The Dog With The Bakelite Nose

By Ian Hutson

Ten slightly mouldy slices of England’s brilliant future failures, each successfully consigned to the pre-apologetic, more successful past. Wonderfully tragic beginnings meet gruesomely happy endings, miserable lives wallow in cheerful second chances. Old-fashioned blokes, being blokes, doing awfully modern bloke things such as inventing stuff and exploring space, but with not a caricature or stereotype left undisturbed. The science is ridiculous, the plots are risible. The opening line of the first story is “Awoogah! Awoogah!” and that’s got to be one heck of a clue. This is England’s beautiful, bumbling, blue-blooded belligerence, lovingly portrayed in properly-punctuated, politically-incorrect, purple prose.

Enjoy tales of rocket-ships crewed by utter idiots, of hung-over gurus struggling to meet demand, of some minor problems with the shape of the moon and of how we, the Smiths and the Browns and the Greens, side-stepped the rat-race, won the space-race and lost touch with the human race.

This book is not about dogs, there are only two in the whole text and they are mentioned but incidentally. The characters in this book are much less well-adapted to the modern world than are either the Collie or the Labrador – they are Englishmen.

The Dog With The Bakelite Nose
The Rarest Gift Of All
The Omnibudsman
The Man Who Invented Extremely Wet Water
Dry Sherry And Victoria Sponge In Space
Take Me To Your Leader
A Simple Matter Of Suitable Transportation
Woomera, We Have A Problem
Pendulum Swing, Pendulum Do
Voting Makes You Free

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Hutson
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370765348

Ian Hutson

Born during tiffin in the sea-side town of Cleethorpes, England, in the year nineteen-sixty. The shame and scandal forced the family to move immediately to Hong Kong. There spoke only Cantonese and some pidgin English and was a complete brat. At the end of the sixties was to be found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Still a brat. Finally learned to read and write under the strict disciplinarian regime of the Nicolson Institute and one Miss Crichton. Then spent a year living in Banham Zoo in Norfolk, swapping childhood imaginary friends for howler monkeys and gibbons. Literally in the zoo, to get home he had to go through the entry turnstiles, past the wolves, past the bears and past the penguins. Didn’t bother with the local school for the entire year, and school was grateful.Found himself working for the English Civil Service. Was asked to leave by the Home Secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant. A few years of corporate life earned some more kind invitations to leave. Ran a few unfortunate companies. Went down the plug-hole with the global economy and found himself in court, bankrupt, with home, car and valuables auctioned off by H.M. Official Receivers. Lived for some years then by candlelight in a hedgerow in rural Lincolnshire as a peacenik vegan hippie drop-out. Now lives on a canal boat, narrowboat Cardinal Wolsey, rushing up and down England’s canals and rivers at slightly over two miles per hour. Wrestles with badgers.Dog person not a cat person. Dogs and cats both know this.

Book preview

The Dog With The Bakelite Nose

[Not about dogs.]

Ian Hutson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Ian Hutson 2018

Published by The Diesel-Electric Elephant Company

England

Discover other books from Ian Hutson at

dieselelectricelephant.co.uk

This eBook is licensed for your personal use and enjoyment only.

CONTENTS

The Dog With The Bakelite Nose

The Rarest Gift Of All

The Omnibudsman

The Man Who Invented Extremely Wet Water

Dry Sherry And Victoria Sponge In Space

Take Me To Your Leader

A Simple Matter Of Suitable Transportation

Woomera, We Have A Problem

Pendulum Swing, Pendulum Do

Voting Makes You Free

The Dog With The Bakelite Nose

AWOOGAH! AWOOGAH!

The camp’s klaxon seemed to bypass the human ear altogether, preferring to burrow directly into the ground-crew’s stomachs, filling each to capacity with sabre-tooth butterflies.

HMSS Beagle was coming in to land, and she was coming in hot and fast!

Beagle’s space-weary nose-cone and battered fins were girding their loins for the coming battle with England’s sweet, sweet atmosphere. Her retro-thrusters were clearing their throats like retired rugby stars preparing to take to the field for one last cameo appearance before an adoring home crowd. Her crew were forming anxious queues outside the lavatories, and some of the more worldly-wise towards the ends of the long queues had brought their own supplies of soft, quilted, aloe-enriched Space-Andrex.

