A Sox news reporter waved her very big microphone before Marley’s face like a rolling pin.
“So, Marley Suckett. The fifth finder. What are you hoping to see in Billy Plonka’s Grot Laboratory?”
“I dunno,” shrugged Marley, “Stuff, I suppose…”
She turned to her camera with a glittering smile and said, “Stuff, ladies and gentlemen, stuff!” Unfortunately the ladies and gentlemen didn’t hear her as Marley had stolen her microphone.
“Could I have your attention, please?” The voice came from the mouth of Chief Inspector Knobsworth and hung in the air unheard amidst all the gibbering and jabbering of excited folk.
“Ermmm. Hello?” he tried again, “Could I just…”
Then he had an idea.
“Bong!” he bellowed.
“Bong!” replied two thousand people who then looked at their watches a little confused then fell silent.
“It has fallen to me, Chief Inspector Knobsworth. That’s Knobsworth spelled with a K.” He said for the benefit of the scribbling reporters, “It has fallen to me, Chief Inspector Knobsworth. Not just Inspector, but Chief Inspector. Have you all got that?” They nodded. “It has fallen to me to be the Official Buzzer Presser at today’s ceremony. Bring forth the Ceremonial Truncheon.”
Two sweating policemen elbowed through the crowd clutching the opposite ends of a red cushion on which lay a long, golden truncheon reserved for special events. Just like this one.
Chief Inspector Knobsworth with a K lifted up the ceremonial truncheon, twirled it around his head a few times to admiring gasps from the crowd and aimed it at the red buzzer next to the speaker on the gates.
“Buzzzzzzzz!”
And everyone waited.
Nothing happened.
They waited some more.
Nothing happened again.
Chief Inspector Knobsworth with a K poked the red buzzer once more.
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!”
The crowd was silent.
Chief Inspector Knobsworth with a K smiled awkwardly and was about to buzz for a third time when the speaker suddenly burst into life and a voice shouted,
“Is that the pizza boy?? ’Cos if it is, I want my *#%><^%€+ money back. I didn’t ask for #%€^*$+# anchovies!! Who eats anchovies, for #%€*^<+#’s sake??”
Everyone’s eyes darted back and forth. That wasn’t what they were expecting. Then they heard the voice scream, “Arrghhh! Stop it! Get off my <+##%€*^ing hair!”
The first voice was replaced by a second voice which sounded a little more sensible, but only just.
“How may I help you?”
Chief Inspector Knobsworth with K pulled out his ePhone and start to read a prepared announcement.
“Mr Plonka, is it with the greatest of delights and pleasure that I have the hugest honour to hereby deliver to you onto and upon your very doorstep and before the crowded crowds of people herein the five lucky winners of the Plonka™ Scratch Cards!”
The crowd roared a huge cheer like the bellow of a happy whale.
“What?” snapped the voice.
“I said…” said the Inspector.
“Oh, wait, you mean the tour thing… hang on…”
Then there was a whirring and a clicking sound and four thousand eyes stared through the rusty gates to see a tatty, moth-eaten red carpet riddled with patches and odd stains roll out as if by magic. It tumbled towards the gates and flapped open the last few centimetres to reveal a bewildered mouse holding a rotten piece of cheese, who smiled brightly and ran off.
“Come through the gates!” said the voice in the speaker.
Then there was a long, low groan like a herd of hippos singing opera.
Then silence.
Then the speaker said, "Piddlesticks! It's stuck again! Use the delivery door!"
* * *
1 Probably by the Sucketts.
BILLY PLONKA
The five lucky Plonka™ Scratch Card winners were starting to think themselves not so lucky as they scrambled and clambered under the rusty, grey shutter with the words “Delivery Door” daubed in flaking white paint.
“Mind my hair!” snarled Viola Mudguard at a bemused Spike Peecee, who had spent so much of his life in front of a screen he had difficulty relating to people in 3D. “I’m appearing in a movie next week!”
“Look out for anything we can half inch1!” hissed Marley at his grandfather who banged his head on the shutter and startled a couple of pigeons.
