did rather set the teeth on edge.

Corinth herself, determined to confound her air-headed reputation of old, had studied every scientific home course available.  As a result, she was perfectly capable of constructing a working nuclear reactor out of two kitchen spatulas and a selection of cutlery – although her efforts to work out what day it was still left much to be desired. 

Even Nigel’s leotard, the seat of all his super-powers, had been less effective since Corinth had attempted to remove ‘certain stains’ by popping it into a boil wash, and it was only by dint of the ancient elastic going that he was able to struggle into its shrivelled remains at all.  Yet despite its tendency to bring on the worst of his rashes, Nigel still liked to feel cocooned within its sagging mesh during times of stress – and times seldom came more stressful than these.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said to Corinth as she re-entered the room.

‘Oh gawd,’ she muttered.

‘We need to get the team back together.  I have a plan to defeat this viral scourge.’

Corinth gazed into his glaucous eyes, for once sparkling again with a hero’s zeal.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well,’ he queried.  ‘Well what?’

‘You just said about getting the team back together.’

‘Did I?  I wonder why?’ he stroked his chin and small flakes of yesterday’s boiled egg fluttered down onto his lap.  ‘Oh yes, my plan!’ he said at last.  ‘My plan to save the world from Coronavirus.  It is, I believe, infallible.’

‘I’ll make the call,’ Corinth stammered with genuine pride.  ‘I always knew you’d come up with a plan…  What is it by the way?’

‘What?’

‘The plan.’

‘Plan?  What plan?’

‘To defeat Covid.  You said you had a plan to defeat Covid.’

‘Oh that,’ he said.  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling the optimism drain from her like water down a dentist’s sink.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said… 

I haven’t met these people in years.  I enjoyed the catch up.  I hope that I was faithful to their spirit.

First published 22.08.20.

I felt that my last Little Fiction Brendan, was a tad dark and therefore I chose this little piece to re-publish simply because it is pure nonsense. As the title suggests, this was written in the depths of Covid (a dreadful period which I dealt with in my plague diaries – this links to week five. I am sure you could find more if you felt so inclined. ) At the head of this piece it links to In Lieu of Nothing in Particular. The best thing about that post is the wonderful Hunt Emerson cartoon that accompanied Super Nigel’s listing in The Radio Times back in the days when such a thing existed…

It was said that Julian could sell snow to the Eskimos and, whilst he had never actually tried it, it was certainly true that he had on occasions managed to sell the actual straw that broke the camel’s back and had misappropriated along the way so many mickles that his muckle* was now the size of a luxury three story bolt-hole on the Algarve, paid for in tight wads of ill-gotten gains.  Thanks to him, Westminster Bridge had more Japanese owners than Sony and The Shard had more stakeholders than it had windows.  He had sold more fragments of The True Cross than four woodyards across the city were able to keep up with and if the slivers of the Elgin Marbles he had allowed Greek Visitors to repatriate over the years (for a small fee, obviously) were gathered together, the British Museum would have to open a new wing.

Julian wasn’t a bad man; anyone that knew him would tell you that.  As a young man he had been a successful Estate Agent, but he could not stand the accusations of falsehood that were continually levelled at him, so he became an even more successful car salesman where the falsehoods were never his own, but the symptoms of a dysfunctional workshop.  Later, after a very short, but extremely lucrative few weeks selling worthless credit-scheme encyclopaedias door-to-door, he felt that he was prepared for a future of living off his own nefarious wits.  He had never married; he had no children and all of his relationships tended to be short-term – not through choice but through necessity.  He could not stay in any place for long, he could never allow his friends to know his next move.  The longest relationship he had ever maintained was over the three years in which he had shared a Strangeways prison cell with ‘Slasher’ Murdoch and his abominable socks.

After his release he had crossed the Channel and armed with nothing more than a smattering of schoolboy French and the ability to talk nonsense in something that sounded vaguely like Italian, managed to make a perfectly decent living selling the Eiffel Tower to Asian tourists, many of whom had only recently availed themselves of an outstanding investment deal for part-ownership of one or another of London’s prime river crossings, but he found that the custodians of French law and order were not as forgiving, nor as amenable, as many members of our own capital’s constabulary, and he was forced to move a little further down the continent, where the police were too busy to waste their time on a sixty-year old chancer, where the suckers were plentiful and the deals were simple, even if the pickings were slimmer.

Still he was happy there.  He was older now; the weather was good, the sun shone most of the time and overheads, in general, were considerably lower than the two capital cities he had worked before.  The natives were easy-going and the tourists as naïve as anywhere else.  The living, although meagre at times, was easy.  The villa was his latest acquisition, his putting down of roots, and it had been such a steal!  Julian’s ‘experts’ had found it oh-so-easy to persuade the yokel owners of the fragility of the foundations; the weakness of the walls; the rude health of the Death Watch beetles in the joists.  The money had, on its way to the seller, found its way through more hands than a Pokeman card in a schoolyard, along a path that was so labyrinthine it probably had a Minotaur as its guardian: it had been laundered more assiduously than his underwear.  His currency was clean, clean, clean, and he was confident that no-one would be able to find fault with any of the paperchain, so it was with some surprise that he found himself being ushered into the office of Mr Ferreira, manager of the bank through which all of his financial transactions had, eventually, progressed. 

