The Furgle and the Frimp

By Darren Bane

Murder and mythology, kidnapping and corporate corruption, love and laughter, thrills and spills, death-defying danger, stunning stunts and the craziest cast of clichéd characters ever entrusted with saving the world.

It's all in this incredible tale of very hot curry and its anti-social after effects, an imminent alien invasion, an ancient Greek god, baked beans which glow in the dark, a space-travelling Citroen 2CV and the full, formidable, force of the Waggly Finger.

Just remember, flatulence could get you everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326605797

Book preview

Prologue

HERBERT Bertbert quivered like a tuning fork as he braced himself to confront one of his greatest fears.

He blamed both his dearly departed father and an innocent insect for his silly surname, severe stutter, and subsequent fear of telephone answering machines (for this, dear reader, is the early 1990s, before everyone had mobile phones; but when everyone had answering machines.

His father, Hubert, had been a rather effeminate man whose main joy in life was cultivating flowers. Sadly, he developed a terrible stutter after tending to his garden one day, and sniffing a bright red brose.

And before you say there’s no ‘b’ in rose, there was a bee in the one that Hubert sniffed

The innocent insect shot up Hubert’s left nostril, where it sacrificed its life by stinging him. The timid Hubert was so traumatised by this experience that he developed his severe stutter, particularly when it came to any words which started with the letter ‘b’.

The trauma was embedded so deep within his psyche that Hubert inadvertently passed on his pronounced stutter to his son. And just to add insult to injury, Hubert also saddled his son with his silly surname.

At Herbert’s Christening, his doting dad could not get his tongue around the middle ‘b’ of the infant’s forename. After a heart-breaking ten minutes of trying, Hubert finally loosened his tongue and was so amazed and delighted at doing it that he forgot to tell his tongue to stop, so what he ended up blurting out triumphantly was Herb-b-b-b, Herb-b-b-b, Herb-b-b-, Herbert Bertbert!

When he saw the birth certificate bearing the name Bertbert, rather than the family’s actual name (which, incidentally, was Bobbleberry, so Hubert was in a no-win situation from the start), he felt so ashamed that he immediately took a vow of silence.

By the time the young Herbert learned to speak, he was unable to ask his parents what his real surname was, because he was an orphan.

His father died tragically when the bank where he had started working as a security guard, on the premise that he would be quite intimidating because he was now the ‘strong, silent’ type, was robbed.

Police untied and ungagged the hapless Hubert who, having conquered the moral dilemma around breaking his vow of silence, was unable to warn his rescuers in time about the bloody big black bomb buried in a bright blue box in the bank’s basement below.

The only thing he did manage to say was b-b-b-b-blast! shortly before the bomb did.

Herbert’s heartbroken mother, Barbara Bobbleberry, died shortly afterwards, apparently as the result of a heart murmur, leaving poor Herbert to face life with his severe stutter and his silly surname.

He picked up the telephone, and pressed the buttons needed to call his best friend. He was extremely relieved when, after several rings, his friend actually answered.

Hi, he said, this is the Hedde of the household. And I bet you thought I was never going to answer the phone.

Well, you certainly t-t-t-took your t-t-t—time…

…and, in fact, I haven’t, the machine has.

Aaaaaaaaaagghhh! yelled Herbert.

So, please leave a message after the beep.

Aaaaaaaaaagggghhhh!

Oh, and you’ve only got about 60 seconds, so don’t take too long.

Aaaaaaagggghhhh!

Bee-eep.

Oh, er, well, um, Hi, it’s m-m-me, Herb-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bert, j-just c-c-c-calling to s-see if you w-w-wa-wa-w-wanted to m-meet me for a b-b-b-b-bee-b-b-b-be-bee-bee, a d-d-drink, at the….

Bee-eep! Click. Brrrrr.

Aaaaaaaaaaagh, b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bugger!!!

One: The Coming

Night fell. Literally.

Shaken, but not hurt, Daley Night (the spelling of his surname is correct; the traditional ‘K’ is both silent and invisible), staggered back to his feet and cursed.

The 15-year-old had not seen the man crouched on the pavement in front of him, tying his shoelaces. Or trying to.

Daley had been walking with his teenage girlfriend, and his eyes had been locked in a long, lingering, starry-eyed, stare with hers.

