OLD JAPAN: KOAN TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

Venerable Tossai calls at my misty mountain temple in old Japan to kick around a few Koans.

Koans break through our reliance on conventional logic in favour of enlightened vision. A thousand years hence, your DADA Absurdists may follow suit.

The junior zen Master kicks off by puzzling how he might recognise enlightenment. I explain that an enlightened man is one who can pee a spiders web off the ceiling of his benjo. Tossai shakes his head in bewilderment, until I add: "But he doesn't!" Tossai falls back in the instant bliss of satori.

I test him further, asking how one escapes the cycle of dressing and eating. "Easy, he replies. "By dressing and eating." I feign puzzlement. "Well, jackass," he snorts, "try wearing your dinner and eating your clothes!"

I give Tossai an affectionate slap, and he falls down the stairs to the temple garden. I have taught him well.

OLD JAPAN: ONE HAND CLAP

I tour the 88 temples of Shikoku, and stop at the last for Koans with a fellow Zen Master, the venerable Sooti. Koans disentangle mental processes and invite the absolute down into the everyday.

Sooti puzzles over my Koan, which suggests that my Benjo talks to me at night, secretly. “You can’t say you have not heard of this phenomenon? I ask. When he shakes his head, I nod: The secret is safe then!” Sooti nods back beaming: now he has known Buddha nature.

After sipping some freshly whisked tea; with no water, no whisk and no tea; he tells me the Koan of the cats in Konan Province: “They call bingo Mousey-Mousey!” he relates.

My brow furrows: “Surely not, “I murmur.

Alright then, question them,” cries Sooti. “No cat will contradict this.”

My brow unfurrows to let my third eye open: he has emptied the cup. Ah Satori! The Zendo fills with the sound of one hand clapping as we don’t applaud each other.

© Mike Atkinson

TIN-POT LANGUAGES

So I’m abroad recently in a Greek Taverna. There’s a group of foreign students chirping away like a language school at playtime, and I’m introduced to them. “This is Mike the cartoonist, he only speaks English!” They shake their heads in sorrow.

“Only English?” I growl, good naturedly. “It’s worth 10 of your tin pot little languages. In fact, it’s made out of 10 of your tin pot little languages!”

It’s true, English is a good natured mongrel called Bitsa. Bitsa this and bitsa that. Which is probably why you know more foreign words than you think.

Like KARAOKE, which in Japanese means empty orchestra; and from the drunken caterwauling I’ve heard at Tokyo karaoke nights, it’s no wonder the band fucks off.

The Norman Invasion 1066 left a dribble of French words in our language, mostly to do with feeding their faces. So we got words like pork, beef and soixante-neuf. That’s 69 on your takeaway menu, Miss.

We flogged a lot of words from the Romans too. Latin verbs like: video I see, disco I dance with, and amo I bonk. A great night out, until you discover that most sexually transmitted diseases are also from the Latin: syphilis, Chlamydia and parenthood.

But don’t confuse our English with American. We really are divided by a common language. In the USA, crisps are chips, jam is jelly and mediation is Clint Eastwood’s point 44 Magnum. The most powerful hand job in the world!

The Germans gave us everyday words like mouse and house. So we can usually guess what they’re shouting at us. Bustenhalter is their typically delicate and sensitive word for bra, but German for Town Hall is Rathouse, so they got that right!

Like Latin, German is a dying language; but don’t tell them! Remember the BBC area forecasts for ships at sea: Dogger, Fisher and GERMANS BITE!

© Mike Atkinson

OLD JAPAN: ENSO - THE CIRCLE

My neophyte Tossai arrives from his ascent of Mount FuJi on his unicycle. In Japan, the cycle or circle enso expresses elegance and enlightenment, but he lacks both and falls off, flat on his face outside my koan hall. Koans are zen teaching aids breaking through the monk's reliance on conventional logic.

Tossai reports difficulties in his meditations on finding one's self. So I tell my koan about the monk who travels to Edo manastery to find himself. Inside, he sees a mirror. and lo, there he is. He returns to Kyoto temple, looks down into his benjo, and lo, reflected in the water: there he is!

Tossai's jaw drops. "So I should travel more, master?" he gawps, remounting his unicycle.

"No, no, no," I growl hurling a rock at him. "You cannot arrive until you stop travelling!" Just then, the rock hits and he falls off his cycle into the river.

"Now I have arrived!" he calls, sitting up in his wet robe and beaming with Satori.

No, I reflect...but you may be halfway there.

OLD JAPAN: SATORI NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

In Minamata I meet the venerable Sooti to exchange Koans. Koan riddles open the third eye to see that problems are not real but conceptual. Who cares what picture you see?

First he questions my Koan about the edible cats on Mount Fuji who hate watching ladies’ volleyball.

Sooti scratches himself, under his robe: “But who hates watching ladies’ volleyball? I don’t believe it!”

“Well ask the the cats yourself,” I reply. “They will not deny it!”

Now his eyes blaze with Satori. He has opened the gateless gate.

In return, Sooti gives me a Koan to reflect upon, which suggests that the worms in Kyoto rely on the wind to dislodge fleas from their moustaches. I am mystified and meditate until the moon rises, then shake my head until he empties the cup: “Inspect a worm’s moustache,” he cries. “The fleas are gone!”

At these words I am enlightened: his answer defies logic perfectly. When the monkey reaches out for the moon in the river, he must first let go his branch...

© Mike Atkinson

CARS: DRIVING YOU CRAZY?

Roads were once so quiet on our estate, they were mainly used for five-a-side football.

Cars were reserved for the rich and famous, like Mrs Bagwash who won the regional bingo. When her Reliant 3-wheeler whizzed by, us young commoners would raise our flat caps and cry:”By gum – that’s the second time this year. She’s flaunting her wealth!”

Now the roads are much crazier. The five-a-side footy lads have turned into Joyriders. Some little brat with acne steals my Skoda and dumps it on Southport beach; with the tide coming in! Oh, joy of joys. And he probably uses my Satnav to get there!

GPS Satnavs are amazing, they can tell you were you’re going and how to get there, even before your wife’s made her mind up. You can download famous voices too. Imagine: Clint Eastwood: “Make my day. Turn left and you’ll miss Wigan!

Of course, many still prefer a real live navigator: the missus again. At least it’s a voice you’ve grown used to... taking orders from.

What women want are bigger mirrors. A car designed by a woman has huge panoramic rear-view mirrors to see if her bum looks big in a Ford Ka. Everything looks big in a Ford Ka. Your chocolate wagon wheel looks as big as it did at school!

