Uncle
Rory’s Time Travelling Tent
Peony, Gilbert and Clemmy were sitting in the kitchen
listening to The Flight of the Conchords.
“What’s your favourite
Flight of the Conchords song?” said Gilbert.
“Mine’s the one about
the Hiphopapotamus,” said Clemmy.
“Why’s that?” asked
Gilbert, inquisitively.
“Because they keep
saying ‘motherflippin’’. That’s such a funny word.”
“I’m the
motherflippin’!” shouted Gilbert.
“No, I’m the
motherflippin’,” said Peony.
Just then Mummy walked
in the room, carrying a mop and a bucket and with a certain expression on her
face. You know the one: the one that says, ‘okay kids, it’s time to do some
chores’.
Gilbert tried to make a
break for it. He ran towards the front door.
“I’ve got some homework
to do,” he said, as he slid past the moppet and buck.
“Moppet and buck?” said
Peony. “Don’t you mean ‘bucket and mop’?”
“Sorry,” said the
author.
“No problem,” said
Peony. “Now can we get back to the story?”
“Sure thing,” said the
author, “but where was I?”
“You were just about to
type a sentence describing how mum was going to try to get us to do some chores,”
said Peony.
“Thanks,” said the
author, tapping keys on the keyboard, and enjoying the sun in the hammock.
A cool breeze blew,
rustling the leaves in the trees; softly wafting the clothes on the line;
gently rocking the hammock.
Birds tweeted. The Gilbert
not in the story came to see what was happening, leaning over daddy’s shoulder.
“How about drawing the
waterfall?” said mummy. “I’ve never seen it. Could you describe it?”
Gilbert walked back into
the kitchen. In his head he was thinking about a chicken taco he had eaten
three days previously, while on a roadtrip through the desert. Actually, he was
thinking about four or five chicken tacos, all at the same time.
That was the kind of guy
he was: not one of those kids who could only think about one taco at a time,
and not even only four or five, but even as many as six or seven.
One time he even thought
about eight chicken tacos and a plate of nachos. But that was a pretty special
occasion, and he wasn’t sure if he could do it again. Probably if he sat down
and made a special effort. Probably if he concentrated really hard.
Probably if there was an
event in the Olympics for thinking about chicken tacos Gilbert would win it.
“I must ask daddy,” he
thought, “when this silly writing competition is over, if they have ‘Thinking
About Chicken Tacos’ at the Olympics. Or maybe the Commonwealth Games. Or at
least there must be a Kent Local Championships.” And in his head he pictured
himself standing on a podium in his blue and white striped track suit bending
over to receive a medal from the Queen while the national anthem played; while
TV cameras zoomed in on his proud smile; while the crowd stood cheering and
applauding; while the commentators told all the millions of viewers at home how
amazing his achievement was; and while the whole world watched as he was
crowned ‘Champion of Thinking About Chicken Tacos of the Entire World and
Universe and Beyond.’
Meanwhile, back in the
story, Peony, Clementine and Gilbert had an idea.
“You know what?” said
Clementine.
“What?” said Peony and
Gilbert.
“Well,” she said, with a
delicious little cunning happy smile on her face, and a twinkle in her eye, “do
you remember how Rory said that his tent was a time-travelling tent that could
take people back in time?”
“Oh yeah!” said Peony.
“I think I know what you’re going to say.”
“What’s she going to
say?” asked Gilbert. “Is she going to say that we should eat some bean-a-ritos
and play Marco Polo in the river?”
“No,” said Peony, “I
don’t think that’s it. I think she’s going to tell us that – “
“Let me speak!” shouted
Clementine, really really loud, so that everyone jumped, and even the
neighbour’s Mexican dogs were startled and afraid, and wondering why people had
to make so much noise.
“Sorry,” said Peony.
“Pish,” said Gilbert.
“Hey,” said mummy, “am I
just going to be standing here with his muppet and bock – sorry, I mean ‘bucket
and mop’ – while you guys whisper over there about how to get out of doing your
chores? It doesn’t seem very realistic that you would have all this time to
talk while I’m just standing here, now does it?”