As a result, he completely failed to see the man hunched over directly in his path, and completely failed to see him rather hard. It would seem that love truly is blind.

The collision sent Daley Night tumbling to the ground.

Once again, the youth could see stars. But alas, these were not the soft, soothing, sweet stars of young love, but the spinning, harsh, tweeting-bird stars of mild concussion.

Having got back to his feet, the tempestuous youth quickly regained his composure; after all, he didn’t want to look too uncool in front of his young lady. He slipped an arm around his girlfriend’s waist, in truth, more out of a need for support than as an affectionate gesture, and started to continue on their way.

He could not resist, however, turning and shouting over his shoulder dick head! to the other man, who was now slowly and very unsteadily getting to his own feet.

I’m shorry, slurred Richard Hedde, but you sheem to have me at a dishadvantage.

His witty wordplay was wasted, however, as Daley Night and his girlfriend were already out of earshot.

Richard Hedde, known inevitably as Dick, of course, had spent the evening at one of the many pubs scattered around the centre of the quaint Cornish fishing town of Loo, which should not be confused with its more well-known neighbouring town, which had added an ‘e’ to its name.

The reason for the ‘e’ dates back to ye dayes of olde, when sanitation services were first developed in Britain. Back then, of course, there were no flushes or pipework sewer systems, so the very first public conveniences were built on steep hillsides overlooking the sea, so that the human discharges could be washed away directly by the oceanic waters.

These ‘modern’ conveniences led to the development of settlements around them, which is why so many of our oldest villages always have a public convenience right in the centre. Every settlement which had such a convenience was named Loo, but in order to differentiate between them, and make it easier for the plumbers to know which ones to go to for maintenance, letters were added, thus you had Looa, Loob, Looc, and so on.

Of course, over the years, place names evolved and changed, with a majority of settlements deciding that they did not want to be named after a toilet.

Two did remain; Looe and the lesser-known Loo which, actually, was originally named Loop, but one night, a comical criminal went there for a ‘p’, and got it. He was later apprehended and charged with taking the ‘p’, but the letter itself was never recovered.

As the use of toilets became more and more commonplace, demand grew, and it wasn’t long before Loo became the first town to have two toilets.

The town council decided to use its original, smaller one for liquid discharges and its second, bigger, more modern, convenience, for the discharge of solids.

Of course, having two toilets in one town made a mockery of the whole lettering system, so the people of Loo numbered their toilets instead, and that’s how the whole I want to do a number one and I want to do a number two thing came about. But that’s by-the-by.

Dick, a freelance journalist, had spent the evening celebrating the engagement of the Loo Paper’s advertising manager, Bill Poster, to the woman in charge of the property pages, Wendy House.

More recently, he had spent the last ten minutes trying to tie his laces. His hand-eye co-ordination was hampered somewhat due to his excessive alcoholic intake.

Having almost been bundled over by the clearly half-blind teenager, Dick gave up on his shoelaces, and started to stumble awkwardly on his way.

It was easier said than done, of course. Dick was renowned for having two left feet when he was sober; indeed, during his first few days in this tiny seaside town, he had browsed all the beachwear stores  looking for a pair of flip flips. But when drunk, he appeared to have at least four left feet, which made walking even more of a challenging  exercise than usual.

He stopped at one point to watch a young girl in a darkened doorway, who could have been forgiven for thinking she was being molested by a rampant octopus on heat.

The slobbering, silver-tongued charmer with the wandering hands gasped, do you fancy a furgle?

Certainly not, she retorted, I’m not that kind of girl.

Well, would you mind not wriggling quite so much, while I have one? he said. Dick winced at the loud crack her hand made when it slapped his cheek.

He shook his head, smiled, and continued walking, lost in thoughts as he tried to remember the last time he had come close to molesting anyone - in a strictly consensual way, of course.

He soon became aware that he was following the same path as Daley Night and his girlfriend, and shuffled along as quietly as he could behind them, for fear of the youth turning on him aggressively.

He followed them out of the small town centre and into Sex Drive, a dark, tree-lined, avenue behind which was a large area of open, common, land.

This recreation area was where children would play football, ride bicycles, and generally do things that young children do, with the full knowledge and permission of their parents.

In one corner of this recreation field was a thickly-wooded copse. This procreation area was where teenagers would do things which certainly did not include football and bike riding – or not in the literal sense, at any rate – and almost certainly without the knowledge of, let alone permission of, their parents. Hence this little garden of delights had become known locally as Furgle Forest.

