The Goats From Gemma Meadows (Part 12)

Part 11 is here.

Goldberg wasn't used to driving at night, and the country roads weren't particularly well-lit, so the journey home was slower and more cautious than usual.

Sarah watched the forest's shadow gliding past, looked up at the dark trees as they stretched their eerie fingers into the murky sky, and thought back on the day's events. It had been frightening at times, true, but it was also the most excitement she'd ever had. Goats, she decided, must take whatever excitement they can get.

Pete wondered what to do next. Should he forget the whole ordeal, go back to being a goat and live out the remainder of his fifteen to eighteen year life expectancy wondering what could have been? Or should he continue to secretly betray his friends in the hope of a reward that may never come? It was a good question. He didn't want to be a goat for the rest of his life.

Cliffey fell asleep the moment they got in the van, and stayed that way right up until they encountered the troll from under the bridge.

Nobody saw it coming. One moment the road ahead had been clear and peaceful; the next, it was being blocked by half a tonne of repulsive, angry troll.

Goldberg had slammed on the brakes in time to avoid hitting it, but instantly decided that this was the wrong thing to do because running it over would have at least bought them some time.

But now the troll was charging at them, head down, roaring his insane roar.

The impact made a mighty WHUMP and sent the van spinning back down the track. Goldberg mashed the accelerator with under his foot in an attempt to flee, but this just caused the van to stall.

The engine sputtered pathetically, then went horribly silent.

"Damn!" cried Goldberg. "Damn damn damn!" Desperately, he wiggled the key in the ignition, trying to get going again.

WHAM! The troll once more collided with the van, nearly knocking the vehicle clear off its wheels.

The goats were terrified. The engine seemed to have given up completely. Goldberg, in a last effort to scare the thing away, honked the horn loudly.

No reaction. The troll bowed its ugly head, preparing to deal the final blow.

Goldberg and the two goats braced for impact.

Wait a minute.

Two goats?

* * *

Peikko and T'pon had been searching the forest for what felt like hours now, and they had found no clue as to where their colleague might be.

"What I don't understand," grumbled T'pon, "is why everyone voted for Jo-Tunn to be League president. He was lazy and worthless back then and he's the same way now. Except he's fatter."

Peikko cocked a warty eyebrow in bemusement. "You didn't vote for Jo-Tunn?"

"Absolutely not," T'pon retorted. "I voted for Karl."

Up went Peikko's other eyebrow. "Karl?!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You must have been the only one."

"I don't see why. I guess all the other trolls couldn't see past his stupid human name. Close-minded idiots. I should have run for the presidency myself, rather than let everyone get behind Jo-Tunn just because he's got a nice, traditonal troll name."

"But surely you'll admit that Jo-Tunn is good at keeping things organised?"

"I'll admit no such thing. We both know that you're the brains of the operaton, Peikko. Jo-Tunn's just a-"

T'pon's political ranting was cut short by an unhinged and rather trolly roar coming from the road behind them.

The two trolls looked at each other in dismay, then started running towards the noise's source.

"Karl? Was that you?!"

* * *

Goldberg looked around the van.

Cliffey was strapped in his seat, wide awake and paralysed with fear.

As was Pete.

Very slowly, Goldberg turned his gaze back to the road.

The troll was not charging at the van. Instead, his attention had turned to the small goat running in circles around him.

"Hey TROLL!" shouted Sarah, her voice quavering ever so slightly. "You want the goat who demolished your marshmallow wall? Come and GET me!"


Of course, Cliffey was the one who had devoured the marshmallow wall, but trolls are notorious for being unable to tell the difference between one goat and another, so Karl chased after Sarah as if she had stolen his soul.

"RAAAAAAAWARGH!"

Sarah was terrified, naturally. But she was quick, and her brave little diversion gave Goldberg time to get the van going again. With engine roaring and headlights on full beam, he stepped on the accelerator and sped towards the troll that was menacing his goat.

Karl may have been mad with fury, but he wasn't stupid. As soon as he noticed that dented behemoth roaring towards him, he wasted no time in getting out of its way.


Sarah kept running, just as Goldberg had hoped. He drove up alongside her as she ran, leant out of his window, reached out his arm, and...


...failed to pick her up. Oh no.

Goldberg hit the brakes and began a three-point turn to try again.

