Plankton Soup: Strange Ingredients

By Grant Sutton

UNOFFICIALLY THE BEST BOOK IN THE WORLDEVER!

THE BOOK THAT N.S.A. SPIED ON FROM OUTER SPACE!

EVEN THE POPE TRIED TO BAN IT!

Not today, thank you. We have enough books. VATICAN

SPOKESMAN

Gritty yet heart warming, like hot salty porridge on a winters

day, Scathing in his criticism of the mess that society is in. Its

not his fault-its probably mine. THE NAZARENE.

I liked the bit where the funny man slipped on a banana skin!

DOSTOYEVSKY

Maverick! Sutton takes one step forward, two steps back.

POLKA DANCE JUDGE

I dont quite know what to make of this book! ORIGAMI

EXPERT

Blockbuster! THE SWEET

Off the wall. ART THIEF

A bit rough around the edges, but thats the way I like it.

TREE HUGGER

Its a book, its a comic, its a bow-tie and its a butterfl y!

SALVADOR DALI

What a hoot! More fun than the theatre! ABRAHAM LINCOLN

His best book so far. The others were shit. FRIEND

THE PLANKTON SOUP SERIES

LITERATURES BEST KEPT SECRET!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496985002

Grant Sutton

According to unsubstantiated reports, Grant Sutton has not been seen since 1939. Legend has it that he has dyed his hair electric blue and now lives in Greenland. “Strange Ingredients” is the third book in the Plankton Soup series…and is a masterpiece, considering Sutton doesn’t speak a word of English.

Book preview

© 2014 Grant Sutton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/11/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8499-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8500-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

(Book Enthusiast’s voice) "Yawn! I’m tired of reading the same old shit. I wish there was something different!"

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

- MONTY PYTHON

PLANKTON SOUP - STRANGE INGREDIENTS

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. More precisely, the reader has taken over the story! All writing in italic after each story represents the readers’ thoughts in a Blog. You are encouraged to join in the blogs via the website www.planktonsoup.co.uk or the Facebook page www.facebook.com/plankton.soup.

All comments are welcome- the more pedantic, scientific, disgruntled, crazier they are- the better we will enjoy them! Thus the readers and their comments’ constitute a very real and substantial part of the stories. In this way the book never actually ends!

• I like Sutton’s Can-Do attitude. Is he American?

• Alas! Judging by the size of his penis, I would say he is Welsh!

"Strange Ingredients is destined to become a modern classic. If it doesn’t then there should be a public outcry. Or a furore. Whichever is the greater." NOSTRADAMUS.

Sutton has pulled out all the stops with this one. Unfortunately he has pulled out the commas as well. His punctuation is simply appalling! ERIK THE BESERKER.

Sutton’s writing is ‘in your face’ like a hot Maori tattoo or a particularly nasty bee-sting. Aggressive, punchy, yet sometimes brings you to tears…like a boxing glove holding a raw onion. He smashes through the crippling boundaries of contemporary literature, sneering at accepted norms of grammar. Spelling? Hoo kneads it? says Sutton. THYMES LITTERY SUPPLEMENT.

WARNING!

The following short stories contain strong language, mindless violence, sexual references, disturbing scenes, flashing images, contentious scientific theories, poor grammar, a variety of foodstuffs and lashings of tea. Some stories may be unsuitable for human consumption. Ensure soup is piping hot before serving. Do not exceed recommended dosage. Store book in a cool, dry place. May contain a sprinkling of nuts.

• So, it’s the usual shit from Sutton then!

A big thanks to the following people for their support;

Julie Basher Ward

Joeri Captain Blackbeard Vanfraechem

Raphael The (H) I.T. Man Robert

Richard Saucey Smart

Dave Perfect Stranger Nicholl

Professor Liam Jones

Andre Van Damme Lamb

Jerome 001 Soine

And a HUGE thanks to Ayesha Drew for the wonderful artwork she created for this book!