She glared suspiciously
at the author and knitted her brow. The guy typing felt a little quiver of
fear. Well, he’d pretty much always been frightened of strong, beautiful women,
just about his whole life. Maybe it was something to do with the nurse who had
delivered him, the way she’d held his feet just after he’d been born; the way
she’d shushed him the first time he wanted to cry.
Or maybe it was that
dental assistant when he was eight years old; the one he thought had pulled his
thumbs until they were really, really long, as though they were made out of
elastic.
Though probably that was
just the laughing gas.
In any case, he knew
he’d made a booboo: he knew that she was right. It wasn’t realistic at all that
mom would have made her entrance and then been silent while the kids figured
out how to escape that damned and dreaded mucket and fop – I mean – well, you
know what I mean: ‘pucket and – no, that’s not it – and –
Oh no: no one can figure
out where this sentence is going; what we need is –
“Stoooooooooooop!” cried
Clementine. “It’s simple: mum came in, put down the bucket and mop – see,” she
said, “it’s not difficult to get that right – and then she said something about
how she’d be back in a minute to put me and Gilbert and Peony to work –”
“Gilbert, Peony and I,” mum interrupted – and she was right.
“– because,” continued
Clementine, “she had to go and help daddy with his diarrhoea, after he’d woken
up in the night and realised he’d shit the bed and made the sheet a little bit
brown and – ”
“Hey,” said the mummy,
who wasn’t in the story, “no swearing.”
“But you swear, mummy,”
said Gilbert, “remember when you saw that snake and said – “
“Yes, okay, Gilbert,”
said the mummy who wasn’t in the story, “we all know what I said when I saw the
snake.”
“You said – “
“Enough!” said mummy.
“Please don’t remind me of that. At least, not till later: it’s just that we’ve
got a story to tell and it really should have made more progress than this. Not
your fault, kiddies, it’s this silly author, forever getting distracted by real
life versions of characters in the story but also outside the story, as well as
talking about his own sitting in the hammock typing away, which is kind of
immaterial to the main thrust of the narrative, which really ought to moving
along quicker than it is, and –“
“I’m lost,” said
Clementine. “I don’t know what’s happening. Which one am I? The one in the
story or the one outside the story? Which one is Gilbert? Which one are you?”
“I’m lost too,” said
Peony. “How many of me are there? I think there’s two, but maybe there’s even
more than that.”
“Oh, you girls,” said
Gilbert. “it’s easy: first of all, there’s the main narrative of the story,
which currently has the three of us sitting in the kitchen having just talked
about our favourite Flight of the Conchords song; then mummy walked in with the
splocket and flop – I mean, ‘picket and dop’ – and now we’re listening to
Clementine tell us her idea about how to get out of chores while mummy helps
daddy clean up his poorly bumpipe after his nighttime diarrhoea adventures.
Meanwhile...”
“Wait,” interrupted
Peony, “so which one are you?”
“I’m the one who keeps
walking in and out of the house to see what’s going on while everyone else
writes, and while an imaginary version of mummy tells the author where he’s
going wrong.”
“But why is the author
even in the story?” said Peony. “Shouldn’t authors be invisible, like good
waiters, merely there to serve the reader, and not get in the way?”
“That’s mainly true,”
smiled Gilbert, “though some writers do find it fun to put themselves in their
own story.”
“Well I don’t like it,”
said Peony, “it seems a bit egoistic to me. Also tends to complicate things a
bit. Also – “
“Can we please get on
with the story!” shouted Gilbert. “All this diverting and talking about people
commenting on the story when they’re supposed to be in it doing cool things is
driving me batty. Hell’s teeth, man!
Just get on with it. There’s only fifteen minutes left and you’ve barely even
made any progress at all!”
“Goddamn,” said the
author, shaking his head and trying to ignore the cries of the real life Clemmy
as she whined about how she couldn’t think of anything to write, “this really
isn’t easy at all.”
“Waaaah-waaaah-waaaaah,”
said Clemmy, sounding actually quite like an eighteen month-old baby, and not a
five-year-old girl at all.
