WHOLESOME TALES

THE STRANGEST TALE YET

There have been many strange tales over the years but none stranger than the one I am here to relay. Though strange may not be the best word to describe it, no. Indeed, an entirely different word might in fact better explain it, but I don't know what that word is. I'm pretty sure that word isn't 'orange'' though, for if it was 'orange' then indeed things would be even stranger, methinks, or possibly so. Anyhow...

Captain Orwell McOdo (the Third) had not been himself for weeks. And if not for the First Mate, Bingo Halfherring the Skattykatzenfjordian, things may have drifted badly, for the Captain spent most of his time in his cabin and hardly gave an order. He only came out when they raided a village or town or city. Sadly, even at these happy times, Orwell was not himself. When he decapitated the King of Japan with one clean sweep of his broadsword, he did so with a lack of his usual lustre. And when he sent off the daughters (the pretty ones) of the people of Allibimbuckledian (in Southern France) to the Girl Crazy Danes, he barely smiled. Even when he sent off a tribe of African children in chains to the God Fearing Americans at a tasty profit, his usual satisfaction just wasn't there.

Prancy, Mincy and Ho Ming just did not know how they could pull him out of his malaise. Not any of their dressing-ups or contortionings or three-way performances in tights, chains or sombreros could illicit interest from their deeply thoughtful, intelligent Captain. Even the handsome Bingo Halfherring could not arouse him, and so that buffed hobbit had to do everything himself, both in and out the Captain's cabin. Luckilly, the First Mate was a veteran of both the Gay Wars of Borneo and the War of Sexual Independance (which the Americans lost and the Brittish lost too), and so the ship was run efficiently and well oiled.

The heart of the problem was Orwell's heart. You see, he didn't know he had one, and now that he knew he had one, he did not know what to do with it. So all the life long day he would lie in his cabin in all his gorgeous resplendance, thinking about a certain Lady.

This situation could not last, of course, because the crew didn't like the First Mate who was a Bisexual and kept trying to persuade them that Girl-kissing was not at all as unrespectable as they thought.

One day the crew elected the Third Mate, Roger Rogerer, to go up and see the Captain armed with a Plan.

Roger shuffled on his bowlegs to the Captain's cabin and knocked.

"Cap'n," he says in his thick Irish brogue. "I'll be wishin' to be a talkin' to ye, me lovely." (That's how Irish Pirates talk by the way).

"Oh no, Rogjie," Orwell sighed. "I'm not in the rogerin' mood..."

Roger knocked louder. "Nay, that's not what I have come up for, Cap'n. I have me a plan as to how to go git your Lovely."

"That's the worse Irish Pirate accen't I've ever heard, Rogjie..."

"And don't I know it, Cap'n, and me from Killarney!" Roger said, his face a picture of pained self-reflective pathos. "But the point is, I know of an Island where you can get some Bittybirdie Gossamer wings. If we had about eighty pairs the crew figures we could fly the Sweet Louise to Tuscany."

"Do you really think so?" Orwell asked hopefully. "Sounds awfully orange to me."

"Orange aint the word, I guarantee ye, Cap'n. Are you up for it?"

"Aye, Roger! Aye!"

And so Orwell rushed up to the poop deck and yelled in a very masculine voice, "All hands, look to me!"

All hands were looking anyway, as the Captain was naked and had not washed or shaved for weeks, cutting a strange potently animalistic figure, attractive to both sexes, and probably she-bears as well, as he stood tall and erect on the deck.

"We sail for Bittybirdie Gossamer Wing Island!" he instructed them, his eyes ablaze with fire. (Not actually, it's just a descriptive term). "Lads! We sail - and at the nonce!"

"At the what?" Mincy asked Ho Ming as they washed socks on the quarterdeck.

"That's a nautical phrase," Ho Ming answered. "Nonce --- it means, immediately --- I think ---"

"No it doesn't," said Prancy, who was painting her toenails on the halfdeck. "It's a French phrase of unknown origin nor meaning."

