I am not the man who will become the pirate king. But don't let that put you off.

Gherkin related stocks rose an average of 20 points during the last fiscal year. For that, and other great facts, read on!

***

I stood a while, waiting for Grott to say something, but infuriatingly, he didn't.

"Well?" I said, "What's happening? Now, call me fussy, but the complete transfiguration of my bedroom tends to kind of catch my attention, so to speak."

"Oh, don't worry," said Grott, smiling patronisingly, "I've just melded the tower with this old lady's house, it's a standard camouflage system."

Why is it Grott's personality had to swap around randomly every time I saw him? It was getting on my nerves. One minute he was smug, the next, plain odd, then he'd be running around in blind panic. I decided to change tack.

"Are you alright, Mrs Fengleworth?" I said, adopting my extra loud talking-to-old-ladies voice.

"Yes dear," said the aforementioned old lady, grinning at me myopically, "It was a bit of a shock when all these people went and appeared in the middle of the kitchen, but once I saw it was your lady friend and some of her friends, I thought it would all turn out for the best."

An important question immediately occurred to me.

"Didn't you.. umm... notice the house had completely changed?"

The old woman turned and peered around her disturbing Zarfang/Old lady antechamber hybrid.

"Yes," she said at last, "I suppose it does look a bit different, now you come to mention it. Still, it's nice to have a change, isn't it?"

I looked at her dubiously, hoping this behaviour didn't mean I'd have to check up on her more frequently in future. While I was busy thinking about this, Mrs Fengleworth started to speak again.

"Still, it's lovely to see you, dear. Haven't seen you in ages, must be a year or more. Where've you been?"

At this, I couldn't help but notice that Grott's expression change to one of worry.

"What did you say?" he said, suddenly.

"I said, I haven't seen him in ages," said Mrs Fengleworth patiently, gesticulating in my direction as if the point needed clarification, "Him, over there."

Her face brightened as she remembered the standard solution to all problems.

"Tell you what, I'll put the kettle on, shall I, and we'll have a nice cup of tea presently. I think I've got some biscuits somewhere," she said, winking in a conspiratorial way in Grott's direction, seemingly completely at ease with his "takes a bit of getting used to" kind of appearance.

Grott beckoned to the rest of us, and we crowded in around him, the non-gnome component stooping to hear what he was saying.

"Listen," said Grott, quietly, "Things are worse than I though. We were supposed to arrive a week or so after we left. To tell you the truth, with things the way they are, I half expected this to happen. We might not be able to spend long here."

There wasn't much the rest of us could say to that.

"Don't worry," I said, trying to put at least a relatively brave face on things, "We shouldn't need to stay too long."

"So, Mrs Fengleworth," I said, brightly, straightening up, "How's Mr Nibbles? I haven't seen him around here."

The old lady's expression seemed to darken for a moment.

"They took him off me," she said, looking troubled, "They said we weren't allowed to keep pets."

The temperature in the room seemed to have suddenly dropped.

"Who's they?" I said, already knowing I'd regret hearing the answer.

"Those... metal people. The ones that wizard sent. You know, the one who reckons he's taking over the world, or something."

Oh dear. It didn't look as if the quality of living had increased substantially in the Howling wastes in the time since I'd left.

"Metal people?" I asked.

"Yes, metal men. They said we couldn't keep any pets, and I wasn't going to give up Mr Nibbles, and then they came and took him off me." She looked even more worried. "They said they'd be coming back."

"When?" said Maevrin, who was looking as concerned as I was at this disturbing chain of events.

"They said they'd be coming back tonight. Still," she said, suddenly brightening, "There must have been a mistake. I'm sure what they say they do in that factory's not true. I mean, they'd never allow it, would they?"

I stared at her in disbelief. Just what had our adversary been up to since we'd left?

I walked over to the window and looked out. What can I say? For somewhere known as the howling wastes to have taken a decisive turn for the worst probably tells you all you need to know. Suffice to say, if I hung around there any length of time, I'd be taking my holidays in Mordor. A nightmarish, twisted landscape greeted my eyes, tongues of flame occasionally licking its distorted surface, black clouds of smoke rising menacingly from vents in the rock. There was a disturbing feeling the land itself would burst upwards into the sky if it could, as if to escape, but was somehow pressed down by layers of corruption. I became suddenly aware of a vast, nightmarish shape rising in the gloom - the outline of a huge, fortress-like tower rising impossibly far into the black sky. It was standing exactly where Eldrigar's tower had stood. I pulled the curtains hurriedly.

