Being Mr. Kenny

Mr McGoogoo was possessed of an extremely large nose. It spent all of its time on his face, and was covered in terrible disgusting warts with hair growing out of them. Mr McGoogoo would sometimes speak to his nose, for he liked to pretend that it was alive and could hear what he said. Little did he know that his nose was in fact a sentient being, living in mutually beneficial symbiosis with his face. Mr McGoogoo provided his nose with a rich and wonderful blood supply, and the nose supplied Mr McGoogoo with an interesting talking point, at parties and the like.

When Mr McGoogoo was just ten years old he had been involved in a radiation leak at the local power-plant. Later, on the night of the accident, his nose had become self-aware, and from that moment hence kept a strange vigil over Mr McGoogoo, learning more and more about its symbiont. Mr McGoogoo’s nose referred to itself as Morgan, while Mr McGoogoo stuck with the more traditional ‘my nose’.

And so, with time, Morgan and Mr McGoogoo grew in size and wisdom. In the years immediately preceding their separation, Morgan became so large and warty that Mr McGoogoo literally couldn’t see past the end of his nose! Due to Morgan’s excessive ugliness Mr McGoogoo found it very hard to make friends. He decided to have his nose removed, and another one fitted in its place. He booked himself into a clinic.

His new nose was very lovely; he regarded his face in the mirror a few days after the operation, and Morgan (who had escaped from the surgeon’s office and was hiding under the bed) heard him remark to the doctor and nurses assembled,

“Oh yes! This one’s a keeper!”

Morgan’s heart grew bitter and he wondered how the person who had carried him for so long, with whom he shared a genome, could forget him so easily.

During the operation the surgeon discovered that Mr McGoogoo’s nose had developed a rudimentary circulatory and digestive system. He surmised that the nose now maintained itself completely independently of Mr McGoogoo, digesting small airborne insects small enough to be inhaled. The surgeon, whose name was Dr Briggs, had thought he had seen something like a nervous system and a brain within the nose, and had placed Morgan in a large glass beaker for later analysis. He planned to dissect the nose and write-up his report in the medical journal, The Journal for Surgeons and General Practitioners. ‘What a hoot,’ he thought ‘I shall be the talk of the town!’ Morgan, upon finding himself in the glass beaker, had managed to tip it over and had slithered away after the nurses finished clearing up after the operation.

Under Mr McGoogoo’s bed now, delighting in his new-found freedom, Morgan formulated a plan. Since the separation, he had grown considerably so that he was now approximately the same size as a small cat, or perhaps a hedgehog. His skin was dark brown in colour and unpleasantly warm, and the hairs in his warts had become sensitive to electric fields. He looked a lot like a rock if you poured lumpy gravy on it, and stuck on bits of hair. He could not see, but was able to navigate by sensing objects around him with his wart hairs.

Mr McGoogoo had had quite thick nasal hair, and Morgan discovered that this had now grown much thicker and harder, and they proved to be excellent legs. He scuttled out from under the bed, moving like a snail who had borrowed some legs from a millipede, and left through the door. He made his way out of the hospital and hid himself under a bush. It was almost midnight, and there were all manner of insects and molluscs that Morgan ate hungrily; and he grew a little larger.

Dr Briggs, on returning to his office to inspect the incredible specimen he had left there, discovered the empty beaker and let out a cry of dismay. Mr McGoogoo was awoken by Dr Briggs’ cry, but he quickly fell back to sleep and soon was dreaming again of all the new friends he would make now that he had his beautiful new nose.

The next morning Mr McGoogoo was allowed to go home and Dr Briggs resigned after losing the nose. By a freak coincidence both men were knocked down in similar hit and run incidents: Mr McGoogoo after leaving the hospital, and Dr Briggs on his way home after clearing his office. Neither of them lived to see the following evening.

Morgan on the other hand was going from strength to strength. He had met a seagull whose name was Maurice, and together they planned to open a shop together, selling little hats and gloves to mice. They were going to call it Mouse Woollens, and they couldn’t wait! Morgan stole all the wool they would need from old ladies, and Maurice sat for hours and hours knitting little woollen gloves and little woollen hats. Morgan helped when he was needed, because his spindly legs were excellent for the fiddly decorations Maurice liked to include.

Two years later, Morgan and Maurice had conquered the market. Their one shop had done so well they were able to buy a factory and some knitting machines. They expanded their lines to make all sorts of clothes for mice, and it was a widely known fact the mice of Little Pickleswick were the best dressed in the country.

But soon the seagull and the nose tired of the mice fashion industry, so they sold their empire to a local businesswoman and decided to move to Denmark. They lived very happily there for many years. Morgan was elected Prime Minister four terms in a row, and Maurice became the country’s best selling artist after winning Eurovision with ‘My heart is made of glue’.

Morgan wrote his memoirs when he was eighty-six (which naturally became an international best-seller) and died at the age of ninety-four. A state funeral was held, and a national holiday was instigated to mark the passing of the best-loved nose in European history. Maurice simply disappeared and was never seen by anyone from that day forth. Some said he had gone mad with grief and flown into the sun itself, and others said that you could still hear him if you listened carefully enough, at night calling for his lost friend. In truth he had lost his way after the funeral and ended up in China, but that is another story for another time.

Now, in fact.

The story of Maurice the Seagull

When Maurice moved to China he met a cormorant called Nancy. They got married, had children, started three wars and died at some point toward the end of their lives.

The End