Viva Grump!

By Colin Quench

This dark comedy of brutality and betrayal is a bawdy romp through the palaces and prisons of 18th century Europe and thus full of swearing, sword fighting and bad sex.
Our hero Eduardo Lasagne - once described as 'Alan Partridge meets Poldark' - is a fledgling revolutionary on a quest to free the people of Grump from oppression. 
The country of his birth is a bell-ended peninsular governed by an evil puppet regime comprising of two little wooden men. We follow Lasagne on the bumpy road to revolution as he builds a team and gathers the know-how to bring down the puppets in an explosive climax - if he can drag himself away from the Queen's bedroom...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Quench
• Release date: May 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201748135

Book preview

I

Birth of a Revolutionary

To lose oneself in Grump was easily done. This was a rugged country of poor communications even by the standards of the 18th Century and there was a great deal of confusion about the internal geography. The forces of the Oofdoof empire had burned all available maps following their initial invasion of 1706, before distributing hundreds of deliberately inaccurate maps to make it difficult for potential rebels to organise any meaningful counter-insurgency. The situation was further compounded by restrictions on travel that forbade movement between towns without a permit. A Grumponian citizen could only obtain said documentation by travelling to the local administrative centre where he or she would immediately be imprisoned for travelling without a permit.

Over the years, the people of Grump gradually forgot the shape of their own country and the one true map retained by the Oofdoofs was eaten by a dog in 1746. What the Grumponians had forgotten was that their tiny nation was fully contained within a slender peninsula protruding from the north-western edge of mainland Europe. It was much the same size as England’s county of Cornwall but its outermost tip had been moulded by the sea over millions of years into a shape that could now only be described as a ‘bell-end’. This unfortunate natural occurrence had prompted many unfavourable comparisons with male genitalia. Indeed, prior to the Oofdoof invasion the emperor had specifically commissioned the writing of songs on this theme and had them subtly fed into the taverns and workplaces of Grump in a bid to undermine the national resolve. When authentic maps of the peninsular again became available in the early 19th Century, everyone was very embarrassed.

Beyond the small fishing industry that littered the long coastline of Grump, the bedrock of the national economy was cheese and biscuits, and the port of Snogg, located halfway along the northern coast, was the undisputed epicentre of production. The town had been notable in medieval times as an important trading post for merchants whose ships had lost their way and came ashore thinking they had at last landed in England. As maritime navigation improved so business declined, and it took several hundred years to rebuild the town's prosperity around salty snacks.

It was here in January 1787 that Eduardo Lasagne arrived on the back of a stolen donkey in search of work. Within a week, he was toiling 12 hours a day as a ‘biscuit shuffler’, mixing handfuls of bumpy crackers like a deck of cards until the supervisor was satisfied that the fewest possible number of crackers had been fitted into each standard packet. This gave him time to think.

As a proud Grumponian he had a natural antipathy towards the empire and had come to see his beloved Grump and its people (even those he really disliked) as lifelong political prisoners of the Oofdoof regime. While he stewed in the engine room of the biscuit factory, Eduardo began to realise that his future now lay in the political arena, while also acknowledging that he knew nothing about politics. In Grump at that time, expressing a desire to attain public office required you to then declare whether you were for or against the Oofdoofs. If you came out in support of the empire, you would find yourself immediately disowned by your family and friends. If you stood against the empire, you would be immediately arrested and imprisoned, or deported, or killed in an unpleasant manner.

It would take another year for Eduardo to make his final decision. In March of 1788, he climbed on to the workbench of his biscuit-shuffling station and declared to his largely disinterested fellow workers that he was now dedicating his life to the fight for Grumponian independence. He then fell off the table, crushing the entirety of his day’s work and receiving an enthusiastic beating from the factory security guards, before being sacked, beaten again, and delivered to the street as a floppy mess, where he took a final beating from the local children. As he lay semi-conscious in the mud, a dog vigorously sniffing his crotch, Eduardo realised that he could not ‘do a revolution’ alone.

