NGLND XPX

by Ian Hutson

  ‘Not just with the on-set sound stage Hollywooden government either, we tried to make contact with everybody and anybody from caterers to prospective screenplay writers. They shot at us. All of them. We waved little white flags, we offered presents, tried contact in obvious, public, places such as Devil’s Tower National Monument and also in more private, restrained, circumstances such as closed, deserted, diners and with men too long without sleep. We gave them translated and easy to pronounce control phrases for our robot sentry, the Gort, which we’d modelled on a robot from an old Earther DVD so that it would look unthreatening. Still they shot at us. I believe that the first ambassador to Earth, Klaatu-barada-nikto-burp-growl-squeak-fart-oohmib-ollocks, is still “on ice” in something called a “bunker” in their “Nevada Dessert”.’

  Eek finished his Garibaldi and reached for a crisp and crunchy Custard Cream.

  ‘We have asked for the return of his remains and his ship repeatedly but all we have attracted so far is a small probe bearing the name “Voyager”. It seems to be exhorting peace while at the same time carrying threatening diagrams showing us the quite – if you’ll pardon me – utterly monstrous proportions of Human genitalia. There’s also some chit-chat from a peanut farmer, the Pygmy girl’s initiation song of Zaire and a lot of poisonous Uranium-238 on the cover. Several of our diplomatic team were killed before we realised that the “record” thingy had been lethally laced with radioactivitiousness.’

  Her Majesty nodded sagely and dunked her Ginger Nut with unthinking ceremony. ‘Oh dear. If one isn’t terribly careful, choosing a present can present so many opportunities for offence. I also believe that their “yellow cab drivers” aren’t actually yellow, it’s just their vehicles. As a child I imagined jaundice to be rife in Hollywood for some reason, possibly to do with the costs of private healthcare and the universal presence of private swimming pools in the gardens.’

  The soggy half of the royal biscuit dropped into the royal tea-cup and was immediately fished out by the clean-fingered chap the Queen keeps on hand for such comestible emergencies. The Official Biscuit-Retriever returned to his position behind Her Majesty and re-commenced staring at the horizon.

  ‘Indeed so, indeed so.’ said the Ambassador. ‘It was all very confusing. In the end we did some unