Wennem clennum wendos (they went).
Wennem clennum wendos.
And I beheld these underground folk and they were, frankly, gorgeous.
Their complexions, their clothing and their hair colour shouldn’t have surprised me. It was all-over gold. And I could see that their eyes were golden, too. As were their tongues. And although they presented by this colouring a most alien appearance, it was one of such striking beauty that I found my eyes popping wide and my lower jaw dangling down.
And they marched and charged and chanted. And then they stopped. And I beheld, in the midst of them, that they carried aloft a saintly statue of a grinning man of benign appearance. And although the golden folk who carried this statue wore the robes of olden days, this statue appeared to be attired in twentieth-century clothing. Or indeed an impression of it, as a child might draw a house from memory. But the face of the statue was well crafted. The grin was a big one, which exposed a goodly array of teeth, and the eyes were crinkled and friendly.
And there was something familiar about that face. It was as if I had seen it before somewhere. Knew the owner of that face.
But then a fellow gold all over and slightly taller than the rest approached the golden throne, bowed before it and then turned to face the congregation before him.
‘Ettas ternowt nysee gen. Ettas ternowt nysee gen,’ he intoned, most solemnly. And the golden folk did bowings of the heads and mumbled the same in reply.
And I looked very hard at that statue. Stared very hard indeed. And as the congregation took up their former chant once more, I heard it. Heard it for what it really was. Saw him for who he truly was.
Wennem clennum wendos.
Wennum clennum wendos.
You can see what I can see
When I’m cleaning windows.
And yes, it was him. It was him.
That statue, carried aloft, was him.
George Formby.
Ettas ternowt nysee gen.
It has turned out nice again.
And I began to laugh.
And that, it turned out, was a bad thing. And it did not turn out nice again at all.
Because I was overheard in this laughter and I was set upon and I was battered a good many times until I fell once more, and almost willingly, considering all the pain, down and down into that whirling black pit of oblivion.
60
You know that dream you have, where you’re on your holidays and you’re on a coach going off for a day trip to see some well-known tourist thing, like the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal, but the driver takes a wrong turn (and you never know whether he did this on purpose) and you end up in the square of an ancient Aztec city, one of the ones with the big stepped pyramids with the sacrificial altar on the top. And the next thing you know, you are being hustled out of the bus by all these natives with exotic jewellery and up to the top of that pyramid and onto that altar. And a high priest sort of chappie has you all held down and then bares your chest and brings out this razor- sharp dagger and raises it high-
And then the alarm goes off, so you miss the exciting bit.
Well, I was having one of those dreams and it was just getting to that exciting bit when, wouldn’t you know it, I was woken up, and so I missed the exciting bit once more.
Woken up by a splash of cold water right across the gob. To find that I was strapped, all spreadeagled and half-naked, across what, from my limited field of vision, appeared to be a sacrificial altar.
Is that ironic, or what?
And I was about to remark upon its irony, or what, when a certain cold, hard hit of reality informed me that I might well be in a bit of a fix here. Because the high priest chappie, who had been intoning the ‘it’s turned out nice again’ line, was looming over me, holding in his golden mit a whopping great golden dagger.
And I spoke out regarding my disinclination towards him bringing that item of weaponry into close proximity with my person, or indeed to a proximity that was well within it. But found that I could not. As someone had stuffed up my mouth. Which caused a real speech impediment.
And I recalled the fear I’d felt when I’d been made the target of an auto-da-fe in the garden at Graceland. And I felt a similar fear right now. Although at least this death would probably be a quick one. Although I did recall that Captain Lynch had once told me how the priests were so skilled with their knives that they could plunge in, slice away arteries and withdraw the heart, still beating, to display before the victim’s still-living eyes.
And I didn’t fancy that one bit.
And so I tried, with renewed vigour, to give voice to my misgivings. But again without success.
And the priest began a new chant, which again sounded like Latin but was more like pidgin English when I listened carefully. And he chanted the first verse of… ‘Mr Woo’s a Window Cleaner Now’.
And then he ceased his chanting and he spoke unto me.
In a broad Lancastrian accent.
Which I will not attempt to imitate here. But he did use the phrase ‘well, I’ll go t’t foot of our stairs’ more than once.
‘Oh monster,’ he spake unto me. ‘Oh horrid pink beasty from the overworld. We have now beheld the terrible ruination of Hindoo Howdoo Hoodoo Yoodoo Man Plaza. How you cast down your thunderbolts from above and descended upon a coloured rope of doom to destroy us all. We who have remained true to the True Faith, who worship at the shrine of the cheeky chappie.’
I thought that Max Miller was the cheeky chappie, but no matter. George was, after all, a generic, or indeed archetypal, cheeky chappie.
‘As the words of the George came down to us in the ancient days, it was prophesied that an evil one would descend upon us. And that he would be all pinky pink. But that if we captured and ate him, it would all turn out nice again.’
And I said, ‘Mmmph mm mm.’ Which, I agree, had never proved to be much of a winner as a means of communication.
‘So die, pinky overworlder!’ And the blade, held high as ever, rose a tad higher.
And I went, ‘Mmmph!’ which meant, ‘Please.’ But no doubt sounded like mmph! And then the terrible blade came down and I closed my eyes and I prayed.
‘Please, please, God,’ I prayed. ‘I know You’re not going to help me. But I also know that in Your infinite wisdom You are infinitely wise and so me dying now in this horrible fashion is all part of Your divine plan. Although, and pardon me for putting in my three-pennyworth here, but it is my considered opinion that it would have been a better deal for Mankind, for Your Mankind, if I lived to fight another day and destroyed the evil Homunculus.’
And obviously, you have to understand, I prayed this really really fast, because that blade was heading on down towards my heart and I didn’t want to get cut off in mid-sentence.
And I heard the swish of that blade. And then nothing. And then whispering. And I opened my eyes and looked up. And there was someone rabbiting away into the priest’s ear. And this rabbiter had one hand over the priest’s knife-hand and had stayed its progress towards my heart. And I heard the priest say, ‘Are you certain?’ in a
