Chapter 2 - Africa, continent of wonder, mystery and Lions

"Aaah" said Ambrose as he scanned the horizon using his highly focused eyes, " I appear to have missed my mark". Mark was a long lost cousin, whom Ambrose had hand reared after Mark’s mum had sadly been killed in a freak accident. The bus from the local asylum had run her over. Mark had the amazing ability to know exactly where he was at all times, which would have been useful, because Ambrose didn’t.

"I can tell you where you are." Said a voice.

Ambrose turned his head slowly, when it had a nice shape and was flush (woodwork joke), Ambrose looked at the speaker of the voice.

To describe as handsome wouldn’t be fair, because he was ugly Very ugly. Try to imagine Quasimodo, going through puberty whilst suffering from elephantitis , just having been involved in a hideously disfiguring accident caused from falling from the ugly tree. Got it? Well the speaker was twice as ugly as that with more painfully ugly bits on top.

What a handsome fellow, thought Ambrose using the part of his mind which was used for heavy irony. He decided to ask the ugly man a question, which he did, and was given the answer, which follows below.

The man’s name was Norris Hackeysack, a retired crazed lunatic and the owner of Hackeysack's Junk Shop Shack, which is where Ambrose had landed. Despite his ugliness, Norris was an extremely rude man who took pleasure in as being as unhelpful and as ignorant as possible.

"No" he said, from what Ambrose assumed was his mouth, "I can’t help you to get to Africa, despite my junkyard being chock full of damaged, but not unrepairable, aircraft, boats and other means of long distance transportation." Then he stuck his, surprisingly handsome, tongue out and waggled it.

"Well" spake Ambrose, his ego out of joint. Ambrose had tried to tell his ego that smoking drugs was bad but it didn’t listen; it went on about being in love with the world, man, and hey, I dig those crazy mushrooms, guy.

"You can ‘Well’ all you want, but I’m not giving you anything, except that fully working, shiny chrome airship that looks like it came right out of a Jules Verne novel."

Ambrose was aghast; Norris was a Gemini.

"What a splendid gift! I had taken you to be an ignorant, foulmouthed ugly git who most likely abuses wildfowl in the most depraved and sordid ways. But I can see I was wrong."

"Thanks" said Norris who couldn’t work out how Ambrose knew about the wildfowl. "Have a safe trip."

"Hey, thanks man" said Ambrose’s ego, who was.

"Well, I’ll be off" said Ambrose who was getting bored of the boring conversation. "And I suggest you remove those pheasant feathers from your nether regions"

Ambrose walked towards the airship, which was called "The No Hope"; climbed aboard, pushed some buttons and pulleys and other things that where chromey and shiny, and sat back in a chair stolen from Disney’s 2ooo Leagues under the Sea as the airship took to the skies and floated off towards the mysterious continent known as Africa, or Bob to its friends.

*******

Now Bob was, as I have said, some three and a half thousand miles from where Ambrose had landed, so it should come as no surprise that Ambrose missed his mark again. By now he was starting to get a little concerned about his odd attachment to Mark (a sort of shiny pointed thing with a socket in the end) and decided to come off the HRT immediately.

In fact, that was what started all the trouble. For as Ambrose threw the small plastic container of pills out of the window, he had not a care for where it might land. They landed, as luck would have it, on a small stone altar, in the corrugated iron shack of the latter day witch doctor and all-around humanitarian Alfonso McFlirty.

Now the tribe, of which Alfonso (or the Great Tit as he was known in the tribe) was the Shaman, was having a problem. Most of the men were out-of-sorts, and sorts are hard to come by in that region. They were inexplicably restless, not sleeping well, prone to night sweats and generally knackered most of the time. The Great Tit had just finished an invocation to the great god Ohmigoodness, when Ambrose’s pills perforated the non-too-sound roof (making quite a lot of sound in the process) and landed square on the altar in front of him. After reading the directions, he popped a couple (they didn’t seem to mind, considering it, as it was, part of their ceremonial duties to the tribe), and immediately felt better.

In a trice (and you don’t find many of them in those parts either) he had analysed the contents and all unaware of the infringement of patents, was knocking them out by the dozen.