The description of artwork in the story A Picture Paints A Thousand Words is borrowed from a real brochure describing the works of Kounellis and Clemente at a gallery in Hanover Square, London, circa late 2013.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY AYESHA DREW

I THINK PIERRE HAS SHIT HIMSELF

THIS IS NO ORDINARY DAY

YOU PROMISED ME CHIPS!

SHPING! SHPANG! SHPONG!

EROS THE XENOS!

VOILA!

THERE IS NO SAFETY NET AT THIS SHOW.

THE RIPPER HAS STRUCK AGAIN!

FORGET THE ALAMO!

TWO LUMPS, PROFESSOR?

CAN WE COHERE THE RANDOM FLUX?

ARSEFANNYTITCOCK!

THE SINGING DANCING SECURITY QUARTET

HE MIGHT HAVE TO SELF-AMPUTATE BOTH ARMS.

GET ME THE NUMBER FOR N.A.S.A.

THEIR ENIGMATIC SMILES NOW REEKED OF SCHADENFREUD

THAT’S PURITY CALOU!

NOT A SAUSAGE

THERES ALL THAT AND MORE IN YOUR OLD TEAPOT!

THE GREAT FLOCK AND SOUL SWINDLE

INGREDIENTS…

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY AYESHA DREW

MEET AND TWO VEG.

PROPER CHARLIE

WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN

THE PLOT THAT THICKENED

THE PROG ROCK TRANCE AFFAIR

A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

THE SECRET SOCIETY

THE JIVE TALKIN’ TURKEY (From Albuquerque)

QUALITY JANITOR

I.M.H.O.

FRANK GLADTIDING; TUG BOAT OWNER, PART TIME DETECTIVE AND FATHERS RIGHTS’ ACTIVIST…WITH MILD TOURETTES. OH! AND HE WAS ALLERGIC TO FLORAL PRINT CURTAINS TOO!

BUDDY GUARDS

WATCHING PAINT DRY

AN AWFUL LOT OF HOT AIR

ME AND THE CAPTAIN

THE BALLAD OF PURITY CALOU

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

FOR WHOM THE BELL RANG (31 TIMES)

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DEITY FORMERLY KNOWN AS GOD

A LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE PREVIOUSLY READ THIS STORY

SOME THINGS YOU WILL READ ABOUT IN THIS BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER SO-CALLED ‘BOOKS’ WRITTEN BY THE SO-CALLED ‘AUTHOR’ FORMERLY KNOWN AS GRANT SUTTON

MEET AND TWO VEG.

"You were made pregnant by a vegetable?" My voice is abnormally high-pitched due to the shock. I am both disappointed and concerned for my friend Pippa. I am… (I’m searching for a good word)…aghast!

"What kind of vegetable?"

Pippa is evasive with the answer but stresses that it shouldn’t really matter; the main thing is that she’s happy.

I try to calculate the gestation period for a vegetable-human hybrid. I decide that by adding the initial germination process of a tuber to the flowering process of a vine, and then to four and a half months (half a human) I will arrive at an approximation of the birth date. I must remember to buy a card and present.

Six weeks later I see Pippa in the park by the river. She is pushing a heavily laden shopping trolley. This is not allowed. There are strict rules governing the misappropriation of supermarket trolleys. You should certainly not take them further than the carpark.

I say Hi to Pippa and she smiles. She indicates two pumpkins in the trolley and tells me their names are Pierre and Melone. They are twins, she adds needlessly.

They look very fresh.

I ask was it a difficult, um…(birth or harvest?)…I say birth.

She laughs and says No, a couple of weeks ago they were only the size of tomatoes.

She offers me the chance to hold one, but to be honest I find other peoples babies repulsive and so I politely decline, telling her that due to my Restless Leg Syndrome I don’t think it would be a good idea.

One of the pumpkins, I think it is Melone, starts to cry and this disturbs the other, who perhaps is Pierre and who also starts to cry.

