 
### Noahs Nuclear Nice

### A Collection of Crazy Plays

### by Anthony E Thorogood

### ***

### Copyright Anthony E Thorogood 2010

### Published at Smashwords

### ***

### Thank you for downloading my ebook. Please note that this book took a lot of time and trouble to create and is subject to copyright restrictions and must not be redistributed.

### ***

### A Good Fun Read

A collection of humorous plays that can easily be read and enjoyed and just as easily performed. All the plays in this collection have been staged with great success and I would recommend them to any aspiring theatre buff or to any reader who loves irrelevant humour.

### Plays by Anthony E Thorogood

Noahs Nuclear Niche: An Assortment of Crazy Plays

Julio & Romiette

Life Love & Lavenham

L'Hotel Le Big Knob

### Noahs Nuclear Niche

### Contents

Noahs Nuclear Niche

Robin Hood and the Gnu

First Class to Mandalay

Simons Castle

Planet of the Cows

Act One

Act Two

### Anthony E Thorogood

Who the Hell am I

What the Hell do I Write

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### Noahs Nuclear Niche

A Comedy

First performed July 1975 at the Balcony Theatre Adelaide and presented by the Adelaide University Drama Society in conjunction with the Association of Community Theatres as part of 'Another Almost Free Season' and directed by me!

Noah: Mathew Farger.

Wife: Annette Green.

Lancelot: Michael Griffin.

God, Salesman, Scientist, Ecologist, Doctor, Gypsy: Susan Tonkin.

Set: A pile of junk, any props needed can come from and go back into the pile of junk and finally the pile of junk is used to build the bomb shelter.

***

Noah: (Noah's wife and Lancelot Marine walk off talking and Noah runs on) Was that my wife I just saw talking to a soldier? If it was I'll batter her brains in. What a cheek, a married woman taking to a soldier. And that's not the end of my problems, there's money too. I earn a comfortable but small income and she takes the credit card and paints the town red. My philosophy of life is simple enough take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves, a penny saved is a penny earned, money doesn't grow on trees but somehow it's too profound for her to comprehend. (shouts) Wife! Come out here.

Wife: I'm busy.

Noah. Do as you're told.

Wife. I'm not a slave at your beck and call.

Noah. I courteously condescend to inform you that I am your husband.

Wife: (enters) My husband courteous and condescending, and I never thought I'd live to see the day. Wonders never cease, hallelujah, ring the bells, put out the flags, crowds gather in the streets. Armageddon has arrived.

Noah: You bag of bones, I'l1 blister, batter and bruise your cretinous carcass.

Wife: Darling, life is so sweet with you around. You're so kind, gentle, considerate and thoughtful.

Noah: I love you too.

Wife: Yes, we were made for each other. Where have you been all my life?

Noah: Married to you mostly.

Wife: Yes, I sensed that something had come between us.

Noah: Never mind that now. Let's go through the shopping list.

Wife: The shopping list?

Noah: The shopping list.

Wife: Do we have to?

Noah: Do we have to? I work my fingers to the bone and all you want to do is to splash my hard earned cash on food. We should go hungry now and then it would save money.

Wife: Yes dear, what's a little hunger when you're happily married, we have our love to keep us warm.

Noah: First things first, I gave you five dollars (holds up five fingers) is that correct?

Wife: (Holds five fingers up in reply, counts them) One, two, three, four, five dollars, check, double check, A.O.K., Roger over and out.

Noah: You purchased potatoes.

Wife: I purchased potatoes.

Noah: What is the current market price for potatoes?

Wife: Fifty cents per kilogram.

Noah:. How many kilograms did you purchase?

Wife: Two pounds.

Noah: Two pounds?

Wife: Two pounds, or thereabouts.

Noah: But how many kilograms?

Wife: One.

Noah: That's fifty cents multiplied by one equals fifty cents. So you purchased potatoes for fifty cents correct?

Wife: Correct.

Noah: Now we're really getting somewhere. But you have another four dollars fifty to account for yet.

Wife: Yes dear.

Noah: Can't we give up potatoes?

Wife: No dear.

Noah: I'm not so sure but go on, what else did you buy?

Wife: Bread.

Noah: You bought bread. How much is bread?

Wife: Fifty cents a loaf.

Noah: How many loaves did you buy?

Wife: One.

Noah: Just one?

Wife: Just one.

Noah: Aha, that's fifty cents, so it's a compound sum of a dollar. You have accounted for a dollar. What else?

Wife: Eggs, dollar fifty a dozen.

Noah: What! One dollar fifty a dozen?

Wife: A dollar fifty a dozen, (with pleasure at his pained reaction) or three dollars for two dozen, four dollars fifty for three dozen and only six dollars for four dozen.

Noah: I don't even like eggs.

Wife: (with Pleasure) I like eggs; scrambled, boiled, fried, poached, omelettes and comboed.

Noah: How many?

Wife: One dozen.

Noah: One dozen at one dollar fifty a dozen. That's a total of two fifty. Do we really need eggs?

Wife: One cabbage at fifty cents a cabbage.

Noah: Three dollars.

Wife: One kilogram of peas, fifty cents a kilogram.

Noah: Three dollars fifty.

Wife: Kilogram of tomatoes, one dollar.

Noah: Four-fifty.

Wife: Kilogram of onions, forty-eight cents.

Noah: Four dollars ninety-eight (pause as Noah holds out hand for change) Well?

Wife: Well what?

Noah: Four dollars ninety-eight from five dollars leaves two cents.

Wife: Two cents.

Noah: Where is it?

Wife: I tossed it in the river.

Noah: You what?

Wife: I tossed it in the river. You know, throw, hurl, pitch, bowl, water, H20, liquid, running, moving, flowing, coin, token, money, splash, crash, plash.

Noah: Almighty God, Jesus Christ, for God's sake why?

Wife: I felt like it.

Noah: You felt like it.

Wife: I felt like it.

Noah: Two cents, I slaved my guts out for that two cents. Here am I working my life away, my fingers to the bone, and you throw my hard-earned meagre pay to the wind. Here zephyrs get rich quick, hey breezes, make your fortune.

Wife: You expect me to believe all this hot air of yours about money? I wasn't born this morning. All I would like is a few crumbs, one or two coins to buy a few pieces of clothing with. Now that's quite reasonable. And perhaps I wouldn't mind it if we had enough food to eat each day. Come on, let me into your secret. How much do you make?

Noah. What do you want to know that for? You just keep your nose out of my business, mind your own business.

Wife: (mimicking) 'Where's my two cents, where's my two cents,' you've got thousands and thousands saved up in the bank.

Noah: Who told you that? I'm poor, I'm poor I tell you. Can't even trust your own wife these days. You're after my money aren't you? Admit it.

Wife: Me after your money, it's easier to get blood out of a stone. You're an old piece of granite, rough as they come, you probably haven't got any blood, just little hard crystals flowing through your veins.

Noah: I've got blood just like the next man. It's red too. You're just venting your frustrations on me because you married a poor man.

Wife: You're a miserable, measly, miser.

Noah: Me? Generous me? What about all the money I gave you to do the shopping? I get no gratitude.

Wife: Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. I admit I've a lot to be grateful for. You're a very generous and kind-hearted man. You're so good to me, you always make sure that my little comforts are seen to.

Noah: That's more like it.

Wife: And to show you how grateful I am, Noah, I've been saving up all the bills over the last month so I can give them to you all at once.

Noah: What?

Wife: There's a gas bill, and electricity, plus water rates, council rates and taxes and land tax. You see what a grateful person I am? It all comes to a pretty penny, believe me. I'll just go inside and gather them altogether. Don't go away. Just wait here and suffer.

Noah: Oh no, Armageddon, all that money, I'm going to have a heart attack. Wife help me, someone help me, I'm dying, I'm dying. (he falls to the floor)

Lancelot: (enters as a commando, armed with a rifle searching for the enemy. When he has checked out the place he relaxes) Did someone call for a friendly hand? I can't see anybody, (stands to attention) I'm on leave from the front. The front is where the enemy are. (He acts out the rest as if he was at the front himself) As they approached in the mist, in the hazy shadows of dust, like fate slowly creeping towards us over the cold damp earth, 'let 'em have it,' the two-way radio cracked. Automatic rifle-fire burst out into the night, red bloody flashes in the once ghostly, almost sacred haze. Machine-guns rattled beating the night into spitted corrugations of colour, noise and death. Mortars, howitzers and field guns blasted huge yellow, orange, red, explosions into the shaking night. Bazooka rockets pierced out into the flashing technicolour tornado. A fireworks display of death and broken bodies. Helicopters hurdy-gurdied into the hurly-burly, dispatched racks of rockets, swooped, zoom, laid egg-clusters of bombs, smothered the earth in staccatoed straffings of machine-gun fire and hurdy¬-gurdied away. Jet bombers swooped in, pounded huge chasms into the ground with missiling megatons and swooped up and away into the unaffected, unnoticing sky. Tanks added rockets, missiles, bombs, and shells, (he suddenly stops and addresses the audience in a newsreader's voice) and from a few miles to the rear after all the bombs, bullets, rockets, missiles and napalm had done their job, a small tactical nuclear war-head whistled through the air. The field disintegrated, the enemy were never identified.

Noah: I'm dying.

Lancelot: Did one of them get you?

Noah: One of who?

Lancelot: The enemy.

Noah: Which enemy?

Lancelot: I don't know, I only know they're out there.

Noah: Who?

Lancelot: The enemy. The enemy who I am trained to meet, face and repel.

Noah: But who are they?

Lancelot: I'm not sure really.

Noah: Who are you then?

Lancelot: Lancelot Marine, defender of the faith, of life, liberty, freedom, and the rights of man. (Winston Churchill style) Never before in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to...

Noah: I don't owe you anything, I'm broke.

Lancelot: (W.C.) We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the shores, in the valleys, in the hills, in the mountains, to the last gun, to the last self-propelled missile-launcher, to the last man.(pause) You're not an enemy are you?

Noah: No, no.

Lancelot: Positively identify yourself within thirty seconds or your life will be terminated.

Noah: I'm Noah, proprietor of various private enterprises and friendly.

Lancelot: Friendly. That means you're on our side. All the friendlies seem to be on our side, Mr Noah I shake your hand.

Noah: The enemy, they haven't got any money we could capture from them?

Lancelot: Oh I shouldn't think so. The enemy are never as civilized as the friendlies. Anyway, we must make plans for the defence of this area against commando raids, air strikes, guerrilla activity, enemy spies, agents and nuclear fallout. There's one thing you must remember in this war torn wide world the enemy are everywhere. Your wife, your children, everyone is suspect. Be on your guard.

Noah: Listen, wouldn't it be cheaper to surrender?

Lancelot: Lancelot Marine never surrenders, he doesn't know the meaning of the word.

Noah: Hang on I'll get a dictionary.

Lancelot: Mr Noah, Lancelot Marine doesn't use a dictionary, Mr Noah, Lancelot Marine doesn't read Mr Noah, people who read are suspect.

Noah: I'm totally illiterate, I haven't read a word in my life, I'm one of the good guys.

Lancelot: (Taking out a map of the local area where the play is being performed) We can set up a sand-bag machine gun emplacement here. You will be requisitioned for the materials.

Noah: What? I'm poor, I have no money, I'm poor.

Lancelot: (Referring to map) A nuclear shelter will go very well here... that's three million dollars.

Noah; Look, if you go away I'll buy you a new lightweight automatic air ¬cooled sub machine gun.

Lancelot: (referring to map) A nuclear missile system over there, only for retaliation purposes you understand. Slit trenches here and here. Barbed wire fences over there, a mine-field in there, artillery positions through there, mortar pits, communications bunkers. Over there dummy tanks and there a decay assault gun. Plus tents to house the troops, a field kitchen, a field hospital, a field H.Q., a playing field, a supply depot. general masters store, officers club, swimming pool, a services hotel.

Noah: How much, how much for God's sake?

Lancelot: Oh not much, several billion will be an adequate start.

Noah: And I'm to pay for this?

Lancelot: Of course. Who is to pay but the tax-payer? Everyone has to chip in, rich or poor, worker and boss. The whole of our side, every person on our side, whether they're on our side or not.

Noah: But I don't like bombs.

Lancelot: Pay up or else. I'll just check out this house, we can convert it to a field headquarters, knock out a wall or two, install radio and radar devices, board up the windows, camouflage the whole place as a tree. (exits)

Noah: Oh no, not my house, my hard-earned corner of the world, I've only just finished paying for it. It's no easy task paying off a house all your life. (Falls to his knees and prays) Oh God, God on high, Almighty God, protect my little sphere of interest, my small commercial enterprise. I've lived a good life, I never did nothing wrong. I gave money to charity, my wife baked cakes for the Sunday School fete. I worked hard all my life, started a little business, increased my productivity. I spent two hours every alternate month of my spare time teaching woodwork to abandoned mothers and I never littered the streets, I never polluted, I put all my rubbish in bins. I've been a good citizen, I planted native trees and grew organic vegetables. Oh God, God on high, Almighty God, help me.

God: (suddenly appears) Noah.

Noah: Who's there?

God: It is I, Noah.

Noah: I?

God: God.

Noah: I'm poor, I have no money, I'm only one single little man, what do you want from me?

God: What do I want? I want nothing. You prayed to me.

Noah: Well you can go now, I'm all right.

God: Noah, you prayed for help, I can give you warning. The world is coming to its Grand Finale, the cup final has arrived, you are an actor in a play and the curtains are about to be drawn on the last act. You stand in the spotlight but the blackout is upon you. In short, the world will erupt in an enormous explosion and for forty days and nights radiation shall rain down upon the earth, pollute the land, flow in the rivers, and poison the sea. All the fountains of the great deep skies will spurt forth and the windows of heaven shall be opened. This mud and bricks, machine and radio, concrete and bitumen civilization that mankind has evolved over thousands of years shall be wiped off the face of the earth.

Noah: What is to be done? I shall die with the rest. I'll be covered in radiation and turn into a mutant, I'll get leukaemia, I'm going to die. (To God) Look it's your fault, if you're the spirit of life you owe it to humanity to stop the oncoming holocaust. You owe it to me to save my life. It's your responsibility.

God: I owe you nothing. You evolved with the guiding hand of fate and fate shall reclaim you. Your fate is to be yourself and in being yourself you destroy yourself.

Noah: But I don't want to die. (pause) You're lying to scare me, there's not going to be any nuclear holocaust.

God: Time is running out.

Noah: Help me. Look, perhaps everyone else is going to get sick and die, but not me, not me. Tell me that's how it is.

God: I'm afraid not.

Noah: Look, stop the holocaust, I'll give you money. Go back in time and stop the discovery of nuclear energy, I'll make it worth your while, I'll grease your palm, you'll come out of this handsomely.

God: Time moves forward not back.

Noah: (angry) Rubbish, rubbish you just don't want to help me. You just don't care. You want to see me dead. Admit it, admit it. You're sick, a sadist, you like to see people in pain. Well you're small, very small, a child.

God: You must accept death. If I help you, you can only put off the end for a while. All perishes.

Noah: No, no, let all the others die, my wife, my friends, my parents, my family, everyone, but save me.

God: There is a way.

Noah: Anything, anything.

God: Noah, go forth and build a nuclear shelter of reinforced concrete and lead. One large room shalt thou make in the shelter, big enough for yourself and your family. Thou shalt line it within and without with lead. Dig it deep into the earth's womb. The length shall be twenty cubits and the breadth ten cubits and the height six cubits. Use the finest materials modern technology can develop. Radio communication, radioactivity sensors devices, telly screens, oxygen devices, insulated, reflective air sensors, and in seven days when the shelter hereafter named 'the Ark' as a symbol of its life-preserving function is finished, you shall enter its warm protective body and remain there for forty days and nights. After this time check the percentage of radio-activity in your area. When a safe limit has been reached you may again emerge from your cave into the sunlight and there upon go forth, be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. (God exits)

Noah: Thank you, thank you God. (Looks up, sees God has gone) Where have you gone? Don't leave me, I'm afraid, don't leave me, I'm scared.

God: (offstage) Noah, build your nuclear shelter, build your Ark.

(Noah collects all the money he threw into the air earlier)

Wife: (rushes in) Here are the bills, twenty dollars, forty dollars, eighty dollars, one hundred and sixty dollars and three hundred and twenty dollars. (Throws them up into the air) I can just see you fuming at the gills when you have to pay off this little lot. Your eyes will turn red with rage, when you look at a book you will burn up every page you will be so fiery and hot-tempered, you will be ablaze with anger. Steam will bellow out of your ears, all present will be filled with fears. You will stamp up and down like a distraught old clown. We'll call in the fire brigade and they'll douse you with lemonade. Gallons of petrol will explode and romantic poets will compose odes. You will rage, explode, get violent, hit the roof, drive me up the wall, go round the bend... come on... come on... anger, violence, temper, spit, curse, fume.

Noah: (Unaffected) A bit more self-control please.

Wife: (sarcastically) What's come over you? Hit me, go on, kick me, punch me, like you used to, come on, show me you care for me.

Noah: No.

Wife: Oh Noah, don't you love me anymore?

Noah: Love? What's that? Never mind, I've been saved, I've been chosen.

Wife: Chosen? By whom?

Noah: By God.

Wife: What about me? Wait a minutes what crap are you talking about? God doesn't exist, everyone knows that.

Noah: Be that as it may, but I have been chosen to live on and begin mankind again. I have been saved for a higher purpose.

Wife: Wait a minute. What are you and me going to be saved from?

Noah: Armageddon.

Wife: You're crazy, I'm married to a crazy man. All I wanted was to be happy and I get a wealthy tight-fisted eccentric. You're not going to be saved, you're going to be put away.

Noah: Disbelieve and be doomed!

Wife: I'm with you.

Noah: Here's two dollars, take it, go and spend it.

Wife: My God, you're out of your mind.

Noah: I'm a generous man. (Is about to hand two dollars to her) No, two dollars is perhaps a bit extravagant. Here's a dollar.

Wife: I don't understand. The old scrooge gives his wife a dollar. Hallelujah: Armageddon has arrived.

Noah: I wouldn't joke if I was you. It just happens to be perfectly true.

(Lancelot enters studying his map, we can only see his legs, the map hides everything else)

Lancelot: Barrage balloons over there, a soup kitchen here, an emergency radiation decontamination relief centre over there...

Noah: Ah Lancelot, my newly found disciple.

Lancelot: Ah stingy Noah.

Noah: I've changed my mind. I'll finance a nuclear shelter. We shall begin work on it straight away.

Lancelot: (overjoyed) What? You don't mean...

Noah: And then we can construct a fully-defensible self-supporting enclave.

Lancelot: My dream's come true utopia, that paradise in the sky here on earth. (embraces Noah) Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Noah: But the shelter first.

Lancelot: Sure thing.

Noah: Oh, meet my wife, Lancelot. She'll be helping us build the shelter.

Wife: We have already met.

Noah: Well, I can't stand around chatting all day. I have got to get this shelter off the ground. There's an old saying: 'God helps those who build their own nuclear shelter.' Our lives are in our own hands. If we can get down to business and build a proper fallout shelter we shall survive. But it's up to us, there's no one else to help us. The nuclear shelter, hereafter named the Ark, has a deadline of seven days if it's not finished in seven days we're dead.

Lancelot: (saluting) A.O.K. In memory of you Mr First Citizen Noah, we shall call the shelter, 'Region Seventy One Nuclear Safety Shelter One, Type 427DDT, Noah's Ark.'

Noah: Look I can't talk now, I have to arrange to meet top level nuclear specialists to advise me on all the ins and outs of nuclear shelters.

Wife: Yes, it will be good if we can get in and out of the shelter.

Noah: You two can begin digging. (picks up two small garden spades from the pile of junk and hands them to Lancelot and wife) Right, dig a small hole here, let me see fifty foot deep, ten foot wide and ten foot long, the width will be em, let me see, ten foot, and the breadth another ten. That should do for a start.

(Noah exits)

Lancelot: He certainly had a sudden change of heart. There was I organizing this whole area to convert it into an efficient military zone and he totally unconcerned about the community, turned me down flat. But now I almost think his heart's in the right place.

Wife: He hasn't got a heart. Just a small gristly mass. Well I think I'll go and carry the groceries into the kitchen. I only got them as far as the lounge and Noah arrived.

Lancelot: But that's a man's job.

Wife: Alright, you show me a man and I'll let him carry them. Well, what are you smiling for?

Lancelot: Me.

Wife: I beg your pardon, I don't understand.

Lancelot: Me, myself and I.

Wife: It's all above my head.

Lancelot: I shall carry your groceries.

Wife: But it's a man's job.

Lancelot: I am a man.

Wife: You're a child's toy soldier, more child and toy than soldier.

Lancelot: I've got medals.

Wife: I've got work to do, a scrooge of a husband, and I prefer men.

Lancelot: I've been in combat,

Wife: You're not a real soldier until you have taken my husband on and come out of it alive.

Lancelot: Does he beat you?

Wife: Let's put it this way, we beat each other.

Lancelot: You should take up with a younger bloke. It may teach him a few manners.

Wife: You know, you could be right.

Lancelot: A man hitting a woman, it's bad form.

Wife: What about a woman hitting a man?

Lancelot: You wouldn't do that, it's unladylike.

Wife. That's true, and I'm such a great lady.

Lancelot: And what did you say your name was?

Wife: I didn't.

Lancelot: Oh.

Wife: Well aren't you going to ask me what it is anyway?

Lancelot: Oh yes,

Wife. It's Guinevere. What do you do Lance?

Lancelot: Me? I try to save the world. That's my mission in life. I try to save the world from itself.

Wife: But who's going to save it from you?

Lancelot: (Making a well-rehearsed speech, clears throat) You see, there's a lot wrong with the world and I want to change it. But the first thing that has to be done is to defeat the enemy. You may say, 'But there's always been an enemy and always will be.' Well, I dream about the day when all the enemies will be defeated. I met a cynic once who said, 'When you've defeated all the enemies you'll find some more to fight, and to kill,' that's just not true. One day all the enemies will be gone and only our boys and the friendlies will be left.

Wife: Do you think it will ever come true?

Lancelot: Just between me and you, our side are right now working on an even bigger bomb and when that's ready, in about seven days, I think we'll be able to finish off all the unfriendlies in one, quick as a zip, strike.

Wife:(sarcastically) And then everyone will be happy.

Lancelot: People won't hate anymore.

Wife: No more war.

Lancelot: Everyone will agree with each other.

Wife: There will be parties.

Lancelot: And festivals.

Wife: People in the streets.

Lancelot: Pageants.

Wife: Games.

Lancelot: Singing.

Wife: And it won't be long.

Lancelot: No! seven days and it shall herald the new world of love and joy.

Wife: Oh Lance you're a hero.

Lancelot: I do my duty.

Wife: You do more.

Lancelot: Everyone should do their duty.

Wife: You're a hero above and beyond the call of duty.

Lancelot: One day there will be no more enemies.

Wife: What a stupid idea.

Lancelot: What? You don't mean that.

Wife: Of course not.

Lancelot: Let's drop the formalities, Guinevere. Call me Lance and I'll call you Guinnie.

Wife: And what do you intend doing when you drop your formalities?

Lancelot. I thought that I might be able to make your life a little more exciting.

Wife: Well you do have your good points.

Lancelot: I'm fully trained in unarmed combat.

Wife: It would teach Noah a lesson if I paid you a little attention. Besides, you're not such a boy really and I'm sure one day you'll grow up.

Lancelot: Did I ever tell you about the time I single handed, held a bunker for six days that was fully surrounded by an enemy battalion?

Wife: An enemy battalion did they know you were there.

Lancelot: It wasn't like that at all.

Wife: Don't get upset, I'm sure you did a wonderful job. All those enemies and you all by yourself. You put up a wonderful show for our side.

Lancelot: I got a medal, this one.

Wife: I got calluses on my hands from digging in the garden. Does that count?

Lancelot: You shouldn't dig in the garden.

Noah: (rushes in) Hey you two get back to work the world's going to end in seven days.

Lancelot: Who told you that? It's a military top secret. You're not a spy for the unfriendlies are you?

Wife: He's a fumbling fool, he couldn't tell a top secret from a bottom drawer.

Noah: I got it straight from the top.

Lancelot. The President of the United States of America? His royal personage himself? Why, Mr Noah, you must be a very important personage. A V.I.P. in fact. Is there anything I can do for you Mr Noah?

Wife: Him a V.I.P.? Only if it stands for a Vaguely Imbecilic Peanut.

Lancelot: Now Guinnie, Noah's a close friend of His Royal Personage himself.

Wife: He's just an old scab bag.

Lancelot: Guinnie I thought you were a red-blooded Australian housewife but now you're talking like an unfriendly.

Wife: (reconsidering her words) Oh Lance, Noah's a V.I.P., Lancelot's a big strong handsome hunk of a man, isn't he Noah?

Lancelot: Why thank you, you're kind of cute yourself.

Wife: Lancelot, you're better than three men of Noah's sort.

Lancelot. I don't like to admit it but I am pretty good.

Wife: (Dragging Lancelot off) Noah darling, I'm flirting with a tall, dark, handsome soldier.

Noah: Go ahead.

Wife: What: You condone it? Gesticulatoriously jealous Noah, who beats his poor wife if she so much as steps out of the house?

Noah: Life's short and we haven't got much time left, I'm too busy to worry about petty jealousies anymore.

Wife: Noah, he's holding my hand.

Noah: Enjoy yourself, God knows I'm useless when it comes down to brass tacks.

Wife: Your brass tacks are not so bad. Come on blow your top, rant and rave with jealousy.

Noah: What's marriage and jealousy when the sky's going to fall in on your head.

Wife: Oh Noah, you don't love me anymore.

Lancelot: Don't worry about Noah, he's got more important things on his mind. Come and see my new self-propelled one hundred and fifty millimetre howitzer.

Noah: Go on you two enjoy yourselves. There's not much time left. Take life less seriously for once be carefree. Besides I've arranged some top level on the spot conferences and I don't want you two in the way, so get out of here.

(Exit Lancelot and wife)

Salesman: (enters) The Salesman cometh. Now listen Mr... I didn't quite catch your name.

Noah: Arthur Noah, but let's not be informal just call me Mr Noah.

Salesman: Oh Mr, Noah, very nice name if I do say so myself, and I do, it has a nice ring about it, mythical, biblical, saintly, prophetic, poetic. Oh by the way my name's Merlin Smythes. Now Mr Noah you look like a man who's interested in saving money, now I've got some quality merchandise here and if you buy it you'll save heaps, did I say heaps, why I'm understating the case, you'll save bags and bags of the stuff, you'll save so much that you will be able to bath in filthy lucre. Now I've got a little number here worked on by top nuclear physicists and scientists at top rating American universities. Am I going to sell you an insurance policy? No! Am I going to sell you a set of brushes? No! Am I going to land you with a fifty volume encyclopaedia? No! Am I going to talk you into a food plan? No! A washing machine? No! A dish washing machine? Again I say, no, no, no! Now Mr Noah you look like a man of high intelligence, I'll tell you what I'm going to do for you, I'm going to sell you a new lease of life. Now most salesmen get you to sign your life way but I'm going to sell your life back to you. I'm going to sell you the key to survival. Now right here in this glossy covered booklet we have a choice of six varieties of modern nuclear shelters, all mod cons. Now I know what you're going to say to me, 'there's not going to be a nuclear holocaust,' but that's what the government would like you to think, why, the way they're digging it out of the ground these days, the place just might blow to bits by itself. Remember Atlantis, the biblical flood, the fall of Rome, the fire of London, the Black Plague, the San Francisco Earthquake, World War One, World War Two, Nagasaki, Hiroshima. Back to the booklet, first there's the 'Penthouse Radiator Reflector' luxury model. Now this deep carpeted dream shelter comes equipped with swimming pool and hot and cold flowing air. This model is designed to reflect radiation away at its source in the upper atmosphere. It has many excellent design characteristics, comes in three colours, red, white and blue, and has the optional feature of a round table, you're not interested in this one?

