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I was
approached by a gentleman with moleskin trousers on, with
the crossed pockets, leaning well back on the pelvis. I'd
never seen a bloke lean so far back without falling on his
arse... and it suddenly occured to me... it was these crossed
pockets... he'd obviously had no toys as a child!
"Here, young fella," he said, "I want a word with thee."
I said, "What is your trouble, Master?" (That's how they are,
round our way.)
He said, "It's our septic tank. I've had a very nasty letter
from the Council."
It was about
twice the size of this room, and the top of it was like one
of these horrible meringues gone wrong, with a six-inch crust
on it. I prodded it with a stick, and the swine sneered at
me: "Come any closer and I'll have yer."
My God!... it was my duty to destroy it.
So we got the big five-pound sticks of explosive, tied them
on the end of the cord, and tossed one in.
Plunk, it up-ended, and a big green bubble come up and winked
at me. And we heard the most evil chuckle as the swine swallowed
it.
I'm sure it thought I was feeding it.
There were
four and a half thousand tons of effluent, all of it got to
go. We got all the ends together, bit of wire, bit of fuse,
detonator. Then the man in the moleskins said: "What about
him down there?"
There was a bloke down the field in a bit of hedge, brushing
with a blunt hook.
I said: "He'll have to shift. He'll get the lot."
Twelve seconds later, four and a half thousand tons of effluent
leapt into the air. It climbed into the sky and, at 300 feet,
it mushroomed out, and a shaft of sunlight hit it. You could
see all the colours of the starling's wing, the greens and
the golds and the browns, light and dark, and a lot of bottle-green
in it, a lot of pig-muck, very sour smell, especially when
it's been in there for eighty-two years. Then it turned over
like an avenging cumulus, and he fled down the field, like
Sodom and Gomorrah, very like, and his face went "Ahhh!".
And he tried to run.
You can't run at 35 miles an hour, with clogs on, in a ploughed
field.
He'd only made four yards, and he was carrying 25 pounds on
his boots then. Visibly falling, and the second time he came
up he got a face full of shite and a double hernia.
The main flight went hissing on its way, then it went to a
grey fog and this thing wriggled and writhed on the ground
and then rose up like a phoenix arising from the ashes.
The solids had mixed with the liquids and gone into a goo,
so that when he lifted his arms... he had a pair of multi-coloured
gossamer wings...
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