or,
This saga takes place on a planet very much like the Earth. However, the Earth had been destroyed millions of years earlier, and these similarities were totally coincidental ("In an infinite universe, anything is possible..."). The planet was mostly covered in tropical islands, though one island where the action of this story takes place was noted because it never stopped raining, and the inhabitants never stopped complaining about the weather, which was understandable really.
The planet Oigy was mostly inhabited by very Earth-like animals, although they had mostly evolved to be much more intelligent than the humanoid life forms. The latter were divided into warring tribes such as "Space Hippies", "Softies", "Civies" and so on, and lived in hidden-away tracts of land known as "campuses".
Our story begins on an obscure railway station...
...where it was raining Blue elephants (most people stay inside when this is happening and wait for the blue elephants to stop and the orange frogs to start again)
The railway station was never used as the train service put into operation 20 years before by oigy rail was still trying to get its first train that set off 20 years previously from a neighbouring station up a very steep hill. This was all blamed on Einrich Putz a brilliant (read mad) nuclear scientist whose theory about getting infinite amounts of energy from semolina if you put a bit of jam in it and mixed it up so that it all went pink. Oigy Rail had decided to use this revolutionary invention in their trains. It worked OK for the first bit down into the valley but when it came to the uphill part the semolina stopped working. Thinking that the semolina had run out and all they needed to do was put some new semolina in they spent the next 20 years filling the train with enough jam and semolina to try and get it moving.
[N.B. They never did get it working until they swapped semolina for Rice pudding 50 years after as they had run out of semolina]
Anyway at the station...
"We are sorry to announce that the 11:00 from Wibble Central is running approximately twenty, two-zero, years late. We apologise to passengers for the late arrival of this train."
Alfred, Skifgus and Seigfried (or Alf, Skiffy and Seigy) looked at their watches again, and tutted loudly at the late train announcement. They didn't know where Wibble Central was, but then they couldn't remember what planet they were on, or anything else for that matter. In fact, the first think the three of them could remember was sitting at the station waiting for the train to take them to Wibble Central.
Eventually they gave up waiting, and decided to leave and find somewhere else to go instead. On the way, they decided to go to the newsagent to get something to read.
Skiffy bought a copy of "The Joy of Lemmings"
Seigy bought a copy of "Motor Racing World"
And Alfred bought "Playvaark".
They were just about to leave the station, when Skiffy pointed up to the indicator board.
"Gosh!" he said "there's a train to Teerts Wen in five minutes, maybe we ought to catch that!"
So, the three set off down to Platform 3, and waited for the train. By some amazing chance the train arrived on time.
"Gosh! God's will must be with us today" said Skiffy
"Uuuuuuuuurrrrrrrr...." said Seigy the Hyperactive Sloth, who was hyperactive, but he still couldn't move faster than 2mph.
"Shurrup punk" said Alfred, who was admiring the centrefold of his magazine, and polishing his mirrored shades at the same time.
"Gosh! Oigy Rail must have spent a lot of money on these leather seats."
"Uuuuuurrrrrrh...... yeeeeeaaahhhh" said Seigy
"Yeah. Maybe I ought to turn it into a jacket" remarked Alfred
"SQWARK" screamed a very large pterodactly sitting next to them "get off my wing!" and she promptly started to beat them up until they agreed that it was a very nice wing really and that it looked much better attached to her and they wouldn't dream of letting Alfred turn it into a jacket.
Five hours later, they arrived at Teerts Wen station, all four of them having made friends.
The Pterodactl was called Ethel the Pterodactl. She was six feet high, weighed around 200lbs and liked flower arranging.
All four of them got off the train, only to be confronted with...
A giant billboard poster of Ethel, who was travelling incognito, trying to avoid her lurid past as Madam Anda. The only reason she was 6 feet tall was her 8 inch platform shoes, which were the cause of many of her squawks.
Madam Anda was actually a notorious man-eater, but there being no men in the near vicinity, she turned her attentions to a rather cute looking aardvark.