The tribe immediately picked up, feeling a whole lot better about them selves and the world in general, and set about annihilating every other tribe in a twenty mile radius, and triggering the biggest and most bloody civil war in their country’s history. Seldom has the impact of modern technology been better illustrated. Although Ambrose did go a long way to illustrating the impact of technology himself, as the particular piece of technology in which he was riding impacted, some four hours later.

*******

Bemused, bothered and bewildered, Ambrose staggered from the wreckage, and realised that he missed out some more words starting with B, like battered, broken and bruised.

"Ouch!!" he cried as both his knees gave way and he toppled head first into a big pile of pointy, sharp broken things which had gathered together specifically for the purpose described above. Ambrose had a spring in his step, a crankshaft in his thigh and dirty great wheel nut poking out his forehead.

"Ouch" he said again for effect and passed gracefully into unconsciousness.

When people pass into unconsciousness, things are supposed to happen. For instance, the mariner in The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner fell into a "swound" which isn’t described but must have some meaning to the poem other than a word the author made up to rhyme with "ground". When Dorothy passed out she was magically transported to the Land of Oz and Alice found herself in Wonderland. Nostradamus was visited by apocalyptic visions of the future and Neo in The Matrix was taken back to the real world.

Nothing happened to Ambrose, nothing. Actually, that’s not strictly true - Ambrose’s usually active thoughts had all decided that since nothing was going on anyway they might as well bugger off and enjoy a nice picnic. Which they did. This was fun until several unruly thoughts got drunk on cider and tried to start a fight with a wishful thought of world peace. Luckily the situation was resolved when a random thought about the reason why old people wear hats and overcoats no matter what the weather, stepped in and calmed the situation down. Ambrose missed all of this, he was still waiting about in unconsciousness waiting for something interesting to happen.

The ironic thing is that while Ambrose's unconscious was sitting about and whistling something altogether more sinister and creepy was actually happening to him in the real world.

*******

Yes, something sinister was indeed creeping. After a little while, it realised that fawning all over an unconscious person had little effect. Feeling totally perplexed, Aristotle the left-hoofed fawn wondered what to do next. After all, fawning was what he did best. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that it was the only thing he could do. Really. Totally perplexed got bored and left. Now Aristotle was alone, with no one to feel, apart of course from the unconscious Ambrose. Aristotle thought long and hard.

He furrowed his cute little brow (no mean task with no hands - or oxen). He blinked his cute little eyes; his cute little tongue popped out to lick his cute little nose, wandered around a bit, decided that this was no place for a disembodied tongue and popped back in again.

Realising that no amount of cute posturing was going to awaken the unconscious Ambrose, Aristotle drew back his incredibly cute hoof and planted it swiftly between Ambrose’s legs.

The noise Ambrose made at this point was indescribable, so I shan’t bother trying. Suffice it to say he woke up. About eight feet up. Unable to think of anything better to do (his thoughts still being at the picnic) Ambrose decided to plummet back to earth.

"Ouch!" he said, not for the first time.

"Oh, you’re awake." Said the Fawn.

"Actually, the name’s Ambrose." squeaked Ambrose, "What’s yours?".

"Normally a pint and a packet of salted peanuts" replied Aristotle, "but as the Pub’s not open yet, and they don’t serve wild animals anyway, let’s say Aristotle".

"Aristotle" said Ambrose and Aristotle together. It was Ambrose’s turn to feel a little perplexed, they always seem to turn up when something interesting is going on.

"Oy!" complained Aristotle, "that’s my perplexed you’re feeling – who said it was your turn?"

The little perplexed thumbed his nose at Aristotle, who realised he wouldn’t be feeling perplexed any time soon. He started feeling a little sad, which whilst not quiet as nice as a perplexed, is better than feeling nothing at all. Nothing at all stormed off in a sulk, feeling unwanted and unloved, both of whom seemed to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, night fell. Feeling a little sorry (he was getting quite good at this now, so he decided he’d put himself about a bit) Ambrose helped the night up. Amazingly enough, it was not night but dawn that rose, and on the horizon at that. "Well," said Ambrose "there’s something you don’t see every day".

*******

Aristotle helped Ambrose gather his thoughts. He had seen them earlier skinny dipping in a lake so he knew where to find them.

