Warning. This is a long read. It’s gonna take you at least 20 minutes.  The latest version of my new story. A lot of mad inventions and sausages

STAN’S SAUSAGE ADVENTURE

 

In this story you will meet

Dr Professor Stan Bonkers (aka Stan or Mr Stan) and his wife Mrs Dolores Bonkers (aka Mrs Stan) and their two children; Tom and Elena Bonkers

 

 

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 (and DUMBOS)

 

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, for all unicyclists who found it hard to balance with just one wheel. He invented Unfarting Underpants, that would absorb nasty bottom burps. He even invented the Bovine Teleportation System (The BTPS), 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.

 

 

 

MOUNTAINEERING IN HOLLAND

Or

NEW, EXCITING AND EXOTIC GARDEN DEVELOPMENTS

 

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 mountain 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 Garden Developments”, were unimpressed.

 

The tweed-clad committee listened politely and patiently as Stan explained his new invention. After a long but enthusiastic discourse, Stan sat down. Presently the chairwoman of the committee, a lady of advancing years, dressed in tweed and coiffed with a deerstalker hat, leaned forward and told Stan that though his invention was interesting, they judged it as “superfluous to garden requirements.” Moreover, no one would wait a million years to grow a mountain in their garden.

 

Stan went home, disappointed but undeterred. He then had his next brainwave, a special growth chemical that would turn molehills into mountains.

 

“Mr Stan” said the tweed clad deerstalker lady after Stan had presented his new invention to the Committee for New, Exciting and Exotic Garden Developments, “No one wants molehills in their garden let alone mountains. You would be far better off inventing something useful like a fast breeder nuclear compost reactor.”

 

 

 

THE MAN FROM ATLANTIS

 

The year before Stan had built a submarine and the family 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). He consulted old maps and old books and even older maps and older books and calculated that if the spotty youth had been able to deliver fish and chips from Atlantis in under half an hour, the only place that the fabled lost city could possibly be was at the bottom of the boating lake in the local park

 

 

 

FALSE SCOTSMEN AND KNITTING A ROCKET TO MARS

 

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? There is never anything on TV, apart from a few false Scotsmen flailing round in kilts pretending to have a Happy Hogmonay.

 

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, though her real name was Dolores) 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, so, she just spent New Year’s Eve knitting quietly whilst watching false Scotsmen flailing round in kilts on TV.

 

New Year in the Bonkers household (because that was the family’s real name – Bonkers and Stan’s official title was Dr Professor Bonkers) was all about adventures.

 

(Back to the story)

 

 

 

THE QUEST FOR THE UNIVERSAL SAUSAGE

 

“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.), and assumed a serious air. He outstretched his telescopic arms* and announced that this new adventure would be to find the world’s most perfect sausage.

 

“A thick, tasty, easy-to-cut sausage, because happiness is a good morning sausage and this morning I ate a most obstinate and tasteless sausage.

 

“What is a sausage?” demanded Stan passionately 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, though for Stan, a sausage was far from a simple affair

 

“A sausage,” continued Stan raising his voice and trembling with emotion, “was a sausage. Nowadays though, it is 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.”

 

Stan was sweating. He was shaking and quaking with emotions after his impassioned speech.  His big bonkers professor forehead was running with sweat. His “too old yellow sweaty” professor shirt, was drenched sweat in and even yellower than ever. His speech had come from the heart. He collapsed in his chair. So impressed were the family that everyone applauded. This was not a mere New Year adventure, this was the quest of a lifetime. The Quest for the One True Sausage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAN’S TELESCOPIC ARMS

 

Let us stray a while from the main story.  Before we begin the quest for the Universal Sausage, I need to enlighten you all on a couple of things.

 

First of all, STAN’S TELESCOPIC ARMS, one of his more useful and successful inventions.

 

Years before, when Stan had made deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns, he had had a “small” accident in his laboratory.

 

It was early one Monday morning, a time most unconducive for work, Stan, still half asleep and thus even more forgetful than ever, had forgotten that he had switched on a deathray machine he was getting ready to test. He sat down at his workbench, stretched his right arm out across the bench to grab his morning laboratory cuppa and “whizz, fizz, boom,” the deathray sliced his arm clean off.

 

“Oh dear” said Stan. “It’s a good job I’m ambidextrous.” And with that he switched off the deathray and drank his morning cuppa using his left hand.

 

Later on the same day, on his way to the canteen, Stan had forgotten he still had a bomb in the pocket of his white coat. As he fumbled around in his pocket to find the lab keys -BOOOOOOM, he accidentally triggered the bomb which blew off most of his left arm.

