Flibbertigibber

    A per se A, B per se B, C per se C, ...
    & per se ampersand
MOLLUSCS
    strange exdentations (toothy)
    rubbly rubbishy rhubrab (niggle).

    "But it makes no sense," lied Hannibal, reading the semaphore sign.

    "Let me have a go," lied Noddy, who popped out of a telescope water-barrel, green with frenzy, pink with envy. Standing beside him was an incongruous bowl of grated Arcturan Megarhino.

    Creation myths flourished, floundered and flibbertigibbered until there was little left to tell. The whole palimpsestic galaxy went absolutely ludicrous, leaving all the characters swimming in a swirly mass of astrogen.

    "Welcome to MY domain," lied the Master.

    He went outside and trod on a land-mine.

An environmentalist's nightmare

A moment later Arthur saw the window, and, followed by Arthur, Hannibal and Sausage the Pineapple Lizard, fell out of it, having seen it a moment too late. Not a moment too soon — the Seive was crunging through the forest like an environmentalist's nightmare after that extra helping of lentils — eating everything in its path — trees, soggy teabags, vegetable marrows, evolving marrows, minor first century heretics, second class railways carriages, light orange kettles and the Antiplautus, who was too busy gloating over having his characters all in the same plot and entirely at his waste-disposal to Aararaghkrummnlphtmm. Hic!

    The Seive had never eaten antimatter before — but it was not at all fastidious — it was only a spelling mistake.

    "I know he was the author!" said Arthur. "What a way to go — eaten by your own spelling mistake!" Meanwhile, the Seive was starting on outer space — apart from the marmalade, which it spat out, giving rise to the creation myth of another minor species, namely that God is the rapid movement of a series of slightly soggy pieces of cooked orange peel — which begat Abraham, which begat Isaac, which begat Jacob in the usual way, because all creation myths have A, I and J respectively...

No absolutes! No idea!

    The lizard looked lugubrious again. Then it struck Arthur with an aging vegetable marrow, which had won second prize in Sodding Dull village flowershow only five months previously. "Feel that?" the saurian enquired. "Yes," said Arthur. "Then you're not a philosopher!"

    "Hang on — I recognize that marrow. It's part of my gooning-bag, isn't it?"

    "Well, Arthur," said David Colemanballs, "you're absolutely rrrr—"

    "Hang on!" yelled Plato in Greek, "no absolutes! no forms! no είδη! no idea!"

    "Well, that's a turn-around for the books," said Richard O'Brien who popped into existence for a couple of nanoseconds at this (●) point.

    "Hello," said Mr Hollis, because he couldn't say anything else.

    Sanskrit exploded, praseodymium gibbered, napkins renched, and salamandrian toothpaste-yakkers protested rantingly in the strood. Surrealism returned, sneezed and blew itself out the window.

    Chiefly in order to prove that really surreal forests have windows — light orange kettle-shaped ones. In this case.

What did it all mean?

    They stood and thought. Nine hundred and seventy-three trombones sidled forth, presented Election Special and crawled away into a devilrish devilry of of their own reviling. Theodora screamed.

    "Do not remove from the grill until thoroughly dead."

    "Cut most of the anatomy away, leaving only the throat."

    What did it all mean? Find out at last — on page 21...


"Meaning," said Arthur. "This is neither the time nor the place," said Theodora.

    "Then I suppose it doesn't have a meaning!" Arthur said, enlightened.

    "That's not what I meant, at all," said Theodora.

    "She means — 'Never mind getting real, or even looking for it. Be practical. Be... empirical," Hannibal interpreted.

    "That is not it, at all," Theodora said.

    "Women!" groaned T.S. Eliot, whose attitudes (insofar &c) were not as enlightened as Arthur's, or even as practical.

Evolved from the rain

    Arthur blinked and understood nothing. It was less complicated than "being" but more difficult to think about. And it was very damp. Household waste dripped from the branches — empty tins of cream of asparagus soup, the foil containers of innumerable Indian take-aways, mouldy kiwi-fruit.

    "We evolved from the rain," said the lizard lugubriously. "It's rather sad. I used to be the outside of a pineapple and a superannuated courgette. Our creation myth involves a malfunctioning waste-disposal unit sending garbage forth into space, imbued with the breath of life. It makes one feel second-hand, somehow."

    "At least you weren't tinned pineapple," said Arthur.

    "I was," said a rather improbable Del Monte tortoise.

    "I wasn't," explained Hannibal, emerging bleary-eyed from a puddle of grapefruit.

Foresty forest

    The Moob was flabbergasted. "I'd never have believed it (and the 'it')," it yippee'd.

    Arthur stood up, surveyed the débris and fell over.

    "It's horribly cold," said Theodora.

    "It's horribly mould," said Mildew, a new caractacus.

    "Hello," said a forty-eight-and-a-half-and-a-third- and-a-n-other-little-bit-foot lizard, whose back was a hideous crumpled crackly cringeworthy mass of scraggy craggy scales. "Can we have some descriptiong, please?"

    The forest was, well, foresty — large, dark and smelly, especially after rain, especially when the rain was made of household waste, as it usually was on the planet Erf. All around, snails cracked underfoot; all asquare, cobwebs dangled spangly in the mist; all aparallelopiped, drippy droopy droobles dribbled drabbly out of Evil Edna's nose.