"Say, sweetie, what do you know about flower arranging?"
"Well I actually know quite a lot about the subject and have got a phd in advanced flower arranging. I did my thesis on the lesser spotted frogwart flower which has this unnatural habit of... what did I say?" said Alf as Ethel flew off to escape the boring Aardvark.
Alfred, Siggy and Skifgus then decided to have a look around Teerts Wen.
As they where walking past the Oigy First National Bank two men ran out carrying a bagfull of money and semolina powered high velocity water pistols. (They were in fact the notorious "Butch Kid" and "Sundance Cassidy").
At that moment the shooting started as the Sheep (slang for cops) had arrived. Alf, Siggy and Skifgus where caught right in the middle of it and all huddled together on the floor trying to avoid being soaked.
Butch and Sundance realised that they where losing and so decided to grab some hostages to bargain with. As Alf, Siggy and Skifgus where the nearest they grabbed them.
"Hold your fire sheep or the lemming gets a soaking" shouted Sundance.
"And the sloth and the aardvark will get it too" said Butch.
"Hold your fire men, they're not bluffing" shouted the head Cop.
Butch and Sundance then bundled our three heroes into their car and started pedalling (semolina was still a luxury for car owners and most had to do with good old leg power). As the car sped away one of the sheep dropped a small bug on the car but the ladybird flew away 5 minutes later.
The car drove deep into The Wilderness (a small farm half a mile from Teerts Wen) and the three quadrupeds were bundled into the hideout...
"Gosh" said Skiffy
"Urrrr....." said the Sloth with the difficult to spell name
"Shit" said Alf
"Now look," said Butch, "if they don't let us have some semolina and a helicopter, we're going to have to feed you to the hoomins."
"Gosh"
"Urrrr....."
"Shit"
"What's a hoomin?" asked Skiffy.
"It looks like that..." said Sundance, pointing to a pen out of the window.
"Gosh" said Skiffy
"Yuuuuk" said Seigy
"Now, look you guys, how do you fancy a nice film contract?" said Alf
"Shuddup Aardvark" said Butch.
Skiffy quipped "Oh well, it'll probably turn out alright in the end..."
"QUIET!!!!!" shouted Butch
"Uuuuurrrr... pleeeaaaaaassssseeee"
"WHAT???! What are you going on about you 'orrid SLOTH you?????"
"Uuuuurrrr... I want toooo gooo tooooooo theeeeee....."
"Shut up!!!"
"Urrr...." continued Seigy.
"Shut up do you bloody well hear me? Eh? Just shut the f*ck up! You sound like a real capitalist! Shut up shut up shut up up shut up shut it okay?"
"Uuuurrr..." Seigfreid could stand it no more. For the past half hour he had been dying to go to the loo... so he made a run for it...
When Butch and Sundance noticed that Siegy was scarpering they decided to feed them to the hoomins after all...
Now as everybody knows hoomins are cute cuddly creatures with big floppy ears little cute cotton wool tails and 200 rows of razor sharp fangs.
They are usually vegetarian and hold rallies waving signs about and chanting "meat is Murder" and various other slogans, but when they get force fed with meat by cruel carnivores their teeth that used to dissect lettuces so expertly get used for ripping and tearing meat apart. They are still vegetarians in that they won't eat the meat but aint 'alf fun ripping the meat into little pieces...
So Butch and Sundance grabbed Alf and were just about to take him outside to be the first of our heroes to be ripped to shreds by the cute and cuddly hoomins, when suddenly they heard the sound of a loudhailer.
"OK in there, we've got you surrounded, you have five minutes to release your hostages and give yourselves up, if you refuse we will be forced to use the SAS."
"Its the Sheep" said Sundance, "what shall we do?"
"Well we'd best think quick before they send in the Semolina Armed Squad" replied Butch.
"How about if we agree to send out our hostages a piece at a time unless they let us go"
"Yeh not a bad idea - shall we send out one of their legs now to show that we mean buisness"
"Yeh let's..."