"How the hell did you survive in the middle of that?" I said in disbelief.

"There didn't seem to be much else to do, really," said Mrs Fengleworth stoically, "I just stay inside, and the metal men bring me my ration, same as everyone else."

There was a heavy silence.

"What factory was that?" said Nigel suddenly, "You said something about taking people to a factory?"

"Oh yes," said Mrs Fenglworth, a complex series of expressions usually adopted by the user of a past it's sell-by-date memory when they're trying to dredge something up, "I think it was that gnome's place. That gnome's sandwich place, or something...."

"Barry the gnome's sandwich manufactory?" said Nigel excitedly.

"Yeah, that's the one. I expect that's where they've taken Mr Nibbles."

She looked suddenly sad.

Nigel looked thoughtful.

"Anyway," I said, hurriedly, thinking it better to change the subject "All we have to do is stay here and wait. I take it we're safe here for the time being?"

"Yes," replied Grott, "We are. From the outside, the cottage we merged with looks just the same. In fact, unless anyone were to walk up and actually knock on the door, there's no way they could ever find us."

He stopped and thought for a moment.

"Oh yes, I suppose that would a bit of a problem, wouldn't it. You know, you're going to laugh when you hear this, but that actually never occurred to me?"

"And what would that be?" I asked, a serial killer style smile materialising on my face. "I do hope you're not going to say something that will bring on one of my turns..."

"Your friend, or whoever it is we're suppose to be meeting -- he'll never find us when we're camouflaged like this."

That had to be the number one sinking feeling I'd had so far - and I'd had a fair few to compare it with.

Another thought, even worse than the last, occurred to me. I turned a sickly countenance in the direction of Mrs Fengleworth.

"These... visitors, the ones that are supposed to be coming tonight - how long would that be from now?"

"Oh," said Mrs Fengleworth, with surreal calmness, "I suppose that would be in a few hours."

One possible route of escape flickered into my mind.

"So can't we just leave?" I asked Grott, "Or just move somewhere else?"

"No," he replied, predictably, "We can't move for six hours or so - we have to wait for the energy reserves to build up so we can break free of this building."

"Grott, dear," said Mrs Fengleworth, while I gradually expired from certain doom syndrome, "I've just noticed - I didn't know you could talk..."

This was enough to drive my nerves over the edge.

"WAAAH!" I bellowed, waving my arms in the air, "WHAT THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?"

I passed a hand across my brow. It seemed I hadn't thought this one through...

Maevrin shot an "Oh what an intrepid leader.." look at me, which was hardly fair, and Mrs Fengleworth looked positively offended. Nigel looked as if he was worried enough on his own, without my help, and Gorgrod maintained his usual blank expression.

"There's no need to shout," said Mrs Fengleworth pointedly, evidently thinking this to be the most inappropriate thing possible, "Now, I've got some kippers I can cook up for you, if it'll make you feel better."

Kippers! Surely not kippers! Ever since I'd entered the kitchen, I thought I'd detected something wrong, and now I'd realised - it was the smell of kippers! Even now, the memory of all those years of intolerable haddock smells seemed to whiffle up into my memory with unnerving speed.

I hurried out of the room, muttering something about wanting to think things over, my mind full of grim, kipper related memories as I hurried up the stairs.

For a while, I paced about in my room, not really thinking about anything concrete, which was pretty much all I could come up with in circumstances. If you can't do anything sensible, wander about and gibber quietly to yourself, that's what I always say. After a while, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in, then," I said, tersely.

Maevrin poked her head around the door cautiously.

"Are you alright?" she asked, "You went a funny colour. At least, not one I've seen you go before."

"Alright, alright," I said, wearily, "Come in."

Maevrin entered and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at me with a mixture of concern and dubiousness. After a while, I stopped pacing about, and turned to face her.

"Well, everyone's got a weakness, OK? Mine happens to be the smell of kippers."

"Kippers?" said Maevrin, the expression of dubiousness waxing visibly.

"Yes," I said, "Kippers. You see, my parents had a fishmonger's shop. Still do, so far as I know."

My eyes must have taken on a dangerous glint, as Maevrin looked slightly worried.

