2858. Travelogue

I don’t know what we’re going to do with the cat when we go on our two-month-long trip through Asia. I’m not leaving it in a cattery. Imagine the expense for all that time. So we have to settle on an alternative.

We don’t have any children – we could if we wanted of course, but we chose to tour the world instead. It’s been a wonderful experience. Anyway, the cat is like a baby. Our baby. It’s a problem we’ve never had before because we never had a cat prior to this and this cat is only a few months old.

I believe that husband Willie has come up with a solution. On the way to the airport – the combined expense of parking at the airport for several months and leaving the cat at a cattery would be astronomical so were going with the car idea and not the cat – as I say, on the way to the airport we pass though Sunshine Estate. That’s an affluent suburb in town. And we’ll simply let the cat out. It can fend for itself but I’m sure some rich kid will find it and look after it. It’s not a suburb I’m particularly fond of. In fact, when Willie called it an “affluent suburb” I said “Don’t you mean effluent suburb?!!!!”

When we come back we can always get another cat.

2837. Floating

There were only four of us on the space craft. We were to travel for over a hundred years to arrive at some God-forsaken planet where we were destined to do scientific research. Travelling for so long could be difficult except we put ourselves into a state of inertia. It’s akin to sleep but it’s not quite the same. However to an observer it would look like we were asleep.

We had just a week to get to know each other before submitting to the pill. We would “awaken” fresh and almost at our journey’s end. Of course the trip back would be the same and we would arrive on Planet Earth some several hundred years later. We knew all this before we volunteered for the flight.

I had what I thought was going to be an advantage. My husband of several months was one of the three others travelling. So I would “awaken” with my husband and return to Planet Earth with my husband. But there was a catch…

My husband turned out to be not quite the man I presumed he was. Of the four members of the crew one was the sexiest man I had every laid eyes on. And when stuck in a not overly big space craft things can get a bit intense. When we got a quiet moment to ourselves we made a plan.

If you ever come across someone floating in space in a state of inertia you’ll know who it is.

2785. A seat on a rocket

There was no doubting that Planet Earth was on its last legs. Space rockets had been commissioned to transfer Earthlings to a newly discovered planet for the sole task of propagating the human species. Old people (those over 35) couldn’t enter the lottery draw for a place on a craft. Several billion eligible contestants were to miss out. In fact only two hundred thousand were selected to fill seats to the new venture.

In an extraordinary coincidence, every politician was selected – even the old ones. Names had been drawn at random out of a hat. Honestly, you wouldn’t read about it. Who would believe that a coincidence like that could happen?

But that’s not the end of this strange piece of history. With the politicians gone, Planet Earth managed to survive and flourish. But the space crafts were sucked into an eternally spiralling vortex that had no time.  Enmity and hatred between the travelling political factions is destined to last for eternity.

2751. International travel

The coffee isn’t as good as the coffee you can buy at home.

The movie theatre is so expensive. It’s twice the cost of what it is at home.

The locals seem to have coleslaw with every meal. I’m sick to death of coleslaw.

The streets are so crowded. It’s like thousands of maggots on a dead sheep. I’m constantly bumping into people.

The locals are so rude. They’re pushy. They’re loud. Unlike home they have not a scrap of courtesy.

They seem to make a great song and dance about the architectural wonder of their Town Hall. Honest to goodness we have one of those on every corner back home.

The weather here is absolutely shocking. You’d think they’d warn people that the weather here is lousy.

Honestly dear. You should have stayed at home instead of coming here.

Stay at home? Goodness me! It’s good to expand ones horizons and be open to other cultures.

2605. An alien favour

After Hector had helped the space aliens fix a hose on their space craft, by way of thanks the aliens told Hector that he could ask for any favour.

Hector said he wouldn’t mind travelling to their exoplanet for a look. “How long would it take to get there?”

“Travelling at just under the speed of light,” said an alien, “it would take around eleven earth years.”

“Count me in,” said Hector.

Hector is now mummified and naked in a glass cabinet on Planet Ekruks.

2510. Dolls

When a hoard of little girls came to Eloise’s house to play, Eloise wouldn’t let them play with her dolls.

Eloise had more dolls than she needed, and as little Ruby said, “That’s just being selfish. I always let people play with my dolls.”

One very pretty doll caught Ruby’s attention. It was a Spanish doll; at least it looked Spanish. ”You’re not to touch it,” said Eloise. “Someone spent hours making those doll’s clothes to look Spanish.”

Rose liked the doll dressed for the cold. “You’re not to touch it,” said Eloise.

All in all, each liked a different doll – that’s how many Eloise had! – but Aria and Emily both liked best the doll with the Hawaiian skirt.

“You’re not to touch,” repeated Eloise. “Every country my husband and I visit when on vacation I buy a doll as a keepsake. Next year we’re thinking of going to Tibet.”

2192. Jet pack

I’m a little bit out of touch, so I can’t instantly recall what those things are called. You put them on your back like a weed-spraying pack and take off into the air. It’s sort of jet propulsion or something. I remember when one was used during an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony years ago. These days they’re so common that a loaf of bread at an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony would be more spectacular. Everyone, just everyone, has got one.

