Being Mr. Kenny

It was dark, and a woman was running down the street. Her shoes were on fire, and she was muttering wild curses under her breath in a harsh language. She was desperately ugly, and very annoying, and suddenly there was a bolt of lightning and she exploded, much to everybody’s relief and amusement. People stood around and clapped, for they were an evil people: more evil than politicians and Microsoft. More evil than having to do reading to pass a degree. More evil, even, than lecturers who waffle on without so much as a title to be seen anywhere in the room, let alone on their slides.

Some years passed, and there came to exist a lady who had pins in her face. Her name was Irene or Beatrice, and she was very beautiful. She was also the Queen of the Northern Kingdoms, and she lived in her ice-palace on the moon. She ate sorbet most of the time. And she could fly. Apparently. It was also said that she could communicate with slugs, but no-one believed this to be true, because the old woman who had said it was clearly mad. Nevertheless, it was true. Irene had been walking in the park one day when she fell over and met a slug who introduced himself as “Peter, Peter the slug”. She had been polite, and said hello, but she got up and ran away, very quickly.

And so Peter was left all alone in that park. He never quite recovered. He lived the rest of his days under the litter bin, gently mourning the loss of that strange, beautiful girl who had had pins in her face and who had been nice enough to say hello. He died alone, one night in the middle of winter, and they buried him under the steps of Irene’s palace.

Despite all these things in her favour (the dress, the beauty, the flying and the slug-communication) Irene was very, very lonely. No man would ever come near her. Her pins, they said, reminded them of cats’ claws and rabbits’ ears. They said. For some reason. Odd, insensitive men that they were.

Anyway, the lady who had pins in her face also had lovely pale white skin. Her tiny, delicate pins covered nearly all of her head and each one was tipped with a coloured bobble, or a cut-glass bead, and some even had precious stones. They had been given to her by her grandmother who, right off her trolley one night on whisky, and as a protest against Prichard and Moody, had decided to stick pins into her granddaughter’s face. Her granddaughter, having not being born at the time, was spared this indignity, so they gave her the pins in a beautiful mahogany box. It was then that her grandmother struck, carefully placing the pins before Irene could say, “Get this mad old woman away from me and have her beheaded!”

She sat on her throne, for she was a queen, and her pins gently glittered in the soft light. People would come from miles away, just to watch the beautiful lady with her sparkling facial adornments. One day she was sitting on her throne (being admired by thirteen people) when she decided it was time for an adventure, so she got up and walked out of her throne room. On the way out she caught the eye of a deliciously handsome young man. She screamed, and threw it back, and the young man caught it. “Impudent fool,” cried the queen, “quite disgusting!” And with that she vanished, and nothing was heard from her for millions of years.

It got quite boring, after a while, just waiting for her, so they sat around, watching daytime TV, praying for the day when Prichard & Moody might finally be taken away and slaughtered. Such violent thoughts were quickly put away and trampled underfoot, but not before their prayers were answered. One day, during “You say we pay”, the set caught fire. The contestant was screaming down the phone, “Flames! Flames!” and Prichard, who had failed to notice the fire quickly engulfing the studio, was getting caught up in the excitement,

“Log, fire, match … hell!”

The contestant was exasperated, “Run, Moody! Let him burn! Save yourself!”

Moody caught the hint, and managed to escape, but Prichard was not so fortunate. He perished that day. But, as they say, you win some, you lose some.

Irene, who was in the middle of an enormous forest at the time, felt a great disturbance in the Force as an international holiday was declared. An end was put to war, famine and disease across the globe, and history took a turn for the better. She even found her mobile phone — it was down the back of the sofa.

When she returned, millions of years later, she saw that the human race had evolved into beings of light, or something, and seeing as the story had kinda gone off the rails a bit, it ended suddenly, but not before Irene found a nice man to marry.

They had lots of kids.