A car designed by lads probably has a fridge for the cans. I know one lad who swears a little lager improves his driving. Sure enough, he maintains a perfect 29.9 mph, right through the lights on red. To the boys in blue, he must stand out like a fish in a tree, which is probably where he’ll end up one day. Perfectly parked in one!

Perhaps we should bring back horses. We’ll still be driven crazy, by the 12 hour clip-clop to Blackpool, and the pong from their exhaust particulates. But at least they feed the rhubarb!

© Mike Atkinson.

OLD JAPAN: MUCH ADO ABOUT MU.

I return from Kin-hin, a walking Zen meditation where all of nature is seen as being vibrant with energy. My heightened awareness senses that a thousand years hence, pale acned youths may seek lazy shortcuts to this hallowed state, with mushroom infusions and herbal inhalations.

I also sense my own acned student, Tossai, giggling inside the temple benjo as I walk by. Following long contemplation, enlightenment is often accompanied by spontaneous laughter when a difficult Koan, or Zen riddle, is understood at last. But I fear Tossai's laughter is not so worthy and he may be ogling geisha prints by Hokusai. At our next Dokusan, or master/student interview, my fears worsen when he claims he was laughing at nothing. Insanity!

I raise my Kyosaku to strike him and assist concentration. However, it transpires he is not so daft after all, but has cracked the Koan I set him last Tuesday regarding MU, which means nothing in the cosmic sense.

This Koan stems from the Buddhist teaching that all sentient beings have Buddha-nature. When difficult students like Tossai ask if this includes dogs and cats, I answer neither yes or no, but MU, to prevent them trying to contemplate Buddhism rationally.

Tossai has a head start because he hasn't a rational bone in his spotty body. But in his own way, he is on his way.

VICE VERSA: IS THIS THE FUTURE?

As Earth's power supplies dwindle, Astral Travel, guided by deep meditation on the keyword OM, beams me through time and space to seek energy solutions from more advanced civilisations; or at least borrow a shilling for the meter.

OM: my eyes open. I am seated with a lady uneating her supper; the waiter pays her, she spoons goulash from mouth to bowl, which he removes when full.

"Excuse me madam, is this the future?"

"No, that was yesterday, this is the past."

I point out that the future is supposed to follow the past, but they do things differently here. At night, I see baldies enter barbers and re-emerge as mop tops. Smokers blow fumes between fingers until their cigarettes grow longer; then walk backwards to newsagents who buy them. And there is much to marvel at regarding my mission.

Cars motor backwards, sucking up exhaust gases and filling petrol tanks all the way to the unfilling station for a refund. Trains backtrack too, feeding electricity into the rails, then back to nuclear reactors, whose atoms unsplit. Planes unfly, making jet fuel and mending the ozone level. This world recharges its batteries after dark: a win-win solution!

Until things begin to grow a little darker. Uneating spaghetti becomes harder to watch, as is unspitting, and natives unblowing noses. At a chicken farm at sundown, I stare open mouthed as a thousand golden eggs suddenly leap up a thousand feathery bums.

But the blackest nightmare haunts my bedtime visit to the WC. Private Eye in hand, I turn; but just before sitting I see those golden eggs again, leaping up...and OM, I escape this topsy-turvey planet.

Let Earth's candle flicker a little longer, until I find a remedy with less vice but more versa. There's no future here.

WEIGHTLESS IN JAPAN: TEMPLE DOGS OF HOKUSAI

I return from Matsushima, by the ocean, by the mountains. Fellow Master Sooti visits my Zendo for a friendly Koan or two. Koan riddles dissolve intellectual suspense and invite Satori.

Venerable Sooti raises a bloody finger. “I was trimming brambles,” he explains. “They don’t take it sitting down, you know.” My eyebrows lift. “Have you ever seen brambles sitting down?” he demands. I shake my head. “There you are then!”

April’s air stirs those brambles, a butterfly floats and balances above them. Ah...Satori.

Sooti has been gnawing at my Koan about the temple dogs of Hokusai, who ride mountain bikes only after dark to avoid causing alarm. I give him a clue: “Whisper in their furry ears and ask them if they do,” I advise this junior Master. “I bet they won’t say no!”

At this, he sighs: his being is now full of light but weightless. One has an eye that sees all forms, but often does not see itself. It is simply this.

© Mike Atkinson

TOXIC WASTE SHOCK: OUTER SPACE, OUT OF MIND?

Mother Earth is knee-deep in crap, and the seas so filthy even the fish wear noseclips. So what to do with all the World’s mucky megatons of junk and jetsam?


“Easy,” I propose to the World Government. “Flush it all down a Black Hole in space. They’re just like celestial toilets, really.” The WG is quick to reply: “Professor Brion Damage – your crap solution is accepted.”

So my Muckraker rockets blast into space, towards the Cygnus Black Hole; crammed with crud, from bent policemens’ bikes to nasty old NHS spectacles. Out of sight, out of mind, I assure the WG. How wrong am I?

Later, I’m leafing through a Life of Queen Victoria. Her biographer relates that her Maj awakes one morn to see a hundred sinister men in fur coats bicycling madly around Buckingham Palace. But wait, no: they’ve got tails! “Get that Charles Darwin in here!” she commands. “We’re surrounded by monkeys on bikes – they’re evolving and it’s all his fault!”

The Time Scanner confirms that my rocketful of rusty cycles blasts through the sky into the Eighteen Umpties and explodes over the Zoo. All the hairy mammals escape and pedal away to terrorise Victorian London. A link between time travel and black holes? I don’t believe it!

Until the Scanner detects another anomaly: English South Coast 1066. And suddenly, there is a crack of thunder as another of my Muckraker rockets rips through time and space and rains down dozens of John Lennon spectacles over Hastings Beach. And King Harold grabs a pair, thick as bottle glass, just in time to shield his eye from the Norman arrow and win the battle. Now I do believe it.

I have changed the course of history: England One France Nil, I muse, reaching for my trusty revolver.

© Mike Atkinson

OLD JAPAN: BIG ZEN, TIME AND ILLUSION

My neophyte monk Tossai walks up from Edo lake, late for his KOANS as usual. Zen koans create a state of intellectual tension conducive to attaining enlightenment.

"Master, what is time anyway?"

"An illusion," I reply, but he whinges that it's no illusion for him, he's getting older by the day: almost all his acne is gone!

"Then meditate on this," I growl quietly. "The very oldest man on Earth is still alive." And for a second, his eyes gleam with enlightenment. But then he blinks and it is gone. "What is illusion, Master?"

"Do you see that I am not holding a benjo stick?"

"Yes I see that stick," he replies.

"Then go and wipe your neophyte bum with it!"

Little Tossai tastes Satori, and the shock tumbles him backwards into my Koi pond. Sitting up, he whispers "Miso No Koro." - A mind like still water. I think he's got it...