Beagle’s target, the Royal Space Force station at Banham in Norfolk, had, quite naturally, been placed on full Red Alert. In fact, in a move not seen since the end of the Really Quite Cold War, the Red Status Bulb above the Gatehouse door had been switched on, thus demonstrating a wholly devil-may-care attitude to the armed forces electricity bills.

Oil-splattered mechanics with truly dreadful fingernails were working flat-out to put the wheels back onto the station’s Bedford fire engine. In the vast Medical Centre, both patient-beds had been made up with relatively fresh linen, although it has to be said that the hospital corners served only to illustrate the unbridgeable cultural gulf existing between medics just putting in their National Service time in the safest post they could wangle and high thread-count Egyptian-cotton Euclidean geometry.

Electrical Contractors were fiddling about up ladders, trying to trace the wiring fault that kept setting the station’s ruddy klaxon off. AWOOG-OUCH! AWOOG-AHA! AWOOG-UM? AWOOG-ER? AWOOG-OOH... AWOOG-A-WOOGA-WOOGA-SAID-THE-MONKEY-TO-THE-CHIMP (as sung by one of the contractor chaps while prodding and poking about, his early childhood having been dominated by hour upon hour of Sing Something Simple on the family’s Grundig wireless set each Sunday evening).

In truth though, the sentiments of the klaxon weren’t far wrong - there had barely been time to make any kind of serious preparation; just a fortnight since the radio-telephone call that would go down in history along with similarly fraught calls that must surely have been made before Hastings and Agincourt and Crécy and Milton Keynes.

The long journey to Red Alert Status had begun when Captain Faraday of HMSS Beagle had called to advise the ministry that there had been a few problems on their recent voyage of exploration, a voyage to go, so to speak, where Englishmen had not been before, to seek out new life and new civilisations and to chat with them a bit over a pot of tea. Towards the end of their five month mission they had indeed found one such new form of life, but it had proven to not be terribly friendly. Tea had not even been on the social horizon, let alone the friendly sharing of a packet of Custard Creams or Garibaldis.

MI3 had very kindly offered a high-quality recording of this momentous call to the nation, explaining that it had been intercepted accidentally and recorded for the purposes of posterity rather than as part of any distasteful blanket monitoring of the nation’s communications, ahem, ahem, cough, cough. MI3 had an awful lot of very nifty open-reel tape-recorders manufactured by Messrs Mains Radio Gramophones Ltd., of Yorkshire, and MI3 thus were in a splendid position to selflessly save many such conversations for the nation, just for posterity, once accidentally intercepted. It seemed that nobody worried about their electricity bills. Well, nobody who lived to tell the tale, anyway. The last such whistle-blower had been killed in a terrible accident involving an exploding whistle, and had had to be interred by undertakers specialising in the tasteful burials of musicians killed by blocked trumpets, sabotaged trombones and high-pressure blow-back from incorrectly or poorly-serviced tubas.

The fateful telephone call in question had itself had begun with the sundry rattles and clicks of Strowger switchgear at the exchange, and these details have been edited out in this account both to save time, and because the author has no idea how to adequately represent them using the letters of the English alphabet. Possibly foreigners with their accents and peculiar little hats and bubbles and upside-down nonsenses under, over and alongside letters may be better equipped than an Englishman to represent the thrrrrppp click click click click click thrrrppp click click thrrrppp click click click click click ba-donk fizz rumble thrrrppp etcetera of a well-worn Post Office Telephone exchange, but who really cares, eh? We join the call at the first human interaction, quite some time after Captain Faraday had dialled O f f i c i a l B u s i n e s s using the secret, emergencies-only letters painted under the numbers on all rotary telephone dials both civilian and military.

‘Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there? I am trying to reach the government’s secret telephonist. I need to get through to one of those important numbers that ordinary little people can never reach. This is Captain Faraday, do you see? I am in outer space. In a space-craft. I’m not an alien or anything, I am a human. Hello? Hello? I hesitate to use the phrase, but, well, can you hear me, Mother?’