"Ridiculous," said Bingo Halfherring from the undereighthdeck, where he was hosing down the King of Japans abducted daughters with bilge water. "It was just the Captain talking stupid as is his wont at times."

"Never mind that," Ho Ming expostulated happily. "It seems our Captain is back with us."

"Hurrah!" cried everyone on board. "Hurrah!"

Bingo Halfherring jumped up out of the undereightdeck and slammed the heavy metal grill down with a joyous bang. "This is surely one of those Special Forumshire moments, to be sure, to be sure," he cried.

Hurrah! huzzah! The Nonce
three cheers for the capn's huge bonce
some folk say he's a ponce
some folk say he's a Rodger
some folk say he's a soap dodger
but he's my captain my king
he makes my Jammy Dodgers sing.

Oh giggedy-gigg,
Mrs Figg
you make me want
to see my ribs
to shed the flab
to slim this Pig
to cut my hair
and make a wig
a wig! a wig!
no, not a wig
a whirligig!

"The Very Romantic Thoughts of Orwell" as channelled by Wisey Banks

THE TRANSFORMATION TALE

orwell mcodo was happy for days

not that anyone could divine it by his words

he hopped when he walked

and walked when he crawled

and slid on his belly in and out of jelly with obvious joy

some of the crew thought he had at last gone mad

and he had

mad with the purest form of love hobbit has ever known

or not known

for can such transformations be described

i say no

after several days orwell mcodo suddenly disappeared into his cabin

with a sheet of vellum

four boards

and several drawing pins

bring me paint and brush in autumn colours

ochres of yellow red and brown

for i wish to paint Mrs Figg naked on her divan in tuscany in autumn

and so prancy brought him reds

and mincy browns

and ho ming yellows

and orwell mcodo set to work though he was no painter

just a hobbit released into the spectral theatre of love

though love is no way to describe what he experienced

and after many days orwell mcodo burst from his cabin

rushed up to the top of the main mast

and plunged into the frothy sea

and was last seen swimming with dolphins

although they may have been sharks

and he was never seen again

in tears

some of them not unhappy

and some very happy

the crew ran to his cabin and found his easle set up

the vellum drawn and pinned to the frame of boards he had made

and his paints set out in neat jars

upon a mahogany bureau he had got in the Dutch East Indies

when he was a young pirate

on the vellum there was nothing

no stroke

no jab

no line

that could be discerned

but in the top corner was pinned a note wildly writ

the words?

love in autum in tuscany

don't slam the door when you go

the end

oh Jimminy Cricket!

Oh my, Mrs Figg, I don't know what Anon was thinking???

The story should not have gone:

...and [Orwell]was last seen swimming with dolphins
although they may have been sharks...

It should have been:

...and [Orwell] was last seen swimming with mermaids
very lovely mermaids
with braided hair
the very best fisk mermaids from the Fjordian Sea
and boy was Orwell nautical
and when he returned to the ship
all dripping all over
from his chiselled chesty nakedness
and his remarkable pert... (Sausages! Sausages!)
and his hair all tangled with seaweed
like the Venus de Milo
he was cured of his madness
or most of it
or at least some of it...

I knew there was a reason I dont like mermaids.

Ol' Orwell McOdo, my Great Great Great Great Grandfather was rather a lad, methinks. I can see where I get it from.

THE GUITAR MAN OF SKATTYKATZENFJORD

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, last century in fact, but post the pre-Raphaelite era, a beautiful Lady had a peculiar mood come upon her (as often comes upon women in my experience) and she took ship upon the Sweet Louise of St Trapeze VIII (a Three Stacker), it being the steamship of Captain Orwell McOdo the Ninth.

(Of course, this was in another Dimension of Forumshire than what most people in this Forumshire know about, but will now clearly know about henceforth.)

The Lady's name was Jewell, and every (heterosexual) man who looked upon her would fall in love with her, as she had a beautiful mind that was kind toward the vitally pathetic silliness of Man, being especially favourable and kind to amateur guitar players, croaking singers, and vain attempters of writing words of beauty, if so happened to be their bent.

(Some say she was a little mad, but that's no bad thing it's said, especially in the bedroom).