Orson Ploop tugged at his rotund mother who shot through the exit with a loud pop. She clattered into Victoria Scabb who shrieked like a gibbon who’d eaten a cactus then fell backwards and landed bum-first on a big red button.
And it was a very special big red button!
Suddenly a large dumper truck which had been sitting quietly in the corner burst into juddering life and the hiss of age-old hydraulic pistons engulfed the room. The children clasped their ears, the adults clasped their own ears and their children’s ears and Marley and Grandpop Fred clasped whatever wasn’t nailed down.
The hinged rear-box on the dumper truck tilted slowly upwards disgorging a glut of garbage. Food waste, kitchen waste, green waste, blue waste, biodegradable swill, sweepings from the floor of a barber’s shop, left-over paint, a couple of pints of toxic waste and an orange peel all slid down forming a tidal wave of sludge at the feet of the visitors who hopped about like ducks on hot tarmac.
And the smell! If your trainers, after a very long country run, scored ten on a Whiff-o-Meter then this smell was probably about a thousand. Yeah, that’s how bad it was!
The visitors gazed open mouthed (then closed-mouthed as oddments of sludge splashed in) as the dumper-truck dripped, dribbled, gurgled and plopped its last contents before them. Finally something tumbled out which looked like a deflated tyre rolling down a mouldy ski slope. The thing which looked like a tyre flopped into the puddle of slop.
It moaned and a leg appeared.
It moaned again and a second leg appeared.
Then two arms and something not unlike a head.
It wasn’t a tyre at all! It was a man. A very odd man…
“You shouldn't have pressed the big red button!” said a voice from the head. Well, it would have said that were it not for the fish sticking out his mouth. What he actually said was,
“Yhyy shgggfh aggg shseddd the ig ed oootton!!” which no one understood until he spat out the fish and repeated it.
They all gazed in amazement at the man who emerged from the sea of swill. Flecks of trash fell from his dishevelled suit and he smiled a one-toothed smile. His clothes looked they hadn’t been washed for months mainly because they hadn't been washed for months and that was the way he liked them. Moths had clearly made a banquet of his top hat which tottered on his head and in his lapel a red carnation sadly drooped.
This was Billy Plonka!
“Welcome to my Grot Laboratory! The finest producer of Grot in the world. Don’t wipe your feet!”
He waded towards the guests who recoiled slightly as he approached, “Show me your Plonka™ Scratch Cards!”
Viola Mudguard was the bravest and squelched forward with her card.
“Fluff!” Plonka snapped pointing at something on her dress.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I had it dry-cleaned before I came,” she said.
“Not at all. That’s just the kind of quality fluff we can use in our experiments. Very good!” He grabbed the fluff, held it up to the light, smiled and slipped it in his pocket. Then he snatched the card and looked at it like a vulture inspecting a mouse. He sniffed it.
“Genuine!” he said with a shrug, “Next!”
Scabb waded forward.
“Whatever is that smell?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I got splashed by the garbage! It’ll wash off.”
“Whyever would you want to do that? It’s wonderful! I wish everyone smelled like you!”
He sniffed her card, grunted and handed it back.
Ors
on Ploop stepped forward.
“Thank you for inviting us to your laboratory, Mr Plonka. We brought you a little gift from Austria!”
“Really?” muttered Mr Plonka, sniffing the scratch card.
“Unfortunately, I dropped it in the rubbish and it is now covered in horrid things!”
Plonka’s eyes-lit up, “How thoughtful! So few people drop presents in rubbish these days! Look it’s a goo-covered kazoo!” and he trilled out a tuneless tune splattering his guest with a fountain of gunk.
“Next!”
Spike Peecee stepped forward holding up his ePad out of which peered his anxious parents. Plonka stared at them staring at him and said, “They’re very ugly - can’t you PictoShop them? Where’s your Scratch Card?”
“I don’t have one!” said Spike.
“Then get out! Get out at once, you repellent little gatecrasher! Be gone and take your ugly parents with you!”
“I did it online.”