‘Yes, Captain. Secret Telephone Service Operator Gladys Wilmslow here. Please accept my apologies for the delay in answering your call, there’s a bit of a flap on here, and everyone’s rather stretched – we’ve been fielding nearly several calls an hour between the three-dozen of us on duty, and we’re all pretty tired, I can tell you. I am aware of your mission, and may I say that we here in the Secret Telephony Department are not unappreciative of your work, Captain. What number do you require?’

‘Oh, thank you. No problem at all. My pleasure. Um - Whitehall two please.’

‘Putting you through now caller. You’re on the secure scrambler so no-one else wig tubzlds shbdux agtworggi ouhg jjhdudsytg huaststsgx a thing that you say...’

Rather uncharacteristically, the number rang several times before it was answered and it was answered at that by a voice that was quite obviously beset by some seriously demanding departmental exigencies. The most immediate exigencies, from what Faraday could make out, sounding to be juggling hot Darjeeling infusions and Ginger Nuts over a soggy desk-blotter. He rather gathered that the person who took the call had just dropped one.

‘Oh bugger! Hair lair. Whitehall two. Rothwell-Tottergently here, apologies for the delay in answering – we’re in a bit of a flap. How may I help you?’

‘Is that Sir Rothwell-Tottergently, Minister for the Royal Space Force?’

‘It is. Is that you, Faraday? The line’s not terribly good, where are you callin’ from? The country?’

‘Outer space.’

‘Oh gosh, not back yet then? How’s it goin’? Find any little green men for us?’

‘Yah - that’s rather why I’m calling. Found some little blue ones. Got a couple of hundred of the blighters stowed away in the hydroponics bay and I’m having the devil of a time getting rid of them. Look, this is strictly entre nous, but I feel that I ought to come straight to the point without beating around the bush or wasting valuable time on euphemisms or dancing around the matter at hand when there’s really no avoiding the issue. I rather think that they want to invade England.’

‘England? Invade? Did you say that they want to invade England? An invasion? Of England? Aliens?’

‘Afraid so, yes.’

‘Have you explained to them that we’ve already been done? Celts, Romans, Germans, Scandinavians, the Dutch – even the ruddy French have had a go. We’ve never been much impressed by invasion, it’s all very tiresome old hat these days.’

‘We have explained this, but they don’t seem to be terribly interested. Persistent little buggers, can only be seen with the new-fangled electric goggles. Have a nasty habit of sucking the life out of things with a fingertip. One tap and whatever it is, it’s dead.’

‘But how do you know that they want to invade England? Have they made some sort of diplomatic announcement, waved a battle-axe overhead and screamed down with cricket, up with umbrellas and bugger the monarchy or similar? That’s rather the usual form in these matters, I understand.’

‘Well, yah, sort of. One of ‘em killed a tomato plant and then pointed at the planet Earth on the R.S.F. emblem on the wall.’

‘Good gravy! It doesn’t get much clearer than that. I love tomatoes. Dead, you say?’

‘Quite. Touched it with a fingertip and that was that, blackened, shrivelled and deader than that foreign rock ‘en’ roll.’

‘Damn, it never rains but it pours. There’s a lot of it about at the moment – we’ve got folk falling off their perches for no apparent reason by the coach-load down here of late. Should one say of late in re the recently late or is that too unfortunate a juxtaposition? C of E is complaining that they’ve got more in the way of the dear departed than they can reasonably plant in the time allotted. Now you say these alien buggers are killing tomatoes and invading? It’s all getting very silly indeed. Indeed, one almost feels as though one is caught up in some sort of tacky pulp-fiction story written by a blethering idiot who ought to have known better. In modern England one does rather find oneself looking around rather for the hidden television cameras and that chap who presents those awful comedy programmes. What’s his name, Biddy McBaxter or some such?’

Captain Faraday, who constantly laboured under the nagging feeling that his whole life were nothing more than twenty-thousand words fit only for consideration for what poor but nonetheless literate people term a paperback, knew precisely to which sensation Sir Rothwell-Tottergently referred.