NHS CUTS - JUST SAY NO!

Who’s worried about NHS cuts? You can avoid them you know. Just don’t get referred to a specialist! Surgeons always feel obliged to do something, usually something bloody, with bone saws and sharp pointy instruments. So don’t go. Just say no!

They’re like gunslingers, who can’t hold their heads high unless they’re drilling a hole in yours, then writing it up in their ‘true confessions’ magazine The Lancet, for blazing a trail in butchery.

“Extra buttock, sir? Ideal for two-tone diesel farting?” “Madame, why not try an extra boob: perfect for cosy threesomes, and nine months later for the triplets!”

Just say no, particularly near the plumbing bits: “Doctor, I can’t feel anything down there! You haven’t cut off my...?” “No Sir, just the fingers.” Army surgeons are even scarier: “Mario, I’ve reversed the direction of your feet. So next time you retreat, it will be towards the enemy.”

And don’t think private is any better. You go private to sort out projectile vomiting. But when you see the estimate, you come out projectile farting. After that, you’re right to hold your nose; if only to stop them nicking it. There’s a big black market in transplants with internet adverts like: ‘Not happy with your nose? Then pick this nearly new nose. One previous owner, good runner!” But he obviously didn’t run fast enough.

Remember, you’re not really ill until a surgeon tells you and these gruesome guys breathe in nitrous oxide, laughing gas, every day. So don’t listen! Just say no!

© Mike Atkinson

OLD JAPAN: RICE AND FALL

I encourage my disciple Tossai to take up Shodo, the way of the brush, which is another form of Zen meditation and also a means of checking on a student's progress: if the mind is correct, the brush stroke is correct.

I teach him to hold the Futofude brush with correctness of mind and breathing, and thus imbue his strokes with dynamic rhythm. First he fashions the character Ki, meaning lifeforce or energy, made of symbols for brown rice and steam; then Yin-Yang, to teach him the balance of the middle way.

Unfortunately, Tossai so lacks balance due to overeating rice, his strokes more and more resemble wet skid marks on a loin cloth; until he finally falls off his stool.

Even so, next day he proudly fastens his daub like a flag to flutter above the temple chimney. Instead of therapeutically thrashing Tossai, I employ a Koan, or Zen riddle for him to reflect upon and rise above his floundering.

"What is that, fluttering there?" I growl quietly.

"My flag is moving, Master."

"No it isn't," I reply, raising my stick.

"Then the wind is moving?"

"No, numpty, not the wind and not your flag, but hopefully your mind!"

His face brightens and for a second I believe his mind moves, knocking on the door of Satori; but his soul isn't in. It is already down the road, knocking on village doors, with his rice bowl held out.

WATCHING THE DEFECTIVES

Pitching a new police series to TV production companies isn’t easy. They’ve already tried just about every daft cuffing together of chalk and cheese detectives: Morse and Lewis, Smith and Wesson; but we’ll have a go. And with police budgets pinched, we’ll also celebrate the handy day-job skills cheapo detectives can bring into part-time plodding.

Crock and Dile are two zookeepers and hobby Bobbies, whose detection skills were honed chasing deadly reptiles they carelessly allowed to escape. Both have little else to do now, but sleuthing and dialling Dignitas since the zoo closed: they caught none of the animals.

Sherlock Homeboys are pipe smoking gangsta hunters from Harlem NY. They’re hot on narcotics, learned from cooking up their own gear, and from the books of Conan Doyle stolen from libraries, which they couldn’t read but traded for wacky baccy in their pipes.

The UK offshoot Scotland Yardies has two spliff sucking ‘specials’, so stoned, they stagger off to Spain’s Costa Del Crime chasing Red Moroccan, and expat Brits not living off the proceeds of one crime or another. They fail.

Black and Dicker are randy coalminers well suited to crime fighting at night, coated in coal dust as they are, and therefore invisible: until they grin at their script. Both boast permanent pitprop erections no power tool can fix.

Roofless and Toofless are bad spelling roofers and fighters of crime in high places: lead theft, suicide, and abusive shouting at hot totty below. Toofless quit aerial abusing himself after a ‘cor look at them ‘ooters’ pretty woman kicked his teef in.
Wallrenderers, boasts two miserable Scandalavian decorators cum defectives helping London’s Met stop Eastenders smuggling Swedish eels into pies. They paint crooks into a corner with existential angst and Heidelbergian gloom. What a mouthful, but no worse than the rotted herring surstomming they relish. These prats who love sprats are highly decorated for giving crims a good plastering, and... Oh I give up, arrest me now!

© Mike Atkinson

OLD JAPAN: OPENING HIS FIRST THIRD EYE?

Tossai shambles into my Zendo, or meditation hall, and commences Zazen, which is sitting meditation; and as usual tries to grab forty winks. He needs a Koan or two.

Koans are essential but sometimes shocking riddles used for opening the neophyte's third eye. Tossai has trouble opening just two today, so I summon him and demand: "Why so much sitting?"

"Because I wish to be a Buddha."

In reply, I take up a rough floor tile and rub it with my robe.

"Why are you doing this, Master?"

"Because I wish to make you a mirror!"

Tossai nods slowly, and presently becomes much more awake in his quest for awakening. But then, sidestepping the middle way, he tries a little too hard at our following audience.

"Master, it might take me ten years to reach Satori, but how long will it take if I study with twice the effort?"

"Twenty years, "I reply. "With one eye fixed on the destination, only one eye remains to find the way."

For a promising moment, his face is lit by Buddha nature, until he yawns again. Oh hum, I reflect later, sitting in my temple benjo: all beings are in flux, and some are more fluxed than others.

FOREIGN OFFICE DIPLOMATS BRIEF: UNDERSTANDING FOREIGN DEVILS

HM envoys to the Vatican should note that their leader holds forth in Latin, perched on a balcony, often just before falling off his perch. Essential phrases are: pro bono - I'm paid in dog food, please bribe me. Caveat emptor - those thieving mafiosos emptied my cave again.

German is another dead language, but don't remind them; remember HM weather warnings: Dogger, Fisher, GERMANS BITE! They sensibly call their town halls rathouses but fahrt a lot, riding around in their smelly catalytic converter cars. Next door, the French are essentially girly men ruled by tarty women; hence at Elysee Palace receptions, the key phrase is: la meme chose - mother knows best.

America is divided from us by a common language. Crisps are chips, jam is jelly, let's call the whole thing off. But avoid adult humour at White House burger breakfasts; they think irony means taking the creases out of clothes, probably by sitting their big burger booties on them.

