Day 28: Down To Earth
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
Crispian had spent the rest of his day in Deftu’s citadel trying to work out how we were going to return to Earth. In between fixing me up some slap up means and drinking much of the rest of the alien’s drinks cabinet dry. It would appear that there is a truth that is universal, that every culture that makes alcohol, makes something that tastes almost, if not completely, like gin. Ditto with tonic water: though it often doubles up as anti-freeze.
“So you are telling me that Deftu does not have his own spaceship?”
“Nothing I can find.”
“How did he get here then?”
“You could ask him,” Crispian said – knowing well that I could not interrupt the Listeners intrepid feedback inspired attempt to listen to his own tinitus.
“Just keep looking,” I said, shuffling around for another bottle of Galactic Gin (like Plymouth Gin but drier, by several hundred degrees).
In the end I retired to the toilet where I could think and not worry about Deftu curing his hearing condition. Which is where I saw it. I called Crispian down instantly.
“What’s that?”
“A giant spacehopper?”
“Indeed. And we can clamber inside and get shot down to earth in it. See.”
There was some sort of primitive catapult device next to the giant rubber craft. Crispian looked unsure but I have always been a gung-ho kind of girl, and also happened to be about three litres of alien overproof alcohol to the better.
Which is how, after decorating the ball with eyes and a happy smile, myself and Crispian found ourselves hurtling back down to earth in a gigantic spacehopper…
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT – Down To Earth
Hats are funny things aren’t they. Useful if you get rained on, are balding or have a tendency to lose lots of heat through your bonce. None of these strike me as a reason for Ben Montpellier Von Pellier Von Ponce of Curiosity Killed The Cat to wear one. A beret, by criminey. And he was not French. Indeed his surname suggested that his family had been kicked out of the aristocracy of numerous European royal families.
There was only one member of Curiosity Killed The Cat that you can rightly admire, and that’s the cat. Its death spared it from listening to yet more rubbish 80’s English white boy funk/soul: of which Down To Earth is a cultural low point. Gibberish lyrics about razor’s edges and magic carpets just made you want to grab Ben’s beret and ram it over his gurning mug. His actual name is Be Vonpellier-Pierrot which suggests that one half of his parents was actually a weeping Pierrot clown. Now with a son like this you can understand the weeping, but being the progeny of a hormone teenager and a stuffed toy is probably enough trauma for anyone.
Curiosity Killed The Cat changed their name in the final years to just Curiosity. One assumes because the cat was well dead by then.