"Well" said Ambrose " this is a pretty pickle, and this tomato’s not bad looking either. Where did you find this delicious feast?"

"It was just lying by the side of the lake where your thoughts were skinny dipping." Said Aristotle tucking into a fruit pie. Which is hard because you have to get the corners spot on.

Ambrose chewed on a meat paste sandwich and considered his options. Aristotle turned his head whilst Ambrose did this, a man’s options are his own affair. Here he was, stuck with a fawn, eating a picnic stolen from his thoughts by the side of a ruined airship. Africa was still a long way off and … hold on, what was he doing here?

He looked at his gathered thoughts. Something was missing. He put them in order of size, then weight, then age, then in a random order, then balanced them top of each other, then he put them in a small production of Oklahoma. Checking the cast he realised that there was no one to fill the part of Curly. It was then he realised he had a stray thought.

"Crikey!" he said out loud, spitting a large portion of potato salad over Aristotle who choked on his boiled egg. "One of my thoughts has gone missing!"

"Was it an important one?" asked Aristotle, nibbling a sausage roll.

"My yes," said Ambrose wolfing down several vol-et-vents " It was the one that made me leave home in the first place. Without it I can’t remember why I’m here."

"Well, what did it look like?" Aristotle munched on some pitta bread stuffed with pancetta and black olive paste.

Ambrose described his thought in full detail in the hope that Aristotle would remember it. He didn’t, but he did say he would try to help him find it, as he had nothing better to do. This pleased Ambrose greatly. He hadn’t had a companion since Mark, and told the fawn so.

"If you do get an attachment for me, make sure it fits properly, I don’t want any leaks." Ambrose agreed and leapt, gazelle-like onto the fawn’s back.

"Hi Ho Aristotle!" he shouted, waving his previously unmentioned Stetson hat in the air, "Away!!"

Unfortunately Ambrose’s weight had played havoc with the little fawn’s knees, which meant that Ambrose had to carry him. They set off into the sunset, which was a pain because they had to wait all day before the sun had actually set.

*******

As the congealed mass of the sun hung in the sky overhead (something else you don’t see every day), Ambrose strode bravely onwards. Where should one look for a missing thought? He looked high and he looked low. He looked hither and thither. He even looked zither, but decided that was just a spelling mistake. Aristotle was proving to be a bit of a pain, constantly reassuring Ambrose and congratulating him on a particularly sharp turn to the left (or right, or sometimes simply for carrying straight on). "Stop fawning over me Aristotle!" he cried.

"What do you expect?" replied Aristotle. "I am when all is said and done, or even before then, a fawn. Fawning is what I do; indeed it is my very substance. I live to fawn. Fawning is–".

Anything else Aristotle had to say was lost as Ambrose tossed him over the edge of a handily placed cliff. Aristotle’s last contribution to our story, before being parted from his life, was a particularly cute "Squish!" as he hit the rocks some several hundred feet below.

Suddenly, a thought came to Ambrose.

"There you are you little bastard!" cried Ambrose, grabbing the errant thought and stuffing it unceremoniously up his nose. It wasn’t that Ambrose particularly chose to do it that way, it was more that he didn’t know any "stuffing a thought up one’s nose" ceremonies.

Now he knew once more why it was he had to get to Africa. The ebony hair clip; the still missing Vibraphone – it all came flooding back, like a blocked toilet.

While most of his thoughts were reeling from the visualisation of the flooding toilet, a small, inoffensive thought, who’d been too polite to speak up earlier, and then was too busy, what with the picnic and all, managed to get itself noticed.

"Hey" Ambrose thought, "isn’t Venticle a name of African extraction?"

As it happens, it isn’t, and never has been, which is probably why the thought didn’t like to speak up. Still it was now able to trot off back to it’s own private piece of the cerebellum, for a lay down in the dark and a rub down with a damp copy of the Radio Times in the sure and certain knowledge of a job well done. Ambrose, however was fired with enthusiasm.

*******

As he flew through the air, completely unaware of who, or what had fired him (or why for that matter) in the general direction of Africa, all he could think was "Oh dear, that water looks awfully wet".

Which was a cracking piece of thinking, concise, clear and straight to the point. And true.