Daddy looked up from his
work and shook his head.
“The death of thought,”
he said, wisely and sagely, while Gilbert glared at the author.
“I’ll tell you what,”
said Gilbert, “I’ll count to three, and if you don’t get back to the main point
of the narrative – which, I’m guessing by the title, is something to do with a
time travelling tent – I’m going to go around the side of the garage, pick up
one of those rusty machetes, walk back here, and chop off one toe for each
minute of my life you waste, you rotten curséd scoundrel, you.”
“Gulp,” said the author,
trying desperately to usher his thoughts in the right and necessary direction –
and yet, even now, still writing about things outside the story, such as this
imagined ushering of thoughts and –
“One,” said Gilbert,
holding up an imaginary knife and relating clearly with the expression in his
eyes what would happen if the author didn’t stop this madness – even this
current madness, which is still not the story at all – and –
Just then, there was a
enormous smash of glass; and the appearance of two boots crashing through the
window; and a masked man in a cape and hat, holding a sword, came swinging on a
rope and landed next to the hammock.
“It’s Zorro!” cried
Gilbert, gleefully, and clapping his hands together.
“That’s weird,” thought
the author, “he came swinging on that rope through the window from the inside (I hope by the way that
when mummy is reading this – assuming that she agrees to do so – that she
utilises the italics).”
“Enough!” cried Zorro.
“Unhand that computer! Give it to me! You’ve proved yourself categorically and
undeniably unsuited to the task, and despite being given multiple
opportunities, have refused time and time again to the tell the really rather
excellent story of what happened when these three darling and wonderful kiddies
had their chore-avoiding adventure with the time-travelling tent!”
The author quivered. He
quivered so much he tipped over the hammock and fell face down in the dirt.
Sand got in his mouth. And some poo.
“Pfff,” he spat.
“Diarrhoea. Daddy’s diarrhoea. Daddyrrhoea.”
“Ha!” laughed Gilbert,
“that’s actually quite good.”
“Best thing he’s written
all day,” smiled Zorro, “but now it’s time for a real man to take over the
reins.”
Zorro reached down for
the computer. Cracked his knuckles. Looked at the keyboard. And then started to
cry.
“Actually,” he said,
“thing is...I don’t know how to type. Nobody ever told me. Not my mummy. And
certainly not my daddy – he left home when I was three years old; I never saw
him again. I...”
Zorro blubbed. He lifted
his mask and wiped multiple tears from his eyes.
The children looked at
him with sympathetic expressions on their faces – well, the girls did, anyway.
Just as Peony was
handing him a piece of toilet paper (unused) Gilbert came running at him with
the machete.
“Yaaaaaaaargh!” he
screamed, “all I wanted was a simple story of how Peony and Clementine and I
travelled through time to escape doing chores by sitting in Rory’s tent and
going on amazing adventures through dinosaur times and even into the future
where there are flying cars and laser weapons and people have robot bodies and
heads that live in jars and you silly grownups have had to go and spoil it all
with your meta ramblings and existential woes masquerading as pseudo-clever
pontifications when it would be so much easier just to get on with it and – “
“Okay then,” said the
author and Zorro together, both now crying – both holding one another in a
consoling embrace – “you do it.”
They held out the
computer to Gilbert. Gilbert threw down the machete – poor old Zorro half
jumped out of his skin – and took in his hands and began to type.
“Once upon a time,” he
wrote, “Peony, Gilbert and Clemmy were sitting in the kitchen listening to The
Flight of the Conchords.”
“What’s your favourite
Flight of the Conchords song?” said Gilbert.
“Mine’s the one about
the Hiphopapotamus,” said Clemmy.
“Why’s that?” asked
Gilbert, inquisitively.
“Because they keep
saying ‘motherflippin’’,” said Clemmy.
“Wait a minute,” said
the author, “isn’t this just the same story again?”
“So it is,” said
Gilbert, with a strangely wicked smile upon his face, “but that’s because...”
“Hold on,” said Clemmy,
“does that mean...?”
“Oh my God,” said Peony,
“all this time I thought that the unnamed author typing in the hammock was Rory
but...”
