Hello again, eager followers of narrative recapitulation:
If you are one of the literally
two or three people who have been following our account of Sparky’s
disappearance into an alternate dimension, you will be aware that our pint-size
picaroon had been trapped among the programs of the curiously-named Golden Age
of Black-and-White Television. Stumped for a method to bring him back to what
passes for reality down our way, Science Boy, Moose and I went off to seek
help. As we left him, Sparky was in the process of giving a hard time to Tom
Terrific:
As fate
(or a writer’s shortcut) would have it, our ace in the hole on all matters
supernatural, Milady Madeira M’Dear, had already gotten wind of the problem
through her crystal ball, and was hard at work on a solution. A part-time practising
sorceress with full borrowing privileges at the local branch of the Witches’
and Warlocks’ Lending Library, M’Dear has dabbled in potions, hexes, and
incantations for more years than it’s polite to ask a lady (particularly a lady
who can turn you into a toad for asking it). When we arrived at M’Dear’s pied-à-terre,
she was thumbing through the index of her favourite reference book:
This cursory research seemed to
indicate that our current dilemma was beyond the reach of either the “bubbling-cauldron”
or the “abracadabra” approach. Instead, M’Dear opted for a good old-fashioned
in-person whammy on Sparky’s cathode ray prison, delivered from a reverse
layout off a triple-twisting arabesque:
All that did for Sparky was get
him into a nasty standoff with Agnes Moorehead:
However, every good witch’s
motto is “if at first you don’t succeed, zap it harder”, and M’Dear is no
exception. Falling back on a tried-and-true formula for success on television,
she decided to try doing it with mirrors:
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The end result of this attempt
gave M’Dear’s application of English an unnecessarily literal aspect:
After a continuity announcement
about the rescheduling of a cricket test match due to rain (imagine that in
England), Coronation Street came on. I’m pretty sure that Macmillan was
still Prime Minister at the time, but Britain was already swinging enough that
the checking of ID’s at public houses was, shall we say, a little on the lax
side:
Rather than risk alienating you
all with more inside references like that last one, I’ll end this chapter of
the saga here. Meanwhile, on Uncle Fun and Sparky Land 2, a choice of viewing includes
edited highlights of Rupert Murdoch hacking into his own cellphone so he can
get all the dirt on what he’s been up to.
Don’t forget to pay your
licence fees before the Uncle Fun and Sparky Land detector van comes through
your area.
Uncle Fun
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