Ambrose hit the water like a man falling into some water from a cliff top. Tiny bubbles of air escaped from every orifice Ambrose owned (and a few he didn’t) and bubbled up to the surface. Unluckily Ambrose had fallen onto one of those areas of water that contains "icy depths" and "freezing swirling currents" and other literary clichés.

Ambrose plunged on, deeper and deeper. Whilst he was sinking further down into the…icy depths he was actually feeling quite chipper. Being a reader of books and a watcher of films, Ambrose knew what happened to people who fell into water. Some landed on the lost isles of Atlantis, some were picked up by submarines, in one film the main character actually became animated and had an undersea adventure with whales, and lobsters and polar bears.

What didn’t occur to Ambrose was the fact that when he had passed out nothing at all had happened, and it was looking like the same thing was going to happen here, except he could possibly drown. White flashes popped in front of Ambrose’s eyes and his heart beat faster and faster. He was close to drowning, when a vast, animated, submarine hailing from the lost isle of Atlantis picked him with only seconds to spare.

"Lucky bastard" mumbled the corpse of Aristotle who had slipped off the rocks and into the sea.

"Tell me about it." said the ethereal presence of Emilia Hangnail who happened to be passing," He’ll get his comeuppance, you see if he doesn’t."

Then she did that evil laugh thing and rubbed her hands with glee, a new type of hand cream.

*******

The fact that the submarine was crewed entirely by animated whales, lobsters and polar bears was somewhat of a relief to Ambrose, as he couldn’t stand animated penguins. No matter how hard he tried, they just kept on falling over.

"Excuse me," said Ambrose to the splendidly animated whale wearing the captain’s uniform "why are you wearing the captain’s uniform?"

The whale did something indescribably odd, which unknown to Ambrose, was his way of expressing embarrassment.

"Look, you won’t tell anyone, will you?" he squeaked in a wholly unwhale-like manner. "It’s a bit embarrassing you see," (which Ambrose didn’t; or at least, he did, but if you recall he didn’t recognise it as such).

You don’t? Oh for goodness sake, it was only four lines ago! If you’re not going to pay attention, then where’s the point in my continuing? Eh? Eh? Harrumph – (clears throat and sits back down) – Now then, where were we? Oh yes –

"I’m not really a whale at all, I’m a penguin. I’m only pretending to be the captain while he’s off having a quick fag."

The whale-shaped penguin fell over. Ambrose attempted to stand him up – but, surprise, surprise - he fell over again. Ambrose began to feel annoyed (No, we’re not going into that again).

"It’s proving a little more difficult than I thought." sighed the penguin, "You couldn’t pass that bucket of Krill, could you – it’s dinner time?"

A quick glance at the two-ton bucket was enough to convince Ambrose that he couldn’t even swallow it, let alone pass it, and he said as much.

"Pardon?" said the Penguin.

"Sorry?" said Ambrose.

"You said ‘As much’. I wondered why."

"Look -" said Ambrose. There was a small comedy moment as the entire crew turned around to see what they should be looking at; but, to be honest, it was so small that I shan’t bother mentioning it. Oh bugger.

The Lobster at the helm said something, but as he was the only Lobster on board (it’s so difficult for a young Lobster to get into the Navy these days) and no-one else on board spoke Lobster, we shall never know for certain what it was.

Given that the submarine had just arrived off the coast of Africa, it could have been "The submarine has just arrived off the coast of Africa, sir." but who can tell?

*******

Ambrose hit Africa’s hallowed turf with a thud, then he poked it with a stick and finally he jumped up and down on it. So here he was, in Africa. He looked about, sniffed the air and clambered out the crater that had been formed after he had been fired from the animated submarine’s torpedo tubes. The scenery of Africa was stunning, sweeping grassy plains, dense jungles and snow capped mountains. The other postcards he had collected weren’t so good, Africa by Night, Africa in the Snow, things like that.

He had landed on the edge of steaming, dense jungle. The distant cries of parrots rang through the air, a leopard roared in the distance, an elephant trumpeted, several monkeys joined in on saxaphone, an aardvark picked up a double bass and pretty soon the whole jungle was a-rocking. Ambrose snapped his fingers in time to the music and set off into the jungle.