On this point, he was in luck. Snogg was well known in political circles as the centre of underground resistance to the empire. Now that he had started to look and listen, the town provided a ready supply of anti-Oofdoof sentiment and the taverns were thick with talk of revolution. However, as a newcomer with limited social skills he never failed to arouse the suspicion of the natives, and soon realised that if he was ever to move beyond the fringe he would need to take the risk of a formal approach to the official Underground Resistance Movement - if he could find it.

While he was looking for the URM (known by its detractors as ‘urrrm...’ due to the notorious inability of its members to agree on anything), Eduardo took practical steps to improve his knowledge of revolutionary politics. He read widely on the nature of empire and monarchy, political philosophy and economics, and re-visited the Classics in the hope of garnering new lessons from the great civilisations of the past. In candid recollections published a decade later, he revealed details of his more personal reading choices from the ‘how to’ genre that was popular with young radicals at the time.

My favourite book was called ‘Recipes for Revolutionaries’. It was a practical guide to creating simple but nutritious meals for political agitators on the move. It also showed how to leave secret messages for fellow revolutionaries in the cafes and taverns that we used as meeting places. This was cleverly done using only the crockery and utensils to hand. For example, you could arrange a knife and fork in the shape of a capital L, put two plates next to it side by side followed by a knife and two forks in the shape of a capital K. Then leave a space on the table before adding another plate, followed by a line of salt in a U shape, and finally a knife and fork in the shape of a capital T. For extra emphasis you could add an upright knife with a blob of jam underneath. What you end up with is a message that is invisible to the untrained eye but, to a seasoned revolutionary, it spells ‘LOOK OUT!’

Eduardo bought or borrowed most of his books from local bookseller Mr Clack. As he delved further into the writings of political theorists and international dissidents, he noticed that most of the books he wanted were being retrieved from a secret stock behind the counter. Eduardo assumed that the bookseller was a kindred spirit and decided to ask him the whereabouts of the URM. His response was so strange that Eduardo recorded the encounter in his diary.

I politely asked Mr Clack the way to the Underground Resistance Movement. He instantly stood to attention before leaning towards me with a mad, staring look in his eyes. He slowly tilted back his head and howled like a wolf, before dropping down on all fours and scampering out of the shop and down the street. I shook my head in disbelief and leaned over the counter to see what other books were being hidden from public view. It was then I noticed a mysterious lever that I felt an irresistible urge to pull. When I did so a secret door opened in the wall behind the counter. I assumed this to be the entrance to the Underground Resistance Movement and stepped inside. But as I frantically thumped the walls, searching for another magical lever, I failed to notice the shop door opening behind me. Then I heard the solemn voice of Mr Clack: ‘I see that you have found my secret cupboard, Mr Lasagne’. Without turning, I calmly replied: ‘I think you may be right, Mr Clack.’ A stand-off ensued between he on the wrong side of the counter and I in the cupboard. After 15 minutes or so, I could see no obvious reason to continue. I reversed out of the cupboard and marched proudly from the shop, my dignity intact.

A few days later Eduardo received a message at his home, delivered by a thin man in a mask who appeared to be speaking backwards. Even before opening the seal he knew it had come from the resistance movement, having spotted the acronym ‘URM’ embroidered in large letters across the back of the messenger's smock. Eduardo was initially overjoyed to have finally made contact with the URM but would ultimately be disappointed to arrive and find nobody in. Over the following month he received numerous messages inviting him to secret meetings, only to waste several evenings each week waiting in empty rooms or running screaming down long corridors. Exasperated, he decided to look elsewhere for fellow dissidents who could help him develop the necessary knowledge and skills to become a dangerous revolutionary.

Eduardo was fond of boasting that he had ‘never met anyone with principles’ yet he was in little doubt that he would need to become more streetwise to succeed in the shadowy, semi-criminal world of resistance politics. The perfect place to do so, he thought, was in jail. There was a prison called Doggtank just a few miles out of Snogg that he presumed would be chockablock with anti-Oodoof activists who had been wrongly imprisoned for their political beliefs. While he was desperate to learn from these dangerous intellectuals, Eduardo did not want to waste valuable time going through the usual channels of committing a crime and being squeezed through the labyrinthine legal system with its notoriously unpredictable outcomes. Instead, he decided to break in to ‘The Tank’.

