TEABAG part 31

Chatteris warned the others, who had just about finished laughing.
“What?” shouted Arthur, “quick let’s be off.”
“B..but,” butted Sid, “the kettle hasn’t boiled yet!”
“Never mind that now Colour Sergeant, we must get back to the airship in case we get captured.” He started through the door towards Robo Sid who was starting to ascend the steps.
The last up the steps was Robo Arthur who was guarding the rear. Chatteris was running as fast as he could across the courtyard to the airship. The others were too far behind. Just far enough so that they could be surrounded by a force that was far too big to have been assembled so soon.
“Oh no,” exclaimed Arthur, “it looks like we’re going to have a big battle scene for the next chapter!”


CHAPTER SIX

Sixty. That is the number of guards that surrounded Arthur and his main party in the courtyard of the Tower of Tarrelo. Ruhtra slurped away, into a drain. Initially there was a stand off as the captain of the guard called for them to, “Lay down your arms and surrender.”
Gunby looked at Arthur to see what they were going to do. He held on tightly to his hipped Hotchkiss cannon, finger on the trigger.
“Have you got an itchy trigger finger?” Tresham asked him.
“No, I’ve been using that cream,” he replied.
Robo Sid and Robo Arthur detached their arms and let them fall on the floor.
“Fools,” derided Sid when he saw what they were doing.
Seeing that it was probably useless Arthur ordered, “Right men, surrender.”
“Sorry, do you want us to surrender?” asked the captain of the guard.
This stunned Arthur, “Er, why yes!”
Then the king of Andacia turned up, “Now then, what is happening here?”
The captain bowed deferentially to the king, “Your highness, I did not know you were visiting the Tower.”
“Snap visit my man, just testing your security arrangements. These are my men pretending to be British soldiers.”
“But your highness, they have been in the strong room.”
“Yes I know, it wasn’t very strong, was it.”
The captain looked very confused, “Um...”
The king snapped at him again, “Well come on, we must be off, I have a country to invade.”
The captain moved aside, allowing Arthur and the others to pass. The king led them back towards the airship.
Robo Sid and Robo Arthur didn’t know what to do, they couldn’t pick up their arms because, well, they didn’t have any arms. They looked desperately at each other.
Two of the nearest guards picked up the arms.
“Here, plug it in here,” gestured Robo Sid with his head pointing towards his right shoulder socket.
A guard plugged an arm in.
“You’ve plugged the left arm in, give me another left arm.”
“Now hang on there,” moaned Robo Arthur, “that’ll be one of my left arms.”
“I know, we’ll sort it out later, on the ship. Unless I have at least one right arm...”
“They’re both left arms.”

TEABAG part 30

To recap. So, Sid is no longer daydreaming, but making the tea. Gunby should be going through the code book with Plattington. Chatteris is guarding the door. Tresham is guarding the other door (the new one that is now available because the electric shield is down.) Arthur starts looking at the other things in the room. Robo Sid, Robo Arthur and Ruhtra are having a game of paper, scissors, rock, lizard, Spock to see who will wind Arthur up next.
“This looks like a Modigliani,” mused Arthur as he looked at a painting that was also stored in the same room as the code book.
Ruhtra won the game and so he took the form of a statue, the Venus de Milo.
“Do you believe that,” asked the colonel as he saw the statue, “they have a copy of the Venus de Milo.” He looked away for a second to see if anyone was listening to him. Ruhtra made a funny face at him, Robo Sid and Robo Arthur saw this and began to do their robotic giggles. Arthur looked back at the statue, everything seemed normal.
Sid could see what was happening also and decided to join in. “Why would they have a copy of the Venus de Milo? Surely it’s the real one and the one on earth is the fake.”
So Arthur peered deeply into the statue’s eyes.
Ruhtra couldn’t keep the ruse up and spat a goggle of Zathanian fluids into Arthur’ s wide open eye.
“Yaargh!” screamed Arthur and flew into a rage while everyone else guffawed with laughter.
From the doorway Chatteris laughed but from the corner of his eye he saw a shadow.
He looked up to the top of the steps to see two guards there looking down at the open door. Hiding in the doorway he looked at the others who were still laughing, he started waving at them to be quiet. It was impossible, so he started to hiss loudly. Robo Sid came over, “Are you a snake or something?”
“Someone’s coming,” he said anxiously.
As per the real Sid, Robo Sid was up for a fight, so he stepped out and met one of the guards as he was getting near the bottom of the steps.
“What are you?” asked the guard, quite confused at a metal man coming towards him.
“A metal man with Sid the dwarf’s AI in its brain.”
“Uh?” uhed the guard just before Robo Sid shocked him into unconsciousness with a stun attachment to one of his fingers that I just made up.
“I didn’t know I had that,” said Robo Sid as he looked at his finger, “I was going to bash him one.”
The other guard started to run for help. Holding up his arm Robo Sid looked as though he was going to shoot something from his other hand, but nothing happened. “I thought you were going to help me out with something there Author.”