The sun was the colour of a port flavoured wine gum It was hot, damn hot. It was so hot all the crocodile’s ice creams were melting. Ambrose wished he had worn his safari suit as opposed to his usual three-piece moleskin, velvet lined suit, Doc. Martin boots and a Stetson hat. He was also wishing he hadn’t snapped his fingers because his bootlaces had come undone and its very hard to tie them back up when your fingers are broken.

Flies buzzed, as did the mosquitoes and all the other little flying things that were currently snacking upon Ambrose. He flicked his hand at them and watched it as it landed somewhere in a bush.

"Damn" he said as he went off to look for it.

After a few moments of fruitless searching he decided to stop searching for fruit and try to recover his hand - he didn’t like the old covering and thought that a nice russet linen would be much nicer. Of course had Ambrose not been involved with so many rubbish jokes he would have noticed that he was surrounded by a group of surly natives all brandishing spears.

Natives always brandish things - knives, swords, shields, whatever - there’s always a lot of brandishing being done and its never exactly fully explained. People usually assume that it simply means "holding in a threatening manner" and the Collins English Dictionary (the 1994 third edition) suggest it means "To wave or flourish (a weapon) in a triumphant, threatening or ostentatious way". Both meanings are correct, but these particular natives didn’t own a dictionary and could only speak that form of English that all generic, stereotyped natives can. These natives thought that brandishing meant "to cover, or smear, alcoholic butter over (the chosen weapon)". Which is what they were doing.

They were doing it very well, but it didn’t actually look that threatening. And it made the spears all slippery. Ambrose failed to notice any of this, because he was recovering his hand, in fact he only noticed them when one of the natives, who had run out of butter, poked his spear right into Ambrose’s bottom.

"Yaroo!" Yelled Ambrose as he shot forwards, deftly recovering his lost hand in the process. Now unknown to Ambrose, the word "Yaroo", in the language that these particular natives did not in fact speak, (but one of them had recently completed a Linguaphone correspondence course in it, and quickly told the others), just happens to mean "Stop boring everybody with talk of that bloody Linguaphone course you’ve just completed", which was quite a coincidence.

Strangely, this led to some confusion amongst the natives, who rather than use Ambrose as target practice, decided to use him as the star attraction in their next banquet.

Ambrose was flabbergasted; he was hornswoggled; he was flummoxed, banjaxed and bamboozled; finally, he was tenderised, sprinkled with a little Paprika, given a sprig of Bay leaves to hold, and placed in a large cast-iron pot and put on to simmer, for what was eventually agreed to be 30 minutes per pound, plus 30 minutes over.

"Well," thought Ambrose, as he was slapped again for attempting to eat the vegetables, "I probably should have sold those Lastminute.com shares after all". After all, here he was, in the middle of Africa; the sun was shining; the air was calm; the water was warm; there was not a sound to be heard, apart from two and a half million assorted jungle denizens and a hundred or so wildly celebrating natives. Ambrose thought he may well never go back to his tedious life in England. He rather preferred his exiting life, as "Ambrose T. Hedgetrimmer – Secret Agent". Secure in his alternate personality, he began scheming and plotting his escape.

Suddenly, he remembered the impending total eclipse of the sun that was due in this locality. Sadly, it was not for two days, and whilst Ambrose wasn’t entirely sure of his weight, he thought one hundred and five stone to be unlikely. He would be cooked before then. No, he would have to think of something else.

Clever plans and schemes ran through his highly trained mind, which he had brought with him for just such an occasion. He didn’t think the old "look out behind you" plan would work, nor the "I have a highly trained commando unit surrounding you at this very moment who will attack on my command" plan.

The water began to boil around him and various vegetables began to bubble to the surface, Swedes and Carrots, Parsnips and Peas and a bloody great Pumpkin. Huge it was, like a small planet. Ambrose’s mind sparked and set fire to his hat. Like a small planet he repeated to himself in an echoey voice…small planet, like the moon. The thoughts in his mind mated like monkeys and conceived a plan.