‘That’s the chap, yes. Baxter Somesuch. Look, in re these aliens, Minister. No question of letting them near nor by dear old Blighty of course, so I’m just calling to explain and to say cheerio and so awfully sorry about losing the ship. Crew rather agrees on this one, must fall on our collective sword. We’re flying the whole kit and caboodle into the sun post haste, next Tuesday, right after brekkers. Cook’s thrown the ration book out of the airlock and has promised us pancakes, with all of the white granulated sugar and JIF lemon juice we can take.’

‘Oh but that’s marvellous, dear boy! I do envy you, I must say.’

‘Eh?’

‘JIF lemon juice – in those little yellow plastic lemons. White sugar too, what a treat!’ Sir Rothwell-Tottergently licked his lips and savoured a dim, pre-rationing memory. ‘Gosh, pancakes. I can’t remember the last time I had a decent pancake.’

Captain Faraday wondered if perhaps there had been some breakdown in communication, and the essence of his news, the bit about flying the whole ship into a rather hot star had not reached the Minister’s ears. He need not have worried so. Sir Rothwell-Tottergently continued.

‘The Sun, you say? Oh, well, that will be a shame, but look, let’s not be hasty. Have we time to throw this out to the oddly bright university-educated chaps in white lab-coats? I’m sure that they could come up with somethin’. Aliens that can only be seen through the electric goggles eh?’

‘Goggles or cats. Cats can see them too. Goggles much easier to wear of course.’

‘Cats eh?’ Sir Rothwell-Tottergently drifted off for a moment, weighing the possibility of some sort of defence of England using loyal cats, perhaps using Army Engineering Corps trebuchet to fling hordes of them at the aliens. He covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and whispered to Patricia, his aide-de-camp, his second-in-charge, his absolute Woman Friday, his amanuensis (his a-woman-uensis?) so to speak, to check on the availability of large numbers of cats, both government and civilian, trained or otherwise. Sir Rothwell-Tottergently was not a chap to let the grass grow under his feet. In fact, he was rarely allowed outdoors at all, even on concrete or tarmacadam surfaces.

Faraday continued. ‘Yes, sir – cats. I’m rather afraid though that the ship’s cat, Mr Babbage, seems to have thrown his lot in with the aliens. De facto defected, damned disloyal little defecator, don’t you know, so not much use at all really. Moved his own litter tray and feeding bowl right in there among them. Spends his days now purring like the tiger that finally got Mowgli.’

Sir Rothwell-Tottergently mouthed to Patricia to hold on the cat question but to check instead how many pairs of electric goggles the Army held in stock for immediate distribution.

‘This Babbage creature? Is it a mouser or a houser?’

‘Sort of a mongrel lap-moggie. No real idea why it went into the service at all if you ask me. Never did seem to understand the notion of duty or discipline.’

‘Ah, so his heart was never really in it then. A typical cat. Feed ‘em best tuna every day and if they once catch a whiff of salmon from next door, they’re off. So we’ll need trained cats then, and possibly some of the more violent street cats, thug-moggies.’ Sir Rothwell-Tottergently raised a not inconsiderable eyebrow in the direction of his secretary, much in the manner of Nelson flapping about with a damp and mildewed semaphore flag. There was, in point of de facto, a little of the damp and mildewed about Sir Rothwell-Tottergently’s eyebrows.

Patricia nodded her acknowledgement that the cats were back on the menu, and she recommenced whispering into the second telephone to her counterpart at the Ministry of Small Domesticated Mammals, Tropical Fish & the Licensing of Sheep & Cattle for use in Stage Performances. The Min of MSDMTFLSCSP, as it was known for short by civil servants pressed for time.

‘Still, treacherous cats aside, we must do everythin’ we can about this, can’t have you volantin’ into the old soleil, so to parlez if you’ll excuse mon French – terribly bad publicity, that sort of thing. Between you, me and the gatepost, flying into the sun would probably be quite painful too. I remember as a child getting awfully badly reddened by the sun once during a holiday at Brighton or Hove or Bognor or somewhere. Can’t recommend it at all. You’d have to get closer to it even than that of course, if you were flying into it. No, no, damn the lap-moggies, there must be something we can do. We may be busy, but we shall leave no avenue unexplored.’