“That’s right,” said
Gilbert, with an expression of triumph, “I fooled you all. The writer is me.
The Gilbert in the story is me. And the two Gilberts outside the story too.
There are loads of us. We are everywhere. We are legion, and legendary, and
leisurely (American pronunciation) too.”
Mummy said the f-word.
So did Peony. And so did Clementine.
Zorro fully removed his
mask, only to reveal another Gilbert.
“Quick,” shouted
Clementine, “let’s go to Rory’s tent!”
So she and Peony and
mummy and daddy – who was clutching his buttocks, so as to keep them from
exploding – raced across the yard as fast as they could, while about seven
dozen Gilberts chased wildly after them.
They got to the tent.
They unzipped the door. They gasped as they saw – no! it couldn’t possibly be!
– yet another Gilbert lying in there asleep.
“What’s going on?” cried
Clementine, “my poor old brain won’t take this!”
Just then Rory came
strolling in after peeing in the grass.
“Quick,” he said, “get
in the tent – we haven’t got much time.”
They all dived in and he
zipped up the door behind them.
The Gilberts were
getting closer and closer – though you’d have thought they’d have been there by
now, what with the tent only being about three seconds away, and when you
factor in for the delay of the stopping one they saw Gilbert, and the little
bit of dialogue but...
Well, they weren’t.
There was still time. Just like in a movie – or, indeed, in an episode of
Zorro.
“Thing is,” said Rory,
calmly, as though they had all the time in the world, when they clearly didn’t,
“Gilbert’s having a dream. He’s dreaming that he’s writing a story. And the
story has come true – in a way.”
“What do you mean ‘in a
way’?” asked Peony.
“What I mean,” he said,
ignoring the clumsy way the author was using dialogue as a plot exposition
tool, “is that we’re all actually inside Gilbert’s dream, including the Gilbert
that was writing the story.”
“So, in a sense,” said
Peony, “we don’t actually exist?”
“That’s correct,” said
Dan Brown, “and neither does the Gilbert who is writing the story. He’s just in
the dream. And when the dream is over, the story is too.”
“So everything will go
back to normal?” asked Clementine. “All we have to do is wake him up?”
“Yes and no,” said Dan
Brown, looking idly at a cup, “the problem is, if we wake him up now, there
will be too many hydrogen atoms in the superheated magnesium coil sprocket, and
that could literally mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.”
“You mean – ” said
Peony.
“Yes, that’s right,”
whispered Dan Brown, while simultaneously peeling the skin off a second-hand
onion, “the dissolution of the coil sprocket would cause such a distortion to
the space time continuum that a black hole would form right there where the
snake hole is, and –“
“You mean –“ said Peony
again.
“Indeed,” he nodded
sagely, and everyone understood, even though it was far from clear where that
sentence was going.
“So what should we do?”
asked Clementine.
“Oh, that’s easy,” said
Dan Brown, “since this is a time-travelling tent, all we have to do is go back
in time to just before Gilbert fall asleep – probably via dinosaur times first,
so as to have lots of adventures, and give a sense that everything was going to
go wrong – and, either tell him to dream of something harmless, like cheese or
chicken tacos – or both, if we so wish – or just not let him fall asleep in the
first place.”
“How would we do that?”
asked Clementine.
“Just sat fire to his
socks or something,” said Dan Brown. “No one can sleep while their socks are
burning.”
“Just like the song,”
daddy mused, “’How Can We Sleep While Our Socks Are Burning?’”
“Midnight Oil?” said
Rory.
“No thanks,” said daddy,
“I never drink oil after ten thirty” – and they all laughed.
Meanwhile, the screaming
crazy horde of Gilberts and Zorros was getting closer – which is hardly
surprising, really, when you consider how much story time has passed, and how
short the distance they had to cover was.
“Okay,” said Dan Brown
finally, after a little siesta, “all we have to do is this: all think of a date
– the time a couple of minutes before Gilbert fell asleep should be good – and
while we’re doing that can someone play this drum so as to jump start the time
travel mechanism that makes the whole thing work? It will need to be someone
with excellent timing and rhythm.”
