| Graham Parker - The Great Trouser Mystery |
Graham Parker's excursion into a future world of crazy colour, maniac music and lunatic laughter, brought to life by the extraordinary illustrations of Willy Smax.
Our hero is T G Trouser, the electric Jesus, inventor of that world-soothing system, Music Therapy. But recently this messiah has become bored with the Paradise he helped create. It's time for a change.
He gathers to him a ridiculous crew of mutants who will make a trip to uncharted regions. There's Twiggot, the coolest thing since permafrost, and his gang, The Large Squad. There's straight Mr Straightly and his wet friend Bruce, who's still evolving. There's Dolse and Dilly, the Lesbian therapists. And there's Three Points To The Home Team, the world!s only surviving cow.
Graham Parket's incredible fantasy blends the outrageous, acid wit of Tom Wolfe with the macabre inspiration of Roald Dahl.
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| Chapter 2 - A Smelly Beginning | |
Against the sick green sky, streaked with blue lightning, a tattered silhouette could be seen, dragging itself along like a piece of animated seaweed.
Mr Straightly strained his eves through the rain, holding his right hand above his evebrows, as if it would help his vision, while his left hand gripped the door of his orange Range Rover to keep his balance in the wind. Mr Straightly was an Englishman in a time warp. A baffled man. This was probably his most baffled moment. He could not imagine why anyone should be out here in this dreadful weather on the border between Nepal and Tibet, without transport and running from the North where onIv cold mountains stood.
'Gad,' thought Mr Straightly.
He'd just been trekking through India reliving his ancestral past, but the world had changed and India was another place now. He wished he'd been his father. That was the era to live in. A man had power then; we're all sightseers now, he thought . . . absently.
The man came closer, dripping through the storm with flailing armsand Straightly could hear an English voice calling for help. After the initial shock he regained his senses and ran across the difficult terrain to the muddy figure's assistance.
'I say, old chap, are you in some sort of trouble there? Where on earth have you come from?' Mr Straightly, embarrassed that he'd never met this kind of situation before, put an arm around the figure and shoved him into the Range Rover. As he did so, he slipped in the mud and hit his face on the man's foot which was still dangling out of the door.
'Pank! Bally nuisance, wish I'd never come to this hellhole in the first place. Oh. . . Ah, excuse me . . . no offence meant... ah, I say, are you alright, man? Gad, I'm in a bally mess now, muck and slime.'
He slithered around to the other door, wet and sticky in khaki shorts, white hunter's hat and prawn moustache, and jumped in daintily, trying not to get the seat wet - as if it were possible.
The thunder cracked.
He wished he'd never noticed the man in the first place now. He'd only just picked up his outline rounding the bend in the track and had a curious feeling he should stop and see if it was really a man or his imagination. He felt something important would come of it if it was a man, out here, on the border of nowhere.
He was probably in his thirties; tubby build, golden-haired and dressed in a long robe with a raincoat over the top. His skin was strangely bright, healthy and flushed. He looked as if he'd been out in an English summer, sitting Linder apple trees, and not in the turbulence of Tibet. [..extract ends]
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| Chapter 4 - Twiggott and the Large Squad | |
He sat in his bedroom on the floor with his back to the wall. He sported a brilliant turquoise mohican haircut to match the room, a skin-tight black T-shirt, a short maroon stenolin jacket with a huge pointed collar, amazing purple trousers, the bottoms of which were cut like a crown. And mock astronaut boots, one silver, one gold.
He was Twiggott.
Twiggott leaned his head against the yellow cushion fixed to the wall, sighed and blinked his blue eyes, absently dangling his arms between his open legs.
He'd just returned from Central Music Therapy after an exhausting two hour journey into his head. He usually visited the nastier places of his brain, plenty of hollow off-key piano overlayed with vibrosyzer, a conglomeration of sound only the more violent people could explore, and Twiggott was a rather nasty person. But only out of necessity as he would say; it was his destiny to be tough - he had his job to do.
The room was soaked in soft green light and an old Failing Parrot tape was blasting out. Twiggott lifted an arm idly and adjusted his haircut, making sure the bat-like collar was pointing up behind it, nice and stiff. He dropped his arm again and stuck his knees even wider apart. The afternoon's sessions had left him rather drained and even a little bored - he was waiting for the energy to pick up. When the boys came around he was sure to start feeling on top again.
Twiggott only just heard the buzzer through i6 rock'n'roll. He got up and strolled across the room. There was a small black microphone hanging over the bed which he lifted off its clip before falling onto the bed and stretching himself full length with legs astraddle, the huge grip soles on the astronaut boots jutting out like house bricks. He spoke through the mike; everything about him was relaxed and lazy. He literally enjoyed himself.
'Ello, 'oo is it then?
'S me Twiggott, One'ser' a voice answered from a tiny speaker in the microphone.
'Oo else'
'Jus' me 'n Two'ser'.
'You and Two'ser eh, awright, up comes ya.'
Twiggott replaced the microphone, and dropped his head on the green pillows. His haircut tilted forward just level with his eyes. He stared at the ceiling.
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