Noah: The round table idea sounds all right, but what if the building falls down during the explosion and we're all killed?

Salesman. There's a money back guarantee if you're not satisfied with our shelter, and if you're still alive after your first nuclear holocaust you get all your money refunded.

Noah: Can I see another?

Salesman: Well here's model five, a slightly cheaper version of model six. It's called 'Penthouse Economy,' it uses lead plate and concrete. This model does not contain the highly reflective overhead radiation stoppers but it has a money back guarantee to keep you alive for forty days and nights.

Noah: It's still much too high. I'd like something closer to the ground, in fact I'd...

Salesman: How about model four, our 'Family Safety Four Bedroom Bungalow.' It comes equipped at no extra cost to you with nuclear bomb proof dog kennel and insulated lead plate cat flap.

Noah: I don't like pets.

Salesman: Oh you want model three. Model three was tailor-made for you, yes three is your dream shelter, when you step into your own personal three and take a deep breath you'll know that three is the paradise you have been dreaming about all your life. It's called the 'Nuclear Family Shelter' or the Z.P.G. Shelter.

Noah: I would like one dug down deep into the ground.

Salesman: Could I sell you a swimming pool?

Noah: No.

Salesman: There's model one, the single man sewerage hole shelter.

Noah: Not deep enough.

Salesman: Are you sure I can't interest you in model two, our 'Economy Take a Chance Corrugated Iron Mobile Shelter?'

Noah. No sale.

Salesman: Well I don't seem to be able to interest you in any of this year's models, perhaps you'd be interested in a little science. Now sit down here.

(The Salesman takes a chair from the junk heap and pushes Noah into it, he then changes into a lab coat)

Scientist: Super Scientist here to solve your nuclear worries. (Takes a note pad and pencil out of his pocket and starts figuring) Adding the sum of the total mean likelihood of nuclear non-proliferation, total expansionist holocaust divided by the square root, we now achieve the basic fundamental probability. We can move on from here to set up a study of the likelihood of the events in question and the estimated results that are foreseen to occur. Ipso facto, quid pro quo, therefore, vis-à-vis, from this we can conclude that and so I leave it up to you to determine in your own...

Noah: Oh yes, I understand every word but what I want Einstein, is a nuclear shelter.

Scientist: Oh yes a little nuclear niche for Noah. Let me see, fundamentally getting down to the bare bones, getting down to the nitty gritty, a nuclear shelter. Now to begin at the beginning, twenty-four inches of concrete rapidly reduces radiation one thousand times, now isn't that interesting and thirty six inches of earth reduces radiation by another one thousand times and then twenty seven inches of brickwork reduces radiation by another one thousand times. But and this is the point, if you add them all together, twenty four inches of creamy concrete, thirty six of brown earth, and twenty seven of red brickwork, you would not reduce radiation by three thousand percent but by a much greater amount. It has a compound effect you see, isn't that interesting. Eighty-seven inches compounded of bricks, concrete and earth, think about it.

Noah: Is eighty seven inches essential, it seems like an awful lot of inches?

Scientist: Convert it to metric and there won't be any inches to worry about.

Noah: Time's running out, only about six days, then poof, will you answer my question, yes or no?

Scientist: Couldn't say really. I'd have to construct an hypothesis, set up a control, test the hypothesis, analyse my results, draw cross-references, retest my hypothesis, establish the variable error in my results, wait ten years, publish my results, have a public controversy, then retest my hypothesis. Then write my autobiography, die, finish the last chapter of my autobiography, be rediscovered, reprinted, hailed as a prophet, be the hero of a generation, a hero of science, be the last word on everything for a decade, then go back into oblivion when people prove me wrong.

Noah: Don't you see I've only got seven days and one's gone already. I can't wait that long. Science got the world into this mess it's up to science to get it out.

Scientist: Science did no such thing, man got himself in and he can get himself out. But I do admit the problem is pressing. We must look elsewhere for an answer, we must turn to ecology.

(takes off his lab coat, puts on a poncho and small rimmed glasses, sits on the floor with legs crossed)

Ecologist: I am a prophet of Ecology, eat dirt, bird droppings and worms, go live in a cave, run naked through the undergrowth, make love, be free. You are a free person no other person has power over you. Life is beautiful, live, be free, run naked through the undergrowth.

Noah: But what about the oncoming big one?

Ecologist: As lightning flashes, the fiery eagles will soar in from the heavenly spheres. Mount Vesuvius will erupt and destroy Pompeii once again. The firmament shall burst and death rain down upon the naked city. Great fireballs spread across the heavens and radiation like rain in a thunderstorm pours down upon the slimly-built houses of civilization. Down from the blue sky gamma and beta as a thin mist at dawn wander down to poison the earth below. Gamma penetrates deep into the earth's flesh, beta lays its dust over the surface, a tablecloth of poison across the world.

Noah: This isn't helping. You're a specialist, what's to be done? I'm about to have a hernia, nothing's going right.

Ecologist: You need to get fit. How about a bicycle? (picks up an old bicycle from the heap of junk) The bicycle an alternative source of transport, very little pollution is produced by the safety cycle. It runs on human power and keeps its human fit at the same time. Thus it, so to speak, recharges its batteries. Cars should be forbidden, made illegal, persecuted.

Noah: But what has that to do with nuclear shelters?

Ecologist: You're never satisfied.

Noah: Yes I am.

Ecologist: No you're not, nothing I do is good enough for you.

Noah: Yes it is.

Ecologist: No it's not the only person you're interested in is yourself. What about the rest of humanity? And another thing, I wouldn't help you if I could.

(puts bicycle back and removes chair to pile of junk)

Noah: Can I speak to my accountant?

(Ecologist changes to Accountant. Puts on a waistcoat)

Noah: And all in all incorporating the latest technical breakthroughs I have just studied, how much will my nuclear shelter cost? Oh yes, before you calculate only include the technical breakthroughs that are cheap.

Accountant: One and one that's two, plus three that's four, minus the smallest common denominator, add the square root and minus the first principle. Add six, take seven, un, deux, trois.

Noah: Well?

Accountant: Be right with you, plus A to the X of P minus M the tangent of the past participle and pi r squared, Baa baa black sheep have you any wool, one minus one is two, humpty dumpty sat on the wall, once times one is one, once times two is two, once times three is three, once times four is four. (Looking up) Oh yes thank you, two sugars please, left over right, right over left and tie, that just about does it. (Looks up, proud smile)

Noah: Well?

Accountant, Three hundred and sixty-seven and a half, nine hundred billion, one hundred trillion, sixty dollars sterling, ten francs, eight roubles, four deutsch marks, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Noah: Oh no, I feel sick, I've got dropsy, diarrhoea, dysentery, diphtheria. A doctor, a doctor, help me get a doctor.

(Accountant changes to a doctor. Puts on a stethoscope)

Noah: Oh doctor, I'm sick, I'm dying, you must save my life. But I'm poor, if it costs too much don't bother about saving it.

Doctor: So you feel a bit under the weather do you? Well you have come to the right man in me. I'm the best doctor on the market. Right, first things first, continue breathing for now.

Noah: Doctor I'm still young, I want to live, I'm even prepared to pay money.

Doctor. My fee is three gum nuts, half a pound of burnt toast and all the money you possess. Say arr.

Noah: Arr,

Doctor: Good. Say see.

Noah: See.

Doctor: Louder.

Noah: See.

Doctor: Now Zee.

Noah: Zee.

Doctor: Bee.

Noah: Bee.

Doctor: Gee gee.

Noah: Gee gee.

Doctor: Now say see bee zee bee gee gee.

Noah: See bee zee bee gee gee.

Doctor: Good, now say round and round the hurricanes hardly, on the plains, brown cow, Peter Piper picked.

Noah: What is this?

Doctor. Ah ha. An acute case of speechlessness. Take off all your clothes.

Noah: What?

Doctor: Take off all your clothes.

Noah: Get out of here you old booby.

( Noah picks up a big padded slap stick thing and attacks the Doctor)

Noah: You broken down old bludger.

(Doctor exits taking salesman's outfit with him)

Noah: There's only one thing for it, this holocaust has got to be stopped. Frankly I can't afford all that money. I made a sterling effort but I'm poor, I haven't got a red cent to my name.

(Lancelot enters)

Lancelot: Mr Noah, how's the shelter coming along? Have you finished it yet? I've brewed up a batch of the old familiar juice to celebrate with. We can give it a proper launching me, you and Lady Noah.

Noah: Where's my wife? What have you two been up to?

Lancelot: Inspecting the structural solidarity of your bedroom in case the big one happens on top of it.

Noah: Never mind that now. Look this nuclear game's a bit expensive. I'm as patriotic as the next man but there's a limit to everyman's wallet I'm still young, I've got a whole life to lead, I haven't achieved anything yet. If something goes wrong - poof, we're all goners. Now what I'm going to suggest is that perhaps we can do without the planned holocaust altogether. Oh yes, and while we're at it let's disband the Army, Navy and Air Force. To hell with the military, they just cost me money.

Lancelot: Mr Noah, that's treason.

Noah: I'm trying to save the taxpayer a few pennies.

Lancelot: Either you stand up and be blown to pieces with the next man or you're a traitor.

Noah: I love my country, Australia the Land of the Free.

Lancelot: That's better. We're not petty men Noah, you have to understand that. We're doing it for freedom, we're doing it for the future,

Noah: (Heartbroken) Yes I see. Well I guess I'd better build my shelter for the future, but the cost is rocketing and I'm poor, I can't afford much this financial year what with the recession and interest rates where they are.

Lancelot: Have no fears me and Mrs. Noah will lend a hand and put our shoulders to the grindstone.

Noah: But I warn you I'm not very rich, I'm just an average man, nobody special.

Lancelot: But Mrs. Noah tells me you're rolling in money, that it's coming out of your ears. You should be able to build a first class shelter.

Noah. Lies, lies, look don't listen to my wife, I'll get her out here and she'll tell the truth this time. Wife, come out here immediately.

(Wife enters)

Wife. After all these years he doesn't remember my name.

Noah: What's got into your head woman of course I remember your name. What is it again?

Wife: I'm a human, I've got a name.

Noah: Your name's wife.

Wife: It's Guinevere.

Noah: The world's coming to an end and she decides to emancipate herself.

Wife: Just watch your step that's all.

Noah: Have you still got that dollar I gave you?

Wife: Here it is. (Only to show him)

Noah: (snatches it) Well I'm taking it back. That will teach you to tell people I'm rolling in money. And as for you Lancelot and your pathetic puerile patriotism I'm building this shelter to save my life, not for any other reason you see. Not one penny more than is necessary and keep your hands off my wife.

Lancelot: Well in that case we have nothing further to communicate to each other you scab of a swindling skin flint.

Noah: Wife, tell him I'm poor.

Wife: Oh I love you in a bad mood. (to Lancelot) He's rich, he's rolling in money, money oozes out of his ears.

Noah: We'll build the shelter here.

Wife: Well I thought just here will be better.

Lancelot: No Guinnie humour him or we'll get no shelter at all. Here's fine.

Wife: No, Noah's wrong.

Noah: Listen do you want a clip on the ear? I'm a sick man but not too sick to clip you one.

Wife: Now there's no need to get violent.

Noah: I'm not getting violent.

Wife: Yes you are.

Noah: No I'm not.

Wife: Yes you are.

Noah: No I'm not.

Lancelot: (restraining Noah's wife) A wife should respect her husband.

(Wife kicks him)

Lancelot: Ahh aah ow she kicked me.

Noah: Serves you right. We can fight if we want.

(Noah Kicks Lance on other leg)

Lancelot: Ahh aah ow he kicked me. Just you wait until the Commander in Chief gets here.

Noah: We'll put it here.

Wife: No, here.

Noah. I'll squeeze that tiny brain of yours out of your little head if you don't shut up.

Wife: That's right get violent, that's the old Noah I used to know. Get yourself into a state become unbearably angry because I'm never going to agree with you.

Noah: You're my wife, you must obey.

Wife: An old crazy man like you. (mimics) 'The world's going to end, the world's going to end, holocaust, holocaust, the end, the end.' You're a pathetic little man.

Noah: (defensively) God told me.

Wife: Another pathetic little man, I'm going off to enjoy myself. Come on Lance, and I'm not going in your silly sausage of a shelter.

Lancelot: I wouldn't take refuge in the same shelter as a money grubbing lick penny like you.

(Noah's wife leads Lancelot off)

Noah. Well desert me then 'cause when you're dead you'll be sorry. I'll laugh I will, I'll laugh my head off and I won't be lonely.

(Noah inspects the pile of junk and the Salesman enters and stands behind the pile of junk)

Salesman: This is some of the finest junk money can buy. Nowhere in Australia can you buy finer junk. Step right up ladies and gentlemen get your junk here. Junk for sale get good junk here finest quality junk. Good quality rusted ¬through crap.

Noah: How much the lot?

Salesman: How much you got?

Noah: An old pencil rubber and three cents.

Salesman: (jokes) Got any lead in your old pencil? Let me see, you can have the lot for forty four thousand four hundred and forty four dollars sterling.

Noah: I'm being serious.

Salesman: Fifty five thousand five hundred and fifty five dollars sterling.

Noah: How about trade discount?

Salesman: Alright but this is my minimum, I can't go any lower. Sixty six thousand six hundred and sixty six dollars sterling.

Noah: Three dollars fifty cents.

Salesman: Two dollars fifty cents.

Noah: Four dollars fifty cents.

Salesman. One dollar fifty cents.

Noah: I'll take it.

Salesman: Fifty dollars.

Noah: Look I'll give you forty five dollars.

Salesman: Forty nine.

Noah: Forty six.

Salesman: Forty eight.

Noah: Forty seven.

Salesman: Forty seven fifty.

Noah: Forty seven fifty. I'll take it.

Salesman: Forty eight.

Noah. Forty seven.

Salesman: Forty nine.

Noah. Forty six.

Salesman: Fifty.

Noah: Forty five, I'll take it at fifty.

Salesman: Forty nine.

Noah: I'll take it, I'll take it.

Salesman. C.O.D?

Noah: Listen would you hold all this for me and I'll pay for it later?

Salesman: Sure thing, of course you have to pay interest, compound interest, transport, handicap, overtime, long service leave, superannuation, so your sum total will be forty eight dollars,

Noah: Done.

Salesman: A pleasure doing business with you.

(They shake hands, the salesman exits)

Noah: I know this pile of junk's not the best material to build a nuclear shelter with, but I reckon it's good enough, it's cheap too. After all I don't know if the holocaust is really going to come do I? I don't want a white elephant on my hands.

(He begins to build the Ark he is obviously unused to physical work and lifting materials. He also has no real conception of what he is doing. He whistles popular war songs. This scene should be made as comic as possible and shelter should be built as quickly as possible)

God: For seven days did Noah build the Ark. On the first day he heard the word of God and he did fear for his life. On the second day Noah began plans for the Ark and he prepared for his salvation. On the third day Noah contracted the labour and materials required for the Ark. On the fourth day the labour went on strike and Noah prepared the foundations with his own bare hands. On the fifth day Noah began to build the Ark. On the sixth day the Ark was finished and brightness shone all around. On the seventh day Noah and all those around him panicked.

(Wife rushes in while Noah is sitting in front of his shelter. She drops to her knees)

Wife: Oh Noah, Noah the world's coming to an end. Save me, I don't want to die. Help me Noah, I've deserted Lancelot for you. He's not as good as you, no sir, no siree, you're two of him Noah, he's just a boy but you are a man. Noah this is the end if you don't let me in your shelter you'll be all by yourself. You'll be terribly lonely, Noah. I don't want to die, I'm still young, I can do things. I want to do something with my life please let me in.

Noah: If from now on you promise to love, honour and obey me, and no back talk.

Wife: Oh Noah you're asking a lot.

Noah: It's my final word.

Wife: How about a compromise? I'll try to be nice to you on Sundays and I'll freeze the shopping bill for six months.

Noah: Done.

Wife. (embracing his knees) Oh Noah, oh thank you, you saved my life. I know my life isn't worth much but I deserve to live, my life's very valuable to me.

(Wife gets up and brushes her hair. Lancelot rushes in, drops to his knees in front of Noah)

Lancelot: Oh Mr Noah I'm sorry I'm late. I've just come to help you build the shelter. I was trying to get the holocaust delayed you see so we would have more time to build the shelter. Noah you must let me in.

Noah: No.

Lancelot: Oh Noah you must save me. If I'm killed I'll just die.

Noah: No.

Lancelot: I'll give you money.

Noah: How much?

(Lancelot takes out a handful of small coins and counts them)

Lancelot: Sixty seven cents.

Noah: You're in.

Lancelot: (embracing Noah's knees) Oh Mr Noah you saved my life. This deserves a drink. I'm going to live, to live. (takes out army drink container) Here have a drink Guinnie this stuff will blow your mind.

(Lancelot and Wife sit and drink)

Noah: Hay you two stop drinking there's still plenty to do.

Lancelot. Oh we're safe, we got our place. What are you complaining about? Let's have a party to celebrate.

Wife: Have a drink Noah you old fart. What's the good of living if you don't enjoy life?

Noah: (joining in) Listen you two, I've got something to say.

Lancelot: Mr Noah, you were right about the Army. It's just a big waste of money. When all this is over I'm going to surrender to the enemy.

Wife: You're the silliest soldier in the army.

Lancelot: I was top of my squad.

Noah. Let's have a taste of your brew Lance? I've decided not to be a scrooge any more.

Wife: This is no time for jokes.

Noah: This might be the last thing I ever say so listen, I'm serious. I've decided to share all I have with you two.

Wife: I never believed it before, but hey I'm convinced the world is really coming to an end. Oh God I'm not scared, I'm terrified.

Noah: I want to share everything I have because when you're dead nothing matters. But we're not going to die, I know that now. We are going to live on. We will live through these dark days and emerge as better people, Lancelot, you can even have a third of my wife, I'll have a third and she can have a third.

Wife: I feel like a piece of rump steak at the butchers. Oh, what the heck, you can both have a third of me and I'll have both of you.

Lancelot: You can't have two men, it's not good form,

Wife: Good form be damned. I've got two men and I'm keeping them both. I'm greedy, besides I like you both.

Lancelot: I'm sure we're going to survive. Everything's working out so well. I'm going to quit the army and Noah's changed and Guinnie you're so friendly to everybody.

God: And at midday on the seventh day from land and sea, lightning flashed and ripped through the sky, sirens wailed. Humanity had but half an hour.

Noah: (frantic) What? It's come the end, quick everybody get a helmet, get into the shelter.

(Noah distributes helmets. The others who greeted the news with stunned shock now frantically rush around getting in each other's way and bumping into each other. Noah stands still)

Noah: Wait a minute let me check. (he checks his pockets) Bankcard, bankbook, savings account, Christmas club, stocks and shares, lottery tickets, book and record vouchers, yes everything seems to be here. Right everybody stand at attention. (they do) Number off.

Wife: One.

Lancelot: Two.

Noah: All present and accounted for, your orders are to follow emergency plan Al.

Lancelot: (frantic) Women and children first.

(Lancelot dives into shelter and is pulled out by Guinevere who crawls in between his legs but he pulls her out and dives in followed by her)

Wife: Quickly, quickly, I don't want to be caught out here I've got the rest of my life to live.

Noah. Don't panic, don't panic but bloody well get in. I don't want to be caught out here. Quickly, quickly.

(As wife disappears Noah stops and looks up at the sky)

Noah: When we come out we will build paradise, brick by brick. All the hatred will be dead, all the armies wiped out. Only people shall emerge and we will stand up in the sun, look up into the sky and humanity and love shall reign. A war that will destroy wars has commenced.

Wife: (Inside shelter) No more speeches, you won't emerge as anything if you don't get in.

Lancelot: Quick get in the bombs are coming.

Noah: I'm a man, I'm not scared of a few bombs, Oh look wife, I can see them falling through the sky. They're only little we haven't got anything to fear.

Wife: (Poking head out of shelter) Will you get in I don't want to be the only woman in the world with dance-a-lot Lancelot the only man. When it's all over every day will be a new life for us, we will be very happy but you must come in. Oh yes, I can see them over there.

Lancelot: Don't worry about him Guinnie. We're all going to die anyway. We're just fooling ourselves, this Noah's Ark won't float it doesn't conform with Plan 92K46B.

Noah: When the morning comes we shall found a new city and call it Camelot. All survivors of the holocaust shall be equal and will work together for the future. Oh no, the bombs are really blowing up. Let me in, let me in it's really happening.

God: As Noah crawled into the ground the earth was beset by vast explosions, cities crumbled and civilization died. Noah's city slumped into the sea and all was waste and barren. After forty days and forty nights Noah was instructed to re-emerge from his shelter to go forth and multiply and repopulate the earth. Noah, God calls you forth, the armies are dead, dry land has been found. (pause) Noah come out!

(God knocks on the top of the shelter. Nothing happens, there is no sound from the shelter. Fade out. God exits. Noah coughs a spot light comes back onto the shelter and Noah with a blackened face crawls out)

Noah: It's alright come on out you lot.

(A dazed and stunned Wife and Lancelot emerge. Both with blackened faces they start laughing)

Noah: That was close, now all we have to worry about is global warming. I think I'll get into a little carbon trading, might be able to make a little money, yes!

Back to Contents

### Robin Hood and the Gnu

A Mummers Comedy

First performed as a piece of street theatre The Cloisters the University of Adelaide 1975 and directed by me!

Cast:

Robin Hood: Stuart Carter.

Maid Marion: Nona Monahin.

Sir Guy of Gisborne: Anthony Thorogood.

Friar Tuck: Neil Piggot.

Doctor: Susan Tonkin.

Setting: Sherwood Forest in merry old England.

***

Let the play begin: (The mummers march on banging drums and saucepan lids)

Mummers: Sherwood Forest is our setting  
And there is no land left for sub letting

Sir Guy: I've taken the land from the poor,  
And now I'm after a little bit more.

Mummers: So noble Robin takes from the rich and gives to the...

Robin: Not so rich.

Sir Guy: I think that you are mudding my pitch.

Mummers: We hope our play of old England brings a smile  
For we have been rehearsing for a while.

Robin: On come I the brave Robin Hood  
In this world I represent all that is good.  
I am big strong and tall  
Quite the bravest of them all  
But I must not make a sound  
Sir Guy of Gisborne and his men are around.  
The Maid Marion is the object of my quest  
And I don't say this in jest  
She said she loved me through and through  
And to me would always be true.  
I remind her of buttercups blooming in spring  
To her I sing like a chorus of angels ring a ding ding.  
Her skin is as soft as silk  
Her complexion as white as milk  
She loves me she says and then disappears  
And leaves me standing here in tears.  
She loves me, she loves me not  
She does, she does not  
She comes, she goes  
I wish that I didn't have such great big toes.

Marion: On come I the beautiful Maid Marion  
A life of debauchery I can no longer carry on  
Fair Robin I have decided on you to give my troth  
But that involves Sir Guy of Gisborne's Roth.

Robin: Marry me?

Marion: Yes today.

Robin: Today?

Marion: Oh tomorrow.

Robin: Tomorrow?

Marion: Next week.

Robin: Next week?

Marion: Next month.

Robin: Next month?

Marion: Next year.

Robin: Next year?

Marion: Oh in a few years.

Robin: In a few years!

Marion: Oh sometime. Don't press me don't get pushy.

Robin: That's just not good enough, I need certainty. I need to know where I am in a relationship, I want to know where I stand. Do you know that you have never kissed me! I think you are taking me for granted, you are just using me for your pleasure. Well I have had just about enough and I want a final decision one way or the other.

Marion: You are so manly Robin.

Robin: Well my dander is up.

Marion: I like it when your dander's up.

Robin: Dander up or dander down what's your decision?

Marion: Oh Robin. We could get engaged and have lots of presents and then there are rings, a friendship ring to start with and then an engagement ring and a wedding ring and I want them all, expensive with lots of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires and things then I could have a shower party and more presents and of course there will be lots of wedding presents I do so love lots of presents. Oh Robin! (they embrace)

Robin: Oh Marion.

Marion: We could get finance and buy a little, square, redbrick, three bedroom, one kitchen, toilet, bathroom, ¬lounge room, wall to wall ceiling house. In a little while we could have a little (pause) car for me and a big one for you and all the usual electrically uselessly useless gadgets. We could have two and a bit children and matching dogs, and they could have little red and white kennels with matching dog bowls. Oh Robin.

(embrace)

Robin: Oh Marion and matching dog bowls yes, yes, yes, Oh rapture, rapture, rapture and matching dog bowls.

Robin: (to the audience) I was clowning one day in the forest and I pushed her right into the river. She got soaked and covered in mud, she had bruises all over her arms and legs and she hurt her back. I helped her out of the river and we fell in love.

Marion: Yes, he pushed me into the river, I got bruises all over my arms and legs and I hurt my back. I almost drowned and we fell in love.

Robin: I go now to fetch Friar Tuck the good  
To marry us in the wood.

(Robin exits, enters Sir Guy of Gisborne)

Marion: (hysterical) Sir Guy of Gisborne, help Robin.

Sir Guy: (dancing, sings)  
I'm a gnu, how do you do?  
It's so very very gnice to be a gnu.  
I'm a gnu, spelt g n u  
I bet you're glad that I'm a gnice gnu.  
I'm a gnu, (aside) not the sort of gnu you see in the zoo  
I'm a totally gnu sort of gnice gnu.  
I'm a gnu, I'll say it right through  
And it's very very gnice to be a gnu.

Marion: (hysterical) Sir Guy of Gisborne!

Sir Guy: (changes character) I'm the G-Guy of G-Gisborne na ah ah.  
You are at my mercy Marion dear  
But you have nothing from me to fear  
I have a little proposition for your delectation  
Marry me or your land and wealth will suffer depreciation.

Marion: Never!

Sir Guy: Never say never.

Marion: Never ever.

Sir Guy: I will cut off your hand with a Swiss army knife  
And the blood will all spurt, the end of your life.

Marion: Dogs meat.

Sir Guy: Lovely creature.

Marion: Pig poo.

Sir Guy: Loveliness itself.

Marion: I will never be overcome.

Sir Guy: I will force you, ah ha. (he grabs Marion and throws her over his shoulder and runs about the stage, Robin with a drawn sword is in hot pursuit)

Robin: On come I the brave Robin Hood  
In this world I represent all that is good.

Marion: You have made that speech already.

Robin: Oh right. You fiend Sir Guy of Gisborne, I challenge thee to fight like a man.

Sir Guy: Drat that pesky Robin Hood  
I'd bash him one on his head if I could.

Marion: Put me down.

Robin: Yes put her down, hiding behind a defenceless woman's dress. (Marion is still held over Sir Guys shoulder but she faces Robin and lays into him trying to get hold of him to scratch out his eyes)

Marion: I'll give you defenceless! I can take care of myself.

Sir Guy: Yes but it is a man's duty to protect the weaker sex.

Marion: I'll give you weaker sex when I get hold of you.

Robin: Our first tiff my little dove.

Marion: Little bloody dove I'll scratch your bloody eyes out. (to sir guy) Now put me down or I'll kick you in the goolies. (Sir Guy puts her down)

Marion: That's better, now you two can fight over me.

Robin: You sir are a foul fiend.

Sir Guy: Same to you with nobs on I'm sure.

Robin: You have got my dander up.

Sir Guy: Marion is mine by right, I'm taking her.

Robin: She's mine as I love her best.

Sir Guy: Oh my Gawd you are a right old pest.

Robin: The only thing we can do is fight.

Sir Guy: The civilised way is a show of might.

Robin: Draw your sword and fight like a ruffian you gmuffian.

Sir Guy: I will stand my ground.

Marion: (getting excited) Kill him, kill him, cut off his head and make him bleed.