So was this itf ,would our heroes soon find themselves completely legless, or would the Semolina Squad be able to save them?
The answer to this question, is of course "yes".
Our heroes will end up legless or be saved by the SAS.
Ethel the ptero... had seen the violent abduction of Siggy, Skifgus and Alfred and had informed the Semolina Armed Squad of the whereabouts of Butch and Sundance's hideout. Now, unknown to the kidnappers/ bankrobbers/ rapists/ uh-oh/ forget I said that/ muggers Ethel had flown a crack squad of the SAS onto the roof of the hideaway. Here they set up their equipment and suddenly pumped six gallons of green aniseed flavoured blancmange into the hideout.
Now baddies on the planet oigy don't like blancmange at all so they had to run out of the hideout, only to be picked up by the sheep.
Unfortunately, hoomins do quite like blancmange...
Which was handy really because Skiffy, Siggy and Alf were drowning in it and they were saved from a fate almost as bad as being torn apart by hoomins, which they were now about to sample.
...or were they...?
NB, due to Oigy having an even more obscure imperial system than Earth, a gallon was approximately 5731.255recurring litres.
Hoomins, apart from being vegetarian sadists, can also breath in fluid by using gills. It was this rather unfortunate fact that the three suddenly realised as a hoomin took a chunk out of Alf's bum.
Aaaargh! screamed Alf
Yeehah! cried a hoomin as it took the piece of Alf off to show to its friends.
Now Alf gets quite violent when he is angry, and he was angry now.
He grapped hold of a hoomin by the soft parts, tore them off and rammed them down its throat. At this the hoomins and the rest of its friends fled for their lives from the angry Aardvark.
"Gosh that was an exciting adventure! I wonder what will happen to us next?" said Skifgus.
"Uuuuur..." said Seigfried
"Shut up and get me a bandage" said Alfred T.P.A.
"Will this big box marked BandAid be what you want?" said E.T.P.
Unfortunately when she opened it, a load of has-been pop stars and a couple of hundred thousand people jumped out and started having a concert complete with flashing lights pyrotechnics, and unfortunately a few million watts of speakers.
This had the unfortunate effect of blasting a hole in the space-time continuum and our intrepid bunch of daringly adventurous adventurers fell through it into a totally different dimension...
"Well bugger me!" said S.T.L.
"Ok, where's the gaffer tape?" said E.T.P.
and A.T.P.A. still had half his left buttock missing...
"Wow", they said "there's sometinh g hairy eating dtargne mushrooms!@"
"Gosh. Look at that!" said Skiffy
"Uuuurrrr....." replied Seigy
"Aaaaargh!" screamed Alfred scarpering with half his buttock hanging off
"Sqwark!" screeched Ethel as she saw something totally horrific...
it was in fact the ghost of Pual Wbeeee...
"Hello" said the ghost, "would you like to hear some really good music?"
"I like your haircut" said Skifgus.
"I think it's crap, so piss off" said Seigy.
"well I'm sure I had it here somewhere, has anyone seen my 'Penile Gangrene'?" said the ghost who then wondered why everyone was edging away from him nervously. Since he thought this might have horific ramifications to do with his personal hygeine he went and became a monk to think about it and was never heard of again...
Suddenly news reports began to come in on the radio that someone had dropped a 50 megaton nuke on the other side of the planet, and a.t.p.a., s.t.l., and s.t.h.s. decided that this might be a good point at which to leave the planet...
Fortunately there was a large intergalactic ferry passing, so they hitched a lift...
Nothing happened for ages until a family-sized yellow hatchback spaceship zoomed past the planet, and deposited a small parcel, tied up with string on the planet's surface.
This however, interested nobody, except for the evil Minah Beast of Oigy who had nothing to do.
This story now merges into The Seventh Saga
of Migglezimblatt the Wombat (and others).
Ethel the Pterodactyl next appears in Chapter 17.
Alfred, Seigy and Skifgus next appear in Chapter 33.
The evil Minah Beast next appears in Chapter 78.
You can bet the hoomins will be back too.