Unless you lived in one of the houses which backed onto the recreation field, in which case you would simply leap over your back fence to get to it, the only way to access it was via a narrow, often muddy, fenced track which ran between two of the houses on Sex Drive.

The narrow lane was called The Back Alley.

Daley Night and his girlfriend turned onto the driveway of the last house before The Back Alley. Their presence on the forecourt was caught by the motion-detecting sensor of a security light above the front door, which sent a brilliant white glow out across the road.

Dick staggered backwards, not wanting to be blinded by the light or seen by the two love-struck teenagers.

He backed up against a convenient lamppost, whose own comparatively dim light was somewhat obscured by the thick foliage of one of the many old trees which lined Sex Drive.

Daley Night’s young girlfriend, May Day, named in memory of a local sailor who had got her mother into some terrible trouble some 15 years before, opened the front door of the house.

She then turned to face her boyfriend, who took her hands very lightly in his own, and said, I’ve had a wonderful evening, May.

May squeezed his hands gently in response.

I hate saying goodbye, he said.

May squeezed his hands affectionately again.

I – I love you, he said, nervously.

I know, she said.

I hate saying goodbye.

I know.

I hate not being with you.

I know.

And I really hate it when you keep saying ‘I know’ all the time, he said.

I don’t, she protested, feebly.

You do, he insisted.

I know, she blushed, squeezing his hands with hers again.

Dick was quite touched by this heart-warming scene of young love that he was witnessing. It’s just so sweet, he said to the lamppost, which beamed back at him.

Daley Night and May Day then stared at each other in one of those awkward, silent, moments that a couple sometimes share when they are not sure whether or not they should kiss.

May, being a modern kind of ‘90s girl, seized the initiative.

She put her hands behind her back, clasped them together, closed her eyes, and leaned forward, pouting her young lips. It looked as if she had suddenly become frozen in place, her flawless face wearing an expression of serene, yet eager, anticipation.

Daley licked his lips, loudly and roughly, wiped them dry on the sleeve of his shirt, and then licked them again.

May maintained her motionless stance. Daley again licked his lips, wiped them on his sleeve, and licked them once more, until he was sure he was ready.

What happened next – and yes, dear patient reader, we are actually getting very close to a moment of enormous and very relevant significance to the rest of our story – seemed, to the two youngsters, to last a lifetime, as if it all occurred in a wonderful state of fuzzy-edged, dreamy, soft-focus, slow motion.

The truth was that everything was over and done with in no more than a few short seconds. But hey, that’s life, kids, so get used to it. And anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying.

As Dick watched intently, Daley Night nervously and cautiously leaned forward and placed his trembling, well-licked, lips onto May’s with the very most delicate of tender touches.

In the very instant that their quivering lips met for the very first time, it seemed as if some kind of wonderful, magical, force had been unleashed.

Their emotions and everything around them seemed to erupt, like red hot lava suddenly exploding from a volcano after many years of building up, or like a lemonade bottle after you’ve spent five minutes shaking it as hard as you possibly can before unscrewing the cap.

The young couple felt their hearts pound as adrenalin was pumped through their veins in a torrential flow.

For them, the tranquility of this dark November night now exploded in a kaleidoscope of colour, sound, emotions, feelings, and all sorts of other ethereal sensations.

The youngsters appeared to be frozen like statues, neither daring to move, their lips barely making contact.

They both had their eyes closed, yet seemed to be in the eye of a dazzling maelstrom of bright colours of every shade and hue they could imagine, and a fair few they had never seen before.

They both experienced a deep rumbling sensation throughout their bodies, a ringing in their ears, a buzzing in and around their heads. There appeared to be an almost deafening roar all around them, which made their heads, hearts and whole bodies quiver, tremble and pound.

They could almost actually feel a wild, wild, wind, like an untamed tornado, a forceful blast of raw, unbridled, passion, whoosh above their heads, ruffling their hair.

The power and sheer force of the emotional elements being unleashed seemed to make the leaves of all the trees lining Sex Drive swirl and swish, whisper and rustle.

