The Good, the Bad and the Bishop of Ely
Created | Updated Sep 1, 2003
~THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE BISHOP OF ELY~
STARRING: Sir Hugo Montogomery and Dame Vera Amp
_____________________________________________________________________
EPISODE 1 - The Woman in Blue:
The bar fell silent as the stranger entered, his hood pulled up around his nose. He gave the assembled drinkers a cursory glance, and crossed to the bar. The bartender climbed to his feet. "What'll it be Mr... ur?"
"Ford," the stranger said, "Ford by name, Ford by nature."
The bartender gave him a look. It was an odd one. "How can you be a ford by your nature?" he demanded.
"Um... never mind," Ford said, "I'll have a pint."
"What of?"
Evidentally, Ford hadn't been expecting this, as it flung him somewhat. "Of... um... um... fanta," he said in the end.
The bartender frowned, nodded, and made the journey to the fanta pump. "For one called Ford," he said, "you're a long way inland."
Ford frowned at him. "You what?"
The bartender handed him the fanta, "Ford, Fjord, get it?" He asked hopefully.
Ford shook his head, and took a sip from his fanta, throwing a coin at the bartender. "So, anyway," said the bartender, once he recovered from being hit in the face with a coin, "what're you doing here Mr Ford?"
"I'm looking," Ford said, "for a rut... um, rat."
"No rats in my bar, no siree, my bar is 100% rat free." The bartender paused, "well, I say that, but you know they say that you're never more than 9 feet away from a rat... not in my bar. Once you're in my bar, you're 10 feet away from a rat."
"I'm looking for one specific rat," Ford said wiping the fanta from around his mouth.
"Oh yes? Can't really tell the difference myself?"
"Oh you can with this one. This one's made out of steel,"
"Steel, eh?" The bartender got a cloth and helped Ford to wipe his mouth.
"Yes... stainless steel."
"Like a saucepan? Or like in the books?"
"Shh, you mustn't mention the books, we're pretending we don't know about them." Ford said wiping at the spilt fanta.
"Oh, I see," said the bartender, wringing out his cloth. He looked at Ford and lowered his voice, "if you interested in finding out about rats, the best person to go and see is Sir Stella Resantess."
"Who?" Ford demanded.
"Sir Stella Resantess. Yes, I know, her name sounds suspiciouly like an anagram, but I can't for the life of me work out what it's an anagram of."
"Santa's Teller Rises?" Ford suggested helpfully.
"Could well be," the bartender said, going and fetching another cloth, "could well be..."
Unbeknownest to him, Ford's conversation had drifted over to a nearby table, where some rough looking chaps were playing cards. They didn't make this obvious just yet though.
Ford hummed to himself. "Yes." he said definitively. "Well, thank you for your help, you've been most .. er .. helpful."
He extended his hand, but rather than shaking it the Bartender just shook his head. "Steel Rat." he laughed, moving to the other end of the bar where a Giant Moose was waiting to be served. Ford turned on his heel and made to leave.
"Hold it right there, Varmit." said an actor with a bad American Western Accent.
Ford turned around. Before him was a gang of four and a half armed bandits (one of them was missing an arm). They grinned menacingly, as they kept their hand on their guns. He prepared to grip his, but then realised he only had a single bullet left. Don't ask how he realised this without actually taking the weapon from its holster and opening the barrel, that's too complicated to explain.
"We hear y'are asking 'bout the Rat." said one of the Bandits, whom Ford instinctively knew had the name Phil. He'd been facing people like this for years, and had learned to read the signs. He thought for a moment.
"Yes." he said heroically.
"We don' much like people asking 'bout the Rat." the Bandit said, chomping on his cigar and lighting a carrot. "Would'ya like to take this out into the stereotypical Western street outside, or would y' like to die here?"
Everyone in the Bar was now hiding beneath a table or chair, and that including Ford. But he soon realised his fate could not be put off, and he stood and prepared to make a witty remark.
"Alright then, Phil." he said to the Bandit, as they all walked out into the Stereotypical Wild Western Street.
