The coathanger of doom had ceased to pucker, Ob was pleased to note, though the preponderance of giddy malefactors was cause for concern in Sheepy Magna. A local Dalek had hidden garlic and now the chickens were coming home to roost. This pleased Ob greatly, for he was inordinately fond of chickens and insisted that Propter accompany him to the farmyard to watch them. Sometimes Ob would photograph them and force Propter to make audio recordings of their clucking, which Ob tried in vain to sell to some friends of Nelson Mandela’s former wigmaker-general.

George am my chum. He was born in Cheddar Gorge, but renounced his citizenship and moved to Norway in 1987, finding work in an Oppland smithy (see below).


George of Norge, formerly of Cheddar Gorge, at the forge

George cohabits with Carmen Riestra. Like me, my friends, she is not from this country. When she tell me she are an Spaniel, I say, “Please to tell me: is your name the Spanish word for mechanics?” Some grocers came to me in a vision and pointed out that if Señorita Riestra was part of a dynasty that included Derek Jarman, Harriet Harman and Lord Scarman, had a sex-change operation and got a job in a bar which kept playing a certain Bowie song of 1972, she’d be Carmen Jarman-Harman-Scarman the barman who listens to Starman.