"Fish was the problem - fish, I tell you," I continued manically, "I couldn't stand all that fish, all day every day. Fish, this, fish that - it drove me crazy. Can you imagine a more tedious fate? I ended up running away from home, to become a wizard. I'd heard about my Great Uncle from family friends, though my parents didn't talk about him much - they didn't think wizardry wasn't a good career path in the modern world. If it didn't centre around fish, and fish related industries, they weren't interested."

Maevrin seemed to struggle to work out what to say to this.

"Hmm, so you're telling me the reason why you wanted to become a wizard is because you didn't like fish?"

"Well, yes," I said awkwardly. Come to think of it, as a tragic/heroic back-story, it was a bit of a let down. I wished I'd included a dragon, or something.

I slumped down the chair by the computer.

"I ended up finding this empty tower, thinking it would be a good start. Didn't work out quite the way I'd planned, I suppose."

There was a short silence.

"Hey, don't be so down on yourself," said Maevrin, smiling suddenly. "You're only doing what you think is right - my parents never approved of my stamp obsession either, you know."

Her unexpectedly kind words caught me somewhat by surprise, and I stared back for a moment at her, trying to make out clearly the expression behind those impenetrable glasses. I'm sure it will come as a great relief to readers that at this moment, Nigel entered the room.

"Hey," he said, "I've been thinking."

"Err, yes?" I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed that I'd not been giving the certain doom scenario we were facing the full attention it deserved.

"The situation's like this, right? We can't leave yet, and we have to find this guy you're after, so that means leaving the tower, right?"

I'd realised this myself, I suppose, it was fairly obvious. I just didn't want to think about actually doing it. The only other thing I wished was that Nigel wasn't one of those infuriating people that won't stop saying "right?" whenever he was explaining something.

"So these whatever-they-are things are going to come here, right? Here's what we do - we go and sneak back into the factory, and create a diversion, so they don't bother coming to the tower. Best chance we've got, I reckon. Grott and me know this sneaky back way into the factory; there's an old tunnel that used to house an offal conveyor, and it leads to a derelict building across the road - we used to use it to creep in when we were late for work. We could get the chance to meet up with your friend while were out there, and you never know, we might even be able to rescue that old biddy's dog while we're at it."

I supposed I'd got to hand it to him. The only concern I had was that a group of highly skilled commandos would probably have trouble pulling off that kind of mission, whereas we... well, let's just leave it at that. I shuddered to think of the hidden dangers there could be out there, in that unnatural darkness that surrounded the tower.

"Still," I thought ruefully as I stood up, "We've got to start saving the world sometime..."

Come with me now, on a journey through time and space...

In 1924, Lord Harold Overcoat successfully circumnavigated his house no less than seven times on one historic afternoon. To this day, the means by which he achieved this unprecedented feat remain lost to history, for he took the secret to his untimely grave in the summer of '39. But the events of that afternoon have long been the stuff of local legend; it was said that the circumnavigation was an attempt to mend a broken heart, due to the tragic disappearance of his wife Lady Esmeralda Overcoat during the Great Peruvian Itchy-foot Outbreak of 1919. Recent historical research has proven this not to be the case, however, as electoral records clearly show she lived only three doors down the road. This has not deterred the telling of various tall tales in the town's pubs and taverns, most notably that on the night of a full moon, Lord Overcoat can still be plainly heard, circumnavigating house after house and letting out his mournful cry beneath the moonlit sky, looking for his lost love.

Lord Harold Overcoat
1886-1939

This is not his story.



Well, let's have a little thinkipoos, shall we? We last left our heroic hero about to recount his lovely plans to his intrepid band of followers. Once again I would like to remind you that the events you are about to read are entirely true and factually correct, and so far have not led to my untimely death or general insanity. GO!

***

I cast my eyes over my companions, the sweat from our near-death dash still very much in evidence on their foreheads. If this were a rubbish comedy film, it could well have been that at this point I might have got into a little huddle with them, leaving the viewer with the sound of dubious whispering which dissolves in one of those wibbly-wobbly kind of fadeouts. But thankfully, it wasn't.

"OK, here's the plan. What we need is the complete kick-bottom wizard type person to help us sort this business out once and for all, right?"

They stared at me blankly. Well, I suppose I couldn't really blame them.

"So what we need to do is go and get one, right?" I said brightly.

"Well, OK, who would that be, then?" said Nigel. "It's not like they're listed in the yellow pages."

"Isn't it obvious?" I said, looking at them hopefully and pausing for dramatic effect, "My Great Uncle!"

