Author: SubEditor

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries205

Previous – Book1 Page205 – Next

FULLYCHARGED
(Whispering.)
And the numbers!

BENET
There was another long queue at the gate, although this one didn’t take one hour.

This one took 59 minutes.

It would have been quicker, but the man at the front didn’t have the right territorial integrity pass. He wasn’t allowed to board the airliner in spite of having no toothpaste and having a travel warrant in his rock steady right hand. After three hours in the airport he was told that he had to go home.

That’s how a holiday starts!

SCENE 4
(Inside an airliner.)

BENET
Inside the airliner a prison guard in a cheap uniform forcibly strapped SimpleSimon and NottaPenny into their chairs before the metal tube was allowed to leave the ground. After it was high enough the prison guard came back and demanded twenty four sovereigns … twenty four … in exchange for two cups of cold, weak tea.

And SimpleSimon and NottaPenny were not allowed to go to the toilet because the captain was turbulent!

When the captain stopped being turbulent there was a rush for the two toilets at the back. This metal tube had 180 passengers and only two toilets. And one of the toilets was broken. All the passengers got very angry, and the prison guards said they had

Previous – Book1 Page205 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries204

Previous – Book1 Page204 – Next

Placing the travel warrant on top of the robot guardian, Miss ActiveVolcano recited the staff incantation, “you just have to hold it still,” and the robot reluctantly accepted it.

FULLYCHARGED
(Addressing HAYLEY in a whisper.)
I think it must have been the robot’s fault.

BENET
Then the mandatory fun continues! They stood in a different queue for another one hour, waiting for the scatter brained guardian of the forbidden belongings to look inside their bags. At least this guardian was a real human being.

And I’m using the word “human” in the widest possible sense of the word.

Actually, some of them were inhumane!

Mrs ScatterBrain checked NottaPenny’s bag … no problem.

When it was SimpleSimon’s turn Mr Inhumane ScatterBrain looked inside his bag and told him not to clean his teeth. He said it was forbidden, and then he stole the toothpaste saying that SimpleSimon must be obscenely rich to be carrying such an extravagantly large tube of toothpaste!

As SimpleSimon and NottaPenny arrive at gate number Eleventy Billion and One, they’re met by the gatekeeper, Mrs FireBreathingDragon.

HAYLEY
(Whispering.)
He’s making up these names!

Previous – Book1 Page204 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries203

Previous – Book1 Page203 – Next

BENET
Good answer!

And we’ve hardly even started!

At an airport the mandatory fun begins with standing in a queue for one hour, to do something called a check in. When SimpleSimon eventually reached the front of the queue his travel warrant was not accepted by the robot guardian. He offered it three times.

NottaPenny recited the magic incantation, “oh get out of my way,” and the robot guardian accepted her travel warrant first time. SimpleSimon tried again, three more times, and thrice reciting the incantation, “why doesn’t this damn thing work?”

The robot guardian refused to allow another try, and instead electrically summoned Miss ActiveVolcano.

HAYLEY
(Addressing FULLYCHARGED in a whisper.)
That can’t be her real name!

BENET
Miss ActiveVolcano erupted from nowhere and frowned at SimpleSimon.

She snatched the travel warrant from his hand, and just in case the first frown wasn’t strong enough, she did it again, giving him a double plus frown and then saying something about the honesty of men.

Or was it …

“Honestly! Men!”

Previous – Book1 Page203 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries202

Previous – Book1 Page202 – Next

HAYLEY
(Returning the favour, HAYLEY pokes FULLYCHARGED in the ribs, and she speaks to him in a whisper.)
Sounds just like you!

BENET
As soon as they went inside the terminal an electric voice came out of the ceiling:

“Welcome to Grab Stick airport, the Oh Four Twenty Five departure to Instant Bull is cancelled owing to the unavailability of metal tubes.”

What does that mean? You book a passage aboard an airliner, and the airport says they don’t have one?

Then another electric voice comes and says:

“Due to the French air traffic control strike, the Oh Nine Fifty Four departure for Jenny Fair will now terminate at Frank Fort where passengers will be met by the replacement stagecoach service.”

Air travel was a nightmare!

The merchants selling travel warrants would make all sorts of false promises, and regularly fail to deliver. Those merchants employed some really dodgy people to work in the airports and inside the airliners. Would you like to go to an airport at 02:00?

AUDIENCE
(Audible, but not loud, they collectively respond.)

No!

Previous – Book1 Page202 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries201

Previous – Book1 Page201 – Next

They didn’t trust each other to do their jobs properly, and so they always double checked, and triple checked, and quadruple checked your paperwork. Even the shopkeepers checked your paperwork before you were allowed to buy anything in an airport!

At the big airports there were eleventy billion doorways called gates.

You started by entering a big building called a terminal …

Sounds like a terminal illness to me … the end …

… . probably because it meant something like …

this is the end of your dreams …

… you are not going to enjoy this trip …

… oh no … not even one little bit!

SimpleSimon and NottaPenny had to go to Grab Stick airport 60 kilometres away from London, and they had to be there at 04:00.

That was silly o’clock, even back then, and at that time in the morning there were no trains! They had to wake up at 02:00, and pay a fortune to a motorised hackney cab driver to get them to the airport, so that they could arrive in time to commence battle with the guardians, all while SimpleSimon’s brain was still asleep!

NottaPenny used to say that actually, SimpleSimon’s brain was always asleep. She always had to show him how to do everything.