TEABAG part 29

“Well, I could be boating with my wife on the river.”
“No, you don’t have a wife.”
“I could meet my wife, on the river bank.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?”
“Well no, not really, I’ve only been around for 6 months, and I think I’ve only seen one woman in that time?”
“Who was that?”
“The blue receptionist in the Tulox cloning factory?”
“You mean she was sad?”
“No, you know, she had blue skin.”
“So would you like a blue skinned wife then?”
“Would that mean we had light blue babies then?”
“Light blue hairy babies probably.”
“That would be a nightmare.”
“Well a nightmare is still a type of dream.”
“So am I really going to get a blue wife then?”
“No, just day dream it for now, and we’ll sort you out a wife after the adventure.”
“The real one doesn’t have to be blue does she?”
“Of course not.”
“Good, if it’s possible I’d like a green one, like the Orion animal women on Star Trek the Original series.”
“I thought you said you’d only seen one woman?”
“One real one.”
“Oh, well go on then, get daydreaming.

So Sid fell into a deep daydream, if there is such a thing, where he was snoozing in the arms of a green dwarf woman...
“She doesn’t have a beard does she?” he inquired, part way through the daydream.
“Erm, I’ll say no. We’ll pretend that green dwarf women don’t have beards, a bit like American Indian men.”
“Good, “ daydream snoozed Sid, “I don’t like women who shave, even though I’ve only met one before.”
Anyway, back to the description, they canoodled in a canoe like two Canucks playing Cadoo.
“What is your name my love?” he asked his daydreamed date.
“Arthur,” she said.
Which shocked him out of his daydream. He had actually fallen asleep and was grabbing Arthur around the waist and really asked the colonel, “What is your name my love?” he quickly separated himself from Arthur.
“Daydreaming Colour Sergeant?” asked his commanding officer.
“Yes Sir, about my new green wife.”
“Green you say? What, green like Green Eggs and Ham or green like the Jolly Green Giant.”
“No, like She Hulk.”
“Oh, I see. Because of your slobbishness you can make the tea, help us all think you see.”

TEABAG part 28

“Well it is in code,” explained Tresham, who was defending his friend, “So maybe you have to skip some of the letters or words, based on a number or group of numbers.”
“A skip code?”
“I know a skip code,” smiled Sid. “I saw a man eat biscuits,
He ate them off the floor,
He covered them in Kerosene,
And sucked them off the floor,
His name was Ooh Aaah Flibbity,
Gibbet Gingivitis Tom,
Scumble Doody Flooby Doo,
And his middle name was John.”

“That’s not a skip code,” derided Arthur, “it’s a skipping rhyme.”
“But wouldn’t it be funny, “he thought, “if that was the cryptographic key] ?”
Arthur gave the book to Gunby, “Try it.”
Gunby was nonplussed because he didn’t understand what his commanding officer was talking about.
Seeing the half giant’s confusion Arthur tried to explain, “What you need to do is say the rhyme, in Hoo, and see if the metre or words match up with the words of the recipe.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, and I don’t know the rhyme off by heart. Do you expect me to be a code breaker within a couple of minutes or something?”
Sid interrupted, “He could compliment the Author, like the real Sid and Arthur do, to be able to break it?”
This was not to Arthur’s taste so he decided, “No, we’ll try to break it ourselves, and nobody tries to sneakily compliment the Author, that’s an order!” He looked at Gunby, “Read us the recipe.”
Beginning to read the half giant began, “A flub and a flue of flour…”
“Arthur interrupted, “A flub and a flue?”
“About a cup and ¾. Then it goes on to say a tang of water… which is around 7-8 oz of water.”
“Good,” he then spoke to Plattington, “You write this down.”
“In flubs and flues or in cups and ounces?” asked the corporal/bombardier.
Sid mimicked him quietly, “In clubs and queues, where the big man bounces.”
“Both!” wanted Arthur.
“Well Gunby’ll have to go a bit slower then,” asked Plattington.
The colonel nodded at Gunby to slow down.
“And read it again so’s I can get it down.”
Gunby looked at Plattington, then the code book. “A… flub… and… flue… of… flour… of… flour…” He glanced down at Plattington to see him writing it down with his notepad.
(How can we get through this without being too boring but also funny?)
Sid heard my thought and spoke to me, “I could do a funny routine and by the time it’s finished they could be finished.”
“But it should really be linked to the bread recipe etc.”
“I can do a few code puns.”
“Or you could have a daydream sequence, that’s also a bit surreal.”
“What kind of dream sequence?”
“On a river?”
“So, do I have a wife, like the real Sid?”
“What difference does that make to the dream?”

