STAN’S SAUSAGE ADVENTURE

NEW YEAR’S EVE

«It’s New Year’s Eve. » announced Stan through a mouthful of bacon.

No one said anything. The family continued chomping their way through breakfast and Stan carried on chewing his bacon and trying to cut his way through an obstinate sausage.

“Yes, it’s New Year’s Eve” announced Stan again, this time more strident and resolute, afraid that no one had heard him the first time.

“Yes we know” groaned the family in a collective groan to stop Stan repeating the bleedingly obvious several times.

“New Year’s Eve” enthused Stan as he finally triumphed over his unwilling sausage. “And as you know, it is time for us all to have an adventure.”

There was a short silence and then a longer than before collective family groan.

“Oh gawd” groaned everyone

“Go pack your bags!” ordered Stan. “I want everyone by the front door in ten minutes ready for an adventure.”

“What do we take?” asked mum

“Where are we going?” asked Elena

“How long are we going for?” asked Tom

“I don’t know” retorted Stan. “This is an adventure!”

Poor old Elena and Tom. It wasn’t easy living with a barmy dad

“I’m not coming round your house” their friends would say. “Your dad’s barmy bonkers.”

The MoMSBI

Friends, family, neighbours, everyone thought Stan was barmy bonkers mad, and he was barmy bonkers mad, Stan was a mad scientist and mad inventor.  That was his job. A highly important job, working for the Government at the Ministry of Mad Science and Bonkers Inventions – the MoMSBI.

Stan had a special job at the MoMSBI, he was in charge of the” Department of Useless Machines and Bonkers Operating Systems” (DUMBOS) and his job was (you’ve guessed) to make mad machines.

Stan was in charge of a large team of mad scientists and potty professors and insane inventors. They all worked in a top secret underground laboratory that was so secret, that often, Stan forgot where he worked, along with the hundreds of other mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors who also forgot where they worked, with the result that it was very rare that enough people actually turned up to work to invent anything.

And this was the way Stan liked it and this was the way that the Government of the World liked it and this was the way the Minister in charge of the MoMSBI liked it and everyone was happy that all the nation’s mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors we’re busy travelling up and down the country trying to remember where they worked and not inventing anything deadly dangerous .

ONE SUNNY CROQUET DAY

For a very long time the world’s mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors had worked inventing deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns, and of course when there are lots of deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns, there will always be someone ready to use them.

Then one sunny day, as the President of the World was out in his garden playing croquet, he thought it would be a bit barmy if someone used all the deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns to destroy everything, because afterwards there would be nothing left – no more people, no more sunny days, no more croquet… So, he took a decision.

“People of the World” announced the President of the World in an international interplanetary TV broadcast. “Let it be on Earth and across the universe, there will be no more deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns. We’re not going to make any of those anymore.”

Cheers went up all across the world, and all those parts of the Universe that could pick up the TV signal, there would be no more deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns.

However all the world’s mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors were sad, What would they invent now? They all got Post Insanity Severe Stress Ecentricity Disorder, and went even madder, pottier and insaner than before.

“Oh My Sausages” exclaimed Stan. “What am I going to do now that I can’t invent deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns?”

And all the other the mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors said the same. They scratched their balding heads, they twisted their spectacles, they pulled on their long moustaches, they chewed on the sleeves of their white coats, they twizzled and twanged their spotted bow ties, they got even more Post Insanity Severe Stress Ecentricity Disorder than before until, the Government of the World announced the creation of the  MoMSBI – like the Chimpanzee House at the Big City Zoo, all the world’s mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors would be put in a big undergound secret laboratory to do their mad, potty, insane stuff, but they wouldn’t invent anymore deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns.

STAN’S MAD INVENTIONS

At the beginning Stan was happy inventing mad inventions. He invented the first ever Cornflake that would never go soggy in milk, (providing you didn’t add milk). He invented the world’s first Crinkled Potato Crisp Uncrinkler (The CPCU). He invented the two-wheeled unicycle. He invented Unfarting Underpants, that would absorb nasty bottom burps. He even invented the Bovine Teleportation System (The BTS), to teleport cows straight into the kitchen and give everyone fresh milk. But the day came when Stan reached the very limit of his limitless intelligence, the day he was asked to invent an impossible invention, The Perfect Cup of Tea Maker. After years of work and thousands of cups of tea, Stan gave up.

Time had come to stop inventing and  stay home and just have adventures, the time had come to leave the MoMSBI and the DUMBOS, but Stan didn’t actually have to leave, because where he worked was so secret that he couldn’t remember where it was, and no one who worked there could tell him where it was because that information was top secret.

In truth Stan hadn’t been to work for longer than he could remember, and he couldn’t remember how long that was because he was so forgetful.  In fact the only reason Stan had invented everything he had done, was because he had forgotten to go home because he had forgotten where he lived.

Stan finally got home when a potty professor colleague had remembered Stan’s address. Of course no one knew how to get there, so the other mad scientists, potty professors and insane inventors, had wrapped Stan up in a big cardboard box, written his address on the lid and sent him home by post.