The dark wooden room felt like the court rooms with which he was much more familiar.  He felt unusually vulnerable and the discomfort danced around the features of his face.  He did not have to ask the question which was banging around his head – Was there some problem with the deal?  Had someone, somewhere, questioned the source of his capital? – Mr Ferreira read it in his eyes and answered it without hesitation, his whole demeanour signalling a major pothole in the road.  “We have the paperwork for your house, senhor” he said.
“And?… Is there a problem?”  Julian knew he would not be there otherwise.
Mr Ferreira sighed heavily.  “The problem, senhor?  The house, it is not your house.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is not your house because it was not the house of the man to whom you paid your money…”
Julian was aware that he was gaping like a stranded fish.
“…You see senhor, you really should have been more careful.  The Algarve, it is full of con men…”

*‘Many a mickle makes a muckle.’ a Scottish ode to thrift…

First published 22 February 2023

I loved the TV series Hustle about a team of ‘long game’ London conmen and women.  The plots were incredibly intricate and always featured a previously considered mishap, used to great advantage.  Those who got conned were always the greedy ones.  I know little about the world of conmen, but I imagine it is very much more seedy than glamorous, and the cons are altogether more basic…

It was the morning of Fabergé’s wedding to Claudio.  Her mother and father were beside themselves with excitement – so much so that, as soon as they had left their respective lover’s bed (they shared the same one) they sat together for breakfast, she toying with the carving knife and he wondering whether he could asphyxiate her by filling her nose with peanut butter.  Fabergé was also beside herself (that’s part of the problem with split-personality) but Claudio was somewhere else entirely.  Claudio’s mother did not approve of Fabergé or her step-foster parents (Derek and Doreen Clench) because she felt they were beneath her family (as they lived in the coal cellar) but Claudio loved Fab (as he called her – which really annoyed her mother who much preferred ‘Ergé’) and would do anything for her, other than change his name to Ethel.

It was ‘The Wedding of the Year’ on The Close (Formerly Archibald’s Close before it was discovered that Lord Archibald had once shared a bed with a yak and Royal Mail had objected to the fact that he was not, in fact, close) and the street was festooned with brightly coloured bunting and light emitting festive orbs (formally known as Fairy Lights, until the council decided the term was offensive).  Everyone was in a state of high excitement and good will abounded.  Nobody had been pushed up a wall and threatened for hours.  Dave’s ‘Sausage In A Bap’ van (formerly Hot Dog van before somebody pointed out that it didn’t serve dogs and what it did serve was at best lukewarm) was parked up in front of the local pub and ready to go.  Surely there could be no problem associated with a van containing two ersatz propane tanks, each having cheap Taiwanese fittings, twenty gallons of cooking fat and a fuel tank filled with something made from reclaimed vegetable oil, bath-tub gin and illegally imported nail-varnish remover being positioned exactly where everybody threw their fag-ends.

Fabergé looked at the photograph of her Equally Viable and Non-Dependent Other-to-be (formerly fiancé before somebody decided that owing to discriminatory spelling the word was demeaning) and sighed.  She would tell him about the sex-change at the reception.  Mo Cringe, mother of Derek, step-foster grandmother of Fabergé, secret lover of Claudio and family matriarch, was trying on her hat.  “Do you think that black is really the right colour grandma?” said Dirk, her youngest half-step grandson-in-law.
“It’s a dark day,” she said with her now familiar perma-scowl.
“Why?” asked Dirk.
“I think it’s something to do with the cloud cover,” she said.  “Is she ready yet?”
“Fabergé?”
“Who else?”  Dirk swallowed slightly.  “Erm, nearly,” he said.  “She’s having a bit of trouble fastening her dress.  She bought it before she… you know…”
“…Got herself pregnant with that brush salesman’s lovechild.” she said.
“But,” asked Dirk “isn’t it Claudio’s baby?”
Mo laughed out loud and catapulted her dentures across the room.  “Him?  He can’t have children.  Not since the incident with the Hen Party from Grimsby and the over-inflated sheep.”
“Does Fab know?”
“He might have mentioned it to her during the course of ante-natal classes…”

One by one the residents of The Crescent readied themselves for The Wedding of the Year (which, by The Close tradition, generally took place about three weeks before the Acrimonious Divorce of the Year) finalising their plans to use this best of opportunities to settle past scores with neighbours, friends and family.  Claudio climbed out of bed and having woken both of the bridesmaids, sent them home to get their dresses on, smiling evilly as he watched them scurry away.  But not as evilly as the maid of honour for whom the antibiotics had still not worked…

Now read on…

First published 19 May 2023

As I write this, Eastenders is celebrating its 40^th year of misery.  The Close is my Albert Square (setting for Eastenders).  It’s a good deal sillier than the flagship BBC Soap, but no further from reality.  I always feel that silly is my forte and I know that I should do it more often.  I will make it my mission…