Previous – Book1 Page201 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries200

Previous – Book1 Page200 – Next

The flying metal tubes were called airliners.

They were one hundred times faster than a horse, and twenty times faster than a ship. The airliners guzzled vast amounts of oil, and that was part of the reason for the energy crisis of 2162.

A holiday involved lots of strange rituals … mandatory rituals … and lots of money. Generally, people didn’t do any work on a holiday so they just wasted their time away, wasted their money away, and generally made themselves poorer.

And sunburnt!

They would come back home from a holiday and boast about how fantastic it was, and how the best bit was when SimpleSimon had had a drink or three, ate something called a Vindaloo, then lost his purse and couldn’t get a motorised hackney cab back to the inn.

SCENE 3
(An image of a mysterious institution, an airport.)

BENET
Up the road from here, there’s a place that we call a harbour, or a port. Well, in the old days there used to be places like that called airports. They were manically overcrowded hell holes of people … technology … and guardians.

• The robot guardian of the travel warrant;
• The bureaucratic guardian of the territorial integrity;
• The scatter brained guardian of the forbidden belongings; and
• The fire breathing guardian of the gate.

And they all hated each other!

Previous – Book1 Page200 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries199

Previous – Book1 Page199 – Next

But first, they had to get there!

How would you go to the coast of Africa?

AUDIENCE
(Excitedly, dozens of children start shouting, including FULLYCHARGED, who can be heard clearly above the rest.)

Ship!

BENET
Yes! By ship! And how long would that take you?

AUDIENCE
(A moment’s silence. The boys look puzzled, the girls look thoughtful.)

HAYLEY
(Responding aloud and alone.)
Seven days?

BENET
Yes … seven days … and another seven days to get back again.

FULLYCHARGED
(Poking HAYLEY in the ribs as he addresses her in a whisper.)
I knew that!

BENET
For a whole year SimpleSimon and NottaPenny saved up all of their pennies. Thousands of pennies! In old money, naturally! They needed hundreds and hundreds of Sovereigns, to book a seven night stay at an inn, and a passage aboard a flying metal tube!

Previous – Book1 Page199 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries198

Previous – Book1 Page198 – Next

A long, long time ago …

… back in the days when the Cannery Islands were inhabited … you might have heard of them … they’re desert islands in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Africa. They have strange names like Lap Llama, Lancer Rodney, Grim Canterbury, Tender Reef and Furtive Adventure.

Four hundred years ago … that was before I was born you know …

Yes it was!

I’m only fifteen …

Honest! Don’t let the beard put you off. I’m still at school, just like you!

Four hundred years ago … the Cannery Islands had water, and plants, and towns, with taverns and ale houses. And people used to go there on a holiday. You know … a holiday … it was one of those things where you climbed inside a flying metal tube so that you could spend a few nights away from home, relaxing and enjoying yourself in the sun.

Of course, the world wasn’t so hot back then. Nowadays The Canneries are a barren death trap. It’s said that shipwrecked sailors who wash up there can barely survive an hour or two.

By sunset … you’d be dead!

When SimpleSimon and his girlfriend, NottaPenny, decided to go to The Canneries on holiday, the daily temperatures used to be around thirty degrees. Just like Wolfland is today. And they could happily walk about wearing a T shirt and shorts.

Previous – Book1 Page198 – Next

Chapter 26 The Almost True True Story of The Canneries197

Previous – Book1 Page197 – Next

Chapter 26
The Almost True True Story of The Canneries

SCENE 1
(The Market Square in Lancaster, temporarily renamed Jackanory Square. An assembly of children aged from five and up are excited yet orderly. Benet is sitting on a large block of roughly hewn tree trunk taken from a Poplar tree, whilst holding a large, red, leather bound volume which appears to be a story book. Periodically he refers to the volume, but it contains only a few notes and serves as a simple aide memoire.)

BENET
(Polite, regular, yet commanding voice, creating the air of a friendly school teacher.)

Are we all sitting comfortably?

Then I’ll begin.

May I first remind you of what Mark Twain said?

In the real world, nothing ever happens in the right place at the right time. It is the task of historians and story tellers to rectify this error.

SCENE 2
(An image of desolate, desert islands is invoked.)

BENET
(Mimicking the style of the famous story tellers of old, such as Bernard Cribbins or Kenneth Williams. Using an animated narrator’s voice to invoke drama and suspense as required, and matching the tone and volume to the content of the story, where possible, adopting fictitious voices to represent different  characters.)

Previous – Book1 Page197 – Next

Chapter 25 Jackanory Square195

Previous – Book1 Page195 – Next

Benet walks to The Stump and stands on top of it. That’s the signal that everybody is to be quiet, because story time is about to commence. He doesn’t need to say anything. Dutifully, a complete hush descends over Jackanory Square.

Benet scans the whole square, there is silence everywhere, the terrace of the Find Thyme Café is packed with people, and nobody is talking. Various people are sitting on the steps of the Town Hall, members of staff from the Chamber, the library, the museum, and the research institute. So many people, that there are rows of them standing at the back.

The owners, Honey and Tigger are standing to one side of the entrance to Magnum Opus, and their adult children Julia and Marcus are standing on the other. The staff and all the customers are silent, eagerly anticipating Benet’s latest, almost true true story.

Benet sits down on The Stump and the kids create a tidal wave of whispers. He looks at them disapprovingly, and then everything goes quiet again. One or two birds chirping, and nothing else.

Previous – Book1 Page195 – Next