 

“Oh dear,” said Stan again. “I’ve got no arms. How am I going to eat my lunch?” A fact which annoyed Stan, for not only was he very hungry, but on Mondays there was his best ever favourite lunch at the canteen – sausage, egg and chips.

 

As luck would have it, Stan had been working on a new invention – telescopic arms to equip soldiers so they could fire even longer guns than before. That afternoon, Stan’s colleagues (at least those who had remembered to come to work mainly because they had forgotten to go home), plonked Stan on an operating table, and after a few hours of wiring, welding and riveting,(like in all the best science fiction films), they had fitted Stan with telescopic arms. Stan was very happy with his new arms, but he was even happier because one of the canteen ladies has saved him a plate of sausage egg and chips, and now with his new arms, Stan could finally have his best, favourite lunch of the week.

 

We are embarking on the Quest of the Universal Sausage – this obviously means a fair amount of global travel. To get where we might go, we are going to use Stan’s Bovine Teleportation System (which works for cows and also humans)

 

 

THE BOVINE TELEPORTATION SYSTEM

(and how and why it got invented.)

or

(HOW TO GET COWS ON THE MOON IF ONLY BY ACCIDENT)

 

Stan lived with his Bonkers family in their wonky house at the top of a very steep hill, that was so big and so steep, that it took the postman all day to cycle to the top to deliver the morning post , which was actually the evening post or even the next day’s post, by the time it finally got delivered.

 

The house wasn’t wonky because it was built on a hill. There are many thousands of houses all across the world that are built on hills or mountains and most of them are seemingly solid affairs, but when your house is bulit by a wonky builder wearing upside down spectacles and using back to front plans, it will be quite wonky. However, when the builder is also so forgetful and so scatter-brained, that he forgets what he is building and gets all his plans mixed up with other plans, the house will be very wonky.

 

The Bonkers’ house was a large, imposing red brick affair, standing on its own, as far away from other houses as possible and as high on the hill as it was possible to build a house. It had three or four floors of differing sizes and each slanting in a different direction. There were towers, spires, domes and turrets that the builder had added because he kept getting all his plans mixed up. Strangest of all (as if all this wasn’t strange enough), at the very top of the highest point of the house, Stan had insisted on building a lighthouse to ward off low-flying space craft.

 

Stan wanted a house on top of a hill because he felt safer that way.

“We’ll never be be flooded, not living on top of a hill,” Stan would repeat regularly and reassuringly every time it rained.

 

“This high up, we can see people coming for miles around, so if it’s someone we don’t want to see, we have plenty of time to hide,”  Stan would often add.

 

But, no one ever came to the wonky house to see the Bonkers family

 

 

It had been years since the milkman’s puny little milk float hadn’t made it up the hill. It had been years that the family hadn’t had fresh milk.  Stan could have invented a rocket-powered milk float or a helicopter milk float, instead he decided on a Bovine Teleportation System. The idea was whacky, but simple.

 

Invent a teleportation system like you get in science fiction films. Strap it to a cow and then every morning at the press of a button, zap the cow from its field, into the kitchen, squeeze the milk out of it, and then send it (the cow) back.

As luck would have it, there was a farm with a big herd of black and white cows at the bottom of the hill.

 

Stan set to work making a cow-friendly, individual, strap-on teleportation module.  Then, one dark night, Stan crept out under the cover of the very dark darkness, crept down the hill and strapped teleportation modules to all the cows. Over the coming days, Stan tried to zap cows from the farm into the kitchen. To the surprise and delight of his family, the first cow actually worked.

 

Stan stood behind a big console of dials and screens and flashing lights. He slowly and ceremoniously pulled a big lever. Things went ping, flashing lights flashed even more, wheels whirred, cogs grinded, whizzing things whizzed.  The machine buzzed and hummed and buzzed and hummed again and then WHOOOOSH! – a rush of wind and a puff of smoke and a rather confused cow appeared in the kitchen.

 

Mrs Stan plonked her milking stool beside the cow, twanged a few teats and filled up bottles with fresh creamy milk. No sooner had she finished milking than Stan pushed the lever again and the cow disappeared. Beginner’s luck.

 

On the second attempt the cow disappeared in flight. On the third attempt the cow exploded in the kitchen, on the fourth attempt, Stan teleported three cows, then when he sent them back, he got the coordinates wrong and sent them all to the Moon, which more than surprised a group of astronauts who had just landed there.