Plonka stopped mid-rant, gazed at Spike and said, “Oh.”
Spike stabbed a few buttons on the ePad, his parents shimmered out of view and were replaced by a winning scratch card.
“That’s a very clean keyboard!”
“Thank you very much!” said Spike.
“I’ll soon fix it!” yelped Plonka, grabbed the ePad and dunked it in a puddle of stinky gunk. Then he poked a few slimy keys and the ePad went…
“Bllluurrrttt!”
“Ah, the Validation Razz! You’re in!”
Marley was the last to step forward.
“Now look at this boy. He’s clearly made an effort. You could all learn from him. His t-shirt is splattered with gunk and grime. Did you do that on purpose to impress me, boy?”
“No, it just got splashed when you fell out the truck!”
“Ah, well, every silk-lining has a cloud!” Plonka sighed, took Marley’s scratch card, sniffed it and handed it back, “That’ll do, I suppose!”
"The tour is about to begin!" he announced, then hiccupped, sniffed and passed round filthy scarves and coats, “Have these. There’s no heating.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Plonka.”
“I’m so sorry for being thoughtful. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Please remain with the tour at all times. You are about to encounter some of the greatest geohazards and slop known to mankind. In the unlikely event of the laboratory crashing down and falling apart please adopt the following position…”
He suddenly screamed like a wounded elk and threw his arms in the air then giggled. “Just my little joke,” he continued, “Please identify the emergency exits.”
The children and parents looked about.
“There aren’t any! And now to get you in the grotty mood - here’s a song!”
From out of nowhere the sound of a badly tuned ukulele started to pluck a dodgy melody. Plonka coughed, smiled his one-tooth smile and started to sing,
“Come with me
and you’ll see
a world of pure contamination!
All the slime and the grime
and the lack of sanitation
Hear things plop
Watch things slop
from my world of pure contamination
Walk among all the dung
and slight discolouration.
If you want to view parasites
simply look around and view them
maybe we could all wade through them
promise me you’ll never chew them!
You’ll get close
to what’s gross
splashing through top quality pollution
All the grot and the snot
of pure, pure contamination!”
Then he did a little skip, cracked his fingers and pranced off.
"Follow me, follow me! Hurry, hurry! Rome wasn’t burnt in a day!”
The guests splashed after him.
“The stench you are currently enjoying,” he announced, as he led them down a dark, dribbling corridor, “comes from the waste pipes overhead!”
He banged a rusty and hastily taped-up pipe above their heads with his cane. It gurgled.
“Some of the finest sewage ever! Pumped directly into my laboratory!”
“It's being pumped inwards?” asked Viola Mudguard.
“But, of course!”
“That's gross!”
A twinkle came to Plonka’s eye, “Why thank you, Viola, what a sweet thing to say! Onwards!”
Before long they started to hear burping, slurping, popping and plopping noises. Mr Plonka slid to a halt outside a large, brown door.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girl, may I present the first stop on the tour - The Giant Garbage Room!”
They stepped inside.
* * *
1 Half inch. Rhyming slang for pinch. You do learn a lot reading this book, don’t you?
THE GIANT GARBAGE ROOM
“My laboratory is riddled with jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, bed-wettingly awesome rooms but this one is, by far, the best. It also has one of the finest whiffs in the entire building!” Mr Plonka inhaled a muggy lungful of rotten air like an expert sniffing expensive wine. The guests did the same and spluttered loudly.
“That’s worse than the Scratch Cards!” blarted Spike Peecee.
“I know, I know,” said Mr Plonka, wistfully, “I’m so lucky!”
The Giant Garbage Room was dominated by a massive grey garbage can scowling down on them like an Easter Island statue in a grump. Brown and grey trash juices cascaded down the sides and formed rivulets of stinky gunk which disappeared with a gulp down a stinky black hole. Mushrooms of green mould sprouted from every gap and large moths swooped overhead, each with the wingspan of an eagle and the stench of a skunk.
Mr Plonka gazed across his creation with a look of total serenity in his eyes.