After making a small hole in the pumpkin with his finger, he proceeded to suck out the entire contents, pips, flesh and those stringy bits, until all that was left was the outer skin. Using the helium he kept concealed in his false back left molar he filled the pumpkin until it began to float. Sealing the hole he had made with a carrot, he carefully tied one end of his extra long bootlaces to the protruding end, and slowly, let the pumpkin float into the air. After some careful calculations he managed to bring the inflated pumpkin in line with the sun causing a huge shadow to fall across the land.

The natives, as one man (called Geoff) gasped in astonishment. This was unprecedented. The "Christ It’s Gone Dark" day had come two days early, and none of the natives were ready. No butter had been spread, the elephant was still practising and Mrs Ft’lxptkowonga was still de-waxing the string. A disaster. The natives were thrown into confusion. This was shown by them running about and screaming.

Amidst all the commotion, which is a sort of a vegetable in those parts, Ambrose made his escape. Which let’s face it is ludicrous. Helium filled teeth? Extra long bootlaces? What a load of nonsense!

I know these natives are supposed to be stupid, but no one on earth could mistake a pumpkin on a string for an eclipse - no one.

It would have been much easier to rock the pot till it fell over, causing the water to fall onto the fire, which would send up clouds of steam which would be an ideal cover to escape under. All this ran through Ambrose’s mind as he legged it. He definitely liked the second plan better and in the end decided that was how he had escaped.

This inadvertently set up a kind of alternate reality thing, in which Ambrose was recaptured by the natives and eventually eaten. All the natives agreed that he tasted rather nice but could have probably done with five more minutes. The "Christ It’s Gone Dark" festival went off without a hitch. The buttery armaments were great, the elephant had its routine down to pat and everyone marvelled at Mrs Ft’lxptkowonga’s de-waxed string. All who were involved went home happy.

Its nice to know that the horribly cannibalistic death of someone could cause so much pleasure, even in another reality.

Like so many things, this was all not known by Ambrose - who had fallen into a raging river.

"Bugger" he said and wished he had gone through with the first plan.

*******

What, you might think, were the chances of Ambrose falling into the Thames? None whatsoever, as he was on a completely different continent, you might well reply – and you’d be right. The name of the river into which Ambrose fell is not related in this story.

So, as Ambrose floated serenely down the not related in this story, he became aware of a disturbance in the water. Not two hundred feet away, was a school of ravenous Piranha! Luckily for Ambrose, it was a First School reception class, and they were all having their mid-afternoon nap. Still, it was a disturbing sight. Moving, he would have been even more worried.

He swam to a small island in the middle of the river, and climbed out onto a small bank. Ambrose checked his balance (a little off to the left), withdrew one hundred pounds in cash, paid a few bills, transferred some money between his savings and current accounts, and ordered a statement. Pity it was a blood bank, really.

Undaunted, Ambrose considered his options. He’d just decided to phone a friend, when he realised that a) he didn’t have any actual friends, and b) neither did he have a telephone.

By bizarre coincidence, at precisely that moment, nothing happened. It lasted quite a while. It was a rip-roaring, barnstorming triumph of a nothing, not that anyone noticed, of course. Slightly after that something happened. This time of course, everybody for miles around (Ambrose) noticed. Something sat there smugly for a while, and thumbed its nose at nothing, who left.

This particular something was a crocodile named Nigel. Nigel was pissed off. It was supposed to be his day off, but no, oh no. Here he was strolling through the African jungle, with a sign strapped to his back advertising - "Davina Venticle – Vibraphone recital, third clearing from the left, 8:00PM. Be there or be somewhere else!" – and why? Why? Because that lazy no-good, son of a grass snake, the grass snake, had not shown up for work this morning – the lousy low-down snake in the grass.

Ambrose stared at Nigel, and Nigel stared back. There was something important about this, a small nagging feeling at the back of his mind was trying to remind him of something. Something about … Aha! Yes that was it! His irrational fear of crocodilians!

Without any further ado, Ambrose shot up the nearest tree. Which served no purpose whatsoever, as going round shooting trees does not help you in running from nasty crocodiles, it just makes the jungle look all untidy. The only thing it did do was make Ambrose wonder where the gun had come from. It didn’t half scare the shit out of the crocodile as well.