Robin: Nothing can stop me killing this wretched foe. This devil this baby bashing fiend, this foul, licentious, fault ridden monster. He must not be per-mitted to exploit the weak and the helpless. He must not be permitted to push around defenceless women and young children.

Sir Guy: (character change) I'm a gnu, how do you do?

Marion: Oh Robin don't hurt him he is just a helpless idiot.

Robin: I must. Sir Guy has had his last straw, now the haystack is bare, I have the needle, (waves sword) so fight you fiend.

(battle commences, with gnu fighting like a chimpanzee and Robin like a ballerina)

Robin: Take that, you fiend. (lunges)

Sir Guy: I'm a gnu. (blocks)

Robin: Murderer! (lunges)

Sir Guy: How do you do? (blocks)

Robin: You woeful foe. (lunges)

Sir Guy: (blocks) I'm a gnu.

Robin: You scourgeable scoundrel, grave-robber, gallows ¬meat, corruptor of youth, assassin, thief, convict, cheat, pimp. (stabs gnu)

Sir Guy: I have been mortally wounded in the heart  
And from this world I shall depart  
No longer shall I live and fart.

Marion: He is dying.

Robin: Yes he is dying.

Marion: Unless you save his life, this dear, dumb, stupid idiotic Gnu of Gisborne, I shall not marry you, Robin.

Robin: (gets down on his knees) Oh Marion, don't carry on.

Marion: My word is my oath, my oath is my promise, my promise is my word, my word is my oath, my oath is my promise...

Robin: Doctor, doctor, doctor, someone's sabotaged my wedding. I mean someone's scratched, clawed and hacked, lacerated, cut and ruptured, spoilt and mischiefed this poor, dumb, stupid gnu. Is there a doctor in the house?

Doctor: On come I the noble Doctor  
I just arrived in my helicopter  
The itch the stitch the palsy and the gout  
All pains within all pains without  
If someone's in I'll fetch him out.  
Old Tom Bottle's wife you knew her well  
She came under an unholy spell  
She contracted rheumatics in all four elbows  
But I cured her with a puff of air from my bellows  
She didn't wait to hear of her recovery  
But died of something undiscovery.  
Bring me a woman seven years dead  
Eight years buried, totally unfed  
Unable to save after nine years in the grave  
I'll give her a bill and she won't lie still.

Robin: You have a cure that from the grave can lure?

Marion: You can save this cretin, this stupid imbecile?

Doctor: Rue, rue, visible rue, hens, pens, turkeys in treacle  
The yolk of an egg, an old-fashioned peg  
The brains of a little red beetle  
And the cross from a gothic steeple  
The head of a louse  
An undersized mouse  
And a diddledrum, diddledrum inside out  
Is a first rate cure I've no doubt.

Robin: But what does it do to this man I have slew?

Marion: (Marion and Robin argue) We don't want diddledrums, diddledrums inside out. I'm afraid Robin the wedding is off. I can't marry someone who slaughters cretins, you moron murderer.

Robin: Oh Marion this doctor brave will Sir Guy save. Doctor tell her of thy cure.

Doctor: It gives a coward a heart if he is willing  
That makes him stand without fear of killing.  
Any man that's got a small mouse  
That scurries around in his fine house  
I'll give it a dose and make it a mose.  
Ribs, legs, arms all broken I'm sure  
My medicine can quite easily cure  
More than this I ,the inventor maintain  
If you break your neck it will fix it again  
And again and again it will fix any pain.  
Now I've something in a bottle  
On my inside, outside, right side, left side  
Waistcoat pocket this side  
With this I once cured a disease  
Twenty yards long if you please  
And if there's a man who dares claim more  
Let him walk in and read out his score.

Friar Tuck: (enters) In come I the holy Friar Tuck  
For lunch I think I'll order Beijing duck.

Doctor: And what say you who come in on cue?

Friar Tuck: In come I the man who ain't been yit  
With my big head and little wit. (vaguely points to his abdomen)  
My head's so big and my wit's so small  
I don't know how I can please you all.

Robin: The Gnu is dying. He will trip over the pail and kick the bucket. He will become deceased and my marriage will die if you don't stop arguing.

Marion: Robin do something. Call an ambulance or our engagement is off, it is obvious to me that your behaviour is not that of a responsible member of the community.

Doctor: (to Friar Tuck) What canst cure?

Friar Tuck: I can cure a magpie with the stitch.

Doctor: And how dost that?

Friar Tuck: Cut off its head and throw it in a ditch.

Doctor: Is that all canst cure?

Friar Tuck: No that's not all canst cure. I can cure a horse with the gout.

Doctor: And how does that?

Friar Tuck: Cut off its head and kick it about.

Robin: They're having an academic argument and my marriage is dying. It's shedding its earthly trappings. My wedding day is mortally wounded.

Marion: Nothing will save our marriage soon.

(Doctor and Friar Tuck go on with their discussion, ignoring everyone)

Doctor: Where didst thou learn thy cures?

Friar Tuck: I travelled for them.

Doctor: Where didst thou travel?

Friar Tuck: I travelled down Plum Pudding Highway over Beef Steak Crossing to Cornflakes Cathedral and there I met the Archbishop of Breakfast.

Doctor: Is that all thou see?

Marion: I see a dead Gnu.

Robin: I see a broken engagement.

Friar Tuck: Nose that's not all I see. I went a bit further and met an old duck. I says 'Good day ma'am but the saucy old goose wouldn't speak sos I kicked up me boot and gave her a gentle nudge and kicked her ninety miles through the eye of a needle. She landed in Sewing Basket Farm where it's impossible to find a hay in a needle stack.

Doctor: What else didst thou see?

Friar Tuck: I see two dead men fighting, two blind men seeing fair play, two men without arms picked them up and carried them away and two dumb men yelled hurray hurray.

Robin: Someone quickly save my marriage!

Doctor: Anything is possible for a small consideration.

Robin: Anything but this commiseration.

Doctor: Here Gnu take one of my knick-knacks  
Swallow down one of my tic tacs  
Arise, arise and we'll sing a merry song.  
(hands Sir Guy a giant pill)

Sir Guy: (rises) That feels better.

Robin: My future's all set.

Marion: So what's this crap you were giving me earlier about weak defenceless women?

Robin: Weak and defenceless I do not think  
Oh my God I can smell a great big stink.

Marion: It is true that your cruel deed has been reversed but I don't see, I can't understand, don't really comprehend why I should enter into a state of conjugal bliss and nuptial bonds with a homicidal maniac.

Robin: I was just doing the manly thing.

Marion: I don't think I am prepared to be lead to the alter and sacrificed for better or for worse. Now that I have got to know you better I'm not so sure that I like you.

Robin: Oh Marion tell me you don't mean it. I've reformed I've got a job and I'm going to get a pay rise plus I get bonuses. I've got life assurance and a part time job to make a little extra on the side, plus I get a healthy interest on my bank deposits and I have a share portfolio. I'm a mass of taxable assets. Think of all that money that you could spend on useless things, think of all that impulse buying, think of the huge credit card debt you could accumulate.

Marion: Because you saved the Gnu I've changed my mind. I'm yours.

Friar Tuck: Now that this has been settled for better and for worse, for good and for bad, for short and for tall, for fat and for thin, for here and for there, for now and for then, for never and for always, (Robin and Marion come together) I can pronounce you man and wife.

Marion: What's this man and wife? Wife and man!

Friar Tuck: I pronounce thee wife and man.

Marion: Oh Robin!

Robin: Oh Marion.

Doctor: The cure was my idea  
And it will be quite dear  
The gnu is no longer a ghost  
My bill will be in the post.

Sir Guy: I'm a gnu gwop per woo.

Mummers: In the forest lives the Gnu.

Sir Guy: I'm the Gnu.

Mummers: He's the gnu  
And brave Robin Hood did all that he could  
And he could when he would  
And he would when he could  
Try hard to woo the noble  
Which isn't the same as mobile  
Maid of all trades and carrions  
Maid Marions.

Robin and Marion: So now we're together.

Mummers: Yes now they're together, together forever  
More ever they're together, together together  
More ever, more ever, forever forever  
Right now and how.

***

Back to Contents

### First Class to Mandalay

A Mummers Style Comedy

First performed August 1976 in the Little Theatre University of Adelaide and directed by me!

Cast:

Old Slobber Chops: Susan Tonkin.

Prince of Paradise: Roger Wetmuff.

Beelzebub: Neil Piggot.

Slasher: Elizabeth Osman.

Wicked Witch: Evatt Chris.

Setting: A bus stop.

***

Let The Play Begin: (in the centre of the stage is a bus stop. The mummers process on banging drums and saucepan lids and making a great old noise. The Prince of Paradise is resplendent, Old Slobber Chops is dressed in rags and the rest look like a sinister bunch of underworld characters)

Mummers: We are the mummers come to entertain you here is the Prince of Paradise.

Prince of Paradise: And if I do say so myself I am very nice.

Mummers : Old Slobber Chops.

Old Slobber Chops: A right good looker.

Mummers : And Slasher.

Slasher: Good with the blade.

Mummers : Not to forget the (whispering to the audience) Wicked Witch.

Wicked Witch: That's me, one plus one and all the rest, my name is secret but it's the best.

Slasher: A genius at credit card fraud.

Wicked Witch: My name is Maud.

Mummers: And finally Beelzebub.

Beelzebub: A good friend to the devil I may add.

Mummers: So we hope you enjoy our little presentation that we perform for your delectation.

(Prince of Paradise walks impatiently over to the bus stop he wears a large golden key around his neck. When Old Slobber Chops speaks he ignores her until her last line)

Prince of Paradise: Where is that bus, are they on strike or something?

Old Slobber Chops: On come I a very old woman, not so old though and not so very. I'm actually quite newly sprung and really quite merry. I feel like I'm at the dawn of my existence, I'm sailing on the maiden voyage of my life, I'm a rosebud about to bloom into a cascading tumult of beautiful splendour. (she sees the Prince of Paradise) Oh look here a young splendidly spoilt sprout.

Prince of Paradise: Please can you reframe from gorking at me.

Old Slobber Chops: I'll pick up this young sapling this young skimpering scamp.

Prince of Paradise: You are breathing my air!

Old Slobber Chops: Hello young idol of my life.

Prince of Paradise: Hello very low-status, very old woman.

Old Slobber Chops: Hello drop dead gorgeous.

Prince of Paradise: I say, do you know to whom you are addressing your infinitely unworthy words?

Old Slobber Chops: A right good looker I'd say.

Prince of Paradise: Do you know, I say again, do you know to whom your unworthy words are chatted at? No you don't. Well I am the Prince of Paradise, the pinnacle of the pyramid of the perfect universe. So don't bother to bother me, you don't rate, you don't even get in the back door, not even the doggy door, you fantasy of a dustman's dreams.

Old Slobber Chops: Such eloquence!

Prince of Paradise: I'm waiting here to catch a bus to Mandalay to go and see my fiancé a Miss Universe.

Old Slobber Chops: Very nice.

Prince of Paradise: So run along now. Go on get thee hence make with the legs, bye bye, we will catch you later alligator, much later.

Old Slobber Chops: Who do you think you are, telling me what to do? I'm a citizen just like you. I got me rights. I got a inalienable right to stand on this bus stop guaranteed by the Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Man. See I got me rights, right?

Prince of Paradise: We also have the right to property. So pooh-pooh to your other rights. I happen to own this bus stop and you're trespassing. So make an attempt at an exit, it's time for bye byes. (he pushes her away)

Old Slobber Chops : If I were you I'd get off me high horse before you fall off.

Prince of Paradise: (looking at his watch) Have you got the time?

Old Slobber Chops: If you got the time I've got the place.

Prince of Paradise: No you old trout, I was speaking of the time of day.

Old Slobber Chops: No afraid not my watch is fast. It's half way round the corner over a wall and down the next street already.

Prince of Paradise: That makes three streets and one corner before the bus gets here.

Old Slobber Chops: Getting back to falling off horses your pedestal's spinning so fast you will get dizzy and dizzier and dizzier still and you will dizzle-dazzle and fall crumbling, tumbling, fumbling off. I might come along for the ride, how about it?

Prince of Paradise: Look you old scarecrow you're ugly.

Old Slobber Chops: I was never trying to pick you up you skinny squeeze bag, you shrivelled starved skeleton.

Prince of Paradise: The feeling is mutual mutton fat.

Old Slobber Chops: You snivelling nose run.

Prince of Paradise: Slime pond.

Old Slobber Chops: I have a man. He's a very youthful young man, a golden youth, an Adonis and he's very young, brand new, he still has the wrapping around him.

Prince of Paradise: Very good you chase after him I'm sure he'll run a three minute mile trying to get away.

Old Slobber Chops: (to the Prince) My sweetheart, my darling, my lollipop boy.

Prince of Paradise: Bow-legged woman.

Old Slobber Chops: My ice cream Sunday.

Prince of Paradise: Yes I'm off to Mandalay, so there's no chance for you to get your claws into me you old wombat.

Old Slobber Chops: You long-haired kangaroo.

Prince of Paradise: I shall not condescend to swap insults with you, you flat-nosed platypus.

Old Slobber Chops: You dried up goanna.

Prince of Paradise: I'm off to Mandalay that exotic romantic paradise that Rudyard Kipling sang about. Everybody wants to make it to heaven, to pass the entry exams to paradise.

Old Slobber Chops: You're my paradise.

Prince of Paradise: And Mandalay with its exotic pagodas, Buddhas, the wind in the palm trees, temple bells, sitting arm in arm with a Chinese girl watching steamers jostle to and fro, the slowly rising sun and elephants piling teak in sludgy, squidgy creeks.

Old Slobber Chops: If you're there that is paradise for me.

Prince of Paradise: Yes, compare the romance of Mandalay to catching buses to the bank where I work. All I can hear is the East calling to me. All I can smell is rich spices. All I can see is the sun in the palm trees. Out there is paradise. So I'm going to Mandalay by first class express bus. I'm waiting for the bus now.

Old Slobber Chops: We can wait together.

Prince of Paradise: You don't get it do you? I don't like you, I don't like your looks they are offensive to me, I don't like your body odour, I prefer to wait on my own. So you're dismissed. Leave immediately, be gone, disappear, abandon my presence, get thee hence. Find yourself a little opening and close the door behind you.

Old Slobber Chops: Greedy, potbellied, ill kempt, long haired being.

Prince of Paradise: Yes I'm in love, in love with Miss Universe. But alas she forsakes me. Seeing her is like trying to see a Government Minister. I've made dozens of appointments, scores of telephone calls, I've sent in twenty petitions and several telegrams but still no results.

Old Slobber Chops: The course of true love never did run without a little levitation. It's all topsy-turvy and turvy-topsy. It's a horrible torrible, ting, the like the likes has never bing. You're knocked out of your six senses into seventeen, out of seventeen into seven score. You'll have to turn to the bottle and empty that down your throttle or there's always me.

Prince of Paradise: I'd like to smash her into tiny crumbs.

Old Slobber Chops: He is so sentimental.

Prince of Paradise: Love is like a red, red rose, a blooming rose in spring.

Old Slobber Chops: Love is never any good, it's a pain and I've got it bad and antibiotics won't cure it, it's a cancer eating out your heart.

Prince of Paradise: Love is like a purple lilac.

Old Slobber Chops: Love is like the autumn sludge.

Prince of Paradise: The sun at dawn.

Old Slobber Chops: A thunder storm.

Prince of Paradise: A rose garden.

Old Slobber Chops: A bed of weeds.

Prince of Paradise: Satin and silk.

Old Slobber Chops: Horse muck.

Prince of Paradise. A starry night.

Old Slobber Chops: A freezing Arctic weed.

Prince of Paradise: Gently falling snow.

Old Slobber Chops: Encrusting freezing ice.

Prince of Paradise: It's wonderful.

Old Slobber Chops: Ugly.

Prince of Paradise: It's paradise.

Old Slobber Chops: Paradise lost.

Prince of Paradise: Wretched woman, low degraded being, gallows meat.

Old Slobber Chops: I heard that. I'd watch my step if I was you I might go off you.

Prince of Paradise: I seem to have two chances of that none and Buckley's.

Old Slobber Chops: I've still got a man you know, youthful as a golden boy, as strong as Goliath, as hairy as Samson.

Prince of Paradise: As hairy as Samson, he's probably a monkey. (makes like a chimpanzee)

Old Slobber Chops: Monkeys have feelings too.

Prince of Paradise: Have you?

Old Slobber Chops: My man is a real painting, a real picture, a work of art, a masterpiece.

Prince of Paradise: That's strange because you're no oil painting.

Old Slobber Chops: Toss of insults if you dare a fool and his insults are soon parted. My man's three of you, a man among men, a superman. I certainly don't need you.

Prince of Paradise: Good.

Old Slobber Chops: (affectionately) Lollipop.

Prince of Paradise: I pay you no attention whatsoever.

Old Slobber Chops: I've got such a big strong man. Who needs you? (affectionately) cutie pie, honey-bun.

Prince of Paradise: You probably never saw a man before in your life. Your bloke is a bit of a rough old bruiser. From the look of you he knocks you around a bit. Gave you a black eye did he? But don't worry, a black eye or two only improves your looks.

Old Slobber Chops: (referring to the Prince) He really loves me.

Prince of Paradise: I can't stand the sight of her.

Old Slobber Chops: He pretends that he doesn't like me but I see right through him.

Prince of Paradise: No! Don't get me wrong, I hate your guts.

Old Slobber Chops: You see he loves me.

Prince of Paradise: You smell like a sewer.

Old Slobber Chops: He even likes my perfume.

Prince of Paradise: It smells of duck poo.

Old Slobber Chops: I tried dog poo but it was a bit too flowery.

Beelzebub: Up bub I the breezy, brazen, bright and brawny Beelzebub.

Prince of Paradise: Can't you see I'm busy throwing insults at Old Slobber Chops here, what do you want?

Beelzebub: There is a bus drivers' Union of Federal Commonwealth Amalgamated Co-operative of Associates Syndicates Congress strike. So there will be no bus today to Mandalay.

Prince of Paradise: What, no bus today to Mandalay?

Beelzebub: I just said that!

Prince of Paradise: Well in that case I'm not staying here with the stench of rotting meat up my nose.

Old Slobber Chops: You say the most beautiful things to me.

Prince of Paradise: I'll walk to Mandalay.

Beelzebub: Oh well, two wells don't make a right they make a well well. Gonna walk huh? I suggest you go straight along a twisting road take the turn off just before and straight after the first on your right turn to the left or it might be the right and go dead straight around every corner.

Prince of Paradise: Fare thee well old stink bomb. I go now to see the Princess of the Stars, Miss Universe, Miss Majestic, Miss Gifted Glory, Miss Globular Goblet of Goodness. (heroic exit)

Beelzebub: Well I got rid of him, how about it.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh my deary, weary, sleary bones.  
I'm like a little dove fantastically in love.  
Oh my deary, weary, sleary heart  
I love a man and can't depart.

Beelzebub: Don't worry about that time waster how about a little canoodling.

Old Slobber Chops: What are you saying?

Beelzebub: Me and you, you and me, we could make sweet music together.

Old Slobber Chops: Get real.

Beelzebub: I love you.

Old Slobber Chops: Get a life.

Beelzebub: You're the only one for me.

Old Slobber Chops: I don't like your face.

Beelzebub: I'll do anything you want.

Old Slobber Chops: A brown paper bag over the head wouldn't be bad for a starter.

Beelzebub: I've loved you since I first saw you.

Old Slobber Chops: You get right up my nose.

Beelzebub: I can't go on without you.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh give over I've got more class than to look down my nose at you.

Beelzebub: Alas I am forsaken.

(Slasher enters carrying a sword)

Slasher: On come I the noble Slasher to claim the hand of the beautiful Old Slobber Chops here for my own.

Old Slobber Chops: You can get lost too.

Slasher: You're coming with me.

Beelzebub: (wielding a sword and circling) Get off she's already spoken for.

Slasher: (circles and lunges at Beelzebub with his sword) She has more taste than to go for a dull lump like you.

Beelzebub: I saw her first.

Slasher: I saw her second.

Beelzebub: She loves me.

Slasher: Get lost you great smelly fart she's mine.

Beelzebub: You'll have to fight for her.

Slasher: No problem fumble foot.

Beelzebub: Prepare to die dead wood.

Slasher: Make a move time waster.

Beelzebub: Go ahead punk make my day.

Slasher: I'm ready when you are.

Beelzebub: I'm going to make you eat shit.

(they Fight)

Slasher: Take that and that and that.

Beelzebub: And here's one in the eye for you.

Slasher: One good turn deserves another.

Beelzebub: I can go one better than that.

Slasher: And one for the road.

(Slasher stabs Beelzebub)

Beelzebub: Ah I'm dead, I'm dying, I'm done.

Slasher: One foot in the grave.

Beelzebub: Is there a doctor in the house?

Wicked Witch: On come I a bit of a Wicked Witch  
I was just asleep in a dirty old ditch.

Old Slobber Chops: Has thou a cure?

Wicked Witch: Take some French toast and bake it like a roast  
The hide of an antelope stretched on a slope  
A mouse or a louse is really quite grouse.  
Cook it all like stew when the moon appears blue  
Two pints of water stolen from an altar  
A rat, a cat, a worn out doormat.  
Mix it all up and throw in a bat  
Stir with a large spoon  
And cook at full moon.  
When all this is bubbling away  
Add salt, malt and fresh green hay  
This is quite easily done  
With a year or two of continual sun  
But if a quick cure is what you look for  
Take this pill and you will need nothing more. (offers a large pill)

Beelzebub: (grabs the pill) Oh oh oh my weary bones I've got to get some medication. (staggers off) I thank you from the bottom of my heart, I had better go as I am about to do a great big fart.

Old Slobber Chops: That's all well and good a nice act of charity, the old codger didn't die after all a happy ending but that does nothing for me, I want to get married to the Prince of Paradise but look at me I'm a mess a disgrace, a walking no man's land.

Slasher: There is always me you beautiful hunk of horse flesh.

Old Slobber Chops: Get off you're crude and rude, I've got taste.

Slasher: Alright then if I'm out of the running I can make you pay, what you need is a pill and I've got one.

Wicked Witch: (produces a bag full of pill jars) We have pills for this and pills for that, no you haven't contracted that yet. Here's pills to take in order to take pills and here's pills to put you to sleep and here's pills to wake you up. Here a pill to get up and another pill to go down again. A pill that enables you to eat breakfast and a pill to digest breakfast and another pill to stop constipation of your breakfast. Pills to get rid of headaches, pills to give you a headache, pills for toothache, stomach ache, red pills, yellow, blue, gold and green pills. And here I have just the pill for you. (he produces a giant pill from the bag of bottles and gives it to Old Slobber Chops) Take this pill, Old Slobber and you'll have no more bother.

Old Slobber Chops: Thank you, thank you, thank you, anything you want just ask (goes to leave)

Slasher: Not so fast. Hold your horses. We're not a mercenary bunch, we ask for no rewards, no money, no return of past kindness what we give we give freely. But what's in it for us?

Old Slobber Chops: For you? Nothing bugger off.

Slasher: We require a cut.

Old Slobber Chops: What have you ever done for me?

Slasher: Fifty percent off the top.

Old Slobber Chops: Drop dead.

Wicked Witch: One plus one makes thirty seven, take seven equals forty four, minus four equals four hundred and naught, which equals half of the multiple of the lowest common denominator.

Slasher: That's right, we want half of Prince of Paradise's paradise sweaty pie. You hear that? Paradise is to be carved into halves half for us and half for you.

Old Slobber Chops: You can take a great running jump.

Slasher: We'll just take the tablet for eternal youth back.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh no anything just ask.

Slasher: Then it's agreed my little buttercup?

Old Slobber Chops: I've got no choice.

Wicked Witch: You could get your hair dyed blond, work out at the gym, a mud pack, a body treatment, manicured and oiled, a full body massage, a body line girdle, a padded bra, false fingernails, false eyelashes, a ton of makeup, Botox for the little wrinkles, a bit of elective surgery, a face lift, a nip here a tuck there, some sexy clothes.

Old Slobber Chops: I think I'll just take the pill it's easier and quicker and so convenient. (she grabs the pill and exits)

Slasher: Soon paradise will be divided up into so many halves that all Old Slobber Chops and her little Prince ship will get is a help half way out. (pause) I wonder where Prince of Paradise is. Our pay is hanging around his neck.

Prince of Paradise:(enters, walking around in circles) I got lost on the way to Mandalay and have been walking around in circles ever since. Walking around in circles didn't seem to be doing any good, so I started walking around in shapes, lines and angles, hexagons, polygons and any other sort of gons. But no matter what shape I walked around in I ended up where I had begun. I'm done for, I shall never get to paradise. I shall never be king of my kingdom. I shall never see Miss Universe again. Oh, alas, alas, my life has ended.

Slasher: Hello Prince of Paradise we have something to make you stay. No longer shall you bewail an empty life when we present you with a wife. Come out Miss Super Crystal, Clear and Clean, Miss Rapturous Radiant Sheen.

Old Slobber Chops: (now young and beautiful enters) Hello sexy.

Prince of Paradise: She's incredibly, unbelievably, fantasmologically beautiful.

Old Slobber Chops: Now don't go over the top.

Prince of Paradise: Oh no sorry I'll stop.

Old Slobber Chops: Keep going ducky.

Prince of Paradise: You are so spectacularly beautiful.

Old Slobber Chops: Yes that's me.

Prince of Paradise: A revelation.

Old Slobber Chops: Keep talking.

Prince of Paradise: Like all the sunsets of the world in one.

Old Slobber Chops: True, true.

Prince of Paradise: A goddess of goddesses.

Old Slobber Chops: I must admit I am pretty good.

Prince of Paradise: I love you.

Old Slobber Chops: That's nice.

Prince of Paradise: I fell in love with you at first sight, head over heels, heels overhead. It's a pain to be parted from you. Don't leave me, my darling. Please tell me that you will never leave me. I'll love you all my life. All my life I've been dreaming of you.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh Prince.

Prince of Paradise: (kneels) Give me your hand, Miss Universe, Miss Infinite Beauty, Miss Firmament, Miss Eternal Loveliness.

Old Slobber Chops: You're not so bad yourself.

Prince of Paradise: Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?

Old Slobber Chops: Oh Prince, I don't know, I really don't know. You're not the only fish in the pond not the only cod in the net, not the only salmon on the line and I've got plenty of bate.

Prince of Paradise: If you don't say yes I'll just die.

Old Slobber Chops: You're not the only field worth ploughing. I might just hitch up my oxen and plough some other field before I decide to plant my crops.

Prince of Paradise: But I love you.

Old Slobber Chops: What exactly are you offering babe?

Prince of Paradise: I'll give you half of paradise half of my kingdom.

Old Slobber Chops: No deal, you haven't reached the deposit yet.

Prince of Paradise: Oh lovelier woman than the most lovely woman that ever lived.

Old Slobber Chops: I want more than fancy, namby pamby words.

Prince of Paradise: I'll give you all of paradise.

Old Slobber Chops: Keep talking.

Prince of Paradise: Keep talking? But I have no more.

Old Slobber Chops: The deal's off.

Prince of Paradise: (pause) I have a key. It's the key that unlocks the door to the future, the door to tomorrow, to time, to life. I can give nothing else but this.

Old Slobber Chops: I'm yours.

Prince of Paradise: Oh my angel. (they embrace)

Old Slobber Chops: My one and only my lolly boy.

Prince of Paradise: You are my very own sweet cuddly Slobber Chops.

(there is the engine noise of a bus coming to a stop)

Beelzebub: (Enters wearing a busman's cap and driving some sort of toy bus at this stage he can recite the poem or part thereof On The Road To Mandalay) All aboard who's coming aboard, next stop Stubbs Creek, Dry Creek, Corny Point, Lost Point and Don't Point, Albury Wodonga, Wagga Wagga, Kathmandu, Burra Burra and Paradise.