The Bandit looked dimly at Ford. "Phil? Who's Phil?"
Ford blushed. Then he realised. "Hold on." he said to the Bandits. "This isn't a Wild West bar, why has the story suddenly turned into a Western?"
Instead of answering him, the Bandit prepared to fire his gun!
In another and less interesting corner of the bar, Wild Guns Bayliss (or Dead Eye Lance, or Six Shooting Baylis, or Quick Draw L, or Butch Baylisity, or The Baylis Kid, or Belly Flop (to his friends)) was sitting nursing half a pint of unspecified alcoholic beverage. Lance was halfway through getting his first aid badge at scouts, and all he needed to do now was help an alcoholic drink recover from a minor wound. This half pint was epileptic, and had just accidentally walked into a cinema showing "Disco Fever: Two and A Half Hours of Strobe Lighing, and Flashing Multi-Coloured Lights", and had been so shocked with the film that it had walked into a chair. Lance was helping it to recover.
"There we go," Lance said, once he had bandaged up the glass, "just don't walk on that for a few days, and you'll soon be as right as an English car's steering wheel."
Lance climbed to his feet, just in time to see a vicious gang of gansters aiming some vicious guns at an idiot. Maybe, he thought, some more beer glases would get broken, and he'd be able to go and do some first aid.
Meanwhile, Ford looked on as the Bandit prepared to fire his fun. "Right then," said the Bandit, pulling out an instruction book, "before firing your new Banger 4.5, make sure that everyone who is not to die, is positioned behind the firer, not in front (for details of what to do if gun is aimed in wrong direction consult Appendix 2, Troubleshooting). Take aim at target and prepare to press the activatation lever, positioned under the main body of the gun. Hold gun steady, and fully depress the activation lever (hereon known as the "trigger) marked 4.5 on Fig 5.6...." the bandit looked up. "Good grief, he's scarpered."
Another stupider and burlier looking bandit groaned, "not again, I told you last time to read the manual at home." The first bandit made a noise like a lawnmower running into a filofax.
Ford caught his breath, as he peered from the alleyway at the front doors of the bar. He sighed.
"Why is it always me?" he asked no-one in particular.
He was surprised when a nearby barrel answered him. "Because you're you."
Ford moved to the barrel, looked into it, looked around it and shrugged. "Guess I imagined it. For a moment I thought you'd talked to me."
The barrel replied "That's okay, I get that all the time."
Ford waited a moment for the Bandits to rush past and then returned to the bar. The Bartender regarded him curiously.
"You've got a lot of nerve coming back in here." he said.
"I've got to learn about the Rat." Ford replied.
"And I told you, you gotta go talk to Sir Stella Resantess."
Ford considered it a moment. "I know what it's an anagram of."
The Bartender looked shocked. Well, he looked slightly more shocked. Actually he just snorted and his eye twitched. "Do tell."
"It's quite obviously an anagram of ... Anna Gram!"
By this time, Bayliss had joined them. "That was mighty brave of you jest now, sir."
"Really? I don't know ... Anybody could have figured out that anagram."
"No silly, when you faced off against them Bandits ... you know who they were?"
"Bandits?" Ford guessed.
"Those were the 'Mysterious Monkey Gang' ... they's been robbin banks up and down the country." Bayliss told him. "They sure ain't gonna be happy when they find out you tricked 'em."
Ford smiled. He had worked this new guy out. "It's alright, you can ditch the phoney accent, Phil."
Bayliss was shocked. "This here is mah accent ... and who's Phil?"
Ford blushed. Again.
Meanwhile in wherever the Mysterious Monkey Gang were...
"Where are we, then?" the first bandit demanded happily.
"Well we ain't in that bar anymore, that's for certain." Another of the bandits said slightly less happily, "in fact, Ah'd say we're in the middle of a sandy set with plastic rocks and a model cactus."
The first bandit looked around uneasily, "Quick," he said, "back to the bar, before the tumbleweed appears."
"Why?"
"Don'tya know your movies?" The first demanded "When the tumbleweed appears those injuns will appear from behind those sand dunes and start shooting arrows, and hitting their mouths with their hands."