Our Dublin officials should note that openly mocking Irishisms is no longer diplomatic. Instead they must retire to the bog (Irish: bog) and shit themselves laughing in secret, after hearing that a sycophant in Cork is a man who has grown tired of wearing trousers.

Diplomats dining in the Orient take heed! Chinese will eat anything with four legs except a table, so insist on Chin Tan Chee Tai - egg and chips. Nips nibble anything from the sea, so avoid government buffets near sewage outfalls. Even Japanese cats flee them, thus: arigato - my cat is in a hurry.

Colleagues fearing the weirdness of Japan should relax, deep breathly and meditate on their government circular: Zen And The Art of Phobia

WAR IS OVER: FEET OF DARING

The MOD texts me with a works order: Professor Brion Damage: UK must continue pretending to be a major power, particularly in useless desert countries. But UKGOV is too tight to buy proper helicopters or armoured jeeps to carry light infantry over land mines and IEDs. Find cheepo alternative: but risky experiments must be tried on civilians first, because their casualties are acceptable.

Light infantry leads me to meditate on Dr T Suzukis assertion that enlightenment is like everyday consciousness, walking down the street, except that you’re two inches above the ground; and I see our squaddies gliding to glory on Hover Boots!

Whose development proves no bovver in the lab: just a wicked in vitro wedding of shoe leather and bird DNA, with just a pinch of the Abdab’s own flying carpet technology. Until the world’s greatest soft shoe shuffle is ready for the kick-off.

And at first, my incredible anti-gravity footwear dazzles the foot-weary world. They delicately float our ladies two inches above the pavement, the puddles and the doggy poo like good fairies; and they take the weight off the feet of our plodding police and postmen.

A few niggling complaints do creep in, of shoes legging it from under beds and nesting in trees; but I kick these into touch as mere teething troubles. Until GCHQ monitor this Air Traffic Control Navaid: Be aware - large flock of St Jude nuns at umpteen thousand feet, hovering to heaven in winged high heels.

But the big flockup comes in Autumn, when the leaves fall but all my magic shoes rise and fly off their feet to fill the azure skies. Birds laugh themselves silly as flocks of boots and ballet shoes join them in the great migration, flying south for the Winter.

I bet you could have kicked yourself, you’re thinking; but I didn’t have to: a flighty pair of aptly named bomber boots crept up behind, then dam-busted me out of my study window to land face down in the muck-heap below.

Why don't I invent something sensible, I muse, until Dr Suzuki whispers to me again: Man with both feet firmly on ground no get trousers off.

© Mike Atkinson

MAD SPORTS ARE BEST

I didn’t shine too brightly at football. Instead of left back, I was usually left outside. They got tired of me catching the ball, or hitting it with a cricket bat.

Cricket was a nightmare too. Instead of deep field, I was usually asked to stand in the next field, where they did mad sports, like chucking cannonballs. Turned out I was good at this shot putting. Well, good at distance but not direction. So my schoolmates renamed it shit potting, beacause the teachers shit themselves running away.

Mad sports are best and rugby is proper mad; your mom says don’t fight or roll in the mud but the rugby teacher insists on it! Unlike football, you must catch the ball, and by the way, the ball is not a ball shaped!

Another crackpot sport is curling. A fat yoyo slithers across the ice; four Scottish witches leap off their broomsticks and start sweeping, farting and casting spells in front; to speed it on to victory. Hurrah!

Highland games are not just mad, they’re criminally insane. Tossing the caber involves a hairy man in a skirt tossing off a large pole. I suppose its good practise for his next stay in Barlinnie Jail. Until his cellmate returns to plumbing school in Poland.

What about urban sports like freerunning; running up walls and leaping from roof to roof? That’s me trying to shake off muggers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I suppose the Greeks invented sport around 3000 years ago in Olympia, to sublimate violence and stop wars. Some Millwall fans still don’t get it. Greeks also invented mathematical formulas. But they didn’t invent one clever enough to get me Olympic tickets.

Have you noticed, one sport beloved by snotty nosed comedy quiz-show shitheads is Beckham Bating: slagging off football hero Dave, because he’s not intellectual like a brain surgeon? For chuff sake, do we knock brain surgeons for playing football badly? No, because you might just get your cranium kicked in.

Then you’ll really need a brain surgeon, and you don’t want to hear he’s at football practice!

© Mike Atkinson

FOOD FOR FRIGHT: IS THIS THE FUTURE?

A distress message draws me through space and time back to Earth, and the office of the World Governor.

“Excuse me, Madam, is this the future?”

“Yes, “she replies,” and the food’s terrible: there’s none left. We not just biting our fingernails, we’re chewing other peoples’ too!”

The WG begs me, Professor Brion Damage, to find tasty alternatives to cannibalism. And my brilliant idea is to dry sea plankton, then spin it into edible wool ready for testing on a remote Scottish island.

Thus it comes to pass that flocks of hungry Jocks, return from the Glen to find their wee wives knitting haggis by the fire; and plankton burgers in green slime for the kiddies. And bless me bagpipes and spit on me sporran, they’re all just scotsilicious! Trouble is, there’s plenty of plankton wool to spare in the crofts. So thrifty hands use it to knit other things, like a smart bikini for Nan here, some modest shorts for the Vicar there, and much much more.

The end begins when all these plankton awake, and spawn collective consciousness in the salty sea air; then pull together. So hard that Nan’s bikini contracts violently, and out pop her mams! At Evening Service, our Vicar’s woolly keks throttle his plums and up his sermon from basso to castrato!

Even when lobbed into the loch, the vast shoals of edible woollens, from Celtic scarves and bed socks, to fearsome willy-warmers, writhe away like evil serpent beasties to devour the planet. Food for fright indeed!

There’s no future here, I reflect, revving up my time machine and throwing this notice at the cannibal mob, snapping at my ankles: Gone to Lunch - Back in Two Millennia.

© Mike Atkinson

NEW SOMALI PIRATE MENACE: THE ICEBERG STEALERS

Commander 'Oxy' Moron of Naval Intelligence reporting. Somali pirates have bitten off more than they can chew: hijacking a tug off Mombasa, they follow its towrope to find an iceberg on the end! The Abduls want it returned, or no cheap water for them and no oil for us. I join HMS Cockaleekie.

Battle commences when the Somalis fire heat seeking missiles, which we dodge behind the iceberg, sending them rocketing back to chase the pirates in a merry hornpipe around the ocean, sashaying the berg behind like an icy tail.

In Mogadishu, their evil mateys are backslapping and hugging to celebrate their big ransom booty, when the iceberg streaks by, freezing them even closer. Oppressed wives mock them mercilessly, singing 'and you know what sailors are...'