(sound of the bus leaving)

Prince of Paradise: (anger at Old Slobber Chops then sentimental sympathy with her) I missed my bus. It blew through while I was kissing you. (pause) Don't worry darling we have each other and darling don't ever forget that we love each other.

Old Slobber Chops: Well sugar baby, sugar daddy and bees honey hand over the dowry or the deals off.

Prince of Paradise: Oh my dearest darling, my sweetest angel.

Old Slobber Chops: Just call me Slobber Chops.

Prince of Paradise: Miss Universe my guardian angel, my goddess of perfection...

Old Slobber Chops: I know I'm perfect but it does get a bit tedious being reminded of it all the time. How perfect am I?

Prince of Paradise: You are perfection itself.

Old Slobber Chops: My legs?

Prince of Paradise: Like a ballerina's.

Old Slobber Chops: My skin?

Prince of Paradise: Like silk and lace.

Old Slobber Chops: And my eyes?

Prince of Paradise: Like diamonds.

Slasher: Never mind that, where is the key to paradise, the ticket to Mandalay, I want my cut.

Old Slobber Chops: Come on Prince we'll be back in three hops and a kick. (about to leave)

Slasher: (grabbing hold of her) Not so fast.

Prince of Paradise: Oh darling, who is this uncouth low plebeian?

Old Slobber Chops: Darling tell him to push off.

Prince of Paradise: Push off there's a good fellow.

Slasher: If you don't turn over the key I wouldn't like to be you.

Wicked Witch: Following formula Y which is deranged from formula X and is based on the assumptions clarified by experiment Z the proposition of the end results obtainable can be seen on this chart of results. (he opens up a long rolled up chart with lots of graphs)

Slasher: Explain the graphs to them Wiz.

Prince of Paradise: I can read algebra.

Wicked Witch: This shows that A minus thirty four times the square root equals the infinitive of and before very long your eyes will pop out, your ears will turn into cauliflowers, hair into rats tails, feet into kippers, teeth turn black and fall out and your breasts...

Slasher: That will do for now Wicked. Get the picture, Miss Universe?

Old Slobber Chops: Oh Prince of Paradise save me from these felonious fiends.

Prince of Paradise: (to Slasher) Run along now good fellow.

Slasher: Oh Prince perfectly peachy, perfumed, pearly pooh your sister here will turn to goo.

Prince of Paradise: Oh darling.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh Princy chops.

Prince of Paradise: Oh majestic.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh delicious.

Prince of Paradise: Oh glorious.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh sumptuous.

Prince of Paradise: Oh ultimate.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh climax.

Prince of Paradise: They're taking you away from me.

Old Slobber Chops: I'm fading... (she begins to drop to the ground)

Prince of Paradise: Oh mercy.

Old Slobber Chops: I'm dying.

Prince of Paradise: I'm despairing.

Old Slobber Chops: I'm feeling sleepy.

Prince of Paradise: What can I do?

Old Slobber Chops: Hold me.

Prince of Paradise: It's dirty down there on the floor.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh darling I love you.

Prince of Paradise: I will have to find myself a new feminine interest, a new leading lady.

Old Slobber Chops: What?

Prince of Paradise: I will advertise on the internet, distinguished, good looking bachelor with no ties requires a fun young thing, blond, blue eyes and big...

Old Slobber Chops: (getting up) Oh no you don't.

Prince of Paradise: I've already had half a dozen responses.

Old Slobber Chops: (takes the large key that hangs around the Prince's neck and gives it to Slasher) Here.

Prince of Paradise. Not the key to paradise!

Slasher: That is very kind of you I knew you would see it my way.

Prince of Paradise: Now that our income is nil zero, double naught, nothing, non-existent, what are you going to do? We have no money and you gave away everything we had in the world.

Old Slobber Chops: (to Prince of Paradise) You just don't care about me, money is more important to you.

Prince of Paradise: And you don't care about me. You give everything I have away. You gave away Paradise.

Old Slobber Chops: So it's my fault.

Prince of Paradise: No I didn't say that but yes it is your fault.

Old Slobber Chops: Typical male chauvinist pig I get the blame for everything. Why don't you admit for once that you're not perfect.

Prince of Paradise: So now I'm to blame.

Old Slobber Chops: I've got the answer.

Prince of Paradise: And what is that my little cuddly sweet thing.

Old Slobber Chops: (referring to Slasher) Kill him that's the only way, lay into him with a sharp knife and sever his jugular artery. Cut him up into small pieces and feed him to the gulls.

Prince of Paradise: But isn't that illegal?

Old Slobber Chops: Will you do it for me love bunch?

Prince of Paradise: Of course my love, my honey suckle.

Old Slobber Chops: And for good measure stab him right through the heart and make the blood spurt like a fountain.

Prince of Paradise: Yes I will yes, yes I will.

Old Slobber Chops: Stick a knife in his gizzards and sprawl them all over the floor.

Slasher: I'll have you know that I am very good with the old rapier .

Prince of Paradise: I'm going to turn you into a steak and kidney pie.

Old Slobber Chops: Don't take too long, a quick kill, in and out with a sharp knife. I'll sharpen it.

Prince of Paradise: (to Slasher) Hey you there, low down smelly creature. I find your body odour offensive.

Slasher: You referring to me?

Prince of Paradise: I don't like the cut of your jib.

Slasher: Ya what mate?

Prince of Paradise: I don't like the way your clothes are manufactured.

Slasher: Piss off.

Prince of Paradise: I challenge thee to fight like a man.

Slasher: On your bike.

Prince of Paradise: On guard.

(they fight with swords)

Slasher: Rack off Noddy.

Prince of Paradise: Touché.

Old Slobber Chops: Chop him up into slices of bacon.

Slasher: I'm hurt.

Prince of Paradise: Round one to me I think.

Slasher: I've been mortally wounded in the heart.

Old Slobber Chops: I hope you are not going to rhyme that with tart.

Slasher: I'm bleeding you fool I think I'm going to ...

Old Slobber Chops: Fart?

Slasher: Faint.

Prince of Paradise: Throw in the towel Slasher before you get my dander up.

Slasher: I care not one wit for your dander.

Prince of Paradise: Let's call a truce and sort out our differences like civilised people.

Slasher: I will fight to the death.

Prince of Paradise: I have more important things to do than to fight with you I'm in love. I'm for ever in love. I'm eternally in love. I'm enrapturingly in love.

Slasher: (desperately fighting) Slash, pash, mash, crash.

Prince of Paradise: But I have handed over eternity, paradise, the future, space, time, life to my wife. I'm out of work. I'm no longer Prince of Paradise. I've got no job. I'm unemployed. I'm on the dole. How can I get married? I've got new responsibilities. But if you gave me the key back.

Slasher: (retreating) Never.

Prince of Paradise: Stand and fight you foot loose felon.

Slasher: Paradise belongs to me.

Prince of Paradise: Soon there'll be the patter of little feet and I have no money. I'll have to sell my crown jewels. But if you would consider a little business deal.

Slasher: Your first class ticket to Mandalay is mine. I will never surrender it.

Prince of Paradise: I'll have to give up my country mansion in Paradise and move into a dog's kennel, dolls house suburban home. I'll plant native trees and the dogs will dig them up and urinate on them. The native trees and shrubs will give my wife hay fever. I'll have to wash the car on Sundays, go for walks through the supermarket on Saturdays. Boy, what an exciting life! I can just see it now a house before I'm twenty five, a wife, two model children, two wheelie bins one for non-fermentable rubbish and one for recyclables, a new set of tyres on my car every twenty two thousand miles. (pleased with his vision) Oh, what an exciting life. However, I'm prepared to come off my high horse and negotiate for what is rightly mine by birth.

(they clash swords and hold their positions in a grip of iron)

Slasher: We could sub divide Paradise.

Prince of Paradise: Sub divide never in a million years, sixty percent cut for me and forty for you?

Slasher: I was thinking more fifty-fifty

Old Slobber Chops: Subdivide what a good idea. Don't worry about our future darling I've had an idea, we subdivide paradise and put up a parking lot. I've also put a deposit and signed the contract for this darling little house, not far from the two houses either side and the one behind. Darling, the future is taken care of and don't forget you have to put the wheelie bins out tonight. Come over here darling, look you can see our darling little house. It's not really that small, really. If we paint the furniture on the walls we'll have plenty of room. See it? Just over there.

Prince of Paradise: Which one? There are millions.

Old Slobber Chops: And if you gouge out his eyes and cut off his...

Prince of Paradise: Unmentionables?

Old Slobber Chops: ...head, we would not have to share a penny of the profit with him.

Slasher: (stabbing at the Prince) You want to go back on the deal.

Prince of Paradise: (blocks the thrust) Deal we had no deal. (stabs Slasher)

Slasher: I'm gone, his knife cut through my mortal heart. I don't have much longer to live, I'm dead I'm gone, I'm finished, bye bye, caput.

Prince of Paradise: I hope you haven't dirtied my sword look darling my sword has got all blood on it.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh poor you.

Slasher: I had the key to tomorrow, the future, the present, paradise, to eternal heaven and now I'm done for I couldn't find the door.

Prince of Paradise: Now I have the key but I'm no better off. I took a walk into the rolling plains of suburbia. It spread out as far as the eye could see, further than the mind could comprehend, far beyond a lifetime of travel, out of the bounds of eternity. I tried the key in ten thousand doors.

Beelzebub: That's what happens when you give amateurs something that's too large for them to handle. (points to the large key in the Prince's hand) Listen Princeling, I can show you the door your key will unlock.

Prince of Paradise: Oh I'd give you anything...

Beelzebub: I'll take the key.

Prince of Paradise: The key but it's my key?

Beelzebub: It's of no use to you, you don't know how to use it.

Old Slobber Chops: It's a deal but you have to come up with the goods first.

Beelzebub: Just settle down to a nice average run of the mill production line mass produced comes in three colours fully guaranteed ten day trial period house, plus a set of wife, children, dog, cat, tea set, cutlery, built in wardrobes, a new world super deluxe super special streamlined refrigerator. Why it will be just a peachy little paradise.

Prince of Paradise: Take this silly old key if you want then.

Beelzebub: For this I thank you, everything comes to me in time.

Prince of Paradise: I'm so happy. I'm off to put a deposit on a house and raise a second mortgage. But where can I find a suitable wife to match the decor?

Old Slobber Chops: Have you forgotten your Old Slobber chops.

Prince of Paradise: Oh my angel my very own Slobber come to me. I'll reform you, make you into a non-entity. When you're an absolutely see through plastic personality we can get married.

Old Slobber Chops: Oh life for me is totally fulfilled.

Prince of Paradise: It's such a happy ending, me and my perfect princess, Ms Universal Suffrage, are going to be married. Come on an ocean of tiled rooves awaits us.

Old Slobber Chops: My deary, my bunny-rabbit, my snoogy.

Beelzebub: What a perfect ending. Oh here slasher a pill to make you feel better don't worry about the side effects.

Slasher: What side effects?

Beelzebub: Nothing really just uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhoea, nose bleeds, flatulence, bad breath and smelly feet.

Slasher: Sounds like a bundle of fun.

Beelzebub: And for my fee?

Slasher: I've got nothing left.

Beelzebub: Perhaps a second mortgage and a top up loan at five that is twenty five percent plus an annual fee.

Slasher: I'm rich.

Beelzebub: Until you have to repay it.

Slasher: I'm poor.

Beelzebub: Ha ha, the keys to paradise are put into the hands of dim witted, witless, widgety, wackety me and I'm going to start a development company. So remember, a key in the hand doesn't necessarily open anything. Ha ha, hee hee.

(the Mummers start banging their drums and marching in a circle before exiting)

Mummers: If Mandalay were not so far away.

Beelzebub: By express bus you can make it in a day.

Mummers: If paradise was just around the corner.

Beelzebub: I'll show you the way but if you would rather take a sauna.

Mummers: We are only mortals and it's no disgrace.

Beelzebub: Would you prefer a little arsenic and old lace?

Mummers: It's warm in our little house in suburbia.

Beelzebub: Quite snug for a little mouse in absurdia.

Mummers: No more talk we are surreal and pleased.

Beelzebub: To breed couch potatoes and heart disease.

***

Back to Contents

### Simons Castle

A Naïve comedy

Simons Castle was first performed on the 14th September 1978 as part of a poetry reading in the Union Gallery the University of Adelaide I directed this one too!

Cast:

April: Susan Tonkin.

Simon: Mark Sobels.

Doddy: Nona Monahin.

Noddy: Denis Coleman.

Sylvania: (I forget!)

Setting: The living room of a suburban house.

***

Scene One: (Simon and April enter their living room they have just arrived home from work. April falls into a chair and pulls off her shoes)

April: My feet are killing me do you think feet can be convicted for attempted murder?

Simon: Only if they're someone else's, if they're your own it's suicide.

April: Put the kettle on dearest. I'd love a nice cup of tea.

Simon: Now don't get into another one of your rages but I'm afraid you'll have to drink your tea without milk.

April: Don't play games with me. The milkman left two pints this morning.

Simon: Well you see April, Nodd and Dodd next door forgot to put out their milk bottles last night, so the milkman didn't leave them any milk.

April: And you gave them ours. I work all day in a dirty, filthy, sweat shop of a factory and come home to an empty bottle of milk.

Simon. I'd run up the street and buy some more only I haven't got any money.

April: Why couldn't Noddy run up to the shop?

Simon: Don't worry, Noddy will return the milk.

April: No one ever returns anything to us.

Simon. Now April, you're just being materialistic.

April: Here you go again. To think I work hard all day just to come home and be lectured in my prime leisure period.

Simon: April, things of this world are transitory. If we worry about what we own and what others own we will waste our lives.

April: All I wanted was a cup of tea, not to be told what a capitalist I am.

Simon: One day April, you will realize that there is a world of the inner spirit deep inside you.

April: I can't take any more of this. I'm going for a walk.

Simon: What about your aching feet?

April. When have you ever cared for my feet? It's your turn to cook tea tonight. I want the steak you bought at the butchers today.

(exits)

Simon: Oh yes the steak.

(the doorbell rings)

Simon. Come in, come in the door's not locked.

Noddy: Hello Simon.

Simon: Good day Noddy.

Noddy: I borrowed two bottles of milk this morning?

Simon: Yes.

Noddy: I brought you the two empty bottles back.

Simon: Thank you very much Noddy that's very considerate of you.

Noddy: You're such a big-hearted fellow Simon that I thought it was the least I could do.

Simon: Oh not at all you shouldn't have.

Noddy: I wanted to Simon.

Simon: You really needn't

Noddy: I did it for you.

Simon: I appreciate that, you have got big heart Noddy.

Noddy: I'm just charitable by nature.

Simon: You're a hero of our time.

Noddy: I like to make people happy.

Simon: A saint.

Noddy: You're not such a bad guy yourself.

Simon: Oh no I'm wicked.

(the doorbell rings)

Noddy: Don't answer that.

Simon: What's the matter?

Noddy: I'll hide in the bathroom and whoever it is, whoever, even if it's my wife, don't tell her I'm here and don't let her into the bathroom.

Simon: Oh Noddy you're playing games with me.

Noddy: Simon I ask you as a friend to do as I say.

Simon: Alright then, it's silly but I will. Of course you know it's better to come out with your problems and discuss them rather than cover them up. Do yourself a favour Noddy I know what I'm talking about. Covering things up is no good.

Noddy: Now now Simon, remember not a syllable.

(Noddy retreats to the bathroom and locks the door behind him, the doorbell rings)

Simon: Come in, come in the door's not locked.

Doddy: Hello Simon.

Simon: Hello Doddy.

Doddy: Simon er, can I wash my hands in the bathroom?

Simon: Did you come over here to wash your hands?

Doddy: Yes, you see your water's so much softer than ours.

Simon: But you have a water softener.

Doddy: Yes well, the truth of the matter is that er well yes, I did all my washing today and lo and behold come midday in a clear blue sky there appeared one small cloud. And where do you think that cloud chose to sprinkle its load? Yes, you guessed it, over my back yard. It was one chance in a million, but down it flooded and subsequently all my washing got soaking wet, especially my towels. Well to cut a long story short, you know what a clean person Noddy is, as soon as he gets home he rushes into the bathroom and jumps into the shower and can you imagine there are no dry towels Noddy is standing in the bathroom dripping wet hollering for a dry towel. What can I do I ask myself? Then I remembered big hearted Simon. So if you don't mind I'll just pop into your bathroom and take a towel on loan.

Simon: Are you sure Noddy is dripping wet in your bathroom?

Doddy: I'm sure he's in a bathroom. (the toilet flushes) Someone is in your bathroom.

Simon: No not at all, by all means no the toilet has a self regulating mechanism so that the user doesn't have to flush it himself. Very handy when you're busy and running late for work and just don't have the time to flush the toilet.

Doddy: Can I see it?

Simon: Are you looking for somebody?

Doddy: Whatever gave you that idea?

Simon: Nothing really.

Doddy: You haven't seen Noddy this evening have you Simon?

Simon: You just told me that he is hollering for a towel in your bathroom dripping wet.

Doddy: As I recall you have got a wonderfully decorated bathroom, I especially like the golden bronze floor.

Simon: No nobody's in there.

Doddy: I just want to have a little peek to remind me of what it looks like.

Simon: Whatever for? It's just a normal everyday pokey little bathroom.

Doddy: Get out of my way.

Simon: To tell you the truth Doddy I haven't cleaned the bathroom for a month.

Doddy: I don't mind it will look lived in.

Simon: Come and see the garden.

Doddy: Step aside.

Simon: Never!

(they push and shove and grunt and Doddy finally pushes Simon aside)

Doddy: It's locked, well I'll have to give it a gentle push. (she batters down the door) There's no one here but the window's open.

April: Simon I'm home. Hello Doddy. When's dinner going to be ready Simon?

Simon: Oh God dinner. I'm still cutting up the vegetables darling.

April: You think your April is a fool. We haven't got any vegetables.. You gave them all to Sylvania last night because she forgot to get some when she went to the supermarket.

Doddy: That Sylvania will eat you out of house and home I don't trust her. I saw her talking with my Nodd the other day she's up to no good I tell you.

Simon: April darling I'm afraid that not only haven't we got any vegetables but we haven't any steak either.

April: No steak what do you think I am a vegetarian?

Simon: Vegetables are good for you.

April: But we haven't got any vegetables.

Simon: No dear.

April: Why didn't you buy steak?

Simon: At lunch time I knocked off from work and went down the street to the butchers, on the way I naturally passed the pub, which is natural because it's on the way. Well lying in the gutter was a drunk. He looked as if he hadn't had a good meal for days so I gave him all the money I had. When I got to the butcher I couldn't buy any steak because I didn't have any money.

April: You're incurable. It's like a disease charitabalius terminius fatalius.

Simon: Now April there is more to life....

April: No lectures please.

Simon: You will let me lend a dry towel to Doddy?

April: No!

Simon: She doesn't mean that Doddy.

April: I do.

Simon: She doesn't.

April: Yes I do.

Simon: There you are she said yes.

April: No I didn't.

Simon: Yes you did.

April: That yes was a no.

Simon: Well I think you're being mean and selfish.

April. For once I'm putting my foot down. I'm fed up with you giving everything away and then upbraiding and lecturing me. I don't think you'd like it much if every time I opened my mouth out popped a sermon. I might give you an ear full one of these days see how you like it.

Doddy: Look Simon I don't want to cause trouble. I'll just forget about the towel.

Simon: No Doddy this is a matter of principle, here have this towel.

April: No give that back. (she grabs it)

Simon: Give that towel to me April.

April: This was a wedding present.

Simon: Don't force me to take it from you. Noddy is standing in his bathroom dripping wet hollering for a towel.

April: I'm defending my house against the encroachment of society.

Simon: April you're shattering my faith in you.

Doddy: Simon I'll let myself out.

Simon: No stay Doddy. April hand me that towel.

April: Never.

Simon: Lending this mere piece of towelling cloth to our poor suppliant Doddy will help bring peace and happiness to mankind. One day everybody will live in one large happy community and your lending of this towel to Doddy will be the symbolic beginning of a new age of happiness for humanity.

Apri1: I'm not going to weaken.

Simon: Noddy will catch his death. (he grabs one end of the towel)

April: Let go, let go I tell you.

Simon: I will never let go of my beliefs.

April: I'm fighting for my rights as a towel owner in this community.

Simon: April, I'm disappointed in you. Don't you believe in the magnificent future of mankind, in the golden days of paradise to come?

April: This towel has nothing what so ever to do with the golden days of paradise to come.

Simon: Heretic!

April: Simon face the truth. When all's said and done a towel is a towel.

Simon: Pagan, infidel Doddy help me pull this towel out of April's hands.

April: I shall never let go.

Simon: One, two, three, pull. (the towel tears in two) Well there's half the towel. I apologise for April's disgraceful behaviour.

April: You're so kind to me dear.

Simon: You disgust and shock me.

April: Darling, you say such loving things.

Simon: You're detestable.

April: Your words are so sweet.

Simon: Animal.

April: Such eloquent loving phrases.

Simon. Leave my house.

April: So it's your house now.

Simon: Well no...

April: Simon has now admitted he owns a house and he orders his poor wife, that's me, to leave. Doddy, Simon has contracted the fatal disease materialius diabolicius fatalicius.

Simon: I shall leave this house.

April: Was it something I said?

Simon: I refuse to live in a disease ridden cesspool.

April: I'd ask you to stay a few days longer but I don't think we've got anything left to give away.

Simon: I'm going to the bathroom to get my toothbrush. Then you'll never see me again. (exits to bathroom)

April: Oh Simon you care more for your toothbrush than for me.

Doddy: I'm terribly sorry April I didn't mean to cause you any marital strife, I've got enough of my own.

April: Don't worry about it this is a game we play it's called marriage. Simon don't go, I'm converted. I'm going to give everything away. Here Doddy, here's the other half of the towel. Would you like a coffee table. Here have a coffee table. Simon I'm giving everything away.

Doddy: I don't want your coffee table.

April: I insist, take it and here's a broken left footed thong, you never know you might have your right foot amputated one day and it might come in handy. Now here is a special gift, a saucer containing one used tea bag.

Doddy: But April what do I want with all this?

April: Take it all I have given up worldly things for the life of the spirit.

Doddy: If you had the other thong to make this a pair they might fit Noddy.

April: Here is something for Noddy, Simon's old toothbrush or maybe you would like to keep it for yourself.

Doddy: I think I'd better be going.

April: Don't go I've still got plenty to give away.

Doddy: No, nothing else thanks, this house is full of crazy people.

(Doddy rushes out, Simon enters and begins searching under the sofa, he pulls out a woman's hat decorated with feathers and plastic fruit, a right thong and a rubber chicken)

April: Haven't you gone yet Simon?

Simon: I can't find my toothbrush.

April: When you go you can leave that chicken I'll have it for tea and I'll have the hat for dessert.

Simon: Have you seen my toothbrush?

April: I gave it to Doddy.

Simon: You what?

April: Noddy didn't put out the milk bottles last night, so the milkman didn't leave him a toothbrush to have with his breakfast and there wasn't a cloud in the sky but it rained all over Noddy's teeth so I lent him your toothbrush.

Simon: A person's toothbrush is a person's toothbrush. When all's said and done, a toothbrush only has one owner and I was the particular owner of that particular toothbrush. I believe in charity but now you have gone too far.

April: Now Simon, giving away that toothbrush will herald a golden age of paradise to come.

Simon: Can't we have a bit of moderation around here, A person's toothbrush torn from his gums by thieving fingers, the bristles still warm, half my teeth still cacky. I can't live with cacky teeth.

April: Oh you degraded spirit that lusts for the earthly pleasures of a toothbrush and the lecherous delights of uncacky teeth. Your teeth have condemned your soul to eternal torment. Cack has slithered its way into your soul.

Simon: Oh I have sinned. What can I do to show my faith in the true destiny of mankind?

April: Go to the dentist and have all your teeth pulled.

Simon: Yes I will, I won't spare myself.

April: Simon haven't you learnt anything?

Simon: You heathen. You are trying to destroy everything I hold dear to me.

April: Not again. I thought I'd taught you some sort of lessen. (doorbell rings)

Simon: There's someone at the door.

April: I can hear that.

Simon: Well aren't you going to open it?

April: Aren't you?

Simon: Of course, (he opens the door) come in, come in, hello Sylvania and er...

Noddy: Yes well Simon this is hard to explain.

Simon: I understand everything already.

Sylvania: Hello Simon, April.

April: Hello Sylvania, what would you like to borrow?

Sylvania: Nothing, yesterday I borrowed some vegetables and I came to return...

April: Hallelujah, you came to return something.

Sylvania: ...the sack.

April: Thank you so much this sack is an heirloom.

Simon: Remember anytime you need anything just ask.

Sylvania: Well there was one thing.

April: I knew there would be.

Noddy: You see Simon, I've left Dodd and moved in with Sylvania.

April: And what has that got to do with us?

Noddy: Well my wife saw the writing on the wall and called a furniture removal truck and carted away all Sylvania's furniture we haven't even got a bed.

Sylvania: I'd sleep on the floor it's healthy.

Noddy: But I've got a bad back.

April: You could have our bed.

Noddy: An air mattress would do.

April: No, we don't need a bed. A good hard floor that's what we like, beds are soft and corrupt. You have converted me Simon, I can't wait to snuggle up into the hard floor.

Simon: But I like sleeping in our bed.

April. You devil in sheep's clothing, lusting for the delights of an inner sprung mattress.

Simon: Take the lot, the wardrobe, the dressing table, the carpet, the bedroom stool, the lamp shade, the light bulb, the window frames, we give it freely.

Noddy: Thank you so much Simon.

Sylvania: And you too April.

Noddy: (to Sylvania) Do you think it's true?

Sylvania: It's too early to tell.

April. Here Sylvania here's my wedding ring.

Noddy: Come on Sylvania we had better start moving the furniture.

(during the following conversation Sylvania and Noddy carry bedroom furniture across the back of the stage)

Simon: April you have changed so thoroughly that you even help me stick to the straight and narrow. But why did you give away your wedding ring?

April: If Noddy gets a divorce and wants to marry Sylvania they might need a wedding ring.

Simon: But that's our wedding ring. A sacred symbol of love.

April: Oh peanuts I enjoyed giving it away.

Simon. Well, I just hope that now you have disposed of your wedding ring you don't intend leading a free and easy life. That you don't give yourself to lecherous frolics with members of the opposite sex who don't happen to be your husband.

April: Simon you think you possess me. You're a materialist. You want to own my body. Why don't you share me around a bit? No, why don't I share me around a bit if I feel like it?

Simon: You're just trying to make me angry but it won't work. I don't believe for one minute, not for one second, that you want to give yourself to lecherous men.

April: Or women as the case may be.

Simon: I forbid it.

April: I'm not asking permission, I am my own master no one else's.

Simon: April, you have opened my eyes. I'm blinded by all the things I own into thinking I own you. Everything must go. Noddy, Sylvania, come in here.

Noddy: What is it Simon?

Simon: Have you finished removing our bedroom suite?

Noddy: Everything's gone.

Simon: I want you and Sylvania to have every stick of furniture I possess, every conceivable thing, even my rubbish.

Noddy: (To Sylvania) What do you say now Sylvania?

Sylvania: I'm still not completely convinced.

Simon: Convinced about what?

Sylvania: Oh nothing, nothing, perhaps I'll tell you later.

Simon. Well let's get to work. Noddy give me a hand with this table. April and Sylvania would you bring the chairs please.

(they carry all the furniture off stage)

April: Everything's gone.

Simon: You know April I have a sneaking suspicion that I went wrong somewhere, but I resist it. It's the devil trying to corrupt me.

April: We still have two empty milk bottles and an old vegetable sack. We should be happy with our lot in life.

Simon: They are nothing but worldly possessions, we must resist temptation. Get down on your knees and pray.