The air can get quite cluttered. It always amuses me to see a parent taking their kids to school. It’s like a parental duck and the babies – except ducklings can’t fly.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my great-aunt Sylvia and what happened to her when she donned one of those things. She had been harping for years about wanting to try flying. Are they called jet packs? I don’t have one. Everyone calls me old-fashioned; I still drive an electric car. And I must admit that the state of the roads these days is atrocious.

“You’re too old to fly alone in the air,” we told Aunt Sylvia. But she wouldn’t listen. She made a heap of dough with that pretend money they have so she’s not short a pretty penny, and before you knew it she’d gone and bought one of those contraptions.

“Look Aunt Sylvia,” we said. “If you must try it let’s go to the park and try it where there’s space.”

But Aunt Sylvia would have none of it. She put the thing on at home and went out to the back yard. I swear I never knew those things could take off so fast. Aunt Sylvia shot into the air like a catapult out of a cannon. She hit the top of a tall maple tree and got hooked up there.

“Just use the machine to come down,” we all shouted. But she said she didn’t trust the thing. So we had to call the Fire Brigade to come and rescue her. These days, of course, they don’t use ladders; they simply put a couple of those packs onto a couple of Fire Brigade people and they do the rest. So Aunt Sylvia was rescued.

She said that never again would she touch the dangerous things. But she must’ve because we found her with a broken neck about a month later when she’d flown crash-bang into the concrete wall of an outside handball court.

2008. Cruising the Universe

Long John Silver (his real name wasn’t Long John Silver but he was known as Long John Silver by his closest associates) had given the exact location of Planet Earth. He had stumbled across Planet Earth while cruising the Universe and thought it to be a fairly fascinating place. (It’s where he had picked up the name Long John Silver from. It had tickled his fancy).

Now a group from Long John Silver’s planet were travelling in a space pod to Planet Earth. The voyage would take just over eight months, which was a phenomenally short time given the distance to get to Earth. Speed is of the essence in space travel.

Already two of the men on board had given birth to babies. (These aliens were sort of like Planet Earth’s sea horses where the males did the gestation).

How exciting to be nearing Planet Earth! Conditions on Earth were so similar to their own that they could simply step off their space pod and be assimilated incognito into earthly daily life (apart from the men having babies, which would be hidden if it happened).

They reached the location stipulated by Long John Silver. There was nothing there. Planet Earth had self-annihilated. It had blown itself up. It was so disappointing for the tourists.

1489. Sad but true

The Seilfnogard are a group of creatures that we on earth call “aliens”. They live on a planet roughly one million light years away from Planet Earth. It’s not improbable that they are the most intelligent creatures in the cosmos. Of course, there are probably creatures more intelligent, but how does one judge intelligence when a one-hour old Seilfnogard thinks like Isaac Newton on a good day?

Coming from a life source and a series of genetic mutations completely unrelated to anything on Planet Earth, they don’t resemble anything we might know. I suppose the nearest thing we have to them are dragonflies. You see, the Seilfnogard live for only about a year, but most of that time is spent in the nymph stage. First there’s an egg, then the nymph, and finally the adult Seilfnogard emerges and lasts only a day or two. Those couple of days are spent delving as quickly as possible into the mysteries of the universe. Then death comes knocking in twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

But goodness me! What the Seilfnogard have achieved! The civilization they have built! The body of knowledge! Although they can fly (they have a double pair of wings not unlike dragonflies) they are terrible at space travel. Many years ago a group of fearless Seilfnogard set out for Planet Earth in a spacecraft that travelled almost at the speed of light. One of their major concerns in this lengthy travel was to propagate. Over the time of the journey to Planet Earth a million-plus generations came and went. Upon arrival they had only two days to record first-hand what they observed. However, panic took over, and the two days were spent hurriedly fornicating and laying eggs in order to begin a trail of generations for the return home.

A million generations later the Seilfnogard arrived back on their planet. No two-million old records had survived as to who they were and to where they’d gone. The travellers themselves didn’t have a clue as to what their mission had been; where they’d been and why.

The stay-at-home Seilfnogard had so evolved over the intervening epochs that inferior genes were undesirable. For example, the stay-at-home Seilfnogard, with selective breeding and genetic engineering, were now able to survive in the adult stage for up to five days. That is why the intrepid explorers were immediately put to death as aberrations.

Sad but true.

1458. Squandavia

From an alien handbook:

One of the more bizarre planets in the cosmos is known as Squandavia, although it is believed that some of the early interplanetary adventurers referred to it as Planet Earth.

Top of the food chain are what are known as elephants. They are the biggest land creatures. In the sea it is creatures called whales.

The most interesting, and most bizarre feature of the planet are the millions and millions of relatively unhairy four-limbed creatures that walk around on two legs. They are everywhere. Apparently the elephants and whales have them pretty well trained for they seem to spend all their time working. They make strange noises most of the time. They don’t graze slowly all day on their food as we do, but they seem to stuff food into their mouths at set times three or four times a day.

Some of their other habits are even more bizarre but we leave that to the traveller to be shocked by discovery.

It is not recommended when visiting Squandavia that you make yourself visible. These little relatively unhairy four-limbed animals are riddled with animosity. It is inconceivable to us that the elephants and whales haven’t got rid of at least a few of them.

If we ever take over this planet, and it seems not unlikely, the extermination of these relatively unhairy four-limbed creatures will be a priority.