Prince Abdul Bin Liner and his umpteen fellow princes sunbathe on Shatt Al Murkey beach and execution site. But when the berg explodes over the horizon, its icy breath gives all the royals flu and their combined sneezing whips up vast sandstorms.

The pirates sneak back to Boosaaso, confident we cannot see them. But we soon hear them: my sonarman detects strange, ancient animal cries, followed by stampeding hooves and terrified shrieks and curses.

As the sandstorm clears, satellite imagery confirms their demise: equatorial heat has defrosted herds of tusky prehistoric boars preserved in the iceberg, to maul the Somalis, ending their piracy forever. Forever?

I log on through Inmarsat to Admiralty Signals, expecting their jingle 'Rule Britannia'.

But the screen flashes, addressee moved; and there is no reply, no jingle. Because there is no Britannia; pirates have hijacked and towed it away for ransom. But that's another story...

THE 1812 (VIA WATFORD) OVERTURE

The Min of Ed gets a right caning from the PM for stuffing plebs’ heads with science and mathematics, but leaving them totally unprepared for automation and unemployment. They still want to work, dammit! As a noted musicologist I propose to remedy this with music therapy, and as guinea pig select Signalman Dingle, a train buff and union troublemaker blocking rail robotisation.

It is my theory only six crotchets of separation exist between the tone-deafest clod and Bach or Beethoven. In the music laboratory, Dingle is strapped to a piano stool and re-programmed: If he dares play work songs, or cloth cap anthems like the Internationale, his eyes are lashed with horror videos of rusting puffers in the rain. But when he learns more lazy-bones classical stuff, he’s serenaded by the blissful happy whistle of esteemed locos in their heyday, like Mallard or Evening Star.

Thus a tamer, laid-back Dingle rejoins his signal box, dismissal notice in pocket; and all signals seem green for robot railways. So how do the signals get crossed

Easy: puffer anoraks are running a steamfest starring Flying Scotsman 4472 on Dingle’s section, and when its blissful whistle toots, my conditioning triggers the pianist in him.

Unfortunately, the switchgear is keyboard controlled, and the 1812 (via Watford) is due next; so he plays the 1812 Overture on his computer; and at first it isn't all bad. A plaintive note in the first movement switches troop trains bound for the latest useless desert war, to red light Amsterdam. So no customer complaints there!

But a more ominous piece sends his fingers to the lower keys and diverts the Leyton Orient Express from Venice to Belgium's eurosewage plant instead. Worst of all it switches the PM's party train, celebrating rail automation, into the Hogsbottom Pig Plant. And all his VIPs risk being minced from assholes into br /> Just in time, as umpteen computrains pinball the World and risk colliding, Dingle's cannon and ball 1812 Overture Finale explodes the railway mainframe, and robot railways are shunted off the timetable forever.

Who might have guessed that Dingle's true genetic ancestor was the bolshie and busy Tchaikovsky, and that his music would undo all my brain- washing? Should have done my music homework, I muse, entering the Min of Ed's study where I receive bottom marks.

© Mike Atkinson

FORK'N KNIVES

Like evolution from ape to man, you start off as a kid eating with fingers, and then slowly progress to scoffing takeaways with a plastic fork. Until one day, perhaps at your drunken wedding reception, you look down, and suddenly your plate is surrounded by more sharp and shiny instruments than a surgeon’s toolbox in ER. Your plate is besieged by cutlery!


It happens to me on a Med cruise booked on You’ve Left It Too Late Dot Com. So I’ve no time to learn table manners. In the ship‘s restaurant, I’m confronted by a monstrous regiment of prickers and prongs. So I spurn them all.

I make lobster butties instead and shout for the Chief Steward to bring on the mushy peas. I don’t want to look common, though. So I shout louder for a big spoon for the peas.

But a week downstream, perhaps seduced by Etiquette, the French girl at my table; I look down and begin to wonder just what all this scrap metal around my din-dins is all about. A butter knife? If the I Can’t believe it’s not lard is that hard, take it out of the fridge earlier! And here’s a gravy boat. We all love gravy on the plate, but not so much you’d need a boat to reach the pie in the middle!

Ah, the dessert fork. I know this one. The SAS started from the Long Range Desert Group. Who Dares Wins! It was one of their improvised weapons. They were tireless and brave, moving quickly throughout North Africa, hunting new desserts to conquer: Date pudding, fig rolls and prune surprise - which made them even quicker!

It’s enough to make you long for something simple like Spotted Dick. So I go ashore in Tangiers, and – success! A week later, the ship’s Doctor congratulates me: “Well done, lad, you’ve got spotted dick!”

© Mike Atkinson

ANIMALS ON THE JOB - BOOTY AND THE BEASTS

Eating animals is becoming a no-no. But why, many ask. They’re clearly made out of sausages and black puddings. Fish are made out of filets. And If we do turn veggie, they’ll all need finding new jobs.

Being a pet’s a traditional job for beasts, but they’re getting more and more exotic. Sharing the house with snakes, iguanas and big hairy spiders sends your dog doolally. Even more so, when your Korean mates put him and them on the menu.

Zoos drive animals crackers too: wolves go whacky and rabbits go round the bend; because, they’re behind bars, pacing back and forth like jailbirds. “Got any snout?” the rabbit asks. “Yes,” growls the wolf. “It’s full of teeth and ready for rabbit!”

Luckily, they’ve now got their own TV therapists and quack doctors. Dog whisperers, horse whisperers and, yes, even duck whisperers! They’re worried about the mental welfare of animals in the tourist industry.

Like those ducks posing for photos by the river in Paris. Are they in Seine? And when rapping crocodiles in Egypt say it doesn’t bother them. Are they in de Nile? It’s all getting a bit loony.

Which is why space exploration may be the ultimate booty-earning gig for animals. After all, they were first in orbit: a Russian dog nicknamed MUTNICK circled the Earth in 1957, tongue hanging out, drooling down and cocking his leg over a zillion capitalist lamp posts.

And of course, budget cuts will favour space jobs for smaller pilots. So instead of: “One small step for man,” they’ll be saying: “One hundred tiny steps for a centipede!”

© Mike Atkinson

GOGGLE BOX TV

It’s mind goggling. There was a time when TV was only alive and kicking a few hours a day. Or it might be if it weren’t still true today.

You see the same old films your granddad saw in black and white, which should have been blue, because they’re all about water: The Cruel Sea, Bridge on the River Kwai, Sink the Bismarck! Wet, wet, wet.

And too many programs these days are about watching paint dry: tarting up old slums, then fobbing them off on poor witless fools. But students don’t complain.

Because charity begins at home. Every morning, the TV charity industry armbends its way into our homes to con us into coughing up donations. Don’t get me wrong, some of their hearts are in the right place. It’s just that far too often, their heads are right up their bums.