April: You pray for me this time.

Simon: Oh golden future, protect me from the lustful temptations of two empty milk bottles and an old vegetable sack.

(doorbell rings)

April: Don't look at me!

Simon: I wasn't, I thought you were looking at me.

April: I wasn't.

Simon: Aren't you going to answer the door?

April: I thought you would.

Simon: I didn't because I thought you might.

April: I'm not going to.

Simon: Me neither. I don't know if I'm in the grip of evil forces or coming to my senses for the first time. I feel a sort of fear, when someone comes through that door you're not sure what will happen.

(doorbell rings)

Simon: Just ignore it.

April: If that's what you want.

Simon: Let's go to bed it's very late.

April: We no longer have a bed. I'm afraid there's nothing for it but to sit up all night and dream about a good night's sleep.

Simon: What are we going to do.

April: It's chilly.

Simon: We could lie down on the floor and put the sack over us.

April: That dirty sack?

Simon: It's cold.

April: I'm afraid your arguments are too strong for me.

Simon: You pop into bed first and I'll nestle up to you.

April: I'm in.

Simon: Move over a bit so I can fit in.

April: Aren't you going to take your shoes off? It's bad manners not to take your shoes off in bed, besides you'll get the sheets dirty.

Simon: You have got yours on.

April: If I take my shoes off my feet will get cold.

Simon: I must admit I'm being selfish in keeping my shoes on I'll take them off.

April: Did you put the cat out.

Simon: The cat died ten years ago.

April: All the more reason to put it out.

Simon. At last I can get into bed and have a good night's sleep.

April: Can I have a bit more sack please.

Simon: I haven't got enough.

April: You've got more than me.

Simon: But I'm on the draughty side.

April: You're being seduced by earthly comforts.

Simon: Have the bed to yourself I'm getting up. I don't care if I have no blanket. I'm beyond worldly concerns. I'm keeping quite warm, thank you very much. Walking about up here is invigorating. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't freeze to death in your bed. You may think you can hear the chatter of my teeth but you're wrong. I'm not shivering, I'm not cold. April, April are you asleep? April, where did I go wrong?

(April snores softly)

***

Scene Two. (Sylvania and Noddy are sitting on the front step of Sylvania's house)

Sylvania: It's your fault for not putting a chair in the door or something to stop it from closing.

Noddy: If you had put a key in the door there would be no problem.

Sylvania: Shall we go back to Simon's and ring again?

Noddy: No, last time they were already fast asleep and didn't answer.

Sylvania: Then we have to sit out here on this cold concrete porch all night.

Noddy: I'm afraid so.

Sylvania: Are you sure all the windows are locked?

Noddy: You locked them.

Sylvania: That was to stop burglars from getting in.

Noddy: Well it certainly works.

***

Scene Three: (a cock crows and a dog barks April asleep on the floor begins to wake, Simon asleep standing up also begins to wake)

April: What's the time?

Simon: Way past dawn. I'll put the milk bottles out.

April: We haven't got any money.

Simon: With all the favours I've been doing people I'll just pray for this little favour and whoever it is that dishes out favours shouldn't turn their back on me now. (Simon puts the milk bottles out) April, the sun's shining through the tree tops it's going to be a beautiful day. Noddy and Sylvania are really moon struck lovers. They have been sitting up all night on Sylvania's porch.

April: I'm hungry. I could eat a horse.

Simon: We haven't got a horse in the house.

April: Let's imagine. We don't need earthly temptations we can let the spirit feed us. I'll begin with two imaginary poached eggs.

Simon: You don't think that a large glass of imaginary orange juice and an imaginary grapefruit is being greedy?

April: Not at all, eat as much as you can swallow, wolf it down. You're not going to get any real food so you might as well make a pig of yourself on this imaginary fare. Here get your teeth into this.

Simon: What is it?

Apri1: A piece of toast with oodles and oodles of marmalade.

Simon: Did you have to imagine marmalade you know I don't like marmalade.

April: I think I'll go and see to my ablutions. Be a dear and while I'm gone clean up all these dirty dishes. The place is an imaginary pig sty. (she goes into the bathroom)

Simon: Life is blissful for us now. We are like one in happiness. A sonorous note plucked from the strings of Orpheus's harp. (suddenly distressed) I hope I've done the right thing I'm no longer absolutely sure. Perhaps I should have used slightly more moderation.

April: (in the bathroom) Arghh

Simon. What's the matter April?

April: (enters) Someone has borrowed the latrine.

Simon: Yes I meant to tell you about that. But took at it this way, It's all for the betterment of mankind.

April: You and your stupid mankind and its stupid glorious future. I'm going to pack my bags and leave. You don't care how low you pull me down into the mud. We haven't even got a latrine and all you can do is lecture about the glorious future of mankind. The future's not much good to us peasants in the here and now who can't even go to the bog. I'm going up to the pub to use their facilities for human convenience. (exits)

Simon: A water closet is just a worldly temptation. (the doorbell rings Simon quietly) Go away. (the doorbell rings Simon opens the door) I've gone out, I'm not home.

Noddy: (outside) When do you expect yourself back then.

Simon: I don't know I didn't say.

Noddy: Maybe I'll come back when you're in then.

Simon: Oh come in, come in. The doors not locked. My house is yours etcetera etcetera as I always used to say.

Noddy: You're looking a bit down at mouth Simon.

Simon. I feel a bit tired of everything, one minute I feel exultant as if I'd won, the next I feel smashed and broken as if I'd lost.

Noddy: Keep your chin up Simon.

Simon: And what do you want this time?

Noddy: A big favour Simon a really big favour. But if you'd rather not I won't bother you further.

Simon: No, no tell me everything.

Noddy: Well it began last night. I moved in with Sylvania but we accidentally locked ourselves out. We came here for help and rang the doorbell but you must have been fast asleep.

Simon: We must have.

Noddy: So Sylvania and I sat out on her front porch all night and talked and we decided to go overseas.

Simon: Why don't you settle for a weekend at Victor Harbor.

Noddy: I've dreamt about going O.S. all my life.

Simon: I prefer Australia, there are so many foreigners overseas.

Noddy: We haven't got anything to match the Eiffel Tower.

Simon: Except the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Noddy: And there's nothing like the Riviera here.

Simon: Besides the Gold Coast.

Noddy: French wines are so good.

Simon: Of course they do make good wine in the Barossa Valley.

Noddy: Ah but we just don't get snow in Australia.

Simon: I suppose you have never heard of Mount Kosciusko?

Noddy: You get a real sense of history over there.

Simon: All those old ruins.

Noddy: The restaurants and the food.

Simon: Our beer's better than theirs.

Noddy: The culture over there.

Simon: We've got the only Sydney Opera House in the world. And there is the Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, Australian Rules Football....

Noddy: You have got to help me. I've never met anyone like Sylvania before. I know it sounds a bit corny but she has opened up my life. She has injected into my arm a shot of adrenalin and now I feel that I could move molehills into mountains. But I'm afraid if I don't get away now I'll get bogged down and I'll never get a chance like this again.

Simon: Is it really important?

Noddy: Simon, what would you be prepared to sacrifice to be in paradise?

Simon: How much do you need?

Noddy: Oh Simon, thank you. I'm drunk I don't know what I'm doing. A forty year old man running away with a twenty year old, isn't it silly? But I'm a new man, nothing matters anymore my wife, my job, they're all nothing.

Simon: I'll give you a cheque for ten thousand dollars. I'll have to sell the house to cover it.

Noddy: That will do, I'll pay you back. Make the cheque out to Sylvania. I'll let myself out, I'm floating. (exits)

Simon: Life seems to weary me. I'm penniless homeless and in debt. I did quite like this house. I won't sell it, I'll let that cheque bounce so high no one will catch it. Why am I always trying to help everybody? There are too many people for just one man. The whole of mankind should join together and help each other. What am I going to say to April? The funs gone out of life, my spirit's dead.

April: (enters) I'm back. The pub's comfort station was indisposed. I had to walk all the way to the petrol station and there was a queue there.

Simon: April, I have some bad news.

April: Of course I didn't mind waiting, after all they were all people like me and they all deserve to use the thunder box. If you have given me one thing Simon it's a love and respect for my fellow man, no matter how disgusting he is.

Simon: Listen April.

April: In fact they not only deserve a turn on the thunder box but they have a God given, inalienable right to a turn on the thunder box.

Simon: You're not listening to me.

April: Did you say something Simon?

Simon. We have to sell this house right away. I gave Noddy a cheque for ten thousand dollars so he could go to Europe with Sylvania. You see he felt like he had been reborn and wants to live once before he gets old. We won't have anywhere to sleep tonight.

April: Where are we going to live? You are lecherous for poverty.

Simon: A house isn't everything, it's only earthly temptation.

April: You're right. It will be invigorating to sleep in the gutter.

Simon: Don't take it so hard. Look at me, I'm as full of life as ever. Oh. I'm worn out what are we going to do? I've been stupid, there is no life of the spirit, no golden age of paradise to come. We ought to possess everything we can get our hands into, onto and around. The more you own the happier you are.

April: Now you know you don't believe that Simon. I'll go next door to Dodd and Nod. They might be able to put us up tonight.

(April exits and the doorbell rings)

Simon: Go away. (doorbell rings) There's nothing more to give away. (the doorbell rings, Simon opens the door) No one lives here anymore the owners have emigrated to Australia.

Sylvania: This is Australia.

Simon: What do you want? I don't want to see anybody go away.

Sylvania: Simon I've got some great news for you, you'll never believe it.

Simon: Good because I don't want to believe anything anymore.

Sylvania: I guess I'll let myself out then.

Simon: What is it?

Sylvania: I'm your long lost daughter.

Simon: If you're trying to get charity from me it won't work anymore one more word about being my daughter and I'll throw you out.

Sylvania: Your first wife's name was Judith and my mother's name was Judith.

Simon: That cuts no ice with me. You're not going to wheedle money out of me that easily.

April: (enters) It's alright Simon. Doddy's making us a cup of tea. She says we can stay in their spare room for as long as we like and look, the milkman left us two pints of milk.

Simon: We can start again and this time I'll not be so eccentric.

April: There's just one thing Simon.

Simon: What's that April?

April: In a couple of weeks when what has happened today is forgotten you mustn't start lecturing me again.

Simon: I have faced the truth. I was too extreme. We should live to be happy today. We need possessions to be happy but we won't chain our lives to them. I have had a true revelation, my eyes have been opened.

April: Simon you are beginning to sound like a sermon again.

Simon: Oh sorry I'm afraid it's difficult for someone who constantly believes he has discovered the truth to keep quiet about it.

April: I don't suppose I really mind.

Simon: Oh I almost forgot. April, Sylvania here says she's my daughter to my first wife. I know she's trying to wheedle something out of me but you can't blame her for trying. Sylvania you can be my daughter if you want,

Sylvania: I am your daughter and I'm not trying to wheedle anything out of you.

April: Sure you are.

Sylvania: The only thing my mother ever told me about my father was that he gave everything away and gave her polemics into the bargain.

April: Simon fits that bill.

Simon: My God I think you are you but wait a minute my daughter's name was Mary you're not you after all.

Sylvania: My middle name's Mary.

Simon: Wrong again my daughter's middle name was Sylvania.

Sylvania: My first name's Sylvania.

Simon: There you are, you can't be my daughter your names are back to front.

Sylvania: On my birth certificate I'm not Sylvania Mary but Mary Sylvania.

April: Check mate.

Simon: You are you, April she is her, welcome home. (he embraces her)

Sylvania: And you're my new mother.

April. I lose a house and gain a daughter. (they embrace)

Simon: And what's this carrying on with a married man?

Sylvania: Don't worry dad we had a quarrel and broke it off. He's gone back to his wife, we were incompatible. You see I wanted to see Asia on three dollars fifty a day for the both of us but he wanted to see Europe on a hundred dollars a day. Ideologically we couldn't come to a consensus we had no shared philosophical fundamentals on which we could build a mutually rewarding dialectic of life.

April: She sounds like an up dated version of you Simon.

Sylvania: Besides he had bad breath.

(the doorbell rings)

Simon: (happy) Come in, come in the door's not looked my house is your house.

(Nodd and Dodd enter.)

Simon. It's Noddy and Doddy come in, come in meet my new daughter Mary.

Doddy: How do you do.

Sylvania: Very well thank you, how do you do.

Doddy: Very well thank you.

Noddy: How do you do.

Doddy: I how do you doed for both of us.

Noddy: Sorry, I brought you something Simon. (he hands Simon the cheque) I don't need all this money to enjoy myself I'm going to Victor Harbor with my wife. (he puts his arm around his wife)

Doddy: Come on everybody the tea's brewing. (everybody troops out leaving Simon and April)

Simon: I feel like a million dollars.

April: We had a happy ending after all.

Simon: It would have been happy all the way through if you hadn't been so worried about keeping up with the Jones's.

April: Me keeping up with the Jones's I like that. What about you giving everything away just to impress the audience with your saintliness.

Simon: I was not trying to impress the audience, but you performed like a two bob watch and it was merely pure vanity not worthy of your inner self.

April: Vanity, you can talk about vanity.

Doddy: (enters) Come on you two the play's over and your cup of tea's getting cold.

April: Come on Simon we're being idiotic.

Simon: Two self centred fools.

April: Speak for yourself.

Simon: What's that remark supposed to mean?

April: Nothing, nothing, I said it tongue in cheek.

Simon: A slip of the tongue indeed, I wasn't born yesterday.

(by now they have disappeared off stage)

***

Back to Contents

### Planet of the Cows

### A Fantasy for Stage

Planet of the Cows was first performed at the Sheridan Theatre in March 1980 for the Fringe of the Adelaide Festival of Arts directed by Bryan Wellington.

### Tim Lloyd in the Advertiser:

'Big Red and Daisy Bell are just two normal farm animals, a bull and a cow, before they decide to head for the big smoke and see how the other half lives. At first things aren't too bad and city humans swallow their prejudices, even eating at the same restaurants as cattle, and going out with them. But the warmth between humans and cattle does not last. Anthony Thorogood has the tremendous advantage of being able to write fresh and fluent dialogue which makes the play come alive. It is indulgent and funny, with everything from terrible puns about cows to sublime comments on Australians' behaviour.'

Original Cast

The play is designed for doubling the minimum cast is 10 actors.

Big Red: Richard Harman

Daisy Bell: Lesley Caust

Albert: J. Stuart Randels

Deloris: Roz Lawson

Melissa: Delia Gatondis

Freddy/Judge: Frank Hind

Clara: Clare Benito

Stud: Michael Griffin

Prime Minister: Ross Lamb

Bishop/ Guard: David Douglas

Judy Freethought: Gillian Hunter

Reporter/Barbara: Lynette Corbell

Waiter: Mathew Bateman

Big Red and Daisy have short horns and a short to medium length tail, Red wears clothes of a rich brown colour and Daisy tends to wear black and white, besides that they look just like anyone else.

***

### Planet of the Cows: Act One

Scene One: (Green Meadows)

Big Red: Daisy! Daisy!

Daisy Bell: (enters) Moo.

Big Red: Daisy I can speak English.

Daisy Bell: Moo.

Big Red: Daisy try and speak, try to say something.

Daisy Bell: Moo .... Moo!

Big Red: Oh this is terrible, I can speak English and you can't but we won't let this come between us. I can teach you English! Repeat after me: 'how now brown cow'.

Daisy Bell: Moo.

Big Red: I don't mind if you can't speak English, I'll stick by you Daisy Bell.

Daisy Bell: Well I should certainly hope so. I would be very angry with you if you put on airs and graces and left me just because you can speak English and I can't.

Big Red: (joyfully) Moo!

Daisy Bell: Pardon? I can't understand you.

Big Red: Daisy you can speak English.

Daisy Bell: Don't be silly, I can't speak English, I'm a cow, cows don't speak English. Oh, I can speak English!

Big Red: I'll soon have every cow speaking English, Chinese and Double Dutch for that matter.

Daisy Bell: Maybe we can go to a vet before it's too late.

Big Red: What an absolufutoraptuouslyscoratobiotic day.

Daisy Bell: That's not English.

Big Red: No I made it up myself, it's all so exilerabulous.

Daisy Bell: What are you talking about Red?

Big Red: Now that I can speak English I will unite the cattle of the world behind me. I'll organise the dairy industry like never before and double and triple the price of milk. We will be rich overnight! Cattle won't be a repressed minority group any longer. I will demand social justice. Cattle of the world unite!

Daisy Bell: We don't need to be rich, we don't need money here on the farm.

Big Red: In the big smoke there's adventure, nightlife. You haven't lived until you have been to the big smoke.

Daisy Bell: It's not like that.

Big Red: The roads are paved with gold. Trains travel miles under¬ ground and they have aircraft that zoom across the sky. People become millionaires overnight.

Daisy Bell: They won't like cattle much, we're different to them.

Big Red: Everyone's accepted no matter what race, colour or creed.

Daisy Bell: Everyone drifts apart in the big smoke.

Big Red: You and I will be the toast and the talk of the town.

Daisy Bell: We won't know one another anymore.

Big Red: We will waltz along the main street with a brass band playing in our honour. The Prime Minister will head the official welcoming committee. We will be the centre of society.

Daisy Bell: Everyone's a stranger in the big smoke. We will lose one another.

Big Red: Daisy Bell, I'll never lose you.

Daisy Bell: It's dirty in the city.

Big Red: We can't stay here Daisy.

Daisy Bell: Why not?

Big Red: Because we have been evicted.

Daisy Bell: Evicted? You can't evict cattle.

Big Red: The Government and big industrialists are moving in. All the cattle in this area are being recruited to work in the new industries mining, mineral exploration, tourism. If we don't go to the big smoke, the big smoke will come here.

Daisy Bell: When are we going?

Big Red: Early next week.

Daisy Bell: I can be ready tomorrow.

Big Red: I'm going to call a worldwide cattle conference in Geneva. We have been pushed around for too long.

Daisy Bell: Let's get to work, I can help you. (both exit)

***

Scene Two: (an international airport, aeroplanes are heard taking off and landing)

Intercom: The 12.45 Austraflipflop flight from Sydney to Melbourne is now taking off on runway one. All passengers wishing to catch this flight please proceed to departure bay two and run! (a traveller loaded down with luggage dashes across the stage. Enter the Prime Minister with a speech in his hand. He looks around, there is no one present so he folds it into a paper plane and is about to launch it into flight when the Bishop enters. The Prime Minister quickly screws up the plane and puts it in his pocket)

Bishop: Hello Prime Minister McMuckraker.

Prime Minister: Hello Bishop Brimsbottom.

Bishop: I've been meaning to mention to you that during the last election I gave my congregation a sermon on the need for stable government.

Prime Minister: And I've been meaning to mention to you that my Government is about to announce a subsidy on a one for one basis for the erection of your new cathedral.

Bishop: You're here to meet the cattle?

Prime Minister: Yes, I'm here to meet the cattle.

Bishop: Cattle are the flavour of the month, the church had to have a high level representative here.

Prime Minister: The press are going to be here so I had to come along and get my picture taken shaking hands, kissing babies, announcing new nation building projects, tax cuts of course and meeting cattle. It's all part and parcel of a PM's day.

Bishop: The Church has to be with it these days, look at me I perform rock masses, eat muesli and jog. And jogging in a cassock is not easy and muesli gives me the trots.

Prime Minister: The honourable leader of the opposition accused me in the house of blatantly ignoring cattle. I'm here to prove the skinny little wart wrong.

(the press enter)

Judy: Mr Prime Minister have you anything to say on the eve of this great occasion when Australia's first two multi billionaire cattle tycoons are about to touch down at Sydney International Airport?

Reporter: Can I ask you a few questions Bishop Brimsbottom?

Bishop: The word of God is ever ready to go to print.

Judy: It's rumoured that Big Red is the richest bull in the world. Is the government taking any action to encourage him to invest in this country?

Prime Minister: We are looking at a tax avoidance, evasion, incentive, kick back, hand out, subsidised investment scheme.

Reporter: Isn't it about time the government stopped handing money to the rich?

Prime Minister: No comment.

Judy: How much money . . .

Prime Minister: No more questions.

Intercom: The 1.05 Austraflipflop flight from New York is about to crash on runway 13. All travellers wishing a good view of this spectacular event please proceed to loading bay nine.

(an aeroplane can be heard landing and there is the wail of sirens. Daisy Bell and Big Red enter)

Daisy Bell: I knew you shouldn't have taken over the controls. Honestly, you fly a plane like you were tossing cowboys.

Big Red: It wasn't bad for my first crash landing.

Bishop: Prime Minister.

Prime Minister: Yes.

Bishop: I just had a thought, how do we know what cattle look like?

Prime Minister: That's easy, they have horns, (he imitates two horns with his index fingers on his forehead) and they say 'moo'.

Daisy Bell: (to Red ) Are you sure we didn't land in Taronga Park Zoo?

Prime Minister: Perhaps you can get on to God and ask him to give us a sign.

Bishop: (on his knees) Oh wrathful Almighty, Bishop Brimsbottom here, just one question, what does a cow look like, amen?

Big Red: Excuse me could you tell me what a Prime Minister looks like?

Prime Minister: Generally shifty with closely set eyes and an ingratiating used car salesman type of smile, clammy hands, don't shake their hands and they say things like: 'welcome welcome, so lovely to meet you, I have been looking forward to our meeting for such a long time,' and then they turn to their aids and say 'Who the hell am I speaking to?'

Big Red: That sounds like you.

Prime Minister: Don't bother me, I'm a VIP waiting to welcome VIP's.

Big Red: This is Australia, I can tell by the friendliness of the natives.

Bishop: That's Big Red himself all one hundred billion dollars of him.

Prime Minister: Snakes alive, caught with me pants down.

(he takes out his screwed up paper plane, unscrews it and reads)

Prime Minister: Welcome to Australia Big Red.

Big Red: Beaut to be back.

Prime Minister: I feel privileged to be invited at this august gathering of noble souls to welcome the first cattle to arrive in this great city. I feel honoured to be privileged to be here on this day of days, this day of historic significance, this day of the most profound import, to welcome Big Red who, I may add at this point, is not a foreign celebrity but was born right here in Australia. It is, I may emphasise here, hard to believe Australia could produce a person of his quality.

Bishop: Welcome Big Red to Sydney on behalf of the Church of Australia. This is a great day for the Australia we know but you must remember under God's law everyone can be great, even an Australian.

Prime Minister: (to Red) About the tax avoidance, evasion, concession incentive, kick back, subsidised investment scheme I emailed you about.

Daisy Bell: (stepping forward) Pleased to meet you, I'm Daisy Bell.

Prime Minister: Congratulations Daisy Bell, behind every great man is a little woman.

Daisy Bell: In front of every great woman is a little man.

Reporter: Miss Bell and Mr Red, I would like to ask you a few questions for our readers.

Big Red: Fire away.

Reporter: What shade of lipstick do you use Daisy Bell?

Judy: Have you anything to say about the state of the economy Mr Red?

Daisy Bell: I think the government should create jobs, it would stimulate the private sector.

Big Red: I use 'Bastard' cologne and 'Bayonet' aftershave.

Judy: Mr Red, what are your ideas on paid maternity leave?

Prime Minister: No comment.

Reporter: Daisy Bell, who's your favourite film star?

Judy: Mr Red, what's your opinion on euthanasia?

Prime Minister: He has nothing to say.

Reporter: Daisy Bell, what's your favourite restaurant?

Judy: Mr Red, what have you to say about nuclear energy and of course global warming?

Prime Minister: He has nothing to say.

Reporter: Miss Daisy Bell, do you think short skirts will be in fashion this year?

Prime Minister: There will be no further questions. The Governor General will be holding a state dinner for our VIP visitors tonight, you may take photographs when they arrive. Come on Big Red and Daisy Bell, I have a car waiting. (all exit)

***

Scene Three (the patio of Deloris's garden. Albert enters bringing a garden table which he has great difficulty deciding where to place finally he places the table and exits. Deloris enters carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres, she places them on the table then moves it)

Deloris: Darling it was a marvellous idea of mine to have the party out here in my garden, don't you think?

Albert: (enters carrying two garden chairs) Where shall I put these chairs, dear?

Deloris: Oh let me see, put one in front of the birch tree and the other over in front of the camellias, no put it in the shade. (Albert puts the chair down and sits on it) It's blocking the door there, how atrocious of you Albert, move it.

Albert: (moves the chair) Is there anything else you want me to bring out here?

Deloris: The drinks.

Albert: Yes dear. (exits)

Deloris: Do you really think that this dress is becoming a hostess or should I buy a new one just for the occasion? Can you hear me, Albert?

Albert: (enters) Every word dear. (exits)

Deloris: Why don't you let me buy a new dress just this once? You don't think that this is atrociously bad taste, do you?

Albert: (enters) I like it, dear. (exits)

Deloris: In this dress I tried to combine good taste with modern fashion. But fashionable clothing is always such atrociously bad taste.

Albert: (enters) Is my tie alright?

Deloris: No, that tie's atrocious! Yes, that tie is definitely wrong.

Albert: I've only got one other, this one.

(he pulls a tie out from up his sleeve, it is the same as the one he is wearing but it is 12 feet long)

Deloris: No the colour doesn't go. And that suit! Where did you get that from? Take it off! Take everything off! Why I married you I don't know. Look where I am today. I have to struggle just to appear affluent. What are you taking your clothes off for? The guests will be arriving any minute now. I can't begin to comprehend why I married you.

Albert: You were in love with me dear.

Deloris: Surely I had more sense than that.

Albert: Apparently not.

Deloris: When I was a girl I was a rebel. I didn't like being told what to do by anybody and when my parents forbade our relationship they signed the marriage contract for me. My father saw through you but...I'm talking to you!

Albert: Sorry dear. I just had a vision of us eloping thirty years ago. I think I might have been a bit hasty.

Deloris: It's so much stress and strain having these little cocktail parties! I wish I had run away this morning and left you to do everything yourself.

Albert: I could have written a short story about it called 'The Garden Party', about a man whose wife runs away from him and...

Deloris: Not more of your boring juvenalia! Other husbands do boring normal things like dig in the garden. But not you. You scribble. I wouldn't mind if you had a flair for it and people were positively interested in your doodlings but nobody is. At least husbands who dig in the garden are harmless. Harmless Husbands, there's an idea: it could be a new charity of married men who go around and dig up people's gardens for them.

Albert: I'm in the forefront of the avant-garde. You see, to say anything meaningful an artist has to be ahead of his time but when he's ahead of his time no one understands him.

Deloris: The authors I like have been dead a hundred years.

Albert: My problem as an author then is obvious, I should have died sixty years before I was born.

Deloris: You might have been a Tolstoy, you could have written War and Peace or Gone with the Wind or Wind in the Willows or something like that. (there is a knock at the door) Someone's here. Go inside and let them in and bring them out.

Albert: When I've been dead a hundred years do you think people will read my works?

Deloris: You have already been dead forty years and response doesn't seem to be improving.

Albert: Very funny.

(knocking at the front door)

Deloris: Go and answer the door please.

Albert: Yes dear. (he exits and re-enters with Freddy and Clara) Freddy and Clara, dear.

Deloris: So glad you could come.

Freddy: Honoured to be invited Mrs Snobbington.

Clara: I never miss your garden parties Deloris.

Freddy: And how's the legal profession these days Albert? Lost any cases lately?

Albert: Well you know I can't grumble, one or two. It's not easy to lose a case. Especially if the law's on the side of your client. Takes skilled fumbling. It's an art.

Deloris: He has great potential, he could lose every case he has if he only tried.

Albert: I was going to tell Freddy how I lost three cases straight yesterday. I think it's a record. Of course I had a sympathetic judge. If I keep this up I'll be rich again!

Deloris: Would you like something to drink Freddy, Clara?

Freddy: Yes please.

Clara: Freddy's driving but I'll have a brandy and dry thanks.