"Oh... dear... we'd better get back in side."
The Mysterious Monkey Gang hurried into a nearby Salon, mistaking it for a Saloon, and while they were there they all had their hair cut.
And, at exactly the same instant back in the bar...
"Right then, Bayleaf, it's time we went after this mysterious Anna Gram, who's name, depite all the rules of spelling, is an anagram of Sir Stella Resantess."
Bayliss looked up with his eyes. "You sure is a darn tootin' genius Mr Ford," he said evenly.
"Why thanks," said Ford oddly. "Now, where can we find Ms Gram?"
"Maybe she'll be with her relations, Tele, Kisso and Twenty Five." Bayliss snorted, falling on the floor laughing. Ford watched him coldly. He didn't get the joke.
"You could be right," he said, in a vain attempt to make a decent cliffhanger.
~END OF PART ONE~
You may think, as with previous stories, we're going to put a witty advertisement here. You'd be wrong.
~PART TWO~
Ford looked down at the floor. "Do you know," he ventured. "I think I know where to find Ms Gram."
"Really?" asked Lance. "And where would that be?"
Ford looked up at the stairway, leading into the top area of the bar. "Where else to women always end up being in Westerns? In the upstairs rooms, of course."
"I don't know." Lance admitted.
"Why not?" Ford asked.
"Because nobody has told me." Lance replied. "I was certain that Anna Gram worked at the Bank ..."
"Don't be willy man!" Ford exploded. Not literally, mind, but in a figureitive sense.
"Er ... don't you mean 'Don't be silly man'??" Lance corrected.
"I know what I meant!" Ford bistled, making sure his gunbelt was firmly attached. "To the upstairs bedrooms!"
"I don't want to ruin it for you," the Bartender said at last, having been listening from afar "But we don't have upstairs bedrooms in this Western bar. This is a family story."
Ford frowned. "So where am I to find Anna Gram?"
The Bartender pointed to the doors. "She works in the bank." He then went back to cleaning some glasses.
Ford and Lance made their way over to the bank on the other side of the street. And mere moments after they've left the bar, the Mysterious Monkey Gang return.
"Where's that varmit who got away earlier?" said the lead Bandit. "Don't tell me we missed him!"
"You missed him." the bartender joked, moments before being shot full of lead.
"Right then," said the first bandit, who had the strange habit of firing pencils at high velocity into his murder victims, "where to know?"
One bandit tentatively raised his hand at the back, "Shall we go and pick wild flowers, and press them, and make pretty pictures out of them?" he suggested.
There was a sickening pause, during which time, the tumbleweed which had failed to appear earlier, mysteriously appeared at the right of the bar and floated across to the left and dissapeared. In the distance a cow barked.
The first bandit turned to the one who had spoken, his fingers fondling the handle of his gun. The rest of the bandits held their breath, and some held random parts of their body.
At last the first bandit spoke, in a voice like thunder... talking... which it doesn't, but if thunder did talk, which it doesn't and never will, it would have spoken in a way not dissimilar to the way in which this bandit spoke. Now. And he said this: "Are there any pansy's around here?"
The bandit at the back, gulped.
"I think there are some round the back..." he said at last.
"Oh good, let's go and pick them then." The group of bandits hurried off.
~Exercise 4a: A La Banque~
Ford pushed open the door to the bank and peered in. "Kangaro?" he called, and then decided to try a more traditional conversation starter, and instead tried, "hello?"
A fat, plump, blulbous, portly, overweight, bank clerk looked up at him. "Ah, you must be the man from the ministry," he said, "take a seat over there by the toast, and I'll see to your garden hose problem later."
And so it was, that Ford (who was no relation at all to Harrison or Steven) and Lance (Who's middle name was Bertram) ended up in a bank, on a cliched Western set, mistakenly identified as men from "the ministry", and Ford managed to get toast crumbs all over his trousers.
~THE AND~
Is this "The End" then?" Bayliss asked.
"Yes." replied Ford as they walked into the sunset, only moments later realising it was a badly placed painted backdrop as they smashed up against it.
STARRING: Sir Hugo Montogomery and Dame Vera Amp
_____________________________________________________________________
EPISODE 1 - The Woman in Blue:
The bar fell silent as the stranger entered, his hood pulled up around his nose. He gave the assembled drinkers a cursory glance, and crossed to the bar. The bartender climbed to his feet. "What'll it be Mr... ur?"
"Ford," the stranger said, "Ford by name, Ford by nature."
The bartender gave him a look. It was an odd one. "How can you be a ford by your nature?" he demanded.
"Um... never mind," Ford said, "I'll have a pint."
"What of?"
Evidentally, Ford hadn't been expecting this, as it flung him somewhat. "Of... um... um... fanta," he said in the end.
The bartender frowned, nodded, and made the journey to the fanta pump. "For one called Ford," he said, "you're a long way inland."
Ford frowned at him. "You what?"
The bartender handed him the fanta, "Ford, Fjord, get it?" He asked hopefully.
Ford shook his head, and took a sip from his fanta, throwing a coin at the bartender. "So, anyway," said the bartender, once he recovered from being hit in the face with a coin, "what're you doing here Mr Ford?"
"I'm looking," Ford said, "for a rut... um, rat."
"No rats in my bar, no siree, my bar is 100% rat free." The bartender paused, "well, I say that, but you know they say that you're never more than 9 feet away from a rat... not in my bar. Once you're in my bar, you're 10 feet away from a rat."
"I'm looking for one specific rat," Ford said wiping the fanta from around his mouth.
"Oh yes? Can't really tell the difference myself?"
"Oh you can with this one. This one's made out of steel,"
"Steel, eh?" The bartender got a cloth and helped Ford to wipe his mouth.
"Yes... stainless steel."
"Like a saucepan? Or like in the books?"
"Shh, you mustn't mention the books, we're pretending we don't know about them." Ford said wiping at the spilt fanta.
"Oh, I see," said the bartender, wringing out his cloth. He looked at Ford and lowered his voice, "if you interested in finding out about rats, the best person to go and see is Sir Stella Resantess."
"Who?" Ford demanded.
"Sir Stella Resantess. Yes, I know, her name sounds suspiciouly like an anagram, but I can't for the life of me work out what it's an anagram of."
"Santa's Teller Rises?" Ford suggested helpfully.
"Could well be," the bartender said, going and fetching another cloth, "could well be..."
Unbeknownest to him, Ford's conversation had drifted over to a nearby table, where some rough looking chaps were playing cards. They didn't make this obvious just yet though.
Ford hummed to himself. "Yes." he said definitively. "Well, thank you for your help, you've been most .. er .. helpful."
He extended his hand, but rather than shaking it the Bartender just shook his head. "Steel Rat." he laughed, moving to the other end of the bar where a Giant Moose was waiting to be served. Ford turned on his heel and made to leave.
"Hold it right there, Varmit." said an actor with a bad American Western Accent.
Ford turned around. Before him was a gang of four and a half armed bandits (one of them was missing an arm). They grinned menacingly, as they kept their hand on their guns. He prepared to grip his, but then realised he only had a single bullet left. Don't ask how he realised this without actually taking the weapon from its holster and opening the barrel, that's too complicated to explain.
"We hear y'are asking 'bout the Rat." said one of the Bandits, whom Ford instinctively knew had the name Phil. He'd been facing people like this for years, and had learned to read the signs. He thought for a moment.
"Yes." he said heroically.
"We don' much like people asking 'bout the Rat." the Bandit said, chomping on his cigar and lighting a carrot. "Would'ya like to take this out into the stereotypical Western street outside, or would y' like to die here?"
Everyone in the Bar was now hiding beneath a table or chair, and that including Ford. But he soon realised his fate could not be put off, and he stood and prepared to make a witty remark.
"Alright then, Phil." he said to the Bandit, as they all walked out into the Stereotypical Wild Western Street.
The Bandit looked dimly at Ford. "Phil? Who's Phil?"