Pippa unhooks a wooden step ladder from the trolley and then takes off her rucksack, but now I can see it is not a rucksack, it’s actually a piano accordion. Noticing my quizzical expression she explains that the only way to soothe the crying pumpkins is by sitting on top of the step ladder and playing a constant, hap-hazard noise with the accordion…for about an hour.

I ask how she had discovered this method and she tells me ‘by trial and error’. This makes me wonder what else she had tried previously in order to arrive at this solution.

I suggest that maybe a concertina would be more convenient. She answers that although it is easier to operate and certainly not as heavy, the concertina does not have the range of power and tone as does the piano accordion. Also, concertinas remind her of barrel-organ monkeys and clowns, neither of which would she allow to have contact with the pumpkin children as they may induce nightmares.

For some reason I suddenly take on the mantle of child psychologist and begin to lecture Pippa, although my intention is only to put her mind at rest. I look up at her sitting on the step ladder, squeezing and expanding the bellows of the instrument.

Pippa, I say, children are born without fear. It is our own fears that we instil in them. They are innocent…until um…proven guilty. It is the classic ‘nature-nurture’ principle. In nature, there are no clowns, no barrel-organs and no fez-wearing monkeys. It is the parent that teaches the child what is good or evil, safe or scary. In nature, the pumpkin has no reason to fear the concertina. They have no natural enemies…except perhaps the stag beetle…oh and greenfly.

I have to raise my voice above the sound of the accordion.

Nurture them Pippa! I urge. Encourage them to embrace all musical instruments, no matter how menacing they may seem. The lyre, the lute, the hurdy gurdy and the glockenspiel are all out there, waiting to be discovered by smiling, happy children, or pumpkins or… whatever.

Pippa suddenly stops playing.

I think Pierre has shit himself she says.

I am about to correct her with the word Shat but see the look on her face as she climbs down from the step ladder and I realise she is in no mood for pedantry.

She looks slightly jaded. Of course she must be. Bringing up two pumpkins alone cannot be easy.

Alone?

Is the father helping at all? I ask.

Pippa launches into a foul-mouthed tirade which I do not intend to share with the reader, but needless to say, the word ‘Arsehole’ appears more than once.

She finishes with, Men! They’re all the same!

But I know that she knows that I know that we both know… the father was a vegetable. And not all vegetables are the same. Some are long and pointy, some are round and knobbly. Some make good fathers, some don’t.

Meet%20and%20Two%20Veg.jpg

READER’S BLOG:

• Sutton has made a prick of himself again! A pumpkin is not a vegetable. It is in fact a fruit, or to be more exact, a pepo.

• The author is a cabbage!

• Scientists should keep their noses out of food classification. I would serve pumpkin as a side dish with spicy chicken, but never, I repeat, never with custard. Therefore it is a vegetable.

• Yeah, and Jaffa Cakes are biscuits!

• All men are bastards and (apparently) so are male vegetables!

• Some people leave pumpkins in a basket at the end of their garden so that passers-by can help themselves. They are encouraging theft. It’s a national disgrace!

• Wait a minute, wait a minute! Pippa had sex with a pumpkin? How the …?

• Pumpkins? Bleuch!

• If you want to see something that induces nightmares, what about Halloween Jack O Lanterns? They are made from pumpkins. Poor Pierre and Melone. Their lives will be short and their deaths will be hideous!

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www.planktonsoup.co.uk

PROPER CHARLIE

There is nothing unusual about this day. Just as every other day in his miserable life over the last few years, he has been to work and drifted aimlessly through the hours. For him there is no feeling of achievement and he is unable to remember what he has done with his time.

His drive home has been the usual slow crawl through the grey streets. The avenue where he lives looks the same as it always has. His front door is the same colour it was yesterday and still opens inward as opposed to outward, which is perfectly normal.

He throws the contents of his coat pockets