"Hurry up Goldberg!" cried Pete, leaning out of the passenger side window. "The troll's right behind her!"

Indeed he was, and Goldberg did his best to turn the van around as quickly as possible. But Goldberg was no stunt driver, and as fast as Sarah ran towards the van, Karl had no trouble catching up to her.

Sarah collapsed, exhausted and petrified. Gasping for breath, she could only screw her eyes tightly shut as the troll's ghastly stench got nearer and nearer and nearer...

TO BE CONTINUED

Signs of Carboard

Another Sunday, another go at doing a car boot sale. This one went rather better.

Sarah, Cliffey and I spent Saturday night at Sarah's house, with her brother Stuart and rather a lot of pizza keeping us company. We rose early on Sunday morning - some found it easier than others - and headed down to BP* to kick it off.

And we did fairly well. My old record player went within the first hour (although strangely enough nobody wanted the records that I'd hoped would go with it - seems there's no market for The Jam, George Michael, and a compilation of 'BBC Space Themes' nowadays), as did my bag of Action Man figures and several of Cliffey's knickknacks.

However, as the morning wore on, we became concerned at the non-sale of two important items: Cliffey's table football table, and Sarah's dad's TV.

Expectations had been high for these two - their starting prices had were £25 and £15 respectively - but there were no takes and the slow dwindling of the asking prices did nothing to change that.

Morning became afternoon, and we started to panic. Not so much for the profit; more because the three of us wouldn't be able to fit in the car if this pair of relatively hefty things was coming with us.

"TV for a fiver?!" we cried desperately at any and all passers-by. Lunchtime had been and gone, and the majority of traders had called it a day, including the lovely lady whose stall had been pitched next to ours (and whose CD rack I eventually bought for a pound out of sympathy - more on that later). We had spent the last hour or so 'modelling'** the football table, to no avail. The situation was looking bleak, and as I headed to the clubhouse to hear the results of the £100 prize draw, it looked like we would have to consider just tossing the football table on the cordoned-off rubbish area and giving Sarah's dad his TV back.

But as I gazed out of the bar's window, I noticed two things:

1) A large red car had pulled up alongside Xander, and...
2) The football table, which had sat alongside our stall all day like an albatross around our collective neck, had vanished.

Upon returning from the raffle results (we didn't win), I was informed that some men had bought the TV for £5 (on the proviso that Cliffey carry it to their car, which was reportedly parked a country mile away), and that the people in the red car had taken the football table for £2 (except Sarah had forgotten to actually take the money off them before they drove away, so it was effectively free).

So we dubbed the day a moderate success and headed off. Sarah had gained £5 from the sale of the TV, I had made £12 or so for flogging my various trinkets, and Cliffey had trousered somewhere between £20 and £30, which is pretty tasty.

Even better, those are the figures after we had, between us, spent a small nation's royal mint on other people's stuff. A quick rundown of our purchases:

Joel - Blondie's Parallel Lines on vinyl for £1; Charizard plushie for £1; melodica for £2; aforementioned CD rack for £1; old Liverpool home strip for 50p - back reads "Gerrard 17".

Sarah - Big fuzzy blue jacket for £2; tribal African face thing, £4.

Cliffey - Giant Tigger plushie for £1 - "big enough to spoon"; Cluedo board game for £1 (I think).

And afterwards we went to Harvester. So a massive success really.

Joel.

*The name of the field in Sully where this shit goes down. I have no idea why it's called that.

**Or 'playing on to pass the time during which nobody wanted to buy anything'. Whichever.

Also Dr. Dre Was There

You know how it is by now. I miss one day, and then I decide that I might as well miss two, then three, and before I know 11 days have gone by and I still haven't updated my blog.

Still, it's not like much has been happening around here lately. Sarah downloaded a game called Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse and she's been playing that and I've been watching her (it's really awesome, I've actually made sure she doesn't play it without me, lest I miss something important), so that's taken up pretty much all of our time recently*.

Oh, although I should mention that we have a new housemate. His name is Marius and he's Albanian.

Aside from that...yeah, just the game and work. The Next sale has been on all this week, and Sarah and I both had some pretty heavy shifts in preparation for it. My contract actually runs out a week today, although it remains to be seen if it will be renewed.