Freddy: I've just come back from a sixteen day streamlined package tour of Africa. It was half business half pleasure. I was sent to keep my eye open for possible markets for my firm.

Deloris: Africa. How marvellous.

Clara: Africa's all he's talked about since he got back.

Albert: Of course I don't really write very well, that's because I don't get enough time, I'm too busy with my legal work.

Deloris: Albert, we are talking about Africa.

Albert: I've never been to Africa dear. (there's a knock at the front door)

Deloris: Albert go and answer the door.

Albert: Yes dear. (exits)

Freddy: Africa is the continent of the future.

(Albert enters with Melissa and Stud who are wearing motor bike gear)

Albert: Melissa and her gentleman friend Stud, dear.

Deloris: Oh look who's come, my daughter. You have met Freddy and Clara?

Melissa: Yes.

Deloris: Freddy, Clara, this is Stud, Melissa's friend.

Freddy: Pleased to meet you.

Clara: How do you do.

Stud: Hi.

Freddy: I was in one of those countries in darkest Africa and the local leader, Kong's his name, was having a harvest festival.

Deloris: Would anyone like something to drink?

Freddy: Gin and tonic thanks.

Clara: Brandy and dry please.

Melissa: A dry sherry.

Stud: A beer thanks.

Freddy: Kong's the leader of the new government which has recently seized power and was fighting the old tribal king over who should be presented the new yam. It was all very symbolic. The yam is a symbol of fertility and thus power.

Deloris: Here's your gin and tonic Freddy.

Freddy: Thanks awfully, I'm as dry as the Nullarbor.

Melissa: (aside) And as boring.

Freddy: It was really an important political clash and...

Deloris: Clara, a brandy and dry.

Clara: Thank you.

Freddy: If the King was presented the new yam he would enhance his political position vis a vis Kong and vice versa.

Deloris: A beer for you Stud. I'm sorry it all frothed up. I'm not really much of a hand at pouring beer.

Stud: She's right.

Freddy: Kong of course had the army, the police and the secret police on his side.

Deloris: And what was it you wanted Melissa?

Melissa: A dry sherry.

Deloris: And what about you Albert?

Albert: I'll get myself something.

Freddy: It had always been the tradition for the king to take the new yam each harvest festival.

Melissa: (joking) How interesting! Tell me Freddy, what exactly is a yam? Is it jam that's gone yucky or is it a native word for ham? Or is it something from one of father's silly poems?

Albert: There was a strange old Yam  
that got into a peculiar jam  
it found that it's trousers  
were other people's houses,  
and walked around shouting dam!

Deloris: Very funny Albert but we don't want to listen to your scribbling today!

Albert: Your drink Melissa. I'm afraid we have run out of dry sherry.

Freddy: It was a really interesting and explosive situation.

Albert: Have you heard about the white girl who was killed by natives in darkest Africa?

Freddy: Yes, she was a nun stayed behind with the sick. A bad business.

Albert: We bring them civilisation and this is how they repay us!

Freddy: Steady on old chap! You can't expect too much. After all, western civilisation had a few teething troubles.

Melissa: It still has a lot of bad teeth that need extracting.

Albert: But she was a nun and a nurse. There's no such thing as natural justice. I've found that out in the courts. But we have civilised traditions.

Freddy: Murdering that nun when you come to think of it is a pretty immoral...

Melissa: (cutting in) Hundreds of black people die every week in Africa because of white man's politics.

Freddy: The trouble with Africa is...

Melissa: (cutting in) The trouble with Africa is that it is a playing field for international politics.

Albert: That's the Moslems and America, not us.

Melissa: We join in.

Freddy: Yes, well, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

(knock at the front door)

Deloris: Albert, quickly open the front door.

Albert: Yes dear.

Deloris: Smile everyone, our guests of honour are here! And Melissa behave yourself.

(Albert enters with Big Red and Daisy Bell)

Albert: Daisy Bell and Big Red dear.

Deloris: My dear Daisy Bell and Big Red I'm so glad you could come!

Big Red: Think nothing of it! We were just knocking around the neighbourhood so we were happy to pop in.

Freddy: Knocking around! I say, that's a new expression on me! How awfully funny it sounds.

Deloris: It's the new intellectual in-talk Freddy.

Freddy: Oh, I say! I thought I knew all the latest in talk amongst our circle. It must have slipped through my...

Clara: In one ear and out the other.

Freddy: I've got an ear for language you see.

Clara: Do be quiet, Freddy. You'll embarrass us in front of the guests of honour.

Deloris: No one's been introduced yet. Everybody, this is Big Red and Daisy Bell. Big Red and Daisy Bell this is my husband Albert, this is Clara Chamberpot and her husband Freddy, this is my daughter Melissa and her gentleman friend Snub.

Melissa: Stud.

Deloris: Snob.

Melissa: Stud.

Deloris: Stodge.

Melissa: Stud.

Deloris: Sod...no, Snot...Scoff...Slodge...Splodge...Spud...Stud!

Big Red: I'm much obliged to be invited. Lovely little roost you've got here.

Deloris: Thank you, would you like a drink Daisy Bell, Big Red?

Daisy Bell: Something strong so I can recover from Big Red's driving.

Big Red: Vodka and orange thanks.

Melissa: This selling of uranium to all comers is a bad business, don't you think Mr Red?

Deloris: Melissa!

Clara: Oh I don't know. Puts Australia on the map as a nation.

Freddy: I'm sure it's only used for peaceful purposes.

Clara: No one's going to drop nuclear bombs on us, Melissa, silly!

Freddy: Of course we're not for the indiscriminate use of nuclear energy. I didn't say that.

Deloris: Yes, I don't think we should let the underdeveloped countries have any, there's no stopping them.

Clara: Civilised countries can handle it. They don't lose their heads. Nations with a sense of humanity and justice are quite safe.

Deloris: Opponents to nuclear energy are just a lot of long haired, vegetarian, dope smokers.

Melissa: What's one bomb more or less after all, if it goes off ha what's the problem?

Clara: The government knows what it's doing.

Deloris: The bombs already exist. I don't think there's anything we can do about it.

Melissa: (satirically) And nuclear bombs aren't harmful, not really, only when they explode. And nuclear power stations are reasonably safe, unless they leak. And there are still plenty of places to dump nuclear waste, at the moment.

Deloris: Here's your vodka Mr Red.

Big Red: Why thank you.

(The party breaks up into small groups and in the following dialogue Deloris, Clara. and Daisy Bell sit together. Big Red sits next to Melissa, Stud stands shyly behind Daisy Bell and Freddy talks to Albert)

Daisy Bell: That's a very nice dress Deloris.

Deloris: Thank you Daisy.

Clara: You have excelled yourself with that dress Deloris, makes me positively look like a peasant.

Deloris: (gaily) Oh it's only an old thing I threw on.

Big Red: Melissa, you were wonderful. You put those humbugs in their place.

Melissa: Thank you.

Deloris: Hors d'oeuvres anybody?

Freddy: I'm starving. (he grabs the lot)

Deloris: Perhaps we will pass the tray around.

Freddy: Yep. (he doesn't)

Big Red: (to Melissa) I like a woman who can speak her mind.

Melissa: You're full of compliments.

Big Red: Love at first sight.

Melissa: Oh, we have hardly met.

Freddy: (to Albert) Written anything lately Albert?

Albert: Well I've got this idea for a historical novel. Its narrated by an Australian female Jewish paraplegic who goes to South Africa on a working holiday and falls in love with a native who's heavily into the anti-apartheid movement. She helps mastermind the destruction of a vital oil link but is caught and surreptitiously executed. My only stumbling block is how can she narrate the novel when she is dead.

Daisy Bell: Red come over here and talk to me.

Big Red: I'll be right with you.

Melissa: Go and talk to her if you like.

Big Red: I want to talk to you.

Melissa: I don't melt like butter under a barrage of compliments.

Deloris: (to Clara) It seems that Big Red has taken a liking to Melissa.

Clara: Good for her.

Deloris: It's a vast improvement on that boring friend of hers, Slug. I suppose it's too early really to talk about marriage.

Clara: If Melissa married into cattle it would be a social step up for your family.

Freddy: (to Albert) Oh Clara and I are happy enough.

Albert: Well to tell you the truth Freddy, I feel like I've been married to Deloris for a hundred years.

Freddy: You'd be lost without her.

Albert: I'm lost with her.

Freddy: God knows sometimes I get pretty annoyed at Clara now and then but without her I'm nothing. (looking at the tray of hors d'oeuvres) Hey someone's eaten all the caviar.

Daisy Bell: (to Stud) What's your name Sexy?

Stud: Er em Stud.

Daisy Bell: That's not your real name?

Stud: (stressing the ands) No. That's what the kids at school called me because I'm big and muscly and don't talk much, and it sort of stuck.

Daisy Bell: You're attached to Melissa are you Stud?

Stud: Oh er not really. She just likes going out with me because her mother don't approve.

Daisy Bell: Are you a member of the breed of great bronzed Australian males?

Stud: Not really. Oh my real name's Barry.

Daisy Bell: And mine's Daisy.

Stud: Yeah.

Daisy Bell: Tell me about yourself.

Stud: I'm not really much of a talker. I've already said more tonight than for the last week.

Daisy Bell: After loud mouthed Big Red you're a blessing. Would you like me to get you a drink?

Stud: Beer thanks.

Albert: (jumps up) Everybody, how about I recite a poem?

Deloris: Albert what ideas you have!

Albert: I make up poems all the time it's what I do.

Clara: I suppose it would be very boring living with Deloris?

Deloris: Thank you very much Clara!

Freddy: Oh I say, how frightfully jolly!

Deloris: I forbid it Albert.

Albert: Oh shut up.

Deloris: (taken aback) Would anyone like another drink?

Clara: A brandy and dry.

Freddy: You're not getting stuck into the grog Clara? Please don't embarrass me in front of Deloris and her guests.

Clara: Oh not now Freddy I'm just starting to have a little fun.

Freddy: You drink when you are happy and you drink when you are unhappy.

Clara: A woman's prerogative.

Deloris: Here's your brandy Clara.

Clara: (skulls it) Another please.

Deloris: Albert please no poetry, my party will be in ruins.

Albert: You recite something.

Deloris: I'm getting Clara a drink dear.

Albert: And we don't need a drunken Clara.

Clara: Thank you. (skulls it) Another please.

Albert: I never write poems down on paper I just make them up as I go along.

Daisy Bell: Would you like another beer, Stud?

Stud: Thanks.

Albert: Quiet everybody. Here I go:

I was peeling potatoes and the floor gave way.

Deloris: You never peeled a potato in your life.

Albert: And the floor caved gave way.

Deloris: The floor gave way with the shock of Albert actually doing something.

Albert: Quiet please.

Deloris: Your drink, Clara.

Clara: Thank you. (skulls it) Another please.

Freddy: Haven't you had enough?

Clara: I'll get it myself. (she grabs the brandy bottle and wanders off)

Albert: Quiet! Carrots, onions and cauliflowers sprouted from the paint peelings on the ceiling.

Deloris: The paint on the ceiling's not peeling on our ceiling.

Albert: Poetic license.

Freddy: I didn't know you needed a license to write poetry.

Albert: The milk bottle looked empty, as I swam in the dregs of a strong cup of slopped black tea.

Deloris: (to Clara) You're not tipsy are you? I can get you some black coffee

Clara: No thanks, I don't believe in mixing my drinks.

Albert: A blue talcum powder cotton wool sky, sat upon the ash grey, dusty broken window.

Deloris: My windows are clean.

Albert: On the advertisement page, a newspaper butterfly was dancing a jig and the headlines frothed in darkest Africa, jet black as the ace of spades print, motor car, industry, submarine, torpedoed, bankrupt, oil rig.

Deloris: Anyone for coffee?

Albert: Gulping my tea in the social pages.

Deloris: I think it's going to rain. There's a cloud hanging over my party.

Clara: (drinking from the brandy bottle) Go on Albert.

Albert: Inspector one, two, three, His Royal Highness the King of Siam was never overheard saying. An old dustbin was doing the twist. A soprano floor mop sang piano. The oven danced a polka, the weather today is quite fine.

Deloris: Really Albert this is all so much nonsense.

Freddy: I liked it Albert. It was the most imaginative piece of nonsense I've heard in years, and I've heard a lot of nonsense.

Deloris: I think Clara needs some strong coffee.

Clara: Up the empire.

Albert: How did you like my poem Melissa?

Melissa: It was different. I didn't understand it.

Albert: What's there to understand?

Melissa: Yes true it was...

Big Red: (to Melissa) How'd you like to go for a burn in my Rolls Royce?

Melissa: Fabulous.

(they exit)

Daisy Bell: Big Red's left without me.

Stud: I'll give you a lift on me motor bike.

Daisy Bell: Shall we go?

Stud: Sure.

(they exit)

Deloris: Let's go inside and I'll make some coffee. I'm afraid my party got rained out.

Albert: Nonsense it was just the party for a rainy day.

Deloris: We can clean up tomorrow.

(all exit but Freddy)

Freddy: You know, those hors d'oeuvres were very tasty.

(exit)

***

Scene Four: (a television studio)

Judy: On our show tonight we have Mr Big Red a cattle milk tycoon who became a multi billionaire overnight by increasing the price of milk. My name's Judy Freethought and this is 'this is the week this is', a news roundup of stories that will hit the headlines in the coming week. We bring you tonight an interview with a short sighted ventriloquist's dummy who claims to be the President of America, the Sentimental Sisters will sing their latest hit single 'Sex and Drugs and Lollypops' but our special guest is the multi billionaire who single-handedly has raised the profile of cattle all around the world. Good evening Big Red and welcome to 'this is the week this is'.

Big Red: Good evening Judy.

Judy: Mr Red, yesterday you were unknown, today you're the bull of the moment. What prompted you to lead this renaissance in the power status of cattle?

Big Red: All my life I've been fighting for the rights of cattle. Let me take the opportunity here to state that for too long Australian society has, in its free and easy 'she's right mate, fair dinkum, fair go' manner, disguised its total prejudice...

Judy: (cutting in) So you have been ambitious all your life Mr Red?

Big Red: ...and total oppression and repression...

Judy: We might say that you have had all your life an ambition to grab money and power.

Big Red: Power and ambition aren't really what I'm talking about, what I'm trying to point out is that cattle are an endangered cultural group.

Judy: And how do you like Sydney?

Big Red: What?

Judy: Have you been to the Opera House?

Big Red: What's the Opera House got to do with anything?

Judy: It seems to me Mr Red that your public opinion rating and your public acceptance is not what it was?

Big Red: Well...

Judy: (cutting in) What sort of reception have you been having in society? By a sweep of the hand it seems yesterday's cattle, who were herded like sheep, are now moving among the upper echelons of society. Are you just a craze of the moment, a fad, a fashion, a trendy in thing or have you found a real position in society?

Big Red: It's true at the moment it is trendy to be a cow, how long that will last I don't know. But while cattle are trendy I would like to take the opportunity to make a few definite points.

Judy: Are you planning to return to the country?

Big Red: I have no...

Judy: Surely you don't ¬find the city to your liking? For instance the lack of grazing land.

Big Red: I really tune in to the city.

Judy: Are you sure you wouldn't prefer it in the country perhaps in villages especially set aside?

Big Red: Just a moment here...

Judy: Yes sure! Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Mr Big Red across Australia. We found him all very good, all very enjoyable to chat to, but quack, it's all very well for cattle to enjoy themselves, quack, and spend their money, quack, but there is a limit, quack, we have standards, quack, this is a civilised country, quack, we are not savages, quack, we are not animals, (Big Red is chased out by a quacking Judy) quack, quack, quack, quack.

***

Scene Five: (a Cathedral, the Bishop and a Monk enter)

Bishop: Today's sermon is on the topic of cattle. The word cattle is a word that is close to our hearts, in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: I must speak out against cattle and milk prices. What is a good Christian life if you can't go home after a hard day's grind and sit down with your nuclear family, escape from the hustle and bustle of life and have a swig of milk? When Jesus went down to Nazareth¬.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: And Matthew said to Mark.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: Said to Luke who spoke of it to John who had a word in the ear of James, and Paul eaves dropping, spoke thus to Timothy.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: Let us heed 'The Revelations of St. John the Divine' 'There appeared a great red dragon, having seven heads, ten horns, fifteen tails and a thousand legs. And there was war in the heavens, And the great dragon was cast out. But woe to ye the inhabitants of lowly Earth for the devil is come down unto ye'.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: And who are these supposedly humble cattle? Satan and his cohorts on the dairy farm, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles and Lucifer, horned devils who verily ya forsooth tramp about freely our streets in the name of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Monk: Amen.

Bishop: Are cattle in league with the devil!

***

Scene Six: (a bus stop, enter two housewives, Barbara and Beverly with their hair in head scarves)

Barbara: Are you coming Beverley? If you don't hurry up we'll miss the bus and we'll miss out on all the bargains at the sale.

Beverley: Here I come Barbara, don't get your knickers in a twist.

Barbara: Did you read about those cattle billionaires on the front page of yesterday's newspaper?

Beverley: I saw them on telly.

Barbara: It's not right, you know.

Beverley: But there's nothing the likes of us can do.

Barbara: They don't wash themselves properly.

Beverley: I s'pose they got different customs to us.

Barbara: They don't keep themselves clean and decent.

Beverley: They could at least use deodorant.

Barbara: They don't shower every day like us.

Beverley: Perhaps they're not used to running water.

Barbara: They don't change their underclothes and their socks regular.

Beverley: The real famous one Mr Red or something he's going with an Australian girl.

Barbara: It's not right really.

Beverley: I can't condone that sort of behaviour.

Barbara: It's hardly decent.

Beverley: It doesn't seem normal somehow.

Barbara: What about our children?

Beverley: We have to think of their future.

Barbara: Is that any way for a decent Australian girl to behave, I ask you?

Beverley: I feel sorry for her mother.

Barbara: I brought my girls up properly.

Beverley: Some people would think she's cheapened herself.

Barbara: He won't marry her. I'll bet my bottom dollar.

Beverley: He's just using her.

Barbara: It's not decent.

Beverley: Not right.

Barbara: Not natural.

Beverley: Something ought to be done.

Barbara: They ought to do something.

(we hear a bus screeching to a halt)

Barbara: Oh here's our bus now!

Beverly: It's going to drive right by!

Barbara: Come on!

Beverly: We'll have to run to catch it!

(exit)

***

Scene Seven: (a restaurant Daisy Bell and Stud enter)

Daisy Bell: Waiter!

Waiter: (enters) Oui Madam.

Daisy Bell: Table for two please.

Waiter: This table over here Madam.

Daisy Bell: Thank you, can we get a pot of tea for two, what teas do you have?

Waiter: It comes in little paper bags.

Daisy Bell: Do you have English Breakfast?

Waiter: You can have it for breakfast, you can have it for dinner...we have tea made from green things.

Daisy Bell: Herbal?

Waiter: Yes we have also tea of the Old Gentleman.

Daisy Bell: Earl Grey?

Waiter: That is he.

Daisy Bell: A pot of the old gentleman and some scones, jam and cream.

Waiter: Very good, will that be all?

Daisy Bell: For the present, thank you.

Waiter: Very good, Madam.

Daisy Bell: It's a warm day today, don't you think?

Stud: Yeah.

Daisy Bell: Why don't you talk to me Stud?

Stud: You know I don't talk much.

Daisy Bell: I do find you Australian males so well educated, so lively, so witty and so full of intelligent conversation.

Stud: Don't start.

Daisy Bell: There you go again. The words just flow from your lips. Your tongue is a lyrical poem. The air swoons at your words. Such grace, such elegance, such eloquence.

Stud: Leave off.

Daisy Bell: (having a go at Stud) Oh Stud, I'm communicating. I'm intelligent enough to communicate with a human being.

Stud: Fair go.

Daisy Bell: I get lonely Stud. I even get lonely when I'm with you. If you'd only talk to me I'd know that you were there.

Stud: Alright I'll talk. Yeah, it's a warm day.

Daisy Bell: Oh Stud, I could kiss you.

Stud: That's my sort of language, body language.

(Freddy and Clara enter)

Freddy: I'm so hungry I could eat a mountain. Oh look, darling, there's Daisy Bell.

Clara: Oh dear, I hope she doesn't recognise us. Don't stare at them Freddy.

Freddy: Sorry. Maybe we could say hello.

Clara: Don't be silly cattle don't say hello the word's not in their language and it's true I read it in the newspaper, they sort of say (she rocks her head from side to side as she speaks the following.) Hallogoodbyehallogoodbyehallogoodbye and no one knows if they are coming or going, been or gone, round the bend or up the creek.

Freddy: I'd just like to say hello, it's bad manners not to.

Clara: No.

Freddy: Waiter.

Waiter: Oui Monsieur.

Clara: Table for two on the other side of the restaurant.

Waiter: Come this way is this table to your liking?

Clara: You're sure you haven't got one tucked away behind a wall?

Waiter: Oh, you wish to be alone together for the intimate little tête-à-tête, a romantic candle lit assignation.

Freddy: I had no idea what you had in mind Clara, you saucy little minx.

Clara: This will do.

Waiter: Would you like to order now or peruse the menu?

Clara: I'd like to look at the menu, thank you.

Waiter: Very good, Madam.

Clara: What did you think of the Opera?

Freddy: Smashing, very good and enjoyable.

Clara: The soprano couldn't sing her top notes.

Freddy: There was that, you are quite right but the tenor sang beautifully.

Clara: The tenor couldn't act.

Freddy: Yes he was a bit of a ham actor. But I did like the sets.

Clara: The sets were overdone.

Freddy: Yes I liked the sets but they were at times overdone. The costumes were fun though.

Clara: They were garish, much too bright.

Freddy: The costumes were fun yes but a bit garish and gaudy. The orchestra on the other hand was...

Clara: ...behind the beat.

Freddy: Exactly what I thought but on the whole though I enjoyed myself immensely.

Clara: I was bored.

Freddy: Yes that's the word bored, I was bored, bored, bored.

(Waiter enters, goes to Daisy Bell's table)

Waiter: Your coffee Madam.

Daisy Bell: I ordered tea and scones.

Waiter: Oh terribly, terribly sorry madam. The scones are stale and the tea is off.

Daisy Bell: Make a fresh pot and just put the scones in the microwave.

Waiter: Oui madam. (goes up to Clara) Would you like to order now madam?

Clara: (smiling) Two weak, white, coffees please.

Waiter: (handing them the coffee) Presto.

Freddy: That was a good trick. Thanks awfully.

Clara: And bring me a large very alcoholic drink, I think I'm in need of a little fortification.

Freddy: Drink has never solved any problems.

Clara: Drink your coffee and don't be a wowser the wowsers are taking over this country.

Freddy: I would like to have some food darling.

Clara: We'll drink our drinks and then we will go.

Freddy: Why?

Clara: I feel uncomfortable sitting in the same restaurant as a cow.

Freddy: That's not very nice Clara. Cows are nice people.

Clara: Freddy don't ever let me hear you say that again.

Freddy: But darling, I like them.

Clara: Cattle don't fit into our society.

Freddy: They fit in just as well as anybody else.

Clara: Everyone looks at them. Everyone, even you, tells cattle jokes. It's a crime, but there you are. They just can't adjust to our civilised ways of behaving. In a hundred years perhaps.

Freddy: We're not so civilised.

Clara: It's for their own good. We shouldn't rush them into things and they drink far too much alcohol it is a scientific fact that they don't have the gene that enables them to drink alcohol.

Freddy: I must admit that some of what you're saying sounds true enough.

Clara: I think this whole affair has gone too far. We gave them a chance. We were considerate, more than considerate. We gave them an inch, and they took a mile.

(Waiter enters with Clara's drink)

Waiter: Your drink madam.

Clara: Thank you. (she skulls her drink) Another please, this alcohol stuff tastes rather good.

Freddy: In moderation.

Clara: My middle name is moderation.

Freddy: I thought it was Ingrid?

Daisy Bell: Where shall we go today Stud?

Stud: Not to the opera again. That was boring.

Daisy: You said that you liked it!

Stud: How about a boxing match?

Daisy Bell: The art gallery?

Stud: A game of pin ball.

Daisy Bell: The theatre.

Stud: There's a football game this afternoon.

Daisy Bell: A symphony concert.

Stud: What about just going up the pub for a few beers?

Daisy Bell: What about a drive in the country?

Stud: I don't think we like the same things.

Daisy Bell: I've got you talking.

Stud: Yeah, well I'll shut up.

Daisy Bell: Oh please don't Stud. If you don't talk I'll take you to the opera again.

Stud: You come to the footy with me and I'll go anywhere you want tomorrow.

Daisy Bell: (shakes hands) Done.

Clara: Look, they're touching.

Freddy: Clara, you're being silly.

Clara: You're the silly one.

Freddy: Sometimes I think that we're not very well matched.

Clara: All you care about is having fun.

Freddy: And you take life too seriously.

Daisy Bell: Stud, isn't that Freddy and Clara over there?

Clara: Turn your face around Freddy, she's looking this way.

Stud: Yeah that's them.

Daisy Bell: They don't seem to want to recognise us. I can understand it in Clara but Freddy seemed like a nice chap.

(Waiter enters, goes to Daisy Bell's table and slops a drink over it)

Waiter: Your chocolate madam.

Daisy Bell: I asked for tea and I wanted it in a pot not over the table, perhaps I could have a cup and saucer or should I lick it up off the floor?

Waiter: Oh terribly, terribly sorry.

Daisy Bell: Give us the chocolate. We'll drink that.

Waiter: Oui Madam.

(Big Red and Melissa enter)

Big Red: Why, hello and a pleasant afternoon to you, Daisy Bell.

Daisy Bell: (smiling) Oh look who it isn't Big Red. What a happy surprise. I haven't seen you since you dropped me (sees Melissa) - and who's this floozy?

Big Red: You have met Melissa.

Melissa: It is a pleasure.

Daisy Bell: Yes and the pleasure is all yours.

Melissa: Big Red and I have been up to so much.

Daisy Bell: Yes I'm sure you have and most of it no good.

Melissa: No it was all good.

Daisy Bell: You little tramp.

Melissa: You old tart.

Big Red: Ladies, ladies! Look I've got an idea. Let's all go out together, we can hit the entertainment strip and see the lights.

Daisy Bell: You must eat first Red. You must keep up your strength. Pull up a couple of chairs and we'll eat together.

Big Red: (grabs two chairs) Daisy, I traded in my Rolls Royce on a helicopter. I took it up for the first time today.

Melissa: One certainly has to hold one's breath if one goes out with Red.

Daisy Bell: (mock sympathy) Is it getting too much for you?

Melissa: No, I love every minute of it.

Daisy Bell: Big Red Melissa says you're too much for her.

Melissa: Just . . . oh it doesn't matter.

Daisy Bell: You hear that Big Red Melissa's all mixed up doesn't know her own mind like all humans she doesn't know if she is coming or going.

Freddy: Clara?

Clara: What?

Freddy: I wonder said the flounder.

Clara: What?

Freddy: Excuse me Clara I've got to go to the little boy's room.

Clara: Will you be alright by yourself?

Freddy: Ha, ha.

(Freddy circles around to Big Red and Co)

Big Red: I won a thousand dollars at the horse races.

Melissa: And lost two thousand at the greyhound racing.

Freddy: Mr Red.

Big Red: I went to the casino in town and won a packet.

Melissa: And then you lost a packet.

Big Red: I was having a bad day.

Freddy: (whispers) Big Red.

Big Red: (loud voice) Freddy.

Freddy: Shush . . . look Big Red...

Big Red: What is it?

Freddy: I've got something important to say to you.

Big Red: Fire away.

(Clara looks around, sees Freddy)

Clara: Freddy, what are you doing? Come over here immediately.

Freddy: Big Red this is for your own good.

Clara: (stands up) Freddy! I'm sorry Big Red if Freddy's annoying you.

