9:12am Monday 15th September 2008
By Telegraph & Argus
After a sleepless night in the hammock in his broom-cupboard home on the third floor of the T&A building, The Scribbler needed someone to talk things through with.
“It’s time for action, Arnold,” he declared.
“Coo-roo!” said Arnold, his voice muffled inside his knitted parrot suit. (Reminder to readers: Arnold is the pigeon The Scribbler reared by hand and released into the wild only to have him return a couple of years later and take up residence with him. When he’s in the building the bird has to be disguised as a parrot to get round the ban imposed on pigeons as vermin by the Assistant Editor With Special Responsibility for Office Hygiene).
“No, I mean it, Arnold,” continued The Scribbler. “I’ve dilly-dallied and possibly even shilly-shallied for far too long. I need to get out of Bradford and take the world by storm while there’s still a world to take.”
As Arnold cocked his head on one side and made as if he was listening, your columnist explained how he had been forced to face up to the uncertainty of life by reports over the last couple of weeks of experiments with a particle collider deep in the ground beneath Geneva with which scientists were trying to recreate the “Big Bang” that’s thought to have begun the universe.
“The technicalities of it are beyond me,” he mused aloud. “I didn’t even get my GCSE in physics. But I do know that it sounds serious. These nutty boffins are trying to prove something to themselves, at great expense, and in the process they might trigger a chain of events that could eventually lead to the end of the world.
“Yes, doesn’t sound too good, does it Arnold? You’ve no need to look complacent. After all, if the world ends that means pigeons as well as people.”
“Coo-roo?” said Arnold, perhaps wondering how he could be seen to be looking complacent when his head and beak were covered by a parrot mask with only a couple of eyeholes to see through.
“I’ve already started to make some changes,” continued The Scribbler. “I’m on the verge of a new beginning and I’m keen to make the most of it, even if it doesn’t last for long before we all vanish up a man-made black hole. But I need to take HER with me into my new life. And by HER, of course, I mean Thelma Gusset (pronounced ‘Gussay’), the woman of my dreams. It’s very nice that she comes and shares my hammock from time to time, and even nicer since we managed to stop falling out of it at moments of extreme passion. But I want her to share my life full-time. I want her to stroll off with me into the sunset, Big Bang or no Big Bang…”
He put on the kettle, poured some milk on to a bowl of Bran Flakes, then put a handful of pigeon corn on the desk top and slipped off Arnold’s parrot hood so the bird could eat.
“You see Arnold,” he went on, “I want to ask Thelma to marry me. There’s no reason for her to say no, now that her estranged control-freak husband Ray has conveniently passed away. But if I’m to ask her, I need to buy an engagement ring. The problem is a lack of capital. Where can I get some money?”
“Coo-roo?” said Arnold, one of his beady eyes turning to look at a box on top of a tall cupboard.
“You’re a genius, Arnold!’ cried The Scribbler, climbing on a chair and reaching down his carton of treasured Action Man figures. “I’ll put them on eBay this very day. And when I’ve got her the ring, I’ll tell her about the new job.”
To be continued…..
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