 

No matter. Stan carried on dematerialising cows until one day, an angry , breathless farmer brandishing a pitchfork and a shotgun came hobbling up the garden path.(In most stories the farmer would have charged up the garden path, but as you may remember, the Bonker’s family house was on a very very high hill and anyone wanting to charge up it would probably have dropped dead with exhaustion by the time they had managed to reach the top.)

 

«What you done with all my cows?» roared  the red faced farmer breathless farmer with as he battered and banged on the front door. Stan was shaking with fear. Mrs Stan was hysterical. Elena and Tom were hiding under their beds

 

«I know you’re in there» screamed the farmer as he waved his pitchfork

 

«I’m gonna have ‘ee»

 

It was then that Stan noticed the farmer brandishing a teleportation unit he’d probably removed from one of the cows.

 

«What this ‘ere?» the farmer shouted. «What’s this contraption. doing on my cows?»

 

Stan’s brain suddenly had a massive wave. He crawled over to his big flashing, buzzing console, pushed the big lever and WHOOOOOSH – the farmer disappeared.

 

That evening, on the news, there was a live press conference from Cape Canaveral. A NASA spokesman confirmed that US Astronauts had found a mad farmer and three cows on the moon, however this could not be taken as proof that the Moon was home to any other intelligent life forms.

 

This was also how Stan discovered that the Bovine Teleportation System could work on humans.

 

 

THE QUEST BEGINS

 

It was time to begin the Quest for the One True Sausage.

 

Just how do you begin a quest?

 

This is not like a search. Obviously you are looking for something, but it is far more grandiose and heroic than looking for your car keys or other mislaid items. This isn’t like finding your way when you’re lost either, this is a quest – a global or even interplanetary search for a thing that you’re not even sure exists.

 

Of course this begs the question, why go looking for something that you’re not even sure is there? And where do you start your quest? And when do you finish your quest? Just because you think you’ve found what you were looking, doesn’t mean that you’ve found exactly what you were seeking. There might something even bigger and better out there.

 

“This is a global quest” announced Stan. “We will travel the world in search of sausage perfection. We will start our sausage quest in Germany because they are a famous sausage nation, namely with Frankfurters and Bratwurst

 

Stan continued. “From Germany we shall continue the European leg of our tour with a stop in France to taste their Andouillette, and then a trip to Spain for some Chorizo, then on to Rome to get some Salami and Pepperoni. From Europe we will head to New York to pick up some hot dogs and then we’re off to Thailand in search of their sausage, the Sai Ua. After our Thai sausage experience, we will zap to the Philippines and taste the Longganisa, which I believe is an unusually long pork sausage …”

 

As Stan paused for breath, Tom made a suggestion.

 

“Dad, that’s a lot of teleportation for sausages, and what happens if the BTPS breaks down leaving us stranded in a sausage predicament?

 

“Yeah” added Elena. “Couldn’t we start at the butcher’s down the high street? He’s got loads of sausages.”

 

“I agree” said Dolores emphatically, which more than surprised Stan, because his wife was never very emphatic about anything other than knitting space rockets.

 

“Why travel around the whole world, when what we seek may be just a few minutes’ walk from our own front door?”

 

Obviously Stan hadn’t considered this. It was far too simple and he wasn’t used to simple concepts. His brain wasn’t made that way. Everything had to be complicated.

 

“Go-to-the-butcher’s-to-look-for-sausages” mouthed Stan very slowly as the idea just started to dawn on him.

 

“Go-to-the-butcher’s-to-look-for-sausages” he mouthed again.

 

“How do we get there?” he asked presently. “Can we teleport? Do I need to build us a rocket? I could quickly knock us up a helicopter, it’s easier than a rocket.”

 

“We walk there Stan,” said Dolores

 

“Walk?”

 

“Yes Stan, we walk,” explained Dolores. “You know, using our legs, one foot in front of the other … walking.”

 

Stan had never really walked anywhere, he had always had different devices to get around such as his rocket-powered roller skates or his bionic pogo stick. Walking! Oh dear. Perish the thought.

 

Dolores made everyone get their coats, and then line up by the front door “Forward March!” she shouted and they all trooped off to the butcher’s down the high street. (Before Dolores became Mrs Stan, she had been in the Army, commanding a company of specialised military knitting engineers.)

 

 

 

 

BORIS AND DORIS BUTCHER

 

Dolores and The Weekly Shop

 

No one was actually sure that there was still a butcher’s down the high street. None of the Bonkers family had been down the high street for years.