Ford blushed. Then he realised. "Hold on." he said to the Bandits. "This isn't a Wild West bar, why has the story suddenly turned into a Western?"
Instead of answering him, the Bandit prepared to fire his gun!
In another and less interesting corner of the bar, Wild Guns Bayliss (or Dead Eye Lance, or Six Shooting Baylis, or Quick Draw L, or Butch Baylisity, or The Baylis Kid, or Belly Flop (to his friends)) was sitting nursing half a pint of unspecified alcoholic beverage. Lance was halfway through getting his first aid badge at scouts, and all he needed to do now was help an alcoholic drink recover from a minor wound. This half pint was epileptic, and had just accidentally walked into a cinema showing "Disco Fever: Two and A Half Hours of Strobe Lighing, and Flashing Multi-Coloured Lights", and had been so shocked with the film that it had walked into a chair. Lance was helping it to recover.
"There we go," Lance said, once he had bandaged up the glass, "just don't walk on that for a few days, and you'll soon be as right as an English car's steering wheel."
Lance climbed to his feet, just in time to see a vicious gang of gansters aiming some vicious guns at an idiot. Maybe, he thought, some more beer glases would get broken, and he'd be able to go and do some first aid.
Meanwhile, Ford looked on as the Bandit prepared to fire his fun. "Right then," said the Bandit, pulling out an instruction book, "before firing your new Banger 4.5, make sure that everyone who is not to die, is positioned behind the firer, not in front (for details of what to do if gun is aimed in wrong direction consult Appendix 2, Troubleshooting). Take aim at target and prepare to press the activatation lever, positioned under the main body of the gun. Hold gun steady, and fully depress the activation lever (hereon known as the "trigger) marked 4.5 on Fig 5.6...." the bandit looked up. "Good grief, he's scarpered."
Another stupider and burlier looking bandit groaned, "not again, I told you last time to read the manual at home." The first bandit made a noise like a lawnmower running into a filofax.
Ford caught his breath, as he peered from the alleyway at the front doors of the bar. He sighed.
"Why is it always me?" he asked no-one in particular.
He was surprised when a nearby barrel answered him. "Because you're you."
Ford moved to the barrel, looked into it, looked around it and shrugged. "Guess I imagined it. For a moment I thought you'd talked to me."
The barrel replied "That's okay, I get that all the time."
Ford waited a moment for the Bandits to rush past and then returned to the bar. The Bartender regarded him curiously.
"You've got a lot of nerve coming back in here." he said.
"I've got to learn about the Rat." Ford replied.
"And I told you, you gotta go talk to Sir Stella Resantess."
Ford considered it a moment. "I know what it's an anagram of."
The Bartender looked shocked. Well, he looked slightly more shocked. Actually he just snorted and his eye twitched. "Do tell."
"It's quite obviously an anagram of ... Anna Gram!"
By this time, Bayliss had joined them. "That was mighty brave of you jest now, sir."
"Really? I don't know ... Anybody could have figured out that anagram."
"No silly, when you faced off against them Bandits ... you know who they were?"
"Bandits?" Ford guessed.
"Those were the 'Mysterious Monkey Gang' ... they's been robbin banks up and down the country." Bayliss told him. "They sure ain't gonna be happy when they find out you tricked 'em."
Ford smiled. He had worked this new guy out. "It's alright, you can ditch the phoney accent, Phil."
Bayliss was shocked. "This here is mah accent ... and who's Phil?"
Ford blushed. Again.
Meanwhile in wherever the Mysterious Monkey Gang were...
"Where are we, then?" the first bandit demanded happily.
"Well we ain't in that bar anymore, that's for certain." Another of the bandits said slightly less happily, "in fact, Ah'd say we're in the middle of a sandy set with plastic rocks and a model cactus."
The first bandit looked around uneasily, "Quick," he said, "back to the bar, before the tumbleweed appears."
"Why?"
"Don'tya know your movies?" The first demanded "When the tumbleweed appears those injuns will appear from behind those sand dunes and start shooting arrows, and hitting their mouths with their hands."