The little homunculus in Faraday’s head immediately asked why No Avenue was exempt from exploration but was then shouted down by one of the many other little voices in there explaining that there was no No Avenue, so obviously the exemption was invalid and No Avenue would be on the list to be fully explored along with all the rest. Faraday blinked, uncrossed his eyes and rejoined the real world with every sober neuron and synapse that he could muster. Fewer than a cerebral football team answered the call, but it was sufficient unto the day.

‘Well, we have discovered that once you can see them it is possible to confine them with much the usual tactics, but I’m desperately worried that they’ll get ight and abight. Is there perhaps somewhere safe and secure that we might land then? Somewhere that the aliens would be unable to survive, should any of them escape?’

Sir Rothwell-Tottergently pondered for a moment. ‘Middle of Manchester, I suppose. As I remember it unwary non-locals don’t have a particularly great life-expectancy there.’

Patricia tugged at Sir Rothwell-Tottergently’s sleeve, whispering that Manchester had been designated an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, or an area of Special Scientific Puzzlement, or an area of Unscientific Unnatural Interests or something similarly silly, and could no longer be regarded as just human land-fill. She added that the word on the street was that the locals had all gone soft anyway and could now no longer be roused by the standard call to arms of Come on if you think you’re hard enough, Marjorie. There had been talk among the Commonwealth Games Committee of dropping the Canal Street All-In Wrestling, Gouging & Biting Team from the next games – the team’s heart just wasn’t in it any more, half of the ladies on the team not even having a single A.S.B.O. to their name.

Sir Rothwell-Tottergently suppressed a giggle of pure delight prompted by a sudden vision of his tweed twin-set and pearls secretary keeping her ear to the ground on the sort of streets that somewhere northern such as Manchester had to offer. She really was a gem! Damned fine filly, too, damned fine – legs like a milk-float horse.

To business! To business! Somewhere in which to land the aliens.

‘How about the Isle of Man?’ suggested Faraday, his experience limited to a traumatic stay there while on humanitarian work, encouraging the failing Will (and Last Testament) of a much-loved aunt, during which visit it rained solidly for the whole morning and then again for the funeral in the afternoon. Indeed, the only trace of civilisation that Faraday had seen there had been limited to the contents of the decanters in the offices of Messrs Reeditt, Weappe & Getoveritt, Solicitors at Arms, immediately after the Vicar’s appeal to the Almighty for clemency, a stock eulogy delivered by the Matron from the Rest Home and the beginnings of the spade-work by whatever grave-diggers are termed when they are filling them in instead of digging them, the title of grave-filler surely already having being appropriated by the deceased.

Rothwell-Tottergently was on the button, quick as a flash. ‘Nice idea but couldn’t be done – T.T.’s on soon. There’s a by-election coming up in Mayfair, it’s a marginal seat and the PM’s really quite keen to secure the ton-up motor-biker vote.’

‘Hmm. Jersey? I suppose that pullovers would be the problem there.’

‘New potatoes old boy. It’s salad season. Disrupt the supply and the whole social calendar would be ruined. You’re thinking of the Isle of Aran for the jerseys, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d quite forgotten the northern north. What about Lindisfarne? The Geordie monk place? That’s terribly remote, isn’t it, and surrounded by some quite rough folk?’

‘Populated with rejects from Hell, yes, but we must consider the mead, dear chap, that’s where they make the very best mead in the world.’

‘Scilly?’

‘Well yes, it probably is, but I do love the stuff and I should hate to see supplies cut off.’

‘No, Sir, the Isles of Scilly?’

‘Oh, see what you mean. I doubt that we’d get permission from the Italians - Mafia and suchlike. A bit awkward really, and we’d certainly need their co-operation but they none of them speaka-da-Inglayzee. Come to think of it, very few of them seem to speaka-da-Italiano properly either – the memsahib tried time and again she says while on holiday a few years ago, camping on the slopes of Vesuvius. According to her postcards she never once managed to get properly boiling water for tea.’

‘Mafia? Permission?’

‘Scilly. Sciscillionians or whatever they call themselves, part of Italy’s foot on the map. I seem to remember that the place is virtually owned by the Mafia. Didn’t Sir Michael lose three of his Mini Coopers there once with some gold in the boot or something? No, we don’t want to confuse matters with the Mafia, let’s keep this on home turf. What about somewhere that’s just remote? We could issue the Army with these goggles and ask them to surround the place until we think of something better. It would have to be somewhere really, really remote, several miles at least away from anywhere nice.’

