h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Across the top are knots and rope,
The next, 'oares cross'd', for rowing.
Below that tier some pins appear,
'For expertise in sewing'

Well hidden on the left hand sleeve
The "knife and fork" - for cooking
Below which Mr Natural
Urged him to "Keep on Trucking"

It's doubtful whether critics will
(In aeons yet to come )
Bestow much time on Grimley Moer's
New incunabulum.

This curious text on Merit Badges,
(Surely marginalia,)
Can only seriously be classed
As balladeering failure.

Of course within the broader text
A sub-text will be found
As any de-constructionist
Who works this fertile ground

To excavate the references
Like bones beneath their mounds.
It's what they pay professors for
In tax-payers' hard-earned pounds.

It may be thought, in years to come
That references to Apollo
Denote respect to classic muses
( See the line I follow? )
Though classics here in Grimley
Would be Moer than most could swallow!

The Apollonian boy-scouts
And their Apollonian maids
Wear a special condom merit-badge
Coz they're aware of AIDS.

Of course, the critics tell us that
In such a mode of dress,
They're Dionysiac - rather more -
And Apollonian - less.

Dear Reader, if by now you feel
That things have got confused,
Remember that in Grimley Moer
We long ago refused
To leave one stone unturned, not one
Irrelevance unused,
So long as it's all nonsense
And the writer is amused.

The reader's lot is just to grin
And groan, or maybe laugh,
As miles of empty persiflage
Drift by like so much chaff.

Don't search these lines for meaning
Or coherence, or a plot,
The central thread of Dandy's quest
Abandoned ( not forgot )
Will surface soon, or later,
And will make more sense, or not.

Just rest assured, we do our best
To fill our oeuvre with passion
( From "patior," Latin, "suffer,")
In the best post-modern fashion.

It puzzles me to think we've come
So far into this tale
Of Grimley, its' inhabitants,
The church, the pubs, the ale

Beyond a thousand verses now and
And yet to hear report
Of the wonder that is Grimley
International Air-o-Port

Splendidgeously constructed from
The finest Conkerite
It could be seen for miles when all
The lights came on at night

A runway started near the end
Of Limping Lepers' Lane
And ran the entire length of what
Had once been Grimley Plain

The tower with its' radar dish
That scanned the empty skies
Had long since lost the interest
Of most of Grimleys' eyes

They know it as 'the fack-tree'
And they pay it no more mind
Assuming it makes biscuits
Or confections of some kind

For though it comes complete with
Terminals one, two and three,
A host of check-in desks,
Departure lounge and duty-free

There's no-one there to use them
By either day or night
As those who live in Grimley
Have not yet discovered flight

Beneath the Grimley viaduct
On Limping Lepers Lane
Two beady little eyes are taking
Shelter from the rain

Whilst peering through binoculars
They sweep across the scene
From multi storey car-park to
Departure gate fourteen

As glumpness falls on Grimley as
It does each night at eight
A shadow slips out of itself
Down by the Fack-tree gate

Beneath the watching eyes there now
Appears a knowing smile
Upon a mouth which says
“Hello my friend, it’s been a while”

The ghost of Corporal Custard
Of the forty second flight
Of Grimley volunteers brigade
Was itching with delight

“A fine day for a holiday”
The ex-old bugger thought
While checking in at Grimley
International Air-o-Port

Completely unaware that in
The present futures’ past
Complete existence failure would
Be his thanks to the blast

Which ripped his continuity
From where it once had been
And left him somewhere to the left
Of some place in between

He’d just checked in and made his way
To get a cup of tea
When time itself collided with
A chrono-biking flea

Which caused a chronoplosion of
The twenty first degree
The consequence of which no one
Could possibly foresee

And so now centuries earlier
He'd found himself at last
And this time he would put his future
Firmly in the past

The eyes of Corporal Custard set off
Briskly down the lane
To catch up with themselves before
They blew apart again

and now that he's been and gone
and everywhere between
so far up in the skies

he reached up and he grabbed the stars
and all the magic that he's seen
now put his head between his legs and kissed his a** goodbye

At some time in the future
It was said by those who know
That Grimley was a wondrous place
As modern cities go

At least until disruptions to
The chrono-logic flow
Caused who knows what to what knows who
And what was who to know

A meeting of the back to front
Brought endings to a start
As eons merged and centuries
Of now were blown apart

In what would soon be known as what
Was known to soon not be
And that which wasn’t any more
Was not what it should be

The moral (if there was one)
Would most probably be
Don’t let your chrono-bike be ridden
By the Flergal Flea

Meanwhile, on the far side of Time, beyond the Blaggerty chronoportal, Dandy wanders bewildered in Tirnanogue.
ooooooooooooOOOOOoooooooooooo

"Ochone, ochone," the ogre's groan
Rang round our hero's ears
"Ochone, ochone," a morbid moan
Accompanied by tears.