It felt like the very ground beneath them was shaking and vibrating, as if there was an earthquake. And the noise and colours made them feel like thousands and thousands of fireworks – and expensive ones, too, like the ones you see at theme parks, Olympic ceremonies, and New Year’s Eve celebrations all around the world, rather than the common-or-garden sparklers and damp squibs you buy from the local corner shop – had exploded in the sky, enveloping their senses in a climactic, colourful, cacophony of light and sound, in a sensual, supernatural, spiritual, sensational, experience.

And they had not even used their tongues.

It was, in every imaginable sense, a mind-blowing, truly magical moment which, once over, would somehow never be recaptured or experienced in quite the same way again.

May shifted back just a little, but enough to pull her soft lips a membrane-width away from Daley’s, and the magical spell between them was instantly broken.

In that split second that the kiss ended, the night sky was once again plunged into darkness, punctuated only by the bright beam of the security light above the front door, and the dim glow from the lamppost Dick was leaning against.

It was almost as if their first kiss had been the conductor for some kind of physical electrical power circuit, which had now, sadly, been switched off.

Wow, gasped Daley. Was it good for you, too?

May was speechless. Daley had, truly, taken her breath away.

I feel even worse about leaving you now, he said. I hope we can see each other again soon.

The front door of the neighbouring house suddenly opened, and a middle-aged man peered out. Daley, I’m locking up now, son.

All right, Dad, said Daley. He gave his lovely lady one last, lingering, stare, whispered, good night, May Day, to which she replied, fare thee well, my Night, and then the pair went inside their respective houses.

A very short while later, the dazzling glare of the security light flickered out, plunging the driveway, and pavement beyond, back into darkness.

This sudden, dramatic, change to the lighting was enough to shake Dick Hedde back into the land of the living.

He had spent the past few moments staring speechlessly at the starlit sky above May’s house. He had been so transfixed by what he had witnessed that he had actually completely missed the magical moment of that incredible first kiss.

For, in the very moment that Daley’s lips made contact with May’s, Dick was immediately, completely and utterly distracted by the rather unexpected sight of an alien spaceship making a very low-level fly past.

The craft had soared overhead with a deafening roar and a dazzling light show, which would have put many a big city nightclub to shame, and seemed to hover above the recreation field behind Sex Drive.

A small hatch opened in the belly of the craft, and a sleek, silver, lozenge, was launched from it.

The projectile plummeted earthwards and appeared to crash land in Furgle Forest.

Bloody Nora! exclaimed Dick.

The small spacecraft, which looked almost humanoid in shape, then soared head-first back into the night sky.

When it reached the outer limits of the atmosphere, it found a much larger spacecraft, which looked rather similar to a fully grown human female, which was sitting in orbit.

An arm reached out from the larger ship, and docked with an arm from the smaller one, forming a very tight bond. It appeared as if the small craft had returned to its mother ship.

If anybody in Loo had had a CB radio switched on at this momentous moment, and if, although it was extremely unlikely, they had been able to tune into advanced, sub-space frequencies, then the CB operator would have picked up a transmission which was broadcast from the mother ship to a point a few miles inland from the sleepy seaside town.

And if, in turn, the operator of that CB radio had been able to translate the alien language in which this transmission was made and then been able to decipher the cunningly complex code in which a clearly important message was concealed, then what they would actually have heard were the words, Polly has been let out of the cage.

However, as it happened, despite still being in fairly common use in the early 1990s, not one single, solitary, person in Loo owned a CB radio set.

Two: Hot Water

Many thousands of miles away from, and several hours behind, Loo, but heading in its general direction all the same, a very cumbersome-looking seafaring ship was reluctantly chugging its way through the choppy waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

The SS Slubberdigullion was a long, low, supply ship making its regular round trip between Plymouth, the nearest major port to Loo, and India.

It was heavily laden with very select spices which were destined to form an exclusive blend for some of the hottest and most potent curries ever cooked up by the culinary world’s most creative, and sadistic, minds.

While Dick Hedde was slowly recovering from the shock of his close encounter, the crew of this not particularly shipshape vessel was recovering from a drama of their own.

The ship had just survived, against all the odds, navigating around the Cape of Good Hope or, as the crew referred to it, the Cape of You Haven’t Got A Hope In Hell Of Successfully Navigating These Waters In That Ridiculous Rust Bucket That You Call A Ship.

