WARNING: this post is quite long, having a goat-slayingly impressive 700 words. This equates to roughly 0.3 londonmarks.
My desk at work has two drawers. The top one is quite shallow, and the bottom one is deep.
June 10
Age 7
My sister and brother are assholes.
Somewhere in my childhood self, an effusive diarist lurked.
I’m certain of it.
Had I mastery enough of my little hands to wield skinny sticks with lead or ink inside, my early years would be in paperback by now.
No, I’m sure I’d have been no Anne Frank, but she had that whole Holocaust thing going for her.
Um. That may have been in incredibly poor taste. Handbasket to hell? One ticket, please.
The Good Doctor Pockless sits enjoying his plain white coffee in his favourite armchair, with the rare inverted chockmark covers he had specially made in Kowloon. After a hard day knocking some nonsense into his students, all he wants is to be left alone, and he is thinking of going to the kitchen to get a nice plate of sardines.
As the Doctor leaves (stage left) Lyle walks in, with a dreamy look in his eyes and sits himself down in the armchair. He bounces up again, makes his way over to the Uberpercolator and hits the button marked ‘Inspirational Substances’, and as Hanni walks in hearing the sound of the coffee being ready, the shock of the noise of the Uberpercolator’s Whistle hurls Lyle across the room, broadsiding the Doctor’s coffee across the priceless armchair covers.
Hanni and Lyle shriek simultaneously and rush to wipe the staining liquid, banging their skulls together with a sickening thud. This renders Hanni unconscious and Lyle staggers around the stage groaning. The noise brings an inquisitive Adrian and D to the scene.
“What happened?” asks D, rushing to Hanni’s side. Lyle blathers and waves at the Uberpercolator, still staggering around. He groans, incapable of speech. “Come on,” says D, “we’d better get her to a bed.”
Adrian raises an eyebrow. He’s like that.
D grabs Lyle and forces him to help drag Hanni into one of the downstairs bedrooms. Adrian, taking whatever is available, picks up the cup from the Uberpercolator and drinks it. All of a sudden, he feels…a little…inspired.
“Woah,” says Adrian. He staggers over to and slumps into the only chair – the prized chair of Doctor Pockless, who conveniently arrives (stage left) carrying a plate of sardines.
He is so shocked that he drops the plate, covering our Adrian in fish. Muttering to himself in an old man style, the breaks the plate over Adrian’s head and wanders back off to the kitchen.
“Wow man, spaced,” says Adrian, and he begins to chew a sardine, absently.
The surprised cries of D and Lyle (now recovered) to find their colleague so covered in the fruits of the sea and shards of pottery brings a curiously melodic Shivery in from stage right. Her voice is so high that a window breaks, just in time to admit Not That Adrian, who pours himself an espresso and wanders upstairs to help himself to the jewellery, completely unnoticed by the astounded others, who spin round to see the redheaded songstress as she wanders over to the Uberpercolator and grabs a binful of espresso.
“Pretty fishlings,” says Adrian, turning a sardine this way and that in the light.
“What’s going on?” asks Shiv, slurping her coffee in a delicate way. D picks up a piece of plate.
“Something…” D blanches. He holds his breath. He begins to go purple.
“Are you all right?” asks Lyle. D goes blue.
“I think…I think he’s trying to resist it,” says Shivery, standing back.
“Resist what?”
“A gimme…” says Shiv. All of a sudden the air is rent with gas being released from great pressure. D rises several feet off the ground.
“SOMETHING….FISHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyy,” bellows D.
“Oh,” says Lyle. “I see.”
“Friendly fishy,” says Adrian, rubbing a sardine with his ear.
In pop Krissa and Pix, chatting between the two of them. They stop, halted by the scene of a heavy breathing D, Lyle trying to look innocent, Shiv hefting and sipping from a five gallon bin of coffee, and Adrian attempting to french kiss a sardine.
“Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight,” they say in unison, and help themselves to coffee.
“I love you, Mrs. Sardine,” says Adrian.