The ogre groaned in misery
"I've lost my mobile phone,"
He put dark glasses on his nose,
"I vont to be alone."

"Vot's happened here in Tirnanogue,
Vy is it all so grim?"
He seemed perplexed, and somewhat vexed,
Something tormented him.

"Vot's happened to our land of youth,
Vere did it all go bad?"
He seemed upset, he seemed to fret,
He seemed, quite simply, sad.

"Excuse me, sir," said Dandy then
"Are you in need of succour?"
The ogre looked through teary eyes
And his trembling lips did pucker.

"I vont to be alone," he said,
"But please don't go avay,
My tale is long and very sad
And could well last all day."

"Ochone, ochone and pogue mahone,"
The ogre groaned in grief,
"I'll sing my song - it's far too long -
Sure, how could it be brief?

Alas for Tirnanogue, alas
This land of light and truth,
This land of never-ending pints
And bright eternal youth.

A kind of Paradise it was
Of never-fading day,
Where flesh was golden, smooth and firm
And never a hair was grey.

Green were the trees and green their leaves
And emerald green the grass,
And green the eyes of the dragon-flies,
But now? All things must pass.

Alas, alas, all things must pass,
The Age of Gold has faded.
The elixir of endless bliss
Is powerless, kaput, jaded.

Our golden world of emerald green,
Our dream has gone astray,
And small grey men live small grey lives
In a world of concrete grey.

Our emerald grass is an underpass
For a highway rent with screams,
Where each grey mind in its grey steel box
Speeds to its concrete dreams.

There was a time, a timeless time
When giants strode our earth,
Like mountains on the move they were
With belts of monstrous girth.

Their red heads blazing like the sun,
Their buttocks like the moon,
With mighty thighs and glittering eyes
Both hero and buffoon,
And mighty lovers, all of them
That never came too soon.

And mighty were their women-folk,
Like ripe fruit fit to burst,
Prodigious were their appetites
And mighty was their thirst.
And powerful were their curses too -
God help the man they cursed.

Where are the mighty heroes now
The golden lads of old?
The emerald world of Tirnanogue
Is withered, grey and cold,
Where small mean men with small mean minds
Think leaden truth is gold,
And nothing is important if
It can't be bought and sold.

Come all ye wandering Dandies now
And listen to my song,
A song of ancient Tirnanogue
And how it all went wrong."

A small grey man in grey steel box
Tuning his radio
By happenstance did come to chance
Upon the Grimley Show

A damsel with a dulcimer
And voice of cooing
Was reading this here epic, and
Had reached the lines above

"I'm glad" he thought "I didn't live
When giants strode the earth"
Just then a monster lorry passed
Leaving him little berth

He panicked, swerved, then lost control
And landed in a ditch
That's all you're going to hear of him;
He's dead. His name was Mitch.

Apollo sat and scatched his head
Reading his pocket pooter
His orders said "When Flea is dead
Bring back its gold pea-shooter"

He'd learnt about the Flergal Flea
In briefings for his mission
And how it shot out golden peas
From some obscure position

Now Custard's spent a lifetime
In attempt to reunite
The parts of him dispersed by
Random Flergal chrono-flight

Since one night in the future as
He left for Megaloof
When time got off its' roundabout
And said 'enoof's enoof!'

So now he's found the airport
He awaits the very flight
That meets with such disaster on
That yet to happen night

The flea would soon be there and things
Might not have been so bad
If he hadn't broke the cyclic metro-doodle
But he had

This has the strange effect of splitting
Strands of time in two
Whilst others tie themselves in knots
As strands so often do

The moment stretched across the whole
Of time and back again
And where an airport once had stood
There now stood Grimley Plain

The home to several dozen
Psychometric Tantramoles
With long established rights to dig
For pleasure or for coal

Now Custard hopes to see things put
Back in their rightful place
He's packed an extra batch of cheese
And chutney just in case

But hasn't made allowance for
Precession of the poles
And neither have a pair of
Psychometric Tantramoles