It sounded great when one charity sent 6 fishing trawlers to an African village, and it might have been. Except there were no fishermen, and the remote, inland lake dried up years ago.

Another TV appeal was in aid of extinct wolves in Scotland. Why, to give them a decent burial? No, they’re reintroducing these wolves from a German forest, where the Huns pronounce W as V. So if you go down to the woods tonight, you’re in for a big vuff! vuff! There’s nae way Scotch Collie dogs will stand for it!

So what’s on in tomorrow’s goggle box world? Well TV is set to jump out of its box and into three-dimensional holograms, with lasers projecting the show like a naff aurora over your fireside rug. So you get a bit-part in the action.

Imagine: you’re reading Telly Times on the loo, when a pack of pups escape from the rasclart advert, then burst in and chase all the bog rolls downstairs. Next comes Peter Kay, Amarillo-marching out of his hologram and into your kitchen; tripping over the cat and ending up face down in your tatty pie.

Finally, that woman in ‘Psycho’ is having her fateful shower. Your dirty Uncle Dennis leaps up from the couch and into this ‘lectronic mirage to cover her nakedness and save her from Alfred Hiccup’s manipulation. There’s shower gel everywhere; it fuses the telly, douses the coal fire and finally cools your Uncle’s ardour. And that’s it: cue Epilogue.

© Mike Atkinson

REGISTRAR FOLLOWED A MUCK CART AND THOUGHT IT WAS A WEDDING.

You know the Registry Office: hatch, match and despatch. Well I know one Registrar whose own despatch date is looming.

One fine day, he’s filling in a Marriage Certificate, and he asks the lad before him about previous marriages. The lad says his wife ran away, so the Registrar asks about children. The lad says no, they ran away too and got caught in the same shotgun blast.

Now this Registrar is used to time wasters so he carries on regardless: Any other marriages? The lad says she disappeared too. Any children? “No, “the lad replies.” They were in the same car when I pushed it over the cliff!”

Our official man’s had enough now: “I don’t think you’re ready for another marriage.” Marriage?” says the lad. “I’m here to register another death!”

Next day, our hero addresses a very mournful, black-clouted group in his office, and loses the plot again. “Is there any reason why this woman you speak of should not be married?” “Yes!” the group shouts back. “Because she’s ninety-five, she’s dead and we want a certificate!”

It’s like that Northern saying: “You know what thought did, followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding.”

Next door to the Registrar’s office is a function room. One night he doublebooks the room to a Martial Arts Club and a Marital Arts chic-chat run by Fanny Summers. And of course a brawl breaks out. God forgive him, it’s an easy mistake to make; both numpty groups get hot over odd weapons and funny fumbles. But imagine the Kung Foo Fight between them!

What a match.

© Mike Atkinson

OFFENSIVE WEAPONS ?

Isn’t it bad enough, a comedy writer going to a small claims court to claim an entire year’s wages? But it really stinks when they won’t even let you in!

Because my court has airport type security; an electric doorframe and a tray for your metal bits: keys, coins and rip out you heart please, you’ve got a pacemaker. And I’m filling my tray when the apelike rentacop suddenly jabs his red button and leaps back howling: “He’s got an offensive weapon!”

No, it’s my 12 tool Swiss Army knife, from that region of Switzerland called China. And the Chinky steel blade broke when I tried cutting cheese. So what’s freaking-out Mr Uniform? Maybe I’ll scalp his monkey head with the can opener, or bust his braces with the tiny saw tool, so his own untrousered, little tool pops out.

Exactly what are these offensive weapons? The law says anything made or adapted to injure a person. But it’s ok if they’re carried for religious reasons. So a blade is fine if you do door to door circumcisions.

Another legal defence allows blades that are part of a national costume. So all you pirates of the Caribbean from Moss Side and Westbourne Grove can claim to feel well undressed without a Swiss Army Knife. It’s a cutlass, fool!

Likewise, Americans feel stark bollock naked if their army knife doesn’t come with little high-powered rifle, bazooka and nuclear missile tools. The Salford army knife boasts multi-bottle openers, coke spoons and spliff tweezers. Which brings us back to court.

You know those killer come-backs; the smart things you wish you’d said in arguments that come to you next day? I want to revisit rentacop and tell him: “Offensive weapon? Your wife doesn’t complain to me, when you’re away on nights! But then, she shouldn’t talk with her mouth full, should she?

Case dismissed.

© Mike Atkinson

UNDER THE WEATHER

High tides are not expected along the Thames, nor high morals within Westminster; though its temporary caretakers will still be on their high horses, galloping over speed traps and blaming their mares.

However, LibDim toilets can expect flooding as their wannabe statesmen upchuck at the giddy sight of their own two faces in the bog water below, and the dread realisation they have flushed away Liberalism forever.

So no strong winds of change in Parliament, though it may become wet and windy later outside the PM’s bum come election time.

In Belfast, rain shouldn’t stop the bigoted marching bores on all sides when decades of reason have failed. Ultra violence levels may rise, so bang on the blinkers, like the US Government did when some Americans funded the troubles.

Speakin’ of devils, a hellish heat is forecast just in time for the conference of gun-loving, NHS hating US Republicans. But it’s not an ill wind: for years, even God’s been praying that they’d give us a break and dry up.

Taxing heat threatens the Spanish Costas too, over the costa living and the pumped-up prices but pissy revenue from Costa Buck UK cantinas.

Much touted sea level rises off Asia will trigger a tsunami of cheap, ready to rust Chinese Arks and Submarines in our pound stores. Now that’s what I call enterprise, Captain Kirk.

Back home, the drizzle in Bury’s Kay Gardens will be that fine rain that wets you through. But let’s face it, even when the sun does come out, they’ll only call the fire brigade: the sky’s on fire!

Finally, icy winds and sleet are expected on nearby Blackpool’s topless and bottomless hen-night beaches. So for now at least, that’s the end of the weather nudes.

© Mike Atkinson

KNOCK KNOCK

I spent a day recently with the Uk Border Force. Having drunk so much on the plane from Turkey, I lost the power to speak English and was detained, along with bogus students and people-traffickers who use sham marriages: They should see mine!

Anyway, back at the border, I recorded one dry as dust Officer at work with the visitors.

“What is the reason for your visit, Sir? Tourism? You want to visit Salford, the Gorbals and Millwall on match night? Are you sure you don’t mean terrorism, Sir? The natives there are pretty scary. Next!”