Patricia paused in her telephonic communications and tugged once more at the Minister’s sleeve cuff for his attention. She loved the feel of his sleeve cuffs.

‘Eh? What is it, Patty?’

Using Ministry top hush-hush silent-speak Patricia communicated that electric goggles were off the menu. Sir Rothwell-Tottergently expostulated.

‘What? None, you say? None at all? Why?’

Patricia indicated that the goggles, being the very latest in technology, cost almost two guineas a pair to manufacture. They had, therefore, not been produced in any great numbers and such numbers as had been produced were already aboard The Beagle.

Sir Rothwell-Tottergently squinted, sucked in his teeth (lower set only) and generally looked like a haddock about to dive into a northern chip-shop’s hopper of beer-batter.

‘Listen here, Faraday, spot of disconvenience in re the electric goggles. It seems that due to the exorbitant cost of the things you have all of the stock with you. The Army has none.’

‘All? We only have twelve sets aboard.’

‘Yes.’

‘How much did they cost exactly?’

‘Two guineas each and that’s before Goggle Excise Duty and Value Added Taxination. If I understand correctly, the government loses out twice on those because it pays the Excise Duty and VAT to itself out of money that it’s already collected as taxes. It’s a damned shame, a damned shame, and the public still wonder where all of the money goes.’

Faraday squinted, sucked in his teeth (upper set only) and generally looked like a cod about to dive into a southern chip-shop’s hopper of wussy Pimms-batter.

‘Ye gods. I see what you mean. No go on the goggles then. We shall have to rely entirely on choosing somewhere remote for our landing. I say - how about Pangbourne?’

‘I was wondering about perhaps somewhere remote where nobody important lives, somewhere to the far north.’

‘Harpenden?’

‘Oh, more remote than that. Oh I say – I’ve just had a wheeze.’

‘Gesundheit. Coming down with a cold?’

‘Cold? Not especially for the time of year. Look - what about Norfolk? If I remember my schoolboy geography correctly that’s pretty much a wasteland. All sugar beet and mustard, from what I’ve heard. Primary industries incest and spare fingers and toes. Whole place is just Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of marine origin covered by an extensive spread of unconsolidated recent deposits, full of oxbow bends. Lower GDP than Bolivia, or slightly more – either way, it’s not much to write home about.’ Sir Rothwell-Tottergently mouthed a silent question at Patricia. ‘Do we have any R.S.F. bases in Norfolk? Ones that are still manned, and preferably with a functioning telephone set?’

Captain Faraday wasn’t immediately convinced. ‘Norfolk? Is that even a place? I seem to remember it just bein’ where the Hobbits lived in Lord of the Rings – one county, only two surnames to rule them all, that sort of thing. Now that I come to think of it though, Norwich is somewhere around there, isn’t it? Some sort of hell-hole full of hairy insurance agents with incomprehensible accents and the morals of sewer rats. Cobbled streets, gas-lighting and gin-dens full of terrifying women with Massey and Ferguson tattooed on their knuckles (in full, a capital letter each).’

‘Oh absolutely, Norfolk’s a real place alright. Rough as a badger’s arse and twice as hairy, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s sort of deserted like Scotchland, though not quite so far to go to get there. No stag stalkin’, grouse shootin’ or salmon fishin’ of course, so even less to recommend it for civilised human habitation and absolutely nothing to disrupt. As shires go it’s listed as just sort of a spare, in case one of the nice ones gets broken or something.’

Patricia, consulting her Bradshaw’s Guide to Useful Counties and Things (hardback; dog-eared; First Edition; price sixpence-ha’penny), nodded to Sir Rothwell-Tottergently and whispered ‘Banham, yes, R.S.F. Banham is in Norfolk, sir. Deepest, darkest, dankest Norfolk. Smack in the middle, to one side, sort of at the southern end. Ish. Well, it’s in there somewhere. The map is largely covered by an ink-stain so I can’t be more accurate than that at the moment. Might be a Beaujolais stain, now that I come to think of it, rather than ink. Yes, we may have no bananas due to import