Setting out from Portsmith (the alternative Portsmouth) in hardly any time at all (approximetly two days), the SS Sweet Trapeze (as was the ship nicknamed) chugged into the wharf at Skattykatzenfjord.

"Oh beautfiful Maiden," said Captain Orwell. "I don't know if it would be wise to go aground here, for the Men of Skattykatzenfjord are what we in the Heterosexual Trade call... hummphh.... Prancewalkers - and the Scotshobbits 'Mincegaiters', but it's all the same to me at the end of the day - and should a single one of them chance to perchance witness the Feminine Wisdom that emanates from your eye (both of them, as I look closer) he may change his Cultural Habits of several centuries and fall in love with you, just like in the video Amarie of Svalfart in the North, once posted in Forumshire, according to legend..."

"Oh hark, Captain, shut ya mouth please. You're waffling!"

"Well, don't blame me then if some handsome Fjordianlandian Homosexual falls in love with you and causes something of a negative reaction in the town. But I will say no more, except to say..."

But Jewell ignored him and sauntered blitheley down the gangplank with a group of gaylads from the Scottish Hebrides (in exile).

Now the lads of Fjordianlandia are made of a stern mettle of Homosexuality, and as Jewell wandered among the herring grills, herringbone clothes shoppes and the manifold bordellos smelling of herring, it seemed her presence was unremarked and unnoticed upon. But at the evening time, when the sun was sliding beneath the crags above the fjord, transforming the pure white snowtops into a beautiful amber hue, like in those pictures Petty makes in another dimension of Forumshire (according to legend); and Jewell was transfixed by same, and climbed the valley, at last passing the Last Homely House, where the Older Men of Skattykatzenfjord were throwing a toga party.

Up into those amber mountains she sauntered, her dress diaphonous, her hands milky white (under her gloves), her legs shapely like Queen Anne legs, her bosom rising and falling with some energism, her face rosy cheeked but in a very tarteful Rubenesque way, not like a tavern maid's while rushing about with trays of ill-balanced cuttlery and crockery.

It chanced she was sauntering past a cave and she chanced to hear the solemn twang of a guitar emanating forth from it's ragged entrance between two rocks that looked liked hunched Scotshobbits.

Jewell was weak to the twang of guitars and she set forth into the cave at the nonce. And there inside, in the candlelight sat a most peculiar sight. Ringo Herring IV. He was playing a guitar in the classic fingerstyle of the time, lost in a trance, while his lyrics were all about loss and the fading of the world. The words also mentioned a Lady with an Inscutable Look - not unlike the one Jewell was wont to wear.

"Oh dear, is that you, my Soulmate?" she saith and Ringo immediately stopped his twanging.

Now, dear reader, I think I need mention that Ringo Herring wasn't your usual Fjordianlandian. Once when he was young, he chanced to walk past a group of visiting girls from Devon, and when they saw him, one lass blushed and placed her hand concealingly upon her bosoms, which were revealed somewhat by her low cut frock, and where Ringo's eye had chanced to fall. Ringo blushed too and hurried on, troubled in mind. Unfortunately, several of the Men of Skattykatzenfjord had seen what transpired, and their minds were troubled too. Then, another day, a troop of Female "Male Impersonators" had come to entertain at the Herring Fisk Rotissarie in the Lower Town, and during a costume malfunction during the third act of Pirates of Penzance, a comely lass's milk-white breast was exposed. The audience gasped, outraged, but Ringo merely blushed. The men of Skattykatzenfjord noticed. A town meeting was held. And Ringo was exiled to the cave at the top of the valley, which is where he remained the past seven years.

"One day," said the Townsmen, "Young Ringo will come to see reason."

But the trouble was, left alone, Ringo fell worse into erroneous thought. He began to have dreams of breasts, and Queen Anne legs, and diaphonous dresses... who can say why a mind falls to wrongness of thinking, but there you have it.

So when Ringo saw Jewell silohuetted in the cave mouth with the new moon behind her, he fell in love immediately.

"I know it is an improper thought, Miss, but I should like to kiss your ruby lips with my ruby lips."