Freddy: I've got to speak to you Red.

Clara: (grabs Freddy by arm) We have got to go. The air around here's taken on a distinctly vulgar scent.

Freddy: I'm not going.

Clara: Please come Freddy, for my sake.

Freddy: Apologise to Red.

Clara: I can't, it's not my fault that they are cattle. There I've said it, you are cattle and I don't like it, I'm just being honest.

Freddy: Clara!

Clara: Please Freddy, let's not argue. We will embarrass Big Red and Daisy Bell and I've embarrassed myself. I'm sorry Big Red I didn't mean it I believed it and I said it and now I have changed my mind cattle aren't so bad but you try telling that to everyone else I'm sorry but that is the way it is. (she walks out, Freddy hesitates and then follows her)

Big Red: What a silly old cow!

(Stud jumps up ready for a fight)

Stud: Moo.

Big Red: Come on everybody let's paint the town red.

***

### Planet of the Cows: Act Two

Scene One: (patio of Deloris and Alberts Country House. Albert and Deloris enter. Albert is armed with a bucket of hot soapy water and sponges, Deloris with a witches broom and a dust pan and brush. Deloris starts sweeping, Albert washes down the outdoor furniture)

Albert: I don't know why we have to have these little functions outside. Everything's dirty and dusty the birds shit all over the outdoor furniture and it has to be washed before you can use it and then there are the ants they get into the food and they bite and the flies...

Deloris: Don't talk to me about flies.

Albert: Precisely my point.

Deloris: The flies are awful.

Albert: Yes and mosquitoes and they bring me up in lumps and I just get itchy all over and the sun is hot so everyone fights for a spot in the shade. Wouldn't it just be easier to have this little function inside.

Deloris: Now Albert don't be a wet blanket.

Albert: I wouldn't mind a wet blanket I'm hot already.

Deloris: You make such a racket.

Albert: I don't really like having these little tête-à-têtes inside or out.

Deloris: All the gang's coming.

Albert: The gang! I don't like gangs, I'm anti-gregarious, I prefer monomeism. The best thing about having people around for these little gatherings is the sheer pleasure I feel when they finally pack up and go home.

Deloris: Well they are coming and that is that, Big Red and Melissa will be here, we haven't seen Melissa for ages. Freddy and Clara said that they would look in.

Albert: I don't even like Freddy and Clara.

Deloris: Of course you do.

Albert: Of course I do. As long as they only look in and don't stay. They could look in from outside the gate.

Deloris: And Daisy Bell and Stodge said they would be passing by.

Albert: Passing bye, even better they can stay in their car on the road.

Deloris: Splodge rides a motorbike.

Albert: But why can't we do it all inside?

Deloris: I don't want crumbs on my new carpet.

Albert: Can't we take the carpet up?

Deloris: Drinks, we need the drinks trolley.

Albert: Yes dear, luckily the drinks trolley has got wheels and we can move it on when the ants find it.

(Albert exits, Big Red and Melissa enter)

Big Red: (jumping into a comfortable garden chair) This spot looks good, I think I'll buy it.

Deloris: Hello Big Red, Melissa, (gives them hugs) where's Albert?

(Albert enters wheeling in the drinks trolley)

Albert: I'm coming. Oh hello Melissa, Big Red.

Big Red: G'day how ya going?

Melissa: Dad.

Big Red: The view looks good. I'll buy that too.

Deloris: Did you remember the suntan lotion Albert?

Albert: And that's another thing you get all hot and sunburnt and you come out all red and blotchy and you burn and your skin peels off.

Deloris: Albert's got one of his grumps going it was always the same when we used to go to the beach when Melissa was a child.

Albert: I've never liked beach parties very much either. You get sand in between your toes, in your socks, in your shoes and it sticks around for weeks, you get sunburnt, salt in your hair, you cut your feet on broken glass, there are sharks and stingrays and when you step on jelly fish they squelch.

Deloris: Next time we go to the beach I'll buy you a bucket and a spade and you can build sand castles.

Albert: I've never liked building sand castles. Always some smart aleck kid comes along and steps on all the towers.

Deloris: Oh you poor boy, you had a depraved childhood.

Big Red: Beautiful day for a swim, we might go to the beach later.

Albert: Isn't it a bit sunny in the sun?

Deloris: Sit down Albert and stop behaving like an old hen.

Albert: Yes dear.

Deloris: Drinks everybody?

Big Red: Beer please.

Melissa: A soda water for me.

Deloris: Yes and I'll have a soda water as well.

Albert: And I'll join Red in a beer please Deloris.

Deloris: I'm not getting them, barbeques and serving drinks outside is your job.

Albert: Another reason to dislike entertaining outside.

Big Red: (to Melissa) This is the happiest day of my life.

Melissa: And mine.

Big Red: I like you so much Melissa I don't even mind that you're not a cow.

Melissa: I'm just as good as any cow.

Big Red: Sure you are but you must admit that your feet are funny.

Melissa: And yours are normal?

Big Red: Let's not have a lover's tiff I've got something important to ask you. Where are we going to live after the big day?

Albert: I'm having a bad hair day. I feel that all my life I've been walking around with my head in a bag.

Deloris: A garbage bag.

Albert: If only I had written something worthwhile rather than trying to be so avant-garde.

Deloris: Worth how much?

Albert: I feel a complete failure.

Melissa: No dad you're great.

Big Red: You have got a beautiful daughter.

Albert: I have done nothing with my life.

Deloris: Have you seen my garden book?

Albert: It's in the icebox.

Melissa: You will succeed you'll see.

Albert: I sold a short story to a literary journal for five dollars.

Deloris: Albert our fortune's made.

Albert: It's not a bad little piece if I do say so myself, but my little bit of success has made me depressed.

Deloris: I am so proud of you, you will have to show me it sometime.

Albert: Would you like to read it?

Deloris: I don't know that I want to go that far.

Albert: I would like you to read it Deloris.

Deloris: (reading her gardening book) 'The first chrysanthemum show was held in Japan in the ninth century.'

Albert: I have improvised a poem.

Deloris: How lovely for you dear.

Albert: I want to recite it.

Deloris: I don't know that I understand poetry dear.

Albert: Oh no-one understands poems they are obscure bits of nonsense really but I have poetry in my blood.

Deloris: Make it hard if you had to have a blood transfusion.

Albert: (stands) It's called Beyond the Marmalade.  
Am I a tea bag or a spoonful of instant coffee?  
I am the universal carpet square he wrote as he turned into a goat.  
Murder, he screamed, now a half-eaten plastic banana  
Drowning in a bowl of milk and cornflakes he clung to the peanut butter  
And hiding his head in an old worn out shoe he sighed  
Is anyone out there beyond the marmalade?

Melissa: (claps) Bravo!

Deloris: Albert put marmalade on the shopping list for next week.

Albert: 'Drowning in a bowl of milk and cornflakes' it's a statement about life. In my short story I tried an existentialist, stream of conscious approach to breakfast but I keep pouring too much milk over the cornflakes, nothing in this life is easy.

Deloris: No matter what the literary standard of the population we can be sure of a continuous stable level of response to Albert's prolific pen, nil!

Albert: I'll surprise you yet. I'm thinking over this idea for a bestselling novel.

Deloris: I always thought that I could write a cookbook.

Albert: You'd have to learn to cook first.

Deloris: I've cooked for you for twenty years!

Albert: The less said about that the better.

Deloris: You can burn your own toast tomorrow.

Albert: Getting back to my novel It's going to take the form of a diary of an as yet unborn woman narrated from her mother's womb. My only unsolved quandary is how is she to get pen and paper to be able to write her diary, being where she is?

Deloris: You couldn't write a shopping list.

Albert: With this novel I think I have got to the essence of life.

Deloris: Before you can write about life you have got to have lived.

Albert: I've lived a very interesting life.

Deloris: Three meals a day and a sleep in on Sundays!

Albert: (ironically) You know Melissa, when I married your mother I married an understanding, sensitive and artistically responsive mind.

Deloris: Did you say something dear?

Albert: Don't worry darling I was only talking about you. Remember me? I was at your wedding ninety years ago.

Deloris: So you were, now I remember, you played the part of the bridegroom, you hammed the role.

Melissa: Tell them now Red before the arguing gets worse.

Deloris: We don't argue Melissa we put points of view, my point of view is that Albert is useless, I don't know what Albert's point of view is as I never listen.

Melissa: Tell them now Red.

Big Red: Now?

Deloris: Tell us what?

Big Red: Melissa and I...

Melissa: ...are engaged. I'm going to marry Big Red, I'm going to be Mrs Red.

Deloris: You shouldn't joke like that Melissa.

Melissa: It is no joke!

Deloris: What a sense of humour she has Albert.

Melissa: Read my lips, I am not joking.

Albert: Well congratulations Big Red.

Big Red: Thank you.

Deloris: Er yes, congratulations.

Big Red: Thank you.

Deloris: I didn't expect it, you took me by surprise. Well all I can say is good luck, and my best wishes. You're the most lively person I've ever met Red, I didn't expect this.

Big Red: Thank you. How about a stroll in the garden Melissa?

Melissa: Love to.

Big Red: Last one to America is a rotten egg, Christopher Columbus here we come.

(Big Red and Melissa run off)

Deloris: Perhaps she could hyphenate her name, Melissa Big Red-Snobbington or perhaps Snobbington-Big Red.

Albert: Or Big-Snobbington-Red, sounds like a variety of potato.

Deloris: This is no joking matter.

Albert: No. I never expected this. It will be difficult.

Deloris: If Melissa marries into cattle people will make life hell for her. She won't fit in with his friends and our society won't accept her. By marrying cattle she is declaring herself a social outcast and it will be lonely out there.

Albert: There's talk that the government is going to legislate against cattle, Melissa might be made illegal.

Deloris: I want the best for Melissa. I want her to be happy but I think if she marries Big Red...

Albert: Melissa's not only marrying Big Red, she's making a stand and it's a fine thing she is doing.

Deloris: It's her life you're talking about.

Albert: It's her decision.

Deloris: But we should warn her.

Albert: Do you think she doesn't know already?

Deloris: I won't allow it.

Albert: You'll only make things harder for her.

Deloris: (deciding that Albert is right) She is our daughter and we must stick by her.

Albert: Under normal circumstances she couldn't have picked a better bloke.

Deloris: Let's go and find them and give them our blessing.

Albert: I hope there are no flies or cob webs or earwigs in the garden, I hate earwigs.

Deloris: Come on you old stick in the mud.

(Albert and Deloris exit Daisy Bell and Stud enter pour themselves a drink and sit down)

Stud: Drink?

Daisy Bell: Why not.

Stud: Nobody about.

Daisy Bell: Where is everybody?

Stud: Not here.

Daisy Bell: I can see that.

Stud: Yeah me too.

Daisy Bell: Shall we go out to a restaurant for dinner?

Stud: Yeah if ya want.

Daisy Bell: How many acres would you like to plough up for dinner?

Stud: I'm not very much hungry.

Daisy Bell: Impossible, you eat like a steam train, shovel it in.

Stud: I'll have some tea and cucumber sandwiches, with tomato sauce.

Daisy Bell: Are you on a diet?

Stud: I'm watching my figure.

Daisy Bell: I'm watching your figure. Looks good to me.

Stud: I mustn't let myself go.

Daisy Bell: Oh I don't know, we could let ourselves go together.

Stud: Daisy Bell, I know I'm not much of a talker but we have to discuss something.

Daisy Bell: I'm all ears.

Stud: I can't say the right words. I think them up and then I forget them before I say them.

Daisy Bell: What sort of words do you want to say?

Stud: Anachronistic and antisocial and apartheid and apathetical if only I knew what they meant.

Daisy Bell: Don't bother thinking you'll only get confused just blurt out what it is you want to say.

Stud: And there's something else too.

Daisy Bell: And what is that?

Stud: Big Red is in trouble with the police.

Daisy Bell: No. You're mistaken.

Stud: S'in the newspaper he might be arrested any minute.

Daisy Bell: What for?

Stud: Daisy Bell what I wanted to speak with you is, perhaps you, you know, going out with me you know...

Daisy Bell: Can you repeat that?

Stud: I've forgotten it.

Daisy Bell: I like you Stud you make me laugh.

Stud: Daisy Bell, me and you, well you know, you and me, get my drift?

Daisy Bell: Frankly no.

Stud: I really like you Daisy Bell, I do a real lot.

Daisy Bell: Thank you, I like you too.

Stud: It's like squeezing juice from a stone lemon.

Daisy Bell: You lost me in the masonry.

Stud: It's not safe for us. Go back to the country with Big Red.

Daisy Bell: Are you giving me the push off?

Stud: No, but I can see how the eggs are stacked.

Daisy Bell: Is that why people have been snubbing me, I eat my boiled eggs the wrong way up?

Stud: Bastards! you point out anyone who is rude to you and I'll fucking punch them out.

Daisy Bell: Control yourself.

Stud: Makes me so fucking mad.

Daisy Bell: Live and let live that's what I say.

Stud: I'll fucking kill them.

Daisy Bell: That's very nice of you Stud but we would have a lot of dead people lying around, be rather messy.

Stud: I don't care, I'll make them suffer, I'll twist their bloody heads off.

Daisy Bell: Calm down.

(Deloris, Freddy and Clara enter)

Deloris: So nice of you to drop by.

Clara: Think nothing of it.

Freddy: We didn't have anything else to do today.

Deloris: Are you still out here in the garden Albert, we need some drinks? (sees Daisy Bell and Stud) Oh hello Daisy Bell and Stoodge I didn't know you were here.

Daisy Bell: Thank you for the invitation.

Stud: Yeah.

Deloris: (to Stud) Likewise I am sure.

(Albert enters wearing overalls, a straw hat and rubber boots and pushing a wheel barrow)

Albert: I'm just going weeding.

Deloris: What! Weeding in my garden? You don't even like the garden it's full of earwigs and things.

Albert: I've decided to face up to my phobias as an adult.

Deloris: You an adult ha!

Albert: Hello, Daisy Bell, Stud.

Daisy Bell: Hello Albert.

Stud: Yeah.

Albert: I Always look forward to the pleasure of your company Daisy Bell.

Daisy Bell: Thank you.

Albert: You helped yourselves to drinks that's good.

Freddy: Hello Albert.

Albert: Freddy, nice to see you, are you on your way somewhere?

Freddy: Always the kidder.

Clara: Nice to see you after so long.

Deloris: Albert, what are you doing?

Albert: I told you, I'm going to weed the garden.

Deloris: My garden.

Albert: Our garden.

Deloris: You stay out of my garden, Albert, or it will be the finish.

Freddy: I've never been much good at gardening myself. Of course I mow the lawns on Sunday mornings.

Clara: Freddy be quiet.

Freddy: The rockery in our garden that was my idea. The goldfish pond was my idea too, only the cat ate all the goldfish.

Albert: (to Deloris) I think I could get to like gardening. I'll start with the chrysanthemums.

Deloris: Don't touch my chrysanthemums.

Freddy: I don't like chrysanthemums much, they're too common, especially on mother's day.

Clara: Freddy I think we ought to be going.

Freddy: What? When we're having such an interesting conversation about gardening. Do you do much gardening Daisy Bell?

Daisy Bell: Not since we came to the big smoke.

Albert: And I could prune the camellias.

Deloris: You barbarian. This is not the time of year for pruning.

Clara: Camellias originally come from China, did you know that?

Albert: Did you want me for something Deloris? I'd like to get on with my gardening.

Deloris: If you dare lay one finger on my garden I'll kill somebody.

Albert: Really Deloris.

Clara: Camellias should be disbudded for larger and better quality flowers.

Deloris: Our guest need a drink.

Albert: Would you like a drink Freddy, Clara, Daisy Bell, Stud?

Freddy: Oh I say that would jolly up the party.

Clara: Look I really think we had better be going.

Deloris: No, not at all, you have only just arrived. Albert, four sherries all round.

Albert: Yes dear (exits)

Freddy: The weather is quite nice today.

Clara: Camellias were named after the Moravian Missionary George Joseph Kamel.

Albert: (enters) One hump or two? Sherry Clara.

Clara: Thank you.

(Clara skulls her drink)

Albert: You are full of useless facts today Clara, I never knew that you were so erudite and full of useless trivia.

Clara: I'm not sure if that is a compliment or not.

Albert: Sherry Freddy.

Freddy: Very sporting of you Albert.

Albert: Daisy Bell.

Daisy Bell: Thank you.

Albert: Stud.

Stud: Yeah er cheers.

Freddy: Bottoms up.

(Clara grabs Freddy's drink just as he is about to drink it)

Albert: Deloris you're drink.

Clara: We had to come Deloris, Albert, Daisy because of the news.

Deloris: What news?

Freddy: Haven't you heard? Clara didn't want to come but I said we must come and give support in time of need.

Deloris: What are you talking about?

Clara: The legislation to expel cattle to the island sanctuaries.

Daisy Bell: What!

Clara: We are very sorry Daisy.

Albert: Yes, I did hear about it but it can be challenged in court and I think that I am the man to challenge it.

Deloris: I think you should concentrate on your new interest in gardening Albert.

Albert: We will not abandon Melissa and Big Red.

Deloris: You know what we agreed. If things got sticky. It's for Melissa's own good that she doesn't see Big Red anymore.

Albert: If it comes to a legal fight I will defend Big Red in court.

Deloris: I forbid you, Albert.

Albert: Something tells me, an itch in my stomach...

Freddy: Maybe you should take an Alka-Seltzer.

Albert: ...that this cattle crisis, as the government are so fond of calling it, that it's something to do with us. What do you think Daisy Bell.

Daisy Bell: I don't think pointing the finger does much good we all want to live in peace.

Deloris: Nonsense Albert, we have been nice to Big Red and Daisy Bell, we couldn't have been nicer.

Freddy: We have all got very serious.

Clara: Shut up Freddy.

Deloris: Albert you can't defend Big Red in Court. You have to concentrate on your writing. You'll be a great writer one day won't he Clara? Won't he Daisy Bell?

Clara: Yes we all admire your work Albert.

Albert: I took all my writing to the incinerator half an hour ago and incinerated the lot.

Deloris: But you spent years, decades, on your work. Albert not only did you fail to achieve anything with your life but you destroyed all the evidence.

Freddy: I liked your stories Albert.

Albert: You never read any.

Freddy: No, but I would have liked them if I had.

Deloris: I wish cattle had never come to Australia.

Albert: I'm grateful that they did. I can really do something stand up and say I want to be heard.

Deloris: Daisy Bell you agree with me don't you? Someone else should represent Big Red in the courts not Albert he's too old and useless.

Freddy: Albert I find this all very confusing, I'm all awash, I don't know whether to go with the tide, or swim against the current, and I've never been a good swimmer, it's all I can do to keep my head above water when dog paddling.

Clara: Freddy, shut up.

Deloris: If you insist on getting mixed up in this cattle scandal I'm going to pack my bags. I'm sorry Daisy Bell but I can't take the stress, already some of my oldest friends won't speak to me.

Daisy Bell: We don't want to cause trouble.

Stud: I'll punch them out.

Daisy Bell: Sit down Stud.

Clara: Deloris you can't leave Albert, I'm sure everything can be patched up.

Deloris: I don't want to live with patches.

Albert: Where will you stay?

Clara: You can stay with us.

(Melissa and Big Red enter)

Melissa: Hello everybody, hello Daisy, Stud, Freddy, Clara.

Daisy Bell: Hello Big Red still hanging about with Melissa?

Big Red: Daisy Bell I haven't seen you for so long, it's really great to see you.

Melissa: We are engaged.

(Melissa shows off her ring)

Daisy Bell: Big Red you can't marry her, you might get arrested.

Big Red: The world is my oyster!

Daisy Bell: And now this fortune seeker has got her claws into you.

Melissa: What was that?

Daisy Bell: Nothing that you need concern yourself with.

Big Red: Don't worry Daisy Bell everything is going to be alright. We are quite safe here everything will work out, we are in the best of all countries in the best of all worlds.

Daisy Bell: God is in his heaven all is right with the world.

Big Red: That's it.

Daisy Bell: You don't believe in God.

Freddy: Hello Melissa we were just talking about gardening.

Deloris: Melissa.

Melissa: Yes.

Deloris: Do you love Big Red?

Melissa: Of course I do.

Deloris: If only he wasn't a bull it would be so much easier.

Freddy: A bull in a tea shop!

Melissa: The fact that he is a bull is what makes him interesting.

Clara: Big Red, Daisy Bell I like you really I do but you have got to see it from all points of view we are all friends but...

Melissa: That's rubbish, there is not all points of view, cattle are just as human as anybody.

Clara: No one says they're not human and I personally have nothing against them but how would you feel if you had a Texas Longhorn or a water buffalo for a next door neighbour?

Melissa: From meeting and getting to know cattle I have forgotten that I ever thought they were different.

Albert: The trouble is that people can't see past a pair of horns.

Big Red: We didn't come to this party to make all this trouble we came here for a few drinks and some pleasant conversation.

Melissa: If we would all stop being so bloody small minded.

Deloris: Language.

Stud: I'll punch them out!

Freddy: Melissa I'm with you.

Melissa: Freddy you're a joke.

Clara: Take that back you little strumpet.

Melissa: You make up Freddy's mind for him.

Clara: And you're no better than a street walker.

Deloris: If cattle would only go away.

Albert: Cattle will always be with us Deloris. It's what we feel inside that must change.

Freddy: This is all getting far too serious, let's get back to our conversation on gardening.

Deloris: Melissa, I'm going to leave your father.

Melissa: I hope you don't expect me to get involved in your little soap opera. I have my own melodrama to take care of. Come on Red we have wedding plans to make.

Big Red: This is not goodbye it's catch you later.

(exit Melissa and Big Red)

Deloris: Albert get my case down from on top of the wardrobe.

Albert: No.

Deloris: Pardon?

Clara: Getting back to camellias...

Deloris: I'll get it myself.

(exit Deloris)

Albert: Will you excuse me Freddy, Clara, Daisy and Stud. I seem to be having a quarrel with my wife.

(Albert exits)

Clara: How do you like that?

Freddy: Pardon?

Clara: I was insulted to my face, called racially prejudiced. I'm not racially prejudiced am I Freddy? I'm just being sensible. Daisy Bell I like you I do, I do and oh bugger my glass is empty!

Daisy Bell: Get Clara a drink Stud and make it a large one.

(Stud pours a drink)

Stud: Eeryago.

Clara: Thank you.

Stud: Getyateetharoundthat.

Clara: I'm just trying to be sensible in a difficult situation.

Freddy: Perhaps you're being too sensible Clara.

Clara: Freddy you can't be too sensible.

Daisy Bell: Being sensible creates a lot of senseless difficulties.

Clara: Let's go and wait for Deloris in the car.

Freddy: Okay, bye Daisy, Stud.

Clara: Yes Daisy Bell, Stud.

Daisy Bell: Yes bye then.

(Freddy and Clara exit)

Stud: (to Daisy Bell) Shall I punch them out.

Daisy Bell: No they are just confused.

Stud: But I wanna punch somebody.

Daisy Bell: Yes it would be nice sometimes, let's go and find Red, it's probably a good time for cattle and special friends to stick together.

(Stud and Daisy Bell exit)

***

Scene Two: (a prison cell Big Red enters handcuffed with a guard)

Big Red: Something seems to have gone wrong, but it's only a minor setback, Big Red can never be beaten.

Guard: No one's going to be beaten up in my prison, unless I say so.

Big Red: Is this really a prison?

Guard: Just think of it as a hotel with bars, and bellboys with guns.

Big Red: This must be a dream.

Guard: You won't be dreaming much on prison beds.

Big Red: Am I mad? Am I here? I'm in a dream, I tell you I am the great Big Red.

Guard: Listen mate, you're just another crim, you remember if you play ball we'll play ball.

Big Red: I'm happy to play ball.

Guard: Good.

Big Red: Can I have a room with a view?

Guard: What would you like? A view of the toilet block or a view of the guard tower?

Big Red: That's a hard one to call.

Guard: Oh by the way there's a girl wants to see you. Do you want to see her?

Big Red: Yes, yes show her in.

Guard: For twenty dollars I might be unavoidably detained I might leave you two alone.

Big Red: Here's fifty.

Guard: That's bribery.

Big Red: Okay here's twenty.

Guard: Thank you.

(Melissa enters)

Big Red: Melissa! My Angel.

Melissa: Oh Big Red, what are we going to do?

Big Red: Pull yourself together, I'll get out of this, they can't imprison a bull without a fight.

Melissa: Big Red I've talked to father and he has agreed to defend you in court.

Big Red: Oh Melissa you're my saviour.

Melissa: Big Red, I want you to tell me one thing.

Big Red: Fire away.

Melissa: What is Daisy Bell to you?

Big Red: Nothing, she means nothing to me. I met her when I was very young and silly and had a brief affair but she's nothing.

Melissa: There's a rumour that you and Daisy Bell are married.

Big Red: Lies!

Melissa: Is it?

Big Red: Melissa I need you.

Melissa: I wonder?

Big Red: Daisy is spreading stories to scare you away, she is terribly jealous.

Melissa: Then you really want to marry me?

Big Red: Melissa I love you.

Melissa: And you won't go chasing other women?

Big Red: Of course not.

Melissa: You're not just saying that?

Big Red: Would I do that Melissa? Besides you're the only person who can get me out of here.

Melissa: I'm sorry I questioned you Red, but I don't trust that Daisy Bell. I'd rather see you rot in jail for the rest of your life than in another woman's arms, isn't that strange.

Big Red: Listen Melissa, when I get out of here and that won't be long I have organised an escape, we can go away to the country for a while until this all blows over.

Melissa: That sounds nice.

Big Red: The country is great. The food, the food in the country is so much better than the modern take away fast food rubbish you eat in the city. Grass, have you ever eaten nice fresh grass? Unless you've eaten fresh grass in spring you have never lived.

Melissa: I think that I would like a rain check on grass.

Big Red: All cattle eat grass we are vegetarian.

Melissa: You never told me that you were vegetarian!

Big Red: You'll love it! Think of chick pea burgers with Brussels sprout snags and parsnip casserole all washed down with cabbage wine.

Melissa: I might just try grass first.

Daisy Bell: (enters) Hello Red darling, I've come to get you out of here.

Melissa: What does this hussy want Red?

Daisy Bell: (to Melissa) Oh, you're still hanging around Red. (To Big Red) It's messing around with women and promising to marry them that always gets you into trouble.

Melissa: I am Red's fiancé. Would you leave us in peace?

Daisy Bell: What do you want to get married for, Red? Do you think you and I could have lived happily all those years together in the country if we had been married?

Melissa: Red, you criminal. You're engaged to two women.

Daisy Bell: We lived together in the country for years.

Melissa: Red, I'm never going to have anything more to do with you.

Daisy Bell: You just leave him to me.

Melissa: No never. Red loves me. It's not Red who's the criminal it's you, you who want to steal him away from me. I forgive you Red, I'll never desert you.

Daisy Bell: Oh how very touching and sentimental.

Melissa: You're heartless.

Daisy Bell: Red doesn't love you.

Melissa: Tell her Red.

Daisy Bell: Keep out of this Red.

Melissa: You mean nothing to Red. He forgot you existed.

Daisy Bell: That's a lie, that's not true, Red tell Melissa the truth.

Melissa: Keep out of this Red.

Big Red: (aside to Melissa) Don't believe a word she says Melissa. I depend on you. (aside to Daisy Bell) Don't believe a word she says Daisy Bell. I need your help to get out of here.

Melissa: There, you heard what Red said?

Daisy Bell: Yes he made a fool of you didn't he?

Big Red: (aside to Melissa) Melissa we're engaged aren't we? (aside to Daisy Bell) Daisy Bell we're a team.

Melissa: Well Daisy, Red has just cleared the ground once and for all. I must go now, but I'm not going while you're still here.