“Scumpiddlinoxious!” he cooed, “It's like a rainforest of filth!”
Marley prodded his grandfather who coughed, forgot he’d been poked, got poked again and tried to remember why he had been poked at all.
“Ask him what’s in the garbage can, doofus!” Marley hissed.
“What’s in the garbage can, doofus?” asked his grandfather.
“I'm so glad you asked!” chirped Mr Plonka, "The Giant Garbage Can is the bubbling epicentre of my grotty empire. All my grot is pumped into that can where it is churned and turned, splashed and bashed, sloshed and sploshed until it is really, really tummy-grumblingly, knee-knockingly, nose-blowingly gross! Please free feel to help yourself to whatever you like!”
“I’m not sure I like any of it!” said Mr J.D. Scabb B.A. (Ed) holding back his daughter.
Spike Peecee’s parents peered out from his ePad.
“Gross!” they both chorussed.
Grandpop Fred turned to Marley and said, “This is really disgusting!”
Marley whispered, “Maybe it is, but remember why we’re here!”
“Of course, how could I forget?” Grandpop Fred nodded, tapped his nose then said, “Why are we here?”
Marley hissed under his breath, “To get stuff. This grot must be worth a fortune. We can shift it on iBay!”
Before his grandfather could reply there was a sudden blaring siren sounding like someone had goosed a walrus and into the room trooped twenty or so very small people. They were all dressed in muddy dungarees splattered with gunk and grot and stinking like a badly kept pig pen. Their hair was matted and their feet caked in mud.
“What do you #%€*^<+# think you’re doing???” shouted one with a surprisingly deep voice. He prodded Mrs Ploop’s bottom with his stained finger.
“You’re standing on our *#%><^%€+ grot!!!” bellowed another, cuffing Viola Mudguard around the back of her knees.
“Leave my knees alone! I’ve won awards for these knees!”
“We just dirted in here!!!” said a third, pointing at the garbage, “This was completely clean until we set to work, you know!”
Mr Plonka casually picked
something from his tooth and said,
“Oh, good, it’s the Grumpy-Trumpers.”
“Hey, Plonk-face, what do you #%€^*$+# think you're doing?”
“I’m conducting the Grand Tour of the laboratory. It’s on the calendar!”
“Ooooooh, bite me!”
“May we continue?” asked Mr Plonka, sarcastically.
“Do what you like, Plonk-face, you own the place!”
Then the Grumpy Trumpers turned around, waggled their little bottoms at Mr Plonka then stomped out blowing loud raspberries.
THE GRUMPY TRUMPERS
“I am sorry for the behaviour of my Grumpy Trumpers!” said Mr Plonka, picking something green off his lapel and putting it in his pocket for later.
“They really lower the tone of the place.” said Mr J.D. Scabb B.A. (Ed).
“I know!” said Mr Plonka, “I suppose they have that going for them.”
“But who are they?” asked Victoria Scab.
Mr Plonka sat down on a leaking oil can which squelched.
“They come from an island far away in that direction.” He pointed in five different directions at once. “In the middle of the Grubbiscum Ocean. Many years ago (too many to count, in fact) I was washed up there after sailing aboard the “Whiff of Success”, a splendid yacht owned by His Grand Opulence the Malodorous Prince of Stinkistan.”
“Were you shipwrecked, Mr Plonka?” asked Spike Peecee.
“No, nothing of the kind. I cooked some clams only a couple of years past their sell-by date and they threw me overboard! I bobbed about for a few days and finally found myself washed up on Grumpy Trumper Island. It was one of the most disgusting places I’d ever laid eyes on so I felt immediately at home. I met some Trumpers on the beach and they were afraid at first but I soon managed to convince them to take me to their village. As soon as the Chief Trumper saw my battered and sea-stained clothes and got a sniff of my BO he immediately declared me their god. They had quite a lot of gods. I think they changed them every week. They’re fascinating people, the Grumpy Trumpers. They live on gravel and mud and it is regarded as high praise if a Grumpy Trumper sneezes on you.
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