“Stand in front of the camera, please. Ah, well nourished, no trace of drug abuse or self abuse. You don’t look shifty or stroppy and you’ve combed your hair. I’m sorry, sir. I don’t believe you’re a student. But you can stay 3 months. Your fellow students will soon bring you down to their level!”

“Ah, another student. Bread, bush meat and gherkins in you suitcase. Don’t tell me, Miss, you’re on a sandwich course. Next please!”

“Drunk, sly, giant expenses book and tiny, broken calculator. You’ve got to be a budding politician. Next!”

“Hello, Madam, you’re applying for asylum because your government persecutes you, treats you like dirt and lies to you; then bleeds your medical services dry while letting their cronies off the hook?”

“I’m sorry, Madam. I’m sending you home for your own good; it’s even worse here. Can I come with you?”

© Mike Atkinson

SHIPWRECK FASHION AND GPS

RISE AND SHINE? YOU MUST BE JOKING.

                

Do you leap out of bed like a lark – or feel more like a dodo?

Then join the club. Blame midnight films or midnight frolics, but dawn is not our finest hour. Especially when we get up late.

Victims of oversleeping are easy to spot: The man’s in such a rush, he’s halfway to work before realising his underpants are on the wrong way round. How can he tell? He can read the label. The underpants are on his head, instead of his fireman’s helmet!

Ladies put on a much braver face. As soon as they wake up they make up. But if she gets up late, one of the symptoms is lastminute lips. She’s so dozy, slapping on the lippy, it looks like she’s kissed a post box with wet paint!

Oversleeping can damage your wealth too. So polish up some good excuses before ringing work.  “Sorry boss, my girlfriend wouldn’t undo the shackles.” Or  just whisper diarrhoea.They won’t want to know any more.

But how can you beat the clock? Well, digital alarms from China are useless. Push that cheeky little snooze button, for just another 10 minutes, and before you know it, it’s bedtime again! It’s economic warfare to make the entire western world late for work. 

 Except for the Germans, that is. Herman needs no artificial aids. At the crack of dawn, he vorsprungs out of bed and Volkswagens down the Autobahn, arriving just as the hooter blows at his sausage factory.

I rely on my classic, wind-up alarm clock, you can still hear it clanging after being wrapped in a duvet and thrown downstairs. Sailors in the ship canal grab their lifejackets and jump overboard.

But when you finally manage to rise and shine, and clock in early, do you get any thanks? The boss looks at his watch: “You’re on time! What’s wrong, insomnia? Grown tired of daytime TV?”

© Mike Atkinson

MERDE: IS THIS THE FUTURE?

The world grows so weary of piss-poor governance, nobody bothers shooting or even satirising their politicians anymore. Deeply humiliated, World leaders beg me, Professor Brion Damage, to scour the universe for revolutionary new ways of fooling the masses into thinking that politics can be fun, and take part. Astral Travel, triggered by deep meditation and the keyword OM, beams me through space and time to fill this tall order.

OM. My eyes open on some nice ladies, knitting on their balcony. "Excuse me ladies, is this the future?"

"But of course, Monsieur," says one. "It is beginning now with Doubledoo the banker. Never lent me a Sou and now it's his turn to feel the pinch!" (There is a crash and a roar from the crowd below.) "Next comes Dr Leach," she croaks. "Charged me three chickens for treating head lice, something he needn't worry about again!" (Another crash, another roar: it is a guillotine!)

"Wait a minute," I interject. "Are you sure this is the future?"

"It is for France, Monsieur," she cackles. "But not for our final contestant Baron Dickswagger, enemy of the Republic and many a poor peasant girl." (Two crashes then hideous sawing noises.) "I just hope they're cutting the right bit off!" She turns to me. "And now, Monsieur, what can we do for you? I hope you won't be a pain in the neck!"

"I am a fact finding emissary from far away," I alliterate. "Take me to your leaders."

"Ah, bourgeois, revisionist and male chauvinist. We are the leaders. Seize him ladies, another one for the chop!"

OM. Just in time I beam back to our cosily careless here and now to report: forget inclusivity; we don't want clowns running the circus, when monkeys already rule the zoo.

MALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Armbenders Ad Agency buzz me in a panic. The masses are ignoring billboards and commercials, choosing healthy useful products instead; and worst of all, picking politicians on such flimsy grounds as honesty and fitness for the job. Container terminals are bursting with unsold dross, and Westminster bars are heaving with pimps and ninnies, no amount of canvassing can elect.

Because, I diagnose, the hoi polloi have been lied to their faces too often and too clumsily. And I, the brilliant Professor Brion Damage, so savvy I can sell Celtic scarves to Rangers supporters, have a truly Machiavellian solution: lie to their backs. Sneak up behind them into their mirror, mirror on the wall, make them fairest of them all ( pert tits and no beer belly) if they embrace the product I cut and paste into their looking glass with LEDs and Photoshop.

Armbenders and their top clients attend the trial, where we see test subject Mr Crud seated before my magic mirror in his soiled underpants, combing over his last few strands of hair. When suddenly, a bottle of Follycurls hair tonic jumps into his hand. The mirror now cuts to a new, Bermuda shorted Crud, sporting lush manly locks and much admired by six leggy ladies, basking on the beach behind him, purring like kittens. He turns, chases, then kisses them all. He's hooked on Follycurls now! Armbenders and Co. cheer madly.

Until Crud clumsily drops and shatters the bottle, and his beautiful dream image fades away. He finds himself stumbling drunkenly down a slummy back street in soiled underpants, hugging lamp posts all the way. Back home, he kicks my magic mirror into splinters.

Which spells bad luck I reflect later, trudging down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, advertising boob jobs; which I have been reduced to. Staring into shop windows, I reflect on two further things: tit is the same reversed; and I have no reflection, which is an attribute of the truly evil.

TIME TRAVEL ACHIEVED: IS THIS THE FUTURE?

As physical exploration of space, and particularly time, flounders; I struggle to perfect Astral Travel, the transfer of our non- physical self using deep meditation on the keyword OM.

Om: My eyes open. It is Earth, and here comes a man of the future, waving his arms and crying: Oh Tempora, O Mores, O Crikey! Wonderful, a latin speaker: he must be a scholar like myself.

"Excuse me Sir, is this the future?"

"Sorry mate," he replies."There's no future here!"

"What makes you so sure?"

"Well for starters, you've just materialised at the Roman Circus in Pompeii, and the crowd are out for blood. Chasing us are ten of the Emperor's fiercest, most sadistic gladiators. If we're lucky, he'll call them off and feed us to the lions instead. Who are you, anyway?"

"Professor Brion Damage, voyager in space and time."

"Well this is the past, you must have lost your way."

I shake my head. "Oh dear, it wouldn't be the first time."