There was silence.

"Well, funnily enough, it's not that obvious," said Maevrin, "Seeing as we've never even heard of your Great Uncle, much less know anything about his wizarding abilities."

"Oh yes," I said, sheepishly, sails drooping windlessly, "I suppose I never did actually say anything about him, now you come to mention it. Well, I have it on very good authority that he was a first-rate white wizard. He's got to be the man to help us out."

"So hold on," said Nigel, "How exactly are we going to find him?"

"Easy," I said, "We take the tower back in time!"

Dubious would have been a bit of an understatement when used to describe the expressions that greeted this.

"Oh no," said Grott, a serious expression etched across his beknobbled countenance, "There's no way I'd do that. You do realise we would have to know exactly where he was at a specific moment in time, right? We're talking about time travel here - it's not the sort of thing you can do without careful planning. It's extremely dangerous at the best of times, and with the tower in a weakened state, we'd only have a day or so at the most before we'd be drawn back to our normal time frame."

That made things somewhat difficult. I thought for a while. It wasn't like I knew anywhere my Great Uncle would be at any particular time - I didn't even know where he'd lived. There was nothing else for it.

"We're going to have to go back home. To the world we came from, and ask the... err... contact I've got there." I said, trying to sound decisive despite the "err".

"Really," said Nigel, looking nervous, "Are you sure that's a good idea? Won't the universe start to unravel, or something? There's also a certain mad, all powerful wizard on the loose who, I dunno, might cause a few problems for us, yes?"

"We haven't got a lot of choice, really, have we? Unless anyone else has got a better plan?"

It seemed they hadn't.

"So who's this 'contact' of yours?" asked Maevrin.

A complex serious of expressions must have passed across my face as I though of how I could possibly describe the visitations of an inter-dimensional anthropomorphic brussels sprout, then decided that I couldn't.

"I know this is going to sound crazy," I said at last, "But this 'contact' of mine will hopefully just show up of his own account, we'll just have keep our fingers crossed on that one. Yes I realise it seems we're risking everything for something totally random," I said, seeing their expressions, "But you're going to have to trust me on this one."

"Well," said Grott at length, "I still haven't agreed to the whole idea of time travelling, but I suppose we really don't have anything to loose, except all your lives, of course," he said, grinning ghoulishly.

"What do you mean, 'all our lives'" said Nigel, turning to face Grott's goblin-like countenance, "Aren't you going to be doing the same?"

"No, I'm not," replied Grott, grinning, "I'll be out of here like a shot, first sign of trouble."

"Right," said Nigel, "That does it! Come here, you rotten little sod!", which was a rather ridiculous insult, as Grott stood at least a foot taller than him.

Nigel lunged forward, but Grott sidestepped neatly, sending him sprawling flat on his face.

"I'll just start the tower moving, shall I?" said Grott obsequiously, smiling smugly. Then he disappeared rapidly out of the room in his trademark blur.

Nigel got slowly to his feet (which was quite an achievement, as he didn't have far to go) muttering dark oaths under his breath.

"So who was this uncle of yours?" Maevrin asked me, "I had no idea you had a real wizard in the family."

"Ask me about it later," I told her, as a strange grumbling sound began, indicating the tower had started to move through whatever peculiar dimensions it travelled in.

Grott appeared once more by our side. No sooner had he done so, when the noise stopped again as suddenly as it had begun. Grott looked irritated.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"Heavy traffic." he replied vaguely.

"Umm... Heavy traffic? What?"

"Well, " said Grott, as if talking about something dull, like unblocking the drains, "There's quite a lot of traffic about in inter-space, you know. I've no idea where it all comes from, but there's a lot of it about, even on a sunday. I expect we're stopped at the lights."

Wordlessly, we all made our way over to the window. Grott opened it for me - it seemed the mysterious vortex itself was quite harmless. I poked my head outside, and did a double-take.