And this explains how Stan got home and just how barmy he was and it brings us nicely back to breakfast in Stan’s house which is where we started this story, all about Stan and family’s New Year’s Eve adventure.

«It’s New Year’s Eve. » announced Stan through a mouthful of bacon.

No one said anything. The family continued chomping their way through breakfast and Stan carried on chewing his bacon and trying to cut his way through an obstinate sausage.

“Yes, it’s New Year’s Eve” announced Stan again, this time more strident and resolute, afraid that no one had heard him the first time.

“Yes we know” groaned the family in a collective groan to stop Stan repeating the bleedingly obvious several times.

“New Year’s Eve” enthused Stan as he finally triumphed over his unwilling sausage. “And as you know, it is time for us all to have an adventure.”

There was a short silence and then a longer then before collective family groan.

“Oh gawd” groaned everyone

“Go pack your bags!” ordered Stan. “I want everyone by the front door in ten minutes ready for an adventure.”

“What do we take?” asked mum

“Where are we going?” asked Elena

“How long are we going for?” asked Tom

“I don’t know” retorted Stan. “This is an adventure!” He paused for thought, because, even if you don’t know where you’re going on your adventure, you at least need some vague idea, if only to know what direction you are going to turn at the end of the street.

“Sausages!” exclaimed Stan. “We are going on a sausage adventure.”

Why not?  it was no less crazy than other adventures they had been on.

Last year they had gone mountaineering in Holland, following Stan’s theory that unprecedented movements in the Earth’s tectonic plates had suddenly shifted Mount Everest from the Himalayas to the outskirts of Amsterdam. So, the family had packed their mountaineering gear and zapped off to Holland using Stan’s Bovine Teleportation System (that also worked for humans.) Surprisingly Stan and family had found no mountains in Holland, giving Stan the idea of inventing a “Grow your own mountain” seed. Pop the seed in the ground, water generously and wait a few million years for your moutain grow. He had submitted the idea to the Royal Horticultural Society, but the green-fingered ladies and gentlemen on the society’s “Committee for New, Exciting and Exotic plants”, were unimpressed.

The year before Stan had built a submarine and they had spent the New Year’s break seeking out the legendary lost city of Atlantis in the boating lake in the local park (The theory behind this was the newly-opened Atlantis Fish and Chip shop in the local high street from where Stan had ordered home delivery Fish and Chips. When they were delivered, the spotty young man who came to the door had announced himself as “The Man from Atlantis”, leading Stan to think what he thought (and you can imagine the rest).

Stan’s family had grown used to his barmy adventures, truth to tell that New Year would not be New Year without a bonkers adventure. Besides what else was there to do at New Year? Apart from a few false Scotsmen flailing round in kilts, there is never anything on TV, and

Tom and Elena never got invited to any New Year parties because their friends thought that they were as bonkers as their dad. Come to think of it Tom and Elena didn’t have many friends, though I can confirm that they were not barmy like their father. As for their mum (Mrs Stan-because that was what she liked to be called) she was not completely mad, just slightly eccentric. She enjoyed knitting and was passionate about space travel. She had decided to dedicate her life to knitting the first rocket to Mars. Anyway New Year in the Bonkers household (because that was the family’s real name – Bonkers and Stan’s official title was Dr Bonkers) was all about adventures.

(Back to the story)

“We’re going on a sausage adventure!” exclaimed Stan excitedly, already salivating at the thought of sausages, big, thick succulent sausages.

Stan stood up (because until now he had actually been sitting down, although I had not mentioned this positional fact.) So Stan stood up, took on a serious air and outsretchted his arms (or what was left of them after  having tested a very dangerous rocket, back in the days when he made those kind of sad and mad inventions) and Stan announced that this new adventure would be to find the world’s most perfect sausage. A thick, tasty, easy-to-cut, universal, vegan, vegetarian, joyous, carnivorous not obstinate sausage – a world sausage that would satisfy every family at every breakfast table the world over because happiness was (or is) a good morning sausage.

“What is a sausage?” demanded Stan from his dumbfounded family, who were used to adventures with submarines and teleportation systems and rockets and complicated devices, but nothing as simple as a sausage.

“A sausage,” continued Stan, “is a sausage, a mix and mash and mayhem of ingredients in. a skin that Sausengineers  (the technical and scientific name for those who invent and make sausages) have invented and reinvented over the years to suit taste and fashion and convenience ,and by this way have diversified, diluted and demeaned the true sausage. So different are sausages now, that the time has come for us to seek out the One True Sausage, acceptable and edible by all. By food fad, by religion, by race, are we all divided, but if I can bring the One True Sausage to the world, I can unite us all, regardless of difference around the Planetary breakfast table and bring peace and love and understanding and sausages. After years of making deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns and mad inventions, I want to make something useful and peaceful.”

Stan was sweating. He was shaking and quaking with emotions, his big bonkers professor forehead running with sweat, his “too old yellow sweaty” professor shirt, drenched in yellow. His speech had come from the heart. He collapsed in his chair. Everyone applauded. This was not a mere New Year adventure that Stan had presented, this was the quest of a lifetime. The Quest for the Universal Sausage.

To Be Continued