So this time when the Flergal Flea
Arrives he isn't met
By two hundred and twenty people
On a jumbo jet

And Custards' realignment of
The airport and the plain
Must wait until the chrono loop
Repeats itself again

Meanwhile a pair of tantramoles
Are startled as their tea
Astonishingly turns itself
Into the Flergal Flea

So meanwhile in another part
Of Gimleys’ mighty tome
Green skinned Brigit Twiddleditch
Has time knots of her own

The way ahead was simple for
She had a magic map
But didn’t understand it and
She got into a flap

By flying sheds through space and time
And causing much confusion
Until a blast at Glurry brought
The shed to its’ conclusion

So there she was confused and bruised
No closer to the gold
With which she’d gild the steeple here
In Grimley, so we’re told

And in tabloid attempt to make
The story more compelling
She’s fallen for her duplicate
(In everything but spelling)

And also, (though relations with
Themselves less complicated)
The Sage and Blay the Bard are
Similarly duplicated

One pair here with Brigit
And her parallel Bridgéd
The other two remain from whence
The Flergal flea has fled

Upon the Sages’ chrono-bike
It seems so long ago
They must be bored and Kyuwar Tea
Supplies are getting low

But there they are and there they’ll be
Till someone takes the baton
On hearing that the Bard sits back
And rolls another fat ‘un

So there it is, apologies
For owt that I forgot
*Here come a dozen balladeers
To further twist the plot







*may not be factualy correct

(Back in Tirnanogue, meanwhile, the ogre groans on...)

"There was a time," the ogre groaned,
"There was a time," groaned he,
"When Tirnanogens lived in bliss
Footloose and fancy-free,
Where melons grew like bindweed
And we'd ogens for our tea.

When skies were blue and grass was green
And virgins walked the land,
And unmolested every night
They danced to the crossroads band.

In every farm there was a cow,
A chicken in every pot,
And bean-rows buzzed with honey bees
Where bolts were never shot,

Pot was in every chicken, which
Was never killed but stoned,
Thereafter neatly plucked and stuffed
And roasted, rolled and boned.

And every morning's sunripe dawn
Was greeted by the cocks,
And every farmer, at dawn's crack,
Was up to oil the locks.

And every youth was golden then,
And all the old were wise,
And girls looked sweetly at their men
For love was in their eyes.
No Gwubbershub had bought their souls
Nor sold them soothing lies,
No tabloid magazines spread out
Lewd pictures of their thighs.

For Tirnanogue was purer then,
And life, if sometimes dull,
Was pastoral, idyllic sure,
And bellies all were full.

But then the Gwubbershub arose
Who knows from whence he came,
His thirst for gold, and earth's black blood
Has been our Tirnan's shame.

Who could resist the Gwubber's spells
His softly soothing song?
His words were few, and very short,
In short his songs weren't long.

What bard could stand to face his spell
For who could understand
The Gwubber's words, which rarely made
Much sense in any land.
But fearful were his dreadful spells
And the wights at his command.

Ochone, ochone, I'm on me own
No one would hear me cry,
I said that Gwubbershub was death,
Too many longed to die.

For time ran slow in Tirnanogue
Like treacle through a bung,
That's why our country once was called
The land of ever-young.

No more, alas, alas no more
No lass, nor more or less,
Gnome ore, you see, was our demise,
Dem eyes I must confess
Looked on with greed as the Shub indeed
Brought evil, gold and stress.

Our grass so green is no more seen
All buried beneath the grey,
Our once-proud males run miles of malls
By Gwubber's motorway.

Ochone ochone, my heart of stone
Bleeds tears of anguished blue,
The GwubberShub has cast his spell.
What can an ogre do?"

"What can an ogre do, indeed?"
Bethought the Dandy lad,
"He's wedded to his misery
His song is grim and sad.
I'm off, I need a holiday,
Am I a callous cad?

"I'll hie me hence ( don't fence me in )
To contemplate my fate,
For "Ware the dreaded Shub" she said -
Said who? My witchy date!
It seems I must the Shub seek out
This side of Tirnan Gate."

Yes folks, 'tis time again to go
A-Grimley balladeering.
I'm off to western parts, if wet
More verse you'll soon be hearing.

The Moer may briefly fade from view,
(Her poets take a breather,)
But give it time, you'll hear the chime
Of Grimley through the ether.

"Who dares the pen take up again?"
The challenge brazen rang.
The herald raised his flonker
And struck a mighty "twang"!