There was a whole queue of outlandish and bizarre vehicles stretched out in a long line, floating rigidly in space as if on a solid road. Just beside the tower, an old man was riding astride a large, red pillar box turned on its side. His complete nakedness was mercifully mitigated by his extremely long white hair and beard, which covered most of his scrawny body. Looking behind him, there was an extremely large penguin, with a head that appeared able to rotate a full 360 degrees. It was towing a horse box, and inside, the horse could plainly be seen wearing a top hat and smoking a cigarette from a long, elegant holder. The horse grimaced at me snootily as I stared at it, as if insulted I had the affront even to look. Beyond, there was a man dressed as what appeared to be the Greek god Zeus riding on jet powered roller-skates. He was engaged in throwing lightning bolts made out of various kinds of Italian pasta at a little tiny gnome-like man that he had attached to a piece of string, like a dog on a lead. Stretching away as far as the eye could see in the murky light, there were all sorts of outlandish shapes that I couldn't make out too well, which was probably a good thing. Turning my head and looking up the "road", I saw that there was indeed a set of traffic lights floating motionlessly in space, the red light glowing brightly against the dark, swirling vortex.

"Well, it's not so bad," said Grott, cheerfully poking his head through the window to join me, "We're practically first in the queue."

"Yes..." I said, vaguely, wondering, not for the first time, how it was possible that I was starting to get used to this sort of thing.

"How's it going there?" shouted Grott to the old man on the pillar box. The old man turned his head sharply in our direction.

"F**K OFF!" he screamed, at me for some reason.

We hurriedly closed the window.

"Really, there's no pleasing some people, is there?" said Grott, shaking his head. Just then, a green light shone at the window, and the bizarre scene disappeared entirely. It seemed we were moving again.

"So how long's it going to take to get back home again?" asked Nigel.

"Oh, a few hours, I expect," replied Grott, who had pulled a magazine from somewhere about his person and started reading it.

Hearing that, we all decided to have a bit of a rest on our own, having already had one alarming adventure that day. I headed up to my room and fiddled about on the computer for a bit, chronicling recent escapades for your reading "enjoyment". What exciting events would appear in the next blog entry? Only time would tell.

I don't know whether it had been the come-down from all that excitement earlier, but I must have dozed off at some point. I awoke with a start at a strange sound - the sort someone might make unblocking a toilet in a Salvador Dali painting. I realised with a sudden, horrible feeling that I didn't recognise the room I was sitting in at all...

I looked around cautiously. It was a bedroom, alright, but not one I could remember seeing. Or.... Could I? Something seemed strangely familiar about it. The decoration was odd to say the least. It was a bit like my room in a way, in that dark stone walls and various shelves were very much in evidence, but there seemed to be rather random pink, chintz decorations liberally festooned about the place as well. The whole shape of the room was different as well - my bedroom had been round, to fit the sides of the tower walls, but this room was a sort of buckled cube shape, as if it had been square, but the walls had then been pushed out into a convex shape by unknown means. There was a set of china flying ducks on the wall above the fireplace.

Then my eyes settled on a familiar sight. It was my long-suffering potion collection, and it was sitting on a cabinet that looked almost the same as the one it had always sat on, though this one seemed to have a flowery engraving on it that I didn't recognise. I suddenly realised that everything in the room was actually familiar - everything was in its normal place for my room, only changed and distorted in some strange way.

I got up, opened the door and went down the staircase, which was now only a gently curved single flight of stone steps, flanked with pictures of various unnervingly cute dogs. Wait a minute... Where had I seen pictures like that?

I didn't have much time to think. I arrived in the kitchen, which was now much bigger and much better stocked than it had been before. To my relief, the others were all standing about, looking confused, along with Grott, who was grinning in an "I know what's going on and you don't" kind of way. But there was another person standing with them, and seeing her I instantly realised where I'd seen decorations like the ones in the newly transformed Zarfang.

"Hello dear," said Mrs Fengleworth, "Fancy a cuppa?"

***

Graham Cardboard,
1933 - 1999

Graham Cardboard, inventor of the pocket trampoline, died last week at the age of sixty-six. An eccentric man, he was convinced he could levitate using the power of seedless grapes, and that he would drop dead if he found himself more that three hundred yards from a man-hole cover. Despite these unusual beliefs, he was immensely popular in the small town in which he spent all his life, and was especially popular with the local school children, who he would entertain by doing a little dance just outside the school grounds, long before this would have been considered creepy and suspicious. Due to his beliefs, he wore large, steel, manhole covers strapped to the bottom of his boots, a practice that is said to have considerably improved the spectacle of his dancing, and also made it easy to tell when he was coming. He died in what was described in the post mortem as a fit of shock three hundred yards from his home, after a bout of forgetfulness had led him to leave his house bare-footed.

His invention, the pocket trampoline, despite early success in Taiwan in the early seventies, never really caught on.

Graham Cardboard,
1933 - 1999