“Clementine can do it,”
said Peony, “she’s great on the drums. ‘Clem-in-time’, they call her, she’s so
metronomic and accurate.”
“Okay,” said Dan Brown,
the hero of the whole thing, and he handed Clementine the drum. “Just go like
this – bang – bang – bang – bang – and we’ll all concentrate on getting back to
the right time and everything should be okay.”
Clementine started
banging out her rhythm, just as the hero Dan Brown had shown her.
Then, suddenly –
“Quick!” shouted daddy,
“they’re almost here!”
Clementine banged.
Everyone squeezed their eyes tight shut in concentration. The tent started
shaking and juddering and whirling, just as though it was travelling through
time.
“Hold on!” shouted Dan
Brown, heroically, “this is the crucial bit!”
The tent was full of
stars. Angels and demons swirled and hovered around everybody’s heads. Black
holes and supernovas blinked into and out of existence. Daddy did a poo.
Then everything was
silent.
Everybody said, “wow”.
There was no noise
whatsoever: no screaming Gilberts; no tweeting of birds; or tapping of
keyboard; or mummy saying the f-word over and over again.
“We made it,” said
Peony.
They all looked down at
Gilbert lying on Rory’s amazing mattress, and smiled.
“I think I’ll take a
nap,” said Gilbert – the real Gilbert – the genuine, actual Gilbert – and not
one of the phoney ones at all – and everyone laughed and shouted “nooooo!” and
he looked at them confused.
“Why not?”he said.
“Oh,” said Peony, “it’s
a long story. And not a very good one, I’ll wager.”
“Hahaha,” everybody else
said. “Great joke, Peony. ‘I’ll wager.’ Hahaha.”
They were all smiling
and relieved, just like at the end of a corny TV show when all the danger has
been averted and nobody cares anymore or acts like real people.
Still, at least there
wasn’t a ridiculous twist in the tale, like other corny TV shows.
Or was there?
“Oh my God,” said Dan
Brown, who had unzipped the tent and was looking into the yard.
“What is it?” everybody
asked, all at the same time, in perfect unison.
“Peony,” he said, “what
time were you thinking of when I said, ‘let’s all think of the time just before
Gilbert fell asleep.”
“Well,” said Peony, “I
must confess, I think I thought of dinosaur times also. Maybe just a little
bit.”
“And you, Easterly?”
“Er...dinosaur times
too.”
“Matt?”
“I was thinking about
going back to the time just before Gilbert fell asleep.”
“Really?”
“No. Not really. I was
thinking about whether or not travelling through time would sort out my
diarrhoea. And dinosaurs.”
Dan Brown rolled his
eyes. He asked Clementine, Rory, and even the sleeping Gilbert, and they all
said that they had accidentally been thinking about dinosaur times.
“Why?” said Clemmy,
“does it matter?”
“I’ll say,” said Dan
Brown. “Take a look at this.”
He threw back the tent
door. Everybody gasped.
Outside the tent was a
T-Rex, a brontosaurus, and a whole flock of those big dinosaur birds that begin
with the letter ‘p’ that nobody can spell.
Pterradactyls – or
something like that.
“The f-word,” said
mummy, “eff eff eff eff eff.”
“Don’t worry, mummy,” said Gilbert, “everything will be okay.”
They all stepped
gingerly outside of the tent and looked around. Dinosaurs were everywhere. They
were the only humans around.
“How will we ever get
out of this?” wondered Clementine.
“I don’t know,” said
Rory, “but probably it’s going to be a really excellent adventure. I’m sure it
will all make a great story one day – or maybe a whole series of great stories,
if we end up travelling to loads of different other times first, before we
finally make it back home.”
“Yes,” said mummy, “for
example: Victorian times; Roman times; Egyptian times; that sort of thing.”
“Anything’s possible,”
said Peony. “Anything at all.”
“Well,” said Dan Brown,
“it all depends on who’s writing it.”
Everyone laughed – even
the T-Rex, whose massive eye was right next to them all.
“Hahahahahahahaha,” they
said.
What a weird, lame
ending for a story.