"Well it might be your last, there's something else; see that big pointy mountain over there? Its called Vesuvius, and if you ask me it looks just about ready to..."

Om: As the volcano explodes in smoke and larva, I escape this carry on, back to the present. Trust me to land in a lions den. No wonder they call me King of the bungle.

SHIPPING SCANDAL: ALL ABOARD FOR CHRISTMAS!

This is GWIZ I tap out in morse code to Portishead Radio, and receive an earful of cheery greetings in dots and dashes. I am the Marconi Wireless Officer aboard MV Hazelcombe on a passage from India at eight knots. Jesus walking on water could overtake us, but he won't beat me to the party.

Women were bad luck on boats until the Seventies see a sea change, with freighters carrying wives and female officers. This is good luck because mixed crews are essential for nautical party games, down in The Pig.

SHIPWRECK is a seagoing fancy dress ball where we all laugh at our greatest fears. Players have ten seconds to dress before the ship sinks, and old hands grab a towel or bed sheet. Others waste time choosing trousers or lingerie for the lifeboat and would surely drown; but here are punished by starting the next game.

BOSUNS LOCKER uses any unlit cubbyhole. The first bosun thinks of a number and whoever utters the same joins him or her inside, where each remove a garment; and so on with each new bosun. Ladies cheat by donning umpteen socks and scarves, but the aim is to provide maximum nudging and winking outside.

Instead of Jingle Bells, our Captain follows this with alarm bells and a round of Board Of Trade Sports, aka DTI Hurdles; statutory simulated emergency drills where the ships cook is mummified in bandages while we drunkenly collapse in a tangle of firehoses and life jackets; and the funnel hoots and brays: Abandon Ship!

We abandon the drill in disgrace to drown our sorrows in The Pig, where Captain Jock fills my glass with Bombay Bathtub, a gin distilled from stewed wood and rats. "Cheers." he growls. "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined!"

INTERPOL: THICK AS THIEVES?

MOST WANTED: Attention directed to dangerous fur-coated and masked gang of three thieves, who never speak but menace victims with sacks to fill with valuables. They have already caused heart attacks and hernias following explosive fits of laughter at their criminal ineptness, and the sight of their knuckles dragging along the ground.

In a Paris betting shop raid, they robbed the babycare shop next door by mistake; then fled with sacks of banana babyfood and wearing plastic baby potties on their heads. Staff shat themselves laughing in the potties left behind

In Geneva, les voleurs targeted Credit Swiz, yet hit the adjoining bonbon shop instead; ignoring the till but plundering every bag of toffee banana splits.

Their biggest blag would have been the Bank of England if they weren't distracted by a grocer's barrow outside heaped with monkey-nuts and,er, bananas. Watching Bank staff coughed up their caviar lunches, convulsed with mirth, as the blaggers fled with the fruit.

FLASH UPDATE: London Zoo security reports cache of banana split toffee, monkey-nuts and banana skins found behind chimpanzee house. Three chimps are missing.  Interpol insist this news totally unrelated to reports of three trainee Interpol London undercover officers disciplined for dragging their knuckles along HQ corridors and dropping, er, banana skins.

WAR NEWS: ART ATTACK!

Another duff government steals power and wants cuts in Defense and Culture, so calls on me, Master of the martial arts. Bogoff! I reply, proposing a buy one get one free solution: sell off galleries by disposing of fit for skip art trash and using it as RAF munitions.

First out of the gallery and into the bomb-bay go the works of action painters who flick, fart, dribble and bike-tyre paint onto canvasses apeing Jackson Pillock. Dropped onto warzones, the enemy mistakes them for roadmaps and gets lost, then freaks out at the jacked-up price tags on such crappy dawbs.

Next into action from 20,000 feet drop all the Turner (turning in his grave) Prize dross such as Gustav Metzger's Bag of Trash whose verisimilitude caused cleaners to bin it; and Chris Ofili's Elephant Dung (1998) for its 'sculptural and metaphorical resonance' : signed, resin soaked turds for £20,000. This rogue nation surrenders, believing the bin men have mutinied and their society is chuffed.

The final art attack sees Anthony Gormlas' 208 tonne Angel of the North bombed into the desert like the 2001 Space obelisk. Insurgents prostrate themselves before this heavenly messenger, then turn their prayer mats towards Tyneside, chanting Why-aye man! War is over.

Until, driving home to Jordyland, I see aghast the Angel resurrected in Gateshead and labelled: 'Return to sender, home is where the art is.'- in Parsi! I reach for my trusty art knife.

MI6 GET STAFFED

Military Intelligence appoint me Controller: Operation Oxymoron. They need to get staffed but their training budget has been slashed.

So I conscript a force already skilled in scamming and skulduggery, and all eminently expendable: send in the clowns. First, I licence to kill the legions of wannabe stand-ups; all expert killjoys, who are well used to escaping from murderously unamused audiences, to safe houses like BBC3 and CH4 where humour is not the password.

Posted to Kabul's Hippodrome, the likes of Russell Howard, Mitchell and Webb torment the Taliban into self immolation with dud gags and nob jokes, whose full awfulness is only revealed when sand gets in the laugh machine.

Next into the looking glass war go the smug, jumped-up panel show royalty led by Princesses Brigstocke, Carr and Lee Muck. At the arse end of their uncomic careers, their only apt insertion point is up the sewer of Tehran's Comedy Store. Their mission: to disentertain and panic the Persians into desertion, when they spy the huge secret army of duff writers who script our Princesses every ad-lib and winge, often aimed jealously at better northern stand-ups.

In Sun Tzu's Art of War this tactic is dismissed as: Mo Lan Yeung!

EXTINCTION SHOCK: BYE BYE BIRDIES

As a high flying orthanologist and word botcher, I am tweeted by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds for a crash audit. There's a flap on: numbers are plummeting.

At dawn, through my telescopic sight, I spy my flocking subjects who have navigated over sea and desert, back home to their summer paradise: Wigan.

And soon there is a flap on as it's breakfast, sorry BEAKFEAST time. Feathers fly when our avian friends quickly fall out and tuck into each other, pecking at Tweetabix or Shredded Beek; and for the ladies Rytweeta; while cannibal ducks dine on Quacker Oats. I spy proper raptors scoffing Stork Sausages and Corncrakes; or a tasty brunch of Magpie and Mushy Peas.

I report back the good news: Bird numbers have now stopped plummeting. Bad news: because they've all eaten each other. Awkwardly, as the audit has taken 19.5 years, the Royal Society is also extinct.

On a chirpier note, the Discovery Channel, which is still going strong with 19.5 viewers, commissions a film on Animal Psychology: Egyptian crocodiles - are they in denile? I don my naturist hat.