"And so you must.." squealed Jewell. "You must!"

And up popped Ringo like a cork out of a champagne bottle, and you should have seen the snogging - unbelievable. But the Men of Skattykatzrnfjord were no fools. They always kept a spy at the back of the cave, hidden behind a false wall of polystyrene, with a peephole. And in no time at all, the Men of Skattykatzenfjord arrived with their torches throwing ornge light uoon the snow outside and their hands clenched hard to their pitchforks.

"Bitch! Bitch!" they cried. "Kill the bitch!"

Which wasn't a very nice thing to say at all, at all. But there you have it.

They dragged poor Jewell down to the town's Burning Pavillion, and bound her to the town Burning Pole. Gaily, they then set to piling extremely combustible faggots at her feet, and someone went to get the herring oil.

(Meanwhile, Ringo had sadly picked up his guitar and began a 'twanging, having now a few new ideas for lyrics).

"Evil bitch!" cried the Headgayman. "You foreign types, always trying to pervert the mind's of troubled young men. Who do you think you are?"

"I am merely a woman, fully female and heterosexual, and not the least bit a lesbian neither!" Jewell boldly proclaimed as someone went off to find the matches.

Just then, when all seemed lost, Captain Orwell McOdo burst into the Pavillion, a blunderbuss in his brawny couageous steady hands. "Stand back," he cried grandly, as he pushed through the crowd in his stripey tights and purple velvet Captain's vest, his peacock-feathered cavalier hat standing regally upon his handsome head. "I'll not allow any Man, however addicted to Poofery he might be, lay one flame upon the gorgeous flesh of this fine lady - for I am enamouresd of her beautiful mind and fanciful thinking-capacity and..."

"Will you just untie me," Jewell urged him, both annoyed and relieved. "Here's the guy come back with the oil - and behind him, the matches-finder!"

Orwell trained his blunderbuss on the Headgayman. "Untie her!" he said sternly.

"I would rather die than let this Evil Creature escape," the Headgayman cried.

So Orwell blew his head off wirth his blunderbuss.

"Sometimes you've got break an egg or two to make an omellette," saith Orwell, which truly offended all the Men there, though it sure as hell showed them that Orwell went business.

In the flicker of an eyelash (a fairly slow flicker) Orwell had untied Jewell, and carrying her in his muscled arms, he made his way down to his ship. (Now, he didn't have to carry Jewell, but Orwell was an Old Fashioned Hero, and Jewell an Old Fashioned Heroine - not one of your Post-modern Sword Warrior types, no, not in the least).

The whole town was aroused by now, and not in a good way, and so Orwell set his cannons on a few buildings, blowing them to smithereens (with, admittedly, some collateral damage), which had the effect of keeping the crazy crowds away as his ship was loosed from it's moorings, and the engines hummed to life. And off sailed the SS Sweet Trapeze.

When it was safe to do so, Jewell and Orwell retired to his cabin.

"I see you too have a guitar," Jewell said. "Will you sing me a love song or three?"

"I will indeed!" Orwell expostulated gallantly.

"Good," said Jewell, "It will save me from hearing you waffle on all day about nothing as is your wont..."

And they lived happily ever after until they had kids.

= = =

!!!!!

THE TRUE TALE OF ODO AND ORWELL

Once upon a time not very long ago, last Tuesday in fact, Odo had cause to journey to Needlehole on business. So he drove his empty cart into the town, amd then attended in the yard of the "Reed and Thatch Warehouse", one of Odo R. Banks' enterprises in that town.

"My good hobbit," Orwell said to the young hobbit lad who hobbled out of the warehouse, coughing up thatch dust and blood, presumably as he had tuberculosis, "See to it that I have my cart loaded with ten bails come morning. I shall leave the cart in your care until then. I'm now off to Mrs Figgs' well known establishment to take refreshment, as well as see to some other satisfactions."

"Yes, Sir, " said the lad feebly, leaning on his walking stick.

"Good lad," Orwell cried benevolently, and he generously flicked the boy a penny which hit the boy soundly on the forehead.