Speaking of sales, Cliffey and I had planned to pop to Sully and sell some of our tat out of Xander's rear at their car boot sale. We loaded all of his stuff in the car, went to my parents' house to load some of my stuff in the car, and drove all the way to Sully, only to discover this sign:

Oh and we went to Techniquest on Wednesday. That was awesome. I played the Rugrats theme on a stone xylophone and Cliffey built a bridge and Sarah had a Calippo and an Asian man stole my go on the water cannon thing. And afterwards we bought some fish and cooked it and ate it and I thought it was delicious and Sarah quite liked it but Cliffey was a bit disappointed.

Okay, it does seem like several things have happened that probably would each have been worthy of their own entry. But I've been busy, dammit!

Joel.

*Much to Cliffey's chagrin.

Dive-Bomb Dave, Seagull Scourge of the Streets

A seagull tried to dive-bomb me this morning. Gaz warned me last week that this sort of thing went on around here, but I assumed he was just some sort of bird magnet because in almost a year of living here I'd never encountered any territorial seabirds.

But I had just set off and was listening to Hospice by The Antlers* when I heard a squawk. I turned around and found myself eye-to-eye with a frowny looking seagull, swooping towards me at about head height.

I ducked, and once this mad-eyed thing had passed over me I ran, quite fast.

But anyway! This blog isn't supposed to be about my morning jolt of SHEER BIRD TERROR. It's supposed to be my triumphant return to blogging after a week or so without updates. We managed to ruin another computer and we had to wait a few days for Sarah's dad to sort us aht, but all is well now.

So how are you? Good?

Joel.

PKMN

Cliffey decided a little while ago that we ought to throw a Pokémon Party - he'd heard stories about them and they sounded pretty cool. Everyone had to dress up as a Pokémon*, obviously, but it went deeper than that. Each room (except the ones we wanted to keep the rabble out of) became a gym: Cliffey's room was the electric gym, the garage was the grass gym, and the oven was the fire gym. You get the idea. Each gym had activites relevant to its theme, so electric gym had the N64, grass gym had grass-related activites, and the fire gym was...well, that was just an oven. We were going to make some chips but we forgot about that.

And most of these activities were, inevitably, translated into drinking games. The psychic gym had a higher or lower game, whereby an incorrect guess meant taking a drink, while a correct guess meant choosing someone else to take a drink.
All good fun. But obviously what you're all waiting for is the list of which pokémon were present. Well, I don't remember all of them, and the ones I do remember, I don't necessarily remember the names of the people who were them. Still, here's a partial list; do help to fill in the gaps if you can.

Charmeleon (Not sure who this was)
Charizard  (Again not sure, but they had crazy dragoneye contacts in so that was cool)
Squirtle (Think this was Dave)
Pidgey (Cartwright in a rather underwhelming towel-and-tape attempt)
Jigglypuff (Sarah, complete with marker pen and pinkish hair)
Zubat (Jen)
Psyduck (Ollie)
Poliwhirl (Tom, and possibly someone else?)
Machoke (Think it was Pat, but I'm a bit unsure between him and Dave because they were both painted blue; also Olly C.)
Bellsprout (Padbury, who later evolved into Man with a lampshade on his head)
Tentacool (Me with leggings on my head)
Onix (Meg)
Exeggcute (Luke, who later 'evolved' into Exeggutor simply by losing some of the balloons attached to his head and gaining a leafy thing)
Tangela (Elen, although this is rather dubious as she only decided on her costume after arriving)
Scyther (Mark in a rather impressive effort; his mum has been desperately searching for photos from the night)
Ditto (there had been several jokes in the runup that someone would come as a Ditto who had transformed into them, but I don't think anyone actually tried that in the end)
Snorlax (Cliffey; debate still rages as to whether Snorlax is blue or green but there we are)

Yes, it was limited to the first 151, and fortunately nobody strayed from that boundary. I wouldn't have minded - Gold, Silver and Crystal were arguably better than Red, Blue and Yellow - but Cliffey would.

I was just annoyed at whoever thought Tinie Tempah was a more appropriate choice of music than MIDI files of the game music on endless repeat.

I think it was Liv. Curse you, Liv!
Joel.

*There was some wiggle-room, naturally. We had an Ash, a Team Rocket, an Officer Jenny, a Nurse Joy, and Ed even dressed as an attack, complete with descending HP bar.