An Early Childhood Chapter 22 Part 4

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: A WHOLE RAFT OF ADVENTURE (PART FOUR)

An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock surreal autobiography. Its first chapter is here. It parodies misery memoirs (such as Angela’s Ashes by the late great Frank McCourt), as well as time travel, pop culture, and literature of various kinds.

Continued from Chapter 22 Part 3.

            But as I looked on, I saw that neither of the prisoners was British in any way. One was of dark complexion, an Indian it seemed, or – if I had caused him any offence were he to hear me, perhaps a Pakistani man – and the other one – a beautiful lady – was wearing a haggis. It turned out in the end that the Indian or Pakistani man was in fact a Bangladeshi. The relevance of his nationhood at this point in world history could be regardered, of course, as quite irrelevant.

            When I say the young woman was wearing a haggis, I mean that she was actually quite nude, her hands over her splendiferously modest upper body in a most bashful fashion, but around her waist, she was wearing a kind of a kilted seasoning of meats and dried pork blood that hung about her like a kind of a completely meat made skirt, but I forgot the word for a “meaty kilt” for a moment there and I thought I’d write haggis just to maintain your interest in the story.

              You could tell from the annoyed look of her that she was obviously there for the eating, and she knew it. At the front of her head, she had the face of a genuine Chinawoman. Or perhaps a Korean. She may well have been Japanese.

            Anyway, I realised that these two prisoners weren’t the hated English localised in very London, so I deemed it appropriate to instigate a rescue. And how better to fight witches than with witchery?

            Now, I still had the gold comb of the banshee that I’d found on the morning of Constable Combover’s murder, returned to me quite recently by Mad Leopold Cassidy. So I made sure that Old Man Phelps and I remained well hidden in the bushes and I hurled the comb into the clearing. It made a dinging sound off the cauldron and the witches put a stop to their dancing and looked at the grooming instrument on the grass.

Continued in Part 5.