"Oh... dear... we'd better get back in side."
The Mysterious Monkey Gang hurried into a nearby Salon, mistaking it for a Saloon, and while they were there they all had their hair cut.
And, at exactly the same instant back in the bar...
"Right then, Bayleaf, it's time we went after this mysterious Anna Gram, who's name, depite all the rules of spelling, is an anagram of Sir Stella Resantess."
Bayliss looked up with his eyes. "You sure is a darn tootin' genius Mr Ford," he said evenly.
"Why thanks," said Ford oddly. "Now, where can we find Ms Gram?"
"Maybe she'll be with her relations, Tele, Kisso and Twenty Five." Bayliss snorted, falling on the floor laughing. Ford watched him coldly. He didn't get the joke.
"You could be right," he said, in a vain attempt to make a decent cliffhanger.
~END OF PART ONE~
You may think, as with previous stories, we're going to put a witty advertisement here. You'd be wrong.
~PART TWO~
Ford looked down at the floor. "Do you know," he ventured. "I think I know where to find Ms Gram."
"Really?" asked Lance. "And where would that be?"
Ford looked up at the stairway, leading into the top area of the bar. "Where else to women always end up being in Westerns? In the upstairs rooms, of course."
"I don't know." Lance admitted.
"Why not?" Ford asked.
"Because nobody has told me." Lance replied. "I was certain that Anna Gram worked at the Bank ..."
"Don't be willy man!" Ford exploded. Not literally, mind, but in a figureitive sense.
"Er ... don't you mean 'Don't be silly man'??" Lance corrected.
"I know what I meant!" Ford bistled, making sure his gunbelt was firmly attached. "To the upstairs bedrooms!"
"I don't want to ruin it for you," the Bartender said at last, having been listening from afar "But we don't have upstairs bedrooms in this Western bar. This is a family story."
Ford frowned. "So where am I to find Anna Gram?"
The Bartender pointed to the doors. "She works in the bank." He then went back to cleaning some glasses.
Ford and Lance made their way over to the bank on the other side of the street. And mere moments after they've left the bar, the Mysterious Monkey Gang return.
"Where's that varmit who got away earlier?" said the lead Bandit. "Don't tell me we missed him!"
"You missed him." the bartender joked, moments before being shot full of lead.
"Right then," said the first bandit, who had the strange habit of firing pencils at high velocity into his murder victims, "where to know?"
One bandit tentatively raised his hand at the back, "Shall we go and pick wild flowers, and press them, and make pretty pictures out of them?" he suggested.
There was a sickening pause, during which time, the tumbleweed which had failed to appear earlier, mysteriously appeared at the right of the bar and floated across to the left and dissapeared. In the distance a cow barked.
The first bandit turned to the one who had spoken, his fingers fondling the handle of his gun. The rest of the bandits held their breath, and some held random parts of their body.
At last the first bandit spoke, in a voice like thunder... talking... which it doesn't, but if thunder did talk, which it doesn't and never will, it would have spoken in a way not dissimilar to the way in which this bandit spoke. Now. And he said this: "Are there any pansy's around here?"
The bandit at the back, gulped.
"I think there are some round the back..." he said at last.
"Oh good, let's go and pick them then." The group of bandits hurried off.
~Exercise 4a: A La Banque~
Ford pushed open the door to the bank and peered in. "Kangaro?" he called, and then decided to try a more traditional conversation starter, and instead tried, "hello?"
A fat, plump, blulbous, portly, overweight, bank clerk looked up at him. "Ah, you must be the man from the ministry," he said, "take a seat over there by the toast, and I'll see to your garden hose problem later."
And so it was, that Ford (who was no relation at all to Harrison or Steven) and Lance (Who's middle name was Bertram) ended up in a bank, on a cliched Western set, mistakenly identified as men from "the ministry", and Ford managed to get toast crumbs all over his trousers.
~THE AND~
Is this "The End" then?" Bayliss asked.
"Yes." replied Ford as they walked into the sunset, only moments later realising it was a badly placed painted backdrop as they smashed up against it.