A frowning Green Fairy, her arm in a sling, storms in from Stage Right holding a muffin.
“Will someone please unwrap this for me?” No one reacts. Frustrated, GF stomps up to Adrian and thrusts the muffin into his face. Startled, Adrian loses his grip on Mrs. Sardine, who shoots up into the air and lands behind the armchair by the door to the kitchen. A yelp of despair startles even the Doctor in the kitchen, who opens the door into Adrian’s head as he scrabbles on the floorboards for his new friend. Another plate of sardines is broadcast liberally across all and sundry. Hanni emerges blinking from the bedroom in time to be covered in fish, and Adrian, recovering, pulls himself to his knees and swayingly blinks in the midst of the briney mayhem.
“I want to marry you, fishywishy.”
The room is curiously silent apart from the Doctor hitting the floor when he sees what has become of his extortionately priced armchair.
Righty yes, well hello there all you lovely people.
Whilst Kate, who is awake at must be an ungodly hour of the Californian night/morning, is working feverishly behind the scene* to produce something for the masses, I have been unceremoniously thrust from behind the curtain from the wings into the blinking limelight.
Pssst! Go on, do that coffee thing you do!
Righty. Ho. Then.
The Coffee Shop of Your Very Dreams has been transplanted to Uborka for your drinking pleasure. The decor is a cool mint green, lush pot plants swan lavishly around the borders of the room, and the ceiling fans spin ever so decorously above. Help yourself to a muffin from the bottomless bowls, but be quick about it – there’s an air of electricity about the place…
Because this is the Green Room, and this is the five minute warning…the curtain goes up in five, people!
Theatrical coffee for one and all. And remember; The Show Must Go On!
Orders please…
* – that’s right. Just the one.
STUART PROBABLY DIDN’T COME UP WITH ANYTHING TO WRITE BECAUSE HE WAS TOO BUSY SAYING MUSHY THINGS TO ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS OVER THE PHONE ALL WEEKEND
I. Good morning.
II. Kate and I would like to bid you glad tidings from our combined realms, in this, the beginning of the time of our visitation to The Domain Of The Cucumber.
III. Verily, Kate did say unto me, “Stuart! What shall we do?”
IV. And I did not answer. For I knew not.
V. “Even worrying about what you’re going to do has already been done, we’re being unoriginal even in this, the time of our deepest panic!”
VI. She spaketh the truth, and it did vex me.
VII. In this time we spoke of wit. We spoke of point and counterpoint. We spoke of argument and schism, of opposition and unity. Yet none was forthcoming.
VIII. In the wilderness of Hatfield I did wander, for forty minutes and forty seconds, pondering our predicament. And then, the clouds parted and the way ahead did become clear.
IX. Stall for time in a way that might pick up and become a theme.
X. So I say unto thee, the Uborkites of the World; do not wear slices of Uborka over your eyes, do not blinker yourselves so. Instead, brandish your allegiance in the form of a full Uborka, you will be seen to be a force to be reckoned with by people afeared of minor bruising and/or cucumber allergies, and thou shalt be able to see where you are going.
XI. Let It Be.
King Pete is closeted in his studyo, says he’s making music. Of course there’s always the chance that he’s looking at p0rn on the interweb, but since he discovered that some pedal bit of his drum kit was not in fact broken, as he believed, but only plugged into the wrong thingy, he has been humming a lot.
Even since his shower.
And I’m going through old Uborka posts, manually, with the intention of compiling a Best Of page. Most of the posts I’ve listed so far have been selected mostly for the funny comments. The audience really does write the best bits of Uborka.
On that subject, if there’s anyone out there with a yearning to branch out from their own weblog, we’re still accepting offers to guest on Uborka. We’d particularly like to hear from people who don’t have their own weblog, and people who’ve been reading but never commenting. Or A-listers who secretly read Uborka but would never admit it to their friends. Don’t worry, you can use a pseudonym.
Anyone want a cup of coffee?