Daisy Bell: Red has made his decision and I also must go, but I'm not leaving you here with him to try and sway his feelings.

Melissa: Well let's go then.

Daisy Bell: Together.

Melissa: Together.

Daisy Bell: You first.

Melissa: No, I insist, you first.

Daisy Bell: Arm in arm.

Melissa: Arm in arm.

(exit Daisy and Melissa)

Guard: (enters) What's the trick?

Big Red: Pardon?

Guard: Two beautiful women, how do you manage it? Is it money?

Big Red: Animal magnetism.

Guard: How can I get some?

Daisy Bell: (enters disguised as a cleaner) Excuse me sir, I'm the cleaner and I have orders to mop your cell.

Guard: This cell was cleaned this morning.

Daisy Bell: No it wasn't.

Guard: Anyway I don't believe in all this cleaning, too much hygiene is unhygienic.

Daisy Bell: I'm the cleaner, I should know if I cleaned his cell or if I didn't.

Guard: I tell you the cell was cleaned this morning.

Daisy Bell: I tell you it wasn't cleaned this morning.

Guard: I tell you it was cleaned this morning.

Daisy Bell: (to Big Red) It's me, Daisy.

Guard: Come along lady. If I say this cell was cleaned this morning then it was cleaned this morning, whether it was or not.

Big Red: No now I remember it wasn't cleaned this morning.

Guard: Yes it was.

Big Red: No it wasn't.

Guard: Yes it was.

Big Red: No it wasn't.

Daisy Bell: Look, you two can fight it out. I'm going to do my job. (she starts mopping Big Red and the guard argue in the background)

Big Red: If it was cleaned this morning it wasn't done very well.

Guard: It doesn't matter if it was cleaned well or badly, all that matters is that I have a bit of paper that says it was cleaned.

Daisy Bell: The cells are cleaned so often that you don't even notice if they are cleaned or not. You take your life for granted, you live in a dream, you just sleep through it day and night, it makes no difference. This pocket watch for instance, watch how it swings to and fro like a pendulum.

Guard: Maybe you're right, perhaps I'm asleep now and just dreaming all this.

Daisy Bell: That's right, reality is only a dream, a sleepy, sleepy dream. Your eyes are getting heavy.

Guard: I feel sleepy.

Daisy Bell: (to the guard) Look at the watch, it rocks from side to side. (to Big Red) Red there's a fast car waiting outside.

Big Red: I feel sleepy.

Daisy Bell: Wake up Red.

Big Red: Sorry.

Daisy Bell: (to the guard) You're feeling sleepy.

Guard: I'm feeling sleepy.

Daisy Bell: Red run for it, I'll be right behind you.

(Big Red exists stage left, Daisy Bell runs off stage right, the guard suddenly wakes up and runs after Daisy Bell)

***

Scene Three: (Prime Minister's Office)

Prime Minister: (on the telephone) I just haven't got time! See my press secretary or somebody, ring up for an appointment. Don't you realise there's a cattle crisis? My political career depends on its outcome.

Guard: (enters) Sir, I have urgent news for you.

Prime Minister: Well, what is it?

Guard: That is, I was sent here to convey urgent news to you.

Prime Minister: Let's have it then.

Guard: Firstly you must understand it's not my news.

Prime Minister: Right.

Guard: In a way it is though, because you see I'm the one who's bringing it.

Prime Minister: Yes, yes.

Guard: But in another way it's not, because I didn't make the news, I'm just conveying it.

Prime Minister: Well convey it man, convey it.

Guard: Let me start by pointing out that I wasn't on duty at the time that the particular bit of urgent news I'm conveying occurred, and even if I was on duty when it happened, I wasn't there.

Prime Minister: Are you going to tell me the news today or tomorrow?

Guard: Well if you put it that way tomorrow if that's all right with you.

Prime Minister: This is your last chance, either tell me the news or I'll ram this telephone down your gullet.

Guard: Well seeing as you put it that way. It was like this, I personally handcuffed Big Red, put his legs in irons, all four of them, chained him to a wall, and put a ball and chain around each of his hoofs. He was locked safely inside his cell, a recently renovated job with five foot thick reinforced concrete walls, double armour plated sliding door and the latest in surveillance cameras. And this was all inside a maximum security prison. Finally two heavily armed guards wearing bullet proof underwear sat outside the door of his cell.

Prime Minister: Playing cards no doubt.

Guard: No, not at all. Suddenly a whirly wind blew up inside the jail. Well it was more like a hurricane or perhaps a tornado.

Prime Minister: Get on with it.

Guard: Where was I?

Prime Minister: A whirly wind.

Guard: Oh yes, it spun around faster and faster and faster and one chap had his hat blown off and the newspaper was blown away and we lost the sports pages.

Prime Minister: And this is what you came to tell me.

Guard: Well there was one other minor consequence.

Prime Minister: And what was that?

Guard: When the wind died down Big Red had flown.

Prime Minister: Escaped? What about my political career? Everybody knows that we arrested Big Red it was all over the television. We have advertised his trial, tickets are selling out fast, I was going to be the star and personally handle the prosecution, we were negotiating film and novelisation rights and you go and lose him. Let me say this if that bull's not located I wouldn't be in your shoes.

Guard: As they say sir, you can't pull your socks up if you haven't got any.

Prime Minister: What are you talking about?

Guard: Well we weren't beaten, no sir, we were certainly not beaten. We put our top minds on the case right away, our greatest criminologists. And it wasn't so very long before I noticed a bucket, just an ordinary old every day cleaner's bucket, and an ordinary old everyday cleaner's mop. Ha, ha, I cunningly thought to myself it was the cleaner. So we staked out the prison, hiding in every cranny, corner, crevice and crack in the concrete and we waited for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime. This time we punched each other to keep awake and nobody played cards. Suddenly a whirly wind blew up again. I gave the word and fifteen of us simultaneously charged. We pounced on the criminal and landed in a great heap on the floor. And down underneath all the guards lay a much crushed criminal. I am personally responsible for the apprehension of one Daisy Bell, a superb piece of detective work on my part.

Prime Minister: A woman?

Guard: I'm afraid she's all we could manage.

Prime Minister: Well don't stand around talking. Bring her in. She'll go on trial immediately. (the guard brings Daisy Bell in) And what's your name?

Daisy Bell: You know my name.

Guard: Er, Daisy, that is, Daisy Bell. Bell's her surname and Daisy's her Christian name.

Prime Minister: So you're the infamous Daisy Bell?

Daisy Bell: Is that a question?

Prime Minister: You have committed a very serious offence, Miss Bell, and if I was you I wouldn't try to be smart, I would cooperate.

Daisy Bell: I'm guilty of nothing.

Prime Minister: This attitude of yours will do you no good. Now if you would admit your offence we can perhaps ask the judge to be lenient in your case.

Daisy Bell: What offence have I committed?

Prime Minister: Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Daisy Bell: Laws are not supposed to be made to trip people up, but to protect people.

Prime Minister: The laws my government enact are the laws of the people. Enacted by them, through me for their protection and welfare.

Daisy Bell: What about my welfare?

Prime Minister: Those who try to break down the order of a state come to an unhappy end.

Daisy Bell: As a member of the people for whom you enact laws to protect, I demand that you enact a law to protect me from the laws you enact.

Prime Minister: The law is the highest authority.

Daisy Bell: The law is the lowest common denominator of a government that has its handcuffs around everyone's wrists.

Prime Minister: If people want to be free they must accept the discipline of freedom.

Daisy Bell: You seem expert at saying with high sounding phrases 'Obey'.

Prime Minister: Those who criticise laws because they have broken them and have been caught are not impartial judges of those laws.

Daisy Bell: Laws that are broken before they are made are not impartial laws.

Prime Minister: Let's stop arguing and come to some agreement.

Daisy Bell: I shall proclaim my innocence to the end.

Prime Minister: If you would plead guilty...

Daisy Bell: Never.

Prime Minister: I can get the judge to give you a suspended sentence.

Daisy Bell: I shall expose you, I shall talk, everyone will know what I have to say.

Prime Minister: You're looking at everything from the wrong angle. The State has an excellent case against you. No matter how much you blab what can you blab, the truth is the truth and I'm not afraid of it.

Daisy Bell: The truth has many faces and they don't all smile.

Prime Minister: Any outburst will simply be detrimental to your case. Now will you consider my offer calmly.

Daisy Bell: I reject it out of hand.

Prime Minister: As you will.

Daisy Bell: I demand to be released.

Prime Minister: I tried to help you I can do no more.

Daisy Bell: Will I be allowed a lawyer?

Prime Minister: Of course...not.

Melissa: You will have a fight on your hands.

Prime Minister: Look, how about a compromise.

Daisy Bell: Never.

Prime Minister: Quack (he puts his hand over his mouth and looks around in embarrassment)

***

Scene Four: (the set turns into a court room a Judge enters)

Judge: I open the proceedings of the central high court of justice and litigation. Bring in the accused.

Guard: The accused is here me lord.

Judge: How does the accused plead? Guilty, insane, deranged, ignorance of the law - which incidentally is no excuse...

Daisy Bell: I plead persecuted.

Prime Minister: I object! It's prosecuted not persecuted, persecuted is unjust, prosecuted is just.

Judge: Objection sustained. The State may present its case for the persecution, sorry prosecution.

Daisy Bell: I demand justice.

Prime Minister: Your honour, I ask the court to please ask the accused to refrain from throwing red herrings about in a court of law.

Judge: Daisy Bell you are overruled.

Prime Minister: The prisoner is accused according to statute seven thousand and forty two forbidding cattle from talking to human beings. If she is proven cattle she is charged with talking to a human, if she is proven a human, she is charged with talking to cattle.

Daisy Bell: There's no such statute.

Judge: Is that true?

Prime Minister: Yes your honour. I just made it up.

Judge: Go on.

Prime Minister: She is also charged under statute seven thousand and forty three for being in the vicinity where a known criminal escaped from prison a few hours previously.

Judge: Don't you think it's time to recess for lunch?

Prime Minister: I have only just begun, your honour.

Judge: Well alright but make it short. This case can't drag on for too long, it's already been going for five or ten minutes.

Prime Minister: I call the guard who is Daisy Bell's guard. Do you swear to answer all my questions as clearly, as thoroughly or as obscurely as I wish?

Guard: I do.

Prime Minister: Are you the guard of the accused prisoner, and do you verify that she is the accused who you have been guarding, and that she is the person who the previously stated charges have been laid against?

Guard: I verify everything.

Prime Minister: You may step down.

Daisy Bell: Your honour, I wish to cross examine the witness.

Judge: That would make the case very longwinded. You must understand that the tax payers have to pay our salaries. Justice must be quick. Objection overruled the persecution may continue.

Daisy Bell: Your honour it seems impossible for me to defend myself and get an acquittal at all.

Judge: An acquittal occurs when the accused is found to be innocent. This is very rare these days. In all my long service as a judge I can't recall giving one. You see, even if you are innocent or if you were arrested by mistake, we don't like to let the accused off scot free. The average person, you will understand is usually guilty of committing some crime or other at some time. There are so many crimes a person can commit nowadays that it stands to reason that everybody breaks the law more or less continuously. And I can't let people go unpunished for such flagrant lawbreaking. We generally find that a small fine or a short prison sentence spares all concerned any embarrassment. You must remember that if someone has had charges laid against them, their personal integrity can't be all that it should be.

Prime Minister: I call Barbara and Beverley to the stand. (Barbara and Beverley step into the stand) Do you swear to answer my questions with the pre-arranged answers?

Barbara & Beverley: We do.

Prime Minister: Have you ever noticed that the accused is different to us?

Barbara & Beverley: We have.

Prime Minister: Did you, let's say, on the night of the thirty ¬second see, or hear by word of mouth that someone else had seen or heard by word of mouth Daisy Bell the criminal standing here and the notorious outlaw Big Red together?

Barbara & Beverley: We did.

Daisy Bell: Are you aware that it is an offence to look upon cattle?

Barbara: We had our eyes shut when we saw them.

Prime Minister: You may step down. The case for the prosecution is closed.

Judge: I think I may speak for Daisy Bell here when I say the defence rests.

Daisy Bell: You honour can I ask you a question?

Judge: Yes I suppose that's all right but keep it short it's time for a tea break.

Daisy Bell: Your honour is there such a thing as natural justice or is justice just a fancy name for laws that are composed merely to suit the powerful and the prejudiced?

Judge: I really don't think that we can discuss such matters. The law is justice by definition.

Daisy Bell: I want justice not the law.

Prime Minister: Your honour, our laws are made by and for our people.

Judge: Look I don't think this case should be allowed to drag on I'm already late for tea. Will the persecution sum up their case.

Prime Minister: There are two possible conclusions that the jury can come to (he refers to the audience) and they are: guilty of being cattle and contempt of court or contempt of court and guilty of being cattle.

Judge: Has the defence anything to add?

Daisy Bell: Your honour I want to say that...

Judge: No, very good. Anyone else?

Guard: Your honour I would like to bring it to the court's attention that Big Red the notorious outlaw bull has offered everyone involved in this case ten thousand dollars if Daisy Bell's case is indefinitely postponed.

Judge: Case declared indefinitely postponed. Guard, clear the court. But I warn you Daisy Bell if you are not out of this city in twenty four hours you will be re-arrested.

(all exit)

***

Scene Five: (patio of Deloris's garden Melissa enters)

Melissa: Dad are you out here (Albert enters with a handful of flowers, he is gardening)

Albert: Here I am Melissa I'm a bit confused on this point. When you weed flowers do you pull out the flowers or the weeds?

Melissa: You didn't go to the court today.

Albert: I told you I've been weeding the flowers.

Melissa: I can see.

Albert: It was my solicitor's wig I couldn't find it. I was going to wear one of your mother's wigs but it didn't look right.

(he suddenly pops on a woman's wig)

Melissa: You didn't go because you were afraid.

Albert: Me, afraid? A coward yes, afraid no. What happened to Daisy Bell?

Melissa: Big Red arrived on a white horse and whisked her away.

Big Red: (rushes in) Melissa!

Melissa: Red! (they embrace)

Big Red: Melissa, we're going away. I've got a car waiting outside.

Melissa: What about Daisy?

Big Red: I can't leave her behind.

Melissa: I don't like cattle.

Big Red: When you look into my big brown eyes how can you say that?

Melissa: I'm a city person Red, maybe it's best if we parted.

Big Red: Melissa, I can't hang about, I've got to get out of town before dark.

Melissa: Good luck Red.

Big Red: I've got to go. I'll send you a postcard.

Albert: Red I would just like to say...

Big Red: Bye

(Big Red exits)

Melissa: In the country Daisy and I would have had a battle royal, it's settled now. And besides there are still plenty of causes to fight for here in the city and Stud wants to help me fight them.

(Stud enters)

Stud: Have they gone?

Melissa: Afraid so.

Albert: Welcome Stud.

Stud: Yeah good, hi.

Albert: How about something to eat? I've cooked a roast. I can't cook but when you're hungry...

(Deloris enters carrying two suitcases, a hat and coat)

Deloris: Albert don't stand there gaping like a stuffed orangutan take these cases off of me.

Albert: Deloris you've come home.

Deloris: I've missed you Albert, I haven't had any one to nag for a week.

Melissa: Hello mother.

Deloris: Oh Melissa I've decided that you were right after all.

Melissa: About what?

Deloris: Oh I don't know, everything.

Stud: Yeah good, hi.

Deloris: Oh hello Stodge.

Albert: You're just in time for dinner. Burnt roast and claggy potatoes, let's all go in and we can decide whether to eat the dinner or cremate it.

(Freddy and Clara rush in)

Freddy: What's happened?

Clara: Yes, what's happened?

Melissa: Big Red rode in on his white horse and whisked Daisy away.

Clara: Thank God. Once you know people it's very hard to be prejudice against them.

Freddy: Clara I could hug you!

Clara: Sounds good to me.

Albert: We are about to have some dinner would you like to join us.

Freddy: Can we postpone that hug Clara dinner sounds great.

***

Scene Six: (a television studio)

Judy: This is the studio we will be shooting in PM.

Prime Minister: Good, good. Let's get on with the film.

Judy: Now stand here and smile, just turn your head a bit to get rid of all those shadows, here, let me brush your hair.

Prime Minister: I'm a busy man. Let's on with it.

Judy: Action roll 'em, take one.

Prime Minister: My government...

Judy: Cut.

Prime Minister: What!

Judy: You rubbed your nose. It won't look good. Camera, action, roll 'em, take two.

Prime Minister: My government...

Judy: Cut. You scratched your bum. It doesn't look good.

Prime Minister: Well let's hope I do it right this time.

Judy: Action, lights, roll 'em, take three.

Prime Minister: My government has quickly responded to the cattle problem in Australia. We have not been sitting on our bums and scratching our noses, we have taken strong action. Many cattle have been prosecuted for walking down the street, breathing in the same air as humans and not doing their shoe laces up properly. Our monetary policy although not as yet solving completely the pseudo-economical-political-unemployment-problem, brings great hope for the future. We have also struck against the assault on our society by cattle. The housing problem though not solved shows great promise of being solved in the future. We have rounded up cattle and deported them. Although education spending has not been increased, there are less cattle to be seen on our streets, I can therefore proudly say that my government has acquitted itself admirably after yet another glorious year of progress. With my government a rosy future lies ahead for every single Australian.

Judy: Cut and print.

(all exit)

***

Scene Seven: (Green Meadows Daisy Bell and Big Red enter arm in arm)

Daisy Bell: Oh Red why didn't we come back sooner? It's so lovely being back on the farm, we should never have gone away. There's nothing in the whole world nicer than being in the country in spring. The air's so fresh and everything's growing.

Big Red: The country's like medicine, you know it's good for you but you can only take it with sugar.

Daisy Bell: We don't need those city slickers Red the country's where we belong. The wide open spaces. Those city slickers live in fenced in paddocks without gates. They rush through their lives not knowing whether they're awake or asleep.

Big Red: What shall we do today?

Daisy Bell: We can just sit in the sun.

Big Red: I might stroll down to the post office and post a letter. Do you want to come for a walk?

Daisy Bell: What letter?

Big Red: A postcard for Melissa.

Daisy Bell: Now Red you're going to have to make your mind up and choose between me and Melissa.

Big Red: There's nothing I want more than to sit in the sunshine with you Daisy Bell. Maybe later we may pay a return visit to the big smoke when they have cooled their heels. They will see cattle can't be stopped.

Daisy Bell: Let's just enjoy the present.

Big Red: (sings) Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do

I'm half crazy all for the love of you

It won't be a stylish marriage

I can't afford a carriage

But you'll look neat, upon the seat

Of a bicycle built for two.

Daisy Bell: Moo!

(the song Daisy, Daisy is played)

***

### The End

That's all for now folks but if you'd like to explore more of Anthony's humour you can read Julio & Romiette. Very roughly based on a play by Shakespeare, Julio and Romiette is a love story with a difference. Kate is besieged by a doddering public servant, a very serious removal man and an Italian backpacker but she's not interested. Her parents have a strange obsession with their burnt umber lounge suite and if you add this to all the weird and wonderful characters the result is a seriously funny play.

***

### Anthony E Thorogood

Who the hell am I?

I was born in London England in 1953, which makes me a baby boomer I think. On emerging into the big wide world I enjoyed life thoroughly. My two sisters and I played on the Woolwich ferry, forever crossing backwards and forwards over the Thames and then, when we got bored with that, we had races in the foot tunnel under the Thames. It's amazing what can keep a small boy happy.

Dad ran a market stall in Woolwich's Beresford Square selling anything and everything. He was a natural Cockney salesman with all the patter that goes with it but when he was told to give it up or die from the cold, we packed up shop and migrated to Australia. Australia was great fun for a small boy from London, with snakes and kangaroos in the paddocks, unlimited sunshine and other boys who talked about nothing but sex!

I went to school like most people do but I was dyslexic and did not do well at all. Then one day, when I was about 15, I taught myself to read and after that I read books, lots of books. I won a scholarship to the University of Adelaide and while I was at University I started writing and staging plays. I found I could write funny lines that made people laugh and I could write good dialogue.

In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked at anything and everything. I got lots and lots of jobs all at once. I worked as an all-night waiter, a painter, junk mail distributor, gardener, builder's labourer and theatre technician to name a few. I gathered together a bundle of money and went walk about to North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Russia, China, India, Thailand, Scandinavia, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy... and the heady heights of the northern English industrial town of Leeds.

While on my travels I worked! I worked picking grapefruit in Israel, oranges in Greece, olives up the mountains in Crete, I was a head barman in a pub in Yorkshire, I worked in a youth hostel in the south of England, I worked all night in a soft drinks factory, I was a storeman for the department store Marks and Spencer, I was a waiter, a kitchen hand, a guinea-pig in a medical experiment and was even in a Bollywood movie in India.

It wasn't all fun and frolics though, I came close to death's door three times in England. I was catapulted off my touring bike by a truck in London, a caravan outside Salisbury and a Mini Minor in Stockport. During this time I also wrote my first book: A Foxtrot Through India. I met a girl named Sue from Yorkshire, Sue poor lass now edits my books. I brought Sue back to Australia and we bought one hundred acres in the country and spent a year building our own home from mud bricks, then we planted apple trees and started to make cider and ran a successful business making the best cider in the world, as one customer said.

In my youth I always enjoyed my old Dad's tales of his adventures in the navy in WWII and of his childhood hop picking in Kent, I think I got my love of storytelling from my Dad. I wrote a book on cider in 2008 after being awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel around the world and drink and research cider. My book: Cider Drink It, Make It, Cook with It was published later that year and sold out. I followed the success of my cider book by writing a series of madcap comic extravaganzas: Bigfoot Littlefoot & West, published in 2012. I followed Bigfoot Littlefoot and West with the Jack Hamma action adventure series starting with Shakespeare on the Roof and In Bed with Jane Austen. 2015 saw me writing three romantic travel adventures in my Continental Drift series starting with Sex Sardines and Sauerkraut. Having got the travel adventures out of my system it was back to Jack Hamma with Hi Jack, Poirot Packs a Punch, Licenced to Thrill, Blind Man's Buff and more on the way. I should mention here that I have plans to write a new zany comedy called Rempit Nethis but more on that later.

This is the bit where I now state that I am happily living the good life on our 5 acre property, on the beautiful island of Tasmania, spending my time walking, cycling, planting trees, growing vegetables and writing the odd book, very odd some people say.

I hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoy writing them.

I'd love to hear from you:

Click here to read my blog

Click here to find me on Facebook

Click here to find me on Twitter

Cheers Anthony E Thorogood

### What the hell do I write?

Jack Hamma: Action Adventures

### Shakespeare on the Roof:

Jack Hamma, an SAS Special Forces Commando, is sent on a top secret mission to assassinate a terrorist leader who is bunkered down on an island in the Indian Ocean. The action has only just begun when Jack and his co-assassin are ambushed by right wing terrorists. Jack is the action hero par excellence but has he met his match in the form of the beautiful Kashmere?

### In Bed with Jane Austen:

Jack Hamma receives an emergency phone call to escort a seventeen year old girl home from school but the Russian mafia has other ideas.

### Picnic with Picasso:

Jack awakes to find himself incarcerated in a completely blacked out dungeon. Who imprisoned him? Can he get away?

### Miss Marple Struts Her Stuff:

Jack Hamma is at it again. This is a relentless and, dare I say it, humorous thriller where every move is a false start and every clue is a red herring.

### Hi Jack:

Jack is in trouble, he is chained and cemented and thrown off the side of a boat - I was out cold until I hit the water. It was freezing and I immediately awoke. My senses had no time to figure out what was going on, I was in the sea, it was cold, I was heavy and sinking fast.

### Poirot Packs A Punch:

Jack is on Stags Head Moor in the north of England. The hunt is on and he is the hunted - The bullet was so close I could feel the air move as it whizzed past my head. A second bullet came even closer, if it was possible to get even closer without hitting me. Blood was running down my forehead and into my eyes, I had been hit.

### Licensed to Thrill:

Jack is in the Australian Bush, it's pitch black, there's a thunderstorm and an old tree crashes down, Jack takes shelter from the thunder, lightning and torrential rain and then he hears a scream.

### Blind Man's Buff:

Jack, Kashmere and the manic Manooka are climbing a sheer cliff, two thousand feet high. Kashmere is leading, she moves up the rock face, gets a new hold, Jack looks up and the rock face begins to crumble.

### Continental Drift: Romantic Travel Adventures

### Sex Sardines & Sauerkraut:

Texas is a feisty beauty from the USA Axel is a good looking novice from Australia. They meet at a border crossing in India, they are stranded, the border guards refuse to let them through. Axel saves the day but Texas isn't ready to owe him anything not even a thank you. Will love sparkle or will it wilt and die? 'Not as much sex as I expected but plenty of sauerkraut!'

### The Curly Wurley Sex Machine:

Johnathon Marvel had it all. The youngest billionaire in the world according to Time Magazine but Johnathon's world collapses and his various business ventures go belly up. Jonathon does what any sane person would do in his situation, he makes a run for it.

### Love in the Land of Milk and Honey:

Ash didn't have much of a childhood, his mother left before he was old enough to remember her and his father was a drunken bum, but Ash makes good. There is only one problem, he feels nothing for nobody. Ash takes off on an around the world marathon eventually hanging out with a couple of members of the Irish Republican Army but then he meets Adelaide a girl who knows her own mind and the fireworks begin.

### A Foxtrot Through India:

Opposites in every way, Josh and Samantha are kindred spirits from vastly different worlds. Falling deeply and powerfully in love, their attraction to one another defies everything they believe in, they share a passion that is bound to erupt like a volcano and then, who knows?

### Bigfoot Littlefoot & West:

### A series of madcap comic extravaganzas - the Marx Brothers and Agatha Christie all thrown into one.

### Death in the Australian Outback:

In Alice Springs, Constable Elizabeth West of the Territory Police is being interviewed for a promotion, it is an interview like no other. There is a drive by shooting, a double suicide, a shot is fired as a boy tries to protect his mother, West is shot at by a gang of bikies, a woman goes missing and West is abducted by a ruthless killer.

### Murder Mayhem and Madness:

Chief inspector Bigfoot wakes up in bed with a naked woman who just happens to be dead.

### Murder in the Australian Back Blocks:

Detective Bigfoot and Sergeant Elizabeth West are stalked by a heavily armed gunman in the Australian Outback.

### Death in the Sydney Opera House:

A young woman turns up dead on Sydney's Bonga-Bonga Beach. There are a string of murders in the Sydney Opera House...an utterly crazy comic whodunit.

### Murder Moves to London:

Our famous trio are on exchange in London England but life isn't all tourist buses and ice creams. A bank manager is shot dead and Police Sergeant West is stalked by a serial killer.

### The Elizabeth West Mysteries:

The precursor to the Death in the Australian Outback Series. Murder most foul comes to northern England and it is up to career woman Police Constable Elizabeth West to sort out the mess. Diabolical, haunting and a darn good read.

### Non Fiction and Other Works

### Freewheeling Tony's Bicycle Book:

'As a cyclist I found it entertaining, challenging and in parts, so funny. Very interesting.'

### Sugar Free Cooking in Sue's Vegetarian Kitchen:

Written in conjunction with Sue Thorogood. The eating of sugar can cause obesity, cancer, diabetes and dementia, that's the bad news, the good news is that you can create fabulous and tasty food without the little white crystals. Have a look at our cookbook it contains a brilliant collection of vegetarian recipes that even carnivores love to eat.

### Cider Drink It Make It Cook with It:

If you like cider and want to know about its history, how to cook with it and how to make it then this is the book for you. Includes a history of cider in Australia

### Melting Moments:

A book of comic quips about girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, working, eating, drinking, sleeping, God, life, death and the universe.

Don't forget I'd love to hear from you:

Click here to read my blog

Click here to find me on Facebook

Click here to find me on Twitter

Cheers Anthony E Thorogood
