'Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do

But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues... '

So sang Eddie Cochran, and boy, do I know how he feels. Ice cream is so much more expensive, there's nothing on the telly and you can't wear the same pair of underpants for more than one day running.

Summertime is the time, as everyone knows, when that huge shambolic lyric-monster Cliff Richard comes out of hibernation. His alarm clock goes off first of all. It is in the shape of jesus wearing sunglasses and it goes off with a recorded message saying 'Hey, wake up, daddy-oh, winter is over and its time to go snuffling for groundnuts again...' He clambers out of his three acre bed and stumbles to the fridge for a beer before making his way from Shropshire to London, tearing the roofs of buildings on the way and eating the terrified peasants within.

When he gets to London, the police are already there to meet him. But far from arresting him, placing him on trial and firing him into space, they actually escort him to Hyde Park and put him inside a huge bouncy castle where he plays to an audience of fifty million. During the concert, one woman becomes so excited that she has a baby. That baby then grows up and in the year 2030 invents a computer that measures how many peas can fit into a single tin can. All of this terrible waste of human potential could have been prevented. We just need to move the sun back a bit.

Now, of course, there's always going to be some jobsworth telling me that its impossible to move the sun just because I don't like Cliff Richard. I mean, they go on and on about ecosytems and global winters, and I mean, its just so frustrating isn't it? I usually turn to them and say - 'Hey, man, just do it!' Like, I'm sure people told Robert Oppenheimer that his idea for a massive great big bomb was going to cause this problem and that problem, but that didn't stop him did it? No! So, I'm not going to be put off by a few moaning minnies telling me not to move the sun. So, that's why I telephoned an astrophysicist this morning.

'I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler

About a workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar'
'

...I said, figuring that it would be good to quote Eddie once again. And he said:

'Summertime blues? Summertime blues? Have you ever spent your summer in the sixth dimension, young man? You don't know how lucky you are. Imagine, an ice cream costs a million pounds! Imagine having to listen to seventeen bendy shaped Cliff Richards all singing at once! And singing backwards too! Llod Gnivil sounds many factorials worse than Living Doll, let me tell you. And don't even get me started on what happens to my underwear.'

'So' I asked 'You'll move the sun for me then?'

'Of course not, fool¹. It's impossible to move the sun. But I'll do your maths homework for a fiver'

Well, I didn't even bother to tell him that I don't do maths homework anymore. I enjoyed doing it once, long ago, and I kept trying to do it right up until the age of twenty eight, which was when my maths teacher got that court order made. But let me tell you this...

You know when you are walking down the street and you see a tramp, doddering about in the summer sun, shouting at the birds, with a piece of string around his waist? And you know how someone usually says: 'You see that unfortunate gentleman over there? Its such a shame you know... he used to be an astrophysicist.' ²?. Well now I know why they say that. And I've always wondered why people say that about me.

It's the penultimate paragraph. That is always a cause for celebration in my book, but it is especially so for readers from Britain³, as this paragraph has been carefully hand carved from a single piece of carrarra marble just for your elucidation and enjoyment. Living in Britain, and reading this, you have probably been thinking 'The sun? What's that? Does he mean the newspaper?'. And I am here to tell you now that the sun is that big yellow thing you sometimes see from behind the clouds after it has finished raining. If you close your eyes and imagine that thing, shining away, with no clouds, sometimes for weeks! - then you might get an idea of what I mean by 'summertime' here. Now you can read this all over again and get a whole new experience, though I'm not sure what that experience would be, or even if it would be an advisable one.

'I'm gonna take the weeks, gonna have a fine vacation

I'm gonna take my problem to the United Nations'

Yes indeed, Eddie. My thoughts exactly. And if they can't shift the sun, then I'll just have to call Magnus Pike or Rolf Harris. Anyway, if you, dear reader, have any ideas or suggestions, please send them, on the back of a postcard to - 'Funderlik Productions, 57 Madeup Avenue, Taxhaven, Tierra Del Fuego' and please enclose ninety seven Tierra del Fuegan sheckles for postage and packing, and a can of beer, preferably sellotaped to the side.

Dr Funderlik's Regular Grunt Archive

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