In practice, this was a relatively simple affair. There was no one watching the outside of the perimeter because the last thing they expected was someone trying to climb in. Eduardo scaled the wall wearing an old prison uniform and, once he had leapt unseen into the exercise yard, was soon escorted indoors by an unsuspecting guard. His first few nights were uncomfortable. Eduardo had no allocated cell so was forced to wander the corridors all night, hiding in the shadows to avoid detection. He tried bribing an inmate to let him share his cell but the unwelcome response was one he would hear many times that night as he innocently tried to secure a bed: ‘Are you trying to bum me?’ His luck finally changed when one of the prisoners died in his sleep and was taken away to be made into glue. Eduardo quickly re-organised the cell to confuse the guards and sat lazily strumming a small guitar on his new bed. Staring wistfully out through the bars of his window, the imposter murmured traditional melodies in such a convincing vignette of prison life that he went completely unnoticed. He later wrote that the Doggtank experience had reminded him of his time at St Ump, except that he learned more in prison and the company was better.

Eduardo soon managed to befriend a group that he had been reliably informed were dissident intellectuals, framed for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment by the corrupt judiciary. It was only after a few long days of awkward conversation that he realised they were in fact a gang of bonafide mass murderers with no academic qualifications whatsoever. As politely as possible, he disengaged from the group and made friends with a slightly less intimidating circle of potential mentors who proved keen to assist in his quest for knowledge. One of these men, the safe-cracking philosopher Miroslav Umpty, was to eventually become Eduardo’s closest political collaborator but he escaped from Doggtank just a few days after they were introduced.

With a new team of tutors, Eduardo was able to learn all the key skills required of an 18th Century political agitator, from the general tenets of civil disobedience, political rhetoric (shouting), speech-writing, crowd manipulation and campaigning, to the more specific details of weaponry, survival techniques, disguise, code-making, Chinese burns, and ‘talking your way out of sticky situations’. He also realised that he would have to improve his public persona. While there was very little active media in Grump at the time and most publications were controlled by the Oofdoofs, Eduardo was an early believer that the public image projected by a potential leader could be a decisive factor in building widespread popular support. Conveniently, he saw no requirement for any substance of truth to lay behind the public image, indeed the truth could often be a hindrance.

Political campaigning is so much easier if you start with a lie, put a lie in the middle and end with a lie. Adding a truth or even a half-truth to the mix only serves to slow the general interchange of lies and dilute the overall power of the misinformation and is therefore best avoided.

Personal appearance was also important. While Eduardo had never struggled to arouse the interest of women, he was fully aware that his looks could sometimes cause alarm. From the age of seven he had endured the mockery of schoolmates for his sizeable hands, a big round face, tiny blue eyes and lips that looked permanently pursed. This was reflected in the nicknames ‘puffer fish’ and ‘big-handed pie face’ given to him by one of his schoolteachers. As he matured, his features grew and spread across his face until he became almost handsome, particularly to older women and women with beards. There is no surviving, verified portrait of Eduardo but numerous contemporary descriptions provide a broad, if sometimes contradictory, impression of his rugged physical appearance.

Lasagne was in possession of a big jaw, which was good for shouting and eating large pieces of food... He had a wide and smooth forehead, on which he would sometimes allow children to play chess... A bush of spiky hair sat atop his temples like the severed head of an Afghan hound recently struck by lightning... He was of average height, average build and average intellect... His small but piercing blue eyes left me all of a-quiver!

After two challenging but invigorating months in jail, Eduardo was anxious to return to the outside world where he could put his newfound expertise into practice. But in the excitement of planning his prison break-in he had not properly considered a strategy for escape. Indeed, he had not even considered the possibility that