TEABAG part 27

“Just say the funny suggestion that will work without breaking the 4th wall too much.”
“Can I break it a little?”
“How?”
“Lift up the skirting board and make the mouse hole big enough to get through.”
“Doesn’t the mouse hole also have the shield going through it?”
“No it’s shielded if you look,” said Sid while he held up the skirting board a little, “the mice can get straight through.”
“Well then,” interrupted Ruhtra as he stepped towards them and made himself into a mouse, “let me oblige.” (Though the last bit was a squeak because he was so small.)
As Ruhtra went through the mouse hole Sid jibed at him, “Make sure Mr and Mrs mouse don’t get you,” he smirked.
As soon as he had got to the other side he turned himself back into the copy of Arthur and strode towards the electric switch to switch it off. He then turned to the others and smiled, “If I had known it was going to be that easy I wouldn’t have needed you lot at all.”
After the initial kerfuffle of Arthur staring out Ruhtra a bit they all noticed, in the centre of the room, on a podium, the code book.
“Don’t say this is going to be like the Indiana Jones type thing?” moaned Sid.
Arthur looked at him, “You mean the snakes on a plane?”
“Noooo, the filling a bag with sand and replacing the golden idol with it.”
Looking around Arthur commented, “I don’t see any holes in the walls where the poison darts could shoot out?”
Ruhtra just grabbed the code book.
Arthur screamed a, “No,” but nothing occurred to the shapechanger.
As he looked at it Ruhtra commented, “It’s all gobbledegook to me.”
“The goblin from the old White Dwarf magazines?” asked Robo Sid.
But nobody else cared to try to outpun him.
“Outrun?” said my spell checker before I changed it back to outpun.
“Give it here,” demanded Arthur of Ruhtra. When the shapechanger had complied the colonel flicked through it, it was empty. He looked up, “There’s nothing in it, it’s empty!”
Sid knocked Ruhtra on the shoulder, “Go on, give it to him.”
Sneering at Sid the Zathanian complied.
Arthur was now holding two code books, “What’s this then?”
“A joke?” weaselled Ruhtra, as one of the code books gradually started to slurp back into his body.
The shaking of Arthur’s head showed his contempt, but as he looked at this code book at least he saw there was something written in it.
“Who reads Hoo?”
“Who?”
“No Hoo.”
“I read a bit,” said Gunby, “my Ma, well, the real Gunby’s mother taught him/me and I sort of have a little of it still ingrained in me.”
“Can you read it?”
“Let’s see,” he scanned the first page, “it’s a recipe for bread.”
“What!” went ballistic Arthur, “we’ve been on this hairbrained mission, nearly got killed by tea pirates and Andacians all for a bread recipe?”