Orwell then strolled on foot up to Mrs Figgs. And strange as it happened, he met Mr Odo R. Banks in the foyer of that busy house of trade.

"Well, Mr Banks, well met," said our Orwell brightly, for he was quite good friends with the long faced hobbit, owner of Rushock Bog, and formerly from there. "What brings a respectable chap like you to this prosperous lady-burghers shoppe?"

"Oh I am here tidying up a few transactions," says the respectable chap. "I'm buying the place, you see, as Mrs Figg has fallen on hard times. Apparently hired ruffians have been beating up her clients and thus adversely affecting her busines. I've offered to supply guards, in return for her selling the place."

"You realize, of course, the nature of the goings on that go on here!"

"I do. But as it's been legalized by the Needlehole Council, I must needs move with the times. I expect cleanliness, tact and higher charges - the things that make any business respectable, of course - and profitable. Anyhow, I must be off. I'm due to give a talk on the "Importance of Chastity" to the Year Twelve girls at Our Lady's. Cheerio."

"Cheerio," said Orwell.

Mrs Figg came over from where she had been processing a large eel order, and she grinned up at the handsome Ozhobbit. "I trust you've left the Missus at home again?"

"Indeed, I have!" Orwell concurred, and he took Mrs Figg by the hand and kissed it in a perfectly gentlemanly fashion.

"Oh Orwee, you mustn't," Mrs Figg blushed. "Not in front of the hired help... Oh Mr Banks has left has he?"

"Indeed he has - just now...."

"Wonderful Gentlehobbit. Saved me from a terrible predicament. Bought the place you know, but left me as Manager. I'd had a terrible time of it of late, what with brutal hobbits, Scotshobbits, beating up the clients."

"Scotshobbits?"

"Yes, but I only knew them by their accents, as they always wore balaclavas."

"But you now have guard hobbits, I've been told."

"Yes indeed. Stout Scotshobbits all. Lovely hobbit that Mr Banks, what."

"What indeed! A very fine hobbit!"

"It's a funny thing, dear Orwee, but did you know that a rumour has circulated lately that you... and hear me out, I know it's stupid... but a rumour has circulated that you and he are one and the same..."

Orwell blinked and then laughed uproariously. "Surely only utter dolts and fabricators and stupid's of a mean intellect could think that."

"Agreed!"

"Now Mrs Figg, let's retire to your room, as I'm keen for a nice dinner, as I've not supped since breakfast."

"I imagine you'll be wanting oiled eels, with muffin to follow?"

"Oh you know me too well," Orwell smiled. "You know me only too well, Mrs Figg."

Nope. Not buying it. Mrs Figg is a very smart lady, it makes sense to nurture your delusions of duality so that you are paying to spend time at the establishment you have recently purchased!

(And you forget that I first met you over at the Planet, in hindsight it is obvious that you were a freshly hatched *decides to self-mod previous statement to a more accurate one* juvenile. That you have since adopted a slightly more grown-up persona only means you are adapting and growing.)

... ... ...

Amarië wrote:...That you have since adopted a slightly more grown-up persona only means you are adapting and growing.)

Tosh and nonsense... take it back Ambassador, or I'll withdraw my... err... vague regard for you...

This is trouble when people start believing clearly fictionalized tales, Odo; if it's not Petty's over-baked story telling, it's the Old Testament...

odo banks wrote:

Amarië wrote:...That you have since adopted a slightly more grown-up persona only means you are adapting and growing.)

Tosh and nonsense... take it back Ambassador, or I'll withdraw my... err... vague regard for you...

I was rather generous when I said grow-up, wasn't I? I take it back. Didn't know it would upset you so much, though.

How dare you! This is what happens when the powers-that-be let in any ol' vulgar-talking foreigner into the village! Eldo - I really wish you'd take on the proper responsibilities of your office... and as to you, Kafria, as mayor... And Petty... you are a moderator!

odo banks wrote:let in any ol' vulgar-talking foreigner into ...

(ummmm.... Ozhobbit........do you know your history? )

No wonder I've just about given up... no respect.... none...