Ambrose brandished his gun, a bad habit he’d picked up from the natives, and waved it at the crocodile. The crocodile waved back and displayed his toothy maw. Ambrose looked worried. If that’s what its maw looked like now, how would It look out of the display case and actually in the mouth of the crocodile?

The crocodile took one step forward, Ambrose took one step back. They did the okey- cokey and they turned around, which gave Ambrose the excuse to run like buggery into the undergrowth. When the crocodile turned back round Ambrose had gone.

Nigel sighed. It had been a while since he’d eaten anyone, aah well. Nigel the crocodile placed his headphones on and pressed play on his Walkman. By sheer coinkydink, the album he was listening to was "Into The Undergrowth", which was Run Like Buggery’s award winning fourth album. The crocodile shook his groove thing and boogie oogie woogied into the jungle.

*******

The spirit of Emilia Hangnail dissolved into the clearing with the corpse of Aristotle the Fawn slung over her shoulder.

"I thought that crocodile was gonna have him then" said Emilia, laying Aristotle over a branch.

"No. Jammy git that he is. I can’t believe how easily he escaped those natives earlier on." said Aristotle.

The ghost wavered with anger and clenched her fists.

"I’ll tell you what Aris’ , I have a plan that’s gonna stop that swine dead in his tracks." She winked and conspiratorially tapped the side of her nose.

"Good. But please don’t call me Aris, I’m sure that’s rhyming slang for Arse." Complained the dead fawn.

"You should be pleased I’m calling you anything, you’re starting to smell."

"I’m a corpse for Christ’s sake, you can hardly blame me."

"You’ve changed Aris’ you were really cute earlier on." Grumbled Emilia.

"Well, Emil’, being thrown off a cliff and having your cute little body smooshed to a bloody pulp is hardly gonna make you feel happy and morning fresh is it." Had the fawn been able to, it would have made a huffy noise and gone into a strop.

"Stop going into a virtual strop." Said Emilia picking the body off the branch, "we have work to do."

Then she did that evil laugh again and faded into the forest like a bad Star Trek special effect.

*******

Ambrose, by now, was well into the depths of the small island, which he discovered had a Mixing Bowl, which is like a Basin but smaller. The slope was steep and stony, and small shoots snagged his shoes. His coat was caught in creepers, and his pockets were well worn through, which wasn’t the fault of the jungle but as it rhymed, Ambrose thought he should have it in.

By now he had reached the bottom of the Mixing Bowl and a strange sight caught his eye, which was a spare one made of glass which had rolled out of his worn through pockets.

This puzzled Ambrose, because the strange sight was a hidden temple and didn’t, as such, have any hands. What it did have was ornately carved designs, which ran the length and breadth of its crumbling yellow stone walls. Creepers wound their way around the stepped sides and in and out of the small, rectangular windows that were dotted around the temple. And to top it off, growing right from the centre of the temple was an ancient, twisted tree, whose highest branch stopped at least 50ft from the top of the already very tall indeed temple. Since we are in a describing things frenzy it must be noted that the sun hung in the sky like a blazing yellow marble.

Ambrose was impressed, more with the temple that with the sun, which he had seen described before on other occasions. He thought that this description wasn’t really as good. But the temple impressed him greatly.

After careful consideration, Ambrose stopped pressing his body against the temple, and looked at the impression it had left on him. It was sort of crinkly, maybe even a bit ridged, and if he screwed his fist up a little, bore an uncanny resemblance to George Formby.

There was nothing for it. Ambrose stiffened his sinews summoned up his blood, put his best foot forward and fell flat on his face. Realising at length that stiffening your sinews when you’re trying to bend your legs is about as useful as bracing yourself, he unstiffened just enough sinews to allow him to move, rose up, tulip down and daffodil sideways, and started towards the grim, dark, forbidding, unwholesome-looking entrance to the temple.

Then, on a whim, he turned towards the brightly coloured, sunny, cheerful, mom’s apple pie-looking entrance with the smiling hot dog vendor outside.

"Hello" said Ambrose.

"Hi buddy" drawled the hot dog vendor.

"Gee, but it’s hot. This is no kind of job for a dog. You wanna buy a map?"