Overlooking the celebrations of survival, and the welcome distribution of the rum rations, from his lofty position in the wheelhouse, located, appropriately enough for this book, on the poop deck, was Captain Auberon Dunderfunk, a stout, swarthy, salty, seadog with a rugged grey beard, and quite long, unkempt, dirty grey-white hair.

He smiled as the ship lurched, creaked and moaned. He knew all too well that the deck was decaying, the bent bow was breaking, and the rusty rudder was rotting. But his cargo simply had to make it to Britain, where the curry industry was booming.

One particular curry company was paying Captain Dunderfunk’s employers, Bin Liners, a large amount of money for their supply service. But sadly, rather than plough some of this cash into keeping their vessels shipshape, the Bin Liner bosses preferred to pocket all the profits.

Auberon Dunderfunk’s first officer joined him in the wheelhouse, armed with a fresh bottle of rum.

A-har there, Number One, said the captain, not just because this man was his second-in-command, but quite simply because Number One happened to be his name.

He had been one of identical twins, which had come as something of a surprise to their mother, as she did not even know she was pregnant, and had therefore not had any time to think about any names for a child, let alone more than one of them. So she copped out and took the easy option of numbering them, in order of appearance.

It was just one of those quirky coincidences of life that Number One had opted for a seafaring life, and had risen to a rank which traditionally carried the title number one with it.

His brother, Number Two, was a toilet attendant in Loo.

I really didn’t think we were going to survive the Cape this time, Number One said, as he handed his captain the rum bottle.

Yo, ho, ho, that be true, me’ heartie, that be true, said Captain Dunderfunk. He put the neck of the rum bottle in his mouth and tugged at the cork with his yellowing teeth. He then spat the cork to one side, and took a deep drink of the warming liquid.

Number One clearly had no idea of just how lucky they had been, for Captain Dunderfunk’s seafaring skills were questionable, to say the least; but then, what could you really expect from a man who thought that naval manoeuvres was something that a belly dancer did.

We are still about half a day behind schedule, though, said Number One.

Captain Dunderfunk picked up a telephone receiver, which whistled at him, blew into the mouthpiece to clear a puff of particularly dusty dust, which is the worst kind, of course, and then yelled into the phone, Rusty! Can’t you make this crate go any faster, you old dog?

The voice of a very stressed Scotsman shouted back down the receiver, Och, if I give her any more, she’ll blow!

Just do what you can, Rusty. We need more speed.

Aye, captain.

The chief engineer of the SS Slubberdigullion, and resident regular miracle worker, Rusty Hulk, began to work his latest magic in an attempt to get them all home just that little bit quicker.

Back in the wheelhouse, Number One had just taken a message from their destination which he was none too pleased about.

"It looks like there is another protest waiting for us in Plymouth, Captain,’ he reported.

BARF?

Thank you, sir, but I did that back at the Cape.

BARF was an environmental pressure group which had grown alongside Britain’s curry boom. BARF – Ban Artificially Reared Flatulence – claimed that any flatulence which was artificially enhanced or generated, through very potent curries, for example, was an evil substance, and was making a significant contribution towards global warming, and thus the production of such curries should be actively discouraged.

No one seemed to know who was behind BARF. Some claimed it was potato growers and cattle farmers, who were trying to poo-poo the curry industry, and convince consumers to stick to more conventional cuisine.

BARF’s activists were familiar figures in supermarkets and restaurants worldwide. They wore small pin badges, and wooden clothes pegs on their nose, which had the BARF logo branded onto them.

For the past few years, BARF’s protests had always been fairly harmless affairs, more of a nuisance than anything else. But in recent weeks, the organisation had started to become a little more sinister, its protests a little less passive.

There had been talk of blockades at curry factories, and even threats of attacks on supply ships. While most people dismissed BARF’s threats as a lot of hot air, they made Captain Dunderfunk feel very uneasy, especially when one considered the somewhat delicate condition of the aging vessel under his command.

A thick dark fog had swallowed the ship. This was nothing unusual but this fog had suddenly started to swirl and move in a slightly sinister, spooky, way, which was somewhat unusual.

The patch of mist directly in front of the ship was suddenly billowing outwards and becoming thinner, as if it was being hit by a powerful, sharp, blast from above which, funnily enough, it was.

Within seconds, the SS Slubberdigullion was sitting in a very clear stretch of ocean, surrounded by fog on all sides, as if it was in the calm eye of a hurricane.

A man-shaped spaceship descended feet first from the sky.