TEABAG part 26

CHAPTER FIVE

“This is where I’ll leave you,” said Gloin, “I’m not equipped for a steampunk battle?”
“What do you know that I don’t know?” asked Arthur.
“The Author.”
“Well thanks for your help Gloin. Maybe I’ll see you back at the fantasy dimension sometime.”
The dwarf policeman waved as he started back up the steps.
As Ruhtra looked into the passageway beyond he noted, “There’s an electric barrier, so they were prepared for a shape changer.”
“They might have just been prepared for thieves,” commented Sid.
“Or that.” He sat down on a nearby chair.
“What are you doing?” exclaimed Arthur.
“I’m useless until you get rid of the electric shield, so I’ll wait here.”
“Lazy slob,” insulted Sid.
“Or lazy blob,” said Robo Sid, “especially when he’s in his fruit bowl.”
Sid kind of opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“Never mind trying to outdo Robo Sid with the quips,” urged the colonel, “we need the electric shield down. It’ll kill us as well as Ruhtra.”
“As long as the switch was no further away than the length of my arm then I could switch it off without it harming me,” offered Robo Arthur.
“Can either of you two see where the switch is through the electric shield?” Arthur asked the Robos.
“Another couple of letters and you could have asked the rooibos,” tweeted Sid.
“Get it together Sid,” ordered Arthur, “stop talking about South African tea and do something useful.”
“What like?”
“Get the others to throw a defensive perimeter around us.”
“There’s one exit, the door. We need one man guarding that.”
“Look I don’t know, just make yourself useful.”
So Sid ordered Chatteris to guard the door while Robo Sid and Arthur looked for the switch in the room beyond.
“It’s there,” spotted Robo Arthur of the electric switch.
“Are you sure it’s not just the light switch?” asked Robo Sid.
“Either way we cannot reach it with our short arms.”
“They’re not that short,” grumped Robo Sid as he waved his not too short arms around, and hit Gunby on the Foreign Service Helmet.
Gunby looked angry, “If you need that arm ripping off, just let me know!”
Robo Sid stood up to his full height, as Gunby did.
“Have you found it yet?” asked Arthur of Robo Sid, to stop the posturing.
Robo Sid backed down from his encounter with the half giant, “Yes,” he told the colonel, “but it’s too far away for our arms.”
“How are we going to switch it off.” fretted Arthur while pulling his beard a little.
“We could break the 4th wall?” suggested Sid.
“What?”
“We could go around the cameramen, bypass the special effects creating the electric shield and switch it off.”
Arthur looked really perturbed, “What?” he babbled again. “No, no, no, let’s try for a more sensible suggestion first.”
“But funny?” queried Sid.
“Well of course funny, you fool.”
“And?”
“So you know you’re a fool?”
“I thought you did too?”

TEABAG part 25

The dwarf looked a little bemused, “Arthur said I can pun with you.”
“About what?”
“Lock picking.”
“I have a little difficulty with puns, different culture and all that.”
“You just be the straight man then.”
“Can I be the straight man while glooping down the steps.”
“Why?”
“Then I’ll be a fluid straight man.” He wobbled around a bit to try to make it funnier.
“Just pretend to be Arthur.”
“With all his pomposity?”
Sid had to bite his tongue, for he knew that Ruhtra was twice as pompous as Arthur was. “Yes,” he hissed slightly.
“Well go on then, pun away.”
“Your face when I pull this face?” (He pulled a funny face.)
“A pic-ture?”
“I’m supposed to have the punch line!”
“Well I’ll have to ask you the questions then, where’s the script?”
“There isn’t one, only an old tablet box that the Author scribbled on.”
“Well show me that then.” When Sid had showed him he asked, “Actor who played ‘King’ Kong in Dr Strangelove?”
“Slim Pick-ens.”
“The thing he used on his guitar?”
“A pick?”
“Something that I had dropped on the floor I have…?”
“Picked up?”
“Something the REAL Sid used to bash people over the head with?”
Sid was getting angrier, “A pick axe handle. Now if you don’t give me a better lead in you’ll be in a pick, a PICK-LE!”
“I say old chap, I’m only doing what you asked. Different culture and all that.”
“Here, I’ll write one down for you. You ask it I’ll punch line it.” Sid wrote something on my old tablet box.
Ruhtra read it to understand it before he began to give the delivery. “What do you call a man who chooses time pieces for customers at Tescos?”
“A clock picker?” Then Sid began to laugh really loud because he thought his own joke was so funny.
Ruhtra looked down at the piece of old card, “What do I do with this now he asked?”
I took it back, they shouldn’t have had it anyway.




So now we go back to Arthur and Plattington who were having no luck at trying to pick the lock on the old wooden door. As Ruhtra came up to them he asked, “Do you want me to slime in through the keyhole and have a look around?”
“I thought you said they might have anti-shapechanging technology at the beginning of this story?”
“Well they might do, but at least I can get you through this door.”
Arthur pursed his lips and shook his head slightly, “Go on then.”
So Ruhtra slimed under the door. They heard sounds from beyond then Ruhtra opened the door, “You wouldn’t have got in anyway,” he explained to them, “there was a bar on the other side, it wasn’t even locked with the key.”
Tutting Arthur looked forward into the dark then spoke to me, “We’re not going to leave the cliffhanger on going through another door opening are we?” asked Arthur as I left the cliffhanger on going through another door opening.