Now that, thought Ambrose would be useful. He produced a wallet from his inside jacket pocket – a tricky job, involving some really quite clever pleating around the hinge, not to mention the spontaneous creation of a small amount of money.

He produced a cigarette from his nose, then decided that as he didn’t smoke, and smelled terrible without his nose, the nose was probably more useful, so he changed it back.

He then produced a coin from the dog’s ear, and used it to buy a map.

"Hang on a minute, buddy. This isn’t a real coin – it’s a facsimile constructed, if I’m not mistaken, from an ear of the canine persuasion."

"I’m terribly sorry." said Ambrose.

"What?" said the dog.

"I said sorry." repeated Ambrose, addressing the dog’s still functioning ear.

"Hang on a second," said the dog, hastily reconstructing his ear from the counterfeit coin. "Ah that’s better".

There now followed a hilarious sequence, during which the dog was seen turning repeatedly in circles every time Ambrose speaks, because he’d put the ear on backwards (Oh how we laughed). Eventually, the dog (Gerald by name) sorted his ear out.

"I’m afraid I’ll have to take that map back, unless you’ve got any real cash." quoth Gerald. "Gadzooks!" quoth Ambrose "methinks I am in a state of acute financial embarrassment."

"Tell you what" quoth Gerald back, "How’s about we stop all this fancy ‘quoth’ing stuff, and I show you around personally?"

Ambrose grinned a grin, and he and Gerald Dogboy entered the temple.

*******

An Interlude pertaining to Skulduggery.

It was Thursday evening, just after 6.30pm as Mr Crabstick the butcher leant up against his sausage making machine sipping a cup of Bovril. It hadn’t been to bad a day he supposed. He hadn’t sold anything, true enough, but the sun had been like a ball of burning gas in the blue sky and the birds were singing. Well, not singing; more like yelling to the bits they knew the words to, and all was well with the world. The only thing that stood out in his mind, and this concerned him slightly, was that Mr Hedgetrimmer had not been in for his tripe pudding. In fact Mr Hedgetrimmer was probably the only customer that ever bought anything from him. He seemed to lack in the area of customers these days. He couldn’t understand it, he had been certain his ideas would work. It was like this: He no longer sold fresh meat, not an ounce of it. The only meat he sold now was processed, processed ham, pork, beef, chicken, turkey, elk, wharf rat and spaniel. And nobody wanted it.

Mr Crabstick sighed a sigh that only a disappointed, red-faced fat butcher can. He took off his stripy blue apron and turned to ascend the stairs to his abode above.

It was then, from the shop, he heard something, talking. Whispering.

Burglars! He thought. At last he would be able to use his great rusty knives that had been out of action for so long. He took one from the knife rack, sidled closer to the door, and listened.

"I don’t understand" said a voice, that had slightly cute tone to it.

"I’ve told you before." This voice was old, like an unoiled hinge. "We need sacrificial meat or the summoning won’t work."

"Yeah you told me, but this shit is processed. I thought you were supposed to use fresh stuff."

"Usually yes, but this demon’s very pernickety and only this crap will do for him." There was the sound of someone putting things into a sack and Mr Crabstick gripped tighter to his knife.

"Its still no clearer to me granny, I’m just a corpse."

"A very smelly corpse, and you’re starting to rot."

"Don’t start on me, Hangnail, or I’ll…hey, wait a bit, what’s that in your pocket?"

There was an embarrassed silence.

"That’s Tiddles."

"Tiddles? You have a cat in your pocket?"

"No, it’s a hamster." A moment of disbelieving silence.

"Don’t look at me like that. Tiddles was shot by that murdering bastard in chapter one and he just wants the same as we do."

The cute voice spoke with a slight giggle in his throat.

"A hamster that wants revenge. Pull the other one."

"If I pull anything of yours corpsey, it’s liable to come of in my hand."

"Hah hah, very bloody funny."

Mr Crabstick braced himself, and prepared himself for attack. "GRAAaaaaaaaAAH!" shouted Crabstick as leapt out into the main shop. "Geroutmebloodyshopyertheivingbastards" he shouted waving his knife in the air.

But there was nothing, no voices, no hamster, and worst of all, no stock. The only thing that was left was the faint smell of a rotting carcass and…chicken and ham pies.