 

Dolores did the weekly food shop without even leaving the house. She’d send a shopping list by carrier pigeon to the local grocer’s on a Monday and on Tuedsay, the delivery boy would come chugging up the hill in a battered old van bulging with the Bonker’s family order.

 

Food, household products, knitting wool, parts for Stan’s inventions, the list was often varied and endless.  It was a wonder how the local grocer managed to get so much different stuff in such quick time. This didn’t seem to bother Dolores though, she would put everything on her list from beefburgers to ball bearings or soup to socket spanners, and it was always there the next day.

 

“Sorry Mrs Stan” apologised the delivery boy one day. “We got most of your order but them old rocket parts that Mr Stan wanted, well NASA said they didn’t have any left, so we tried the Russian engineers at the Roskosmos and they might get some to us for next week. Oh, and we’ve run out of tomato soup.”

 

Back down the high street

 

“There’s a butcher’s” cried Tom,

 

Boris And Sons.

Master Butchers And Purveyors Of Fine Sausages Since 1855

 

No doubt this was a butcher’s. There were trays of steak in the window, and long strings of sausages hanging from hooks behind the counter. In the doorway stood a rotund little man sporting a white butcher’s trilby hat and a blue and white stripy apron. He smiled a big smile on his big red face and twisted the ends of his unfeasibly long handlebar moustache.

 

Stand strode up to the butcher.

 

“Are you a butcher?” he asked

 

“Yes sir, I am” confirmed the butcher. “I am Boris the butcher, just like my father Boris before me and his father Boris before him and his father Boris before him.”

 

“You’re all called Boris!?”  Stan blurted in surpise.

 

“Yes sir. Four generations of Boris Butchers. Always Boris and always a butcher.”

 

A rotund lady, attired the same way as Boris appeared in the doorway.

 

“Let me introduce my wife sir. Doris. Doris Butcher.”

 

Doris smiled and then twisted the ends of her unfeasibly long handlebar moustache.

 

“She’s got a moustache” laughed Dolores.

 

“I know Madam,” replied Boris, “a fine false moustache fashioned from my finest moustache clippings,” he continued, adding that every butcher had always had a moustache, so why not every Doris butcher.

 

“All good butchers have a moustache madam, and my wife is an excellent butcher, so she too has a moustache, if only a false one. Such has been the tradition for every Doris Butcher since there has been a Boris Butcher. In this family every Boris has always married a Doris.

 

“And your son, is he called Boris?” asked Stan

 

There was a short, and poignant silence as Boris Butcher stopped twiddling his moustache. The smiling face and affable Butcher demeanour gave way to a mournful air of sadness dejection. Sadder than a month of wet Sundays, more dejected than a footballer who had scored an own goal in the World Cup Final, as mournful as a Continental breakfast. Doris Butcher sniffled, ther was a tear in her eye and then suddenly she errupted into an unprecedented and uncontrollable maternal blubber, so wet that it dissolved the glue on her false moustache, that curled, shrunk and fell on the ground.

 

“We never talk about our son sir,” confessed Boris.

 

“Your son Boris?”

 

“No sir “ retorted the present Boris Butcher. Many years ago our son decided that he wanted to be a mad inventor or a potty professor. Steaks, roasts, briskets, legs of lamb or sausages , none of that was good enough for him, he wanted to invent deadly rockets and bombs and flying machines and death rays and nasty poisons and big guns, so he studied in secret and rhen one day, he changed his name and left home and went to make his way in the world.”

 

Boris wiped away a first visible tear.

 

“We implored him sir. We said to him, stay home, be a Butcher. We told him that he was bright enough to be a Sausengineer. We told him that he could make the world’s perfect sausage and revolutionse sausage-making and make good old sausages again.  We begged him to stay. But no sir, he packed a set of spanners and yellow sweaty mad scientists shirts and left home forever. Last we heard, he was involved in making evil entreprises, of bombs and guns and deathrays and such, when he could have been have making sausages. We are so upset sir. Doris was ready to pass on her special sausage knowledge, because she is the world’s Best Ever Champion Sausage Maker and awarded as so by the World Sausage Committee. No sir, our son left and now we have no one to take up this business when we are too old and we will be sausageless and there will be no more Borises and Dorises ever again sir. My wife will hang up her false moustache and WE WILL CLOSE.

 

Boris Butcher wasn’t the type to fall down or cry or get too upset, but he was shuddering after this speech. No more Borises or Dorises or sausages. Stan was touched. He didn’t quite know how he felt, but it was like he had just invented something useful but someone had told him it wasn’t obscure or useless or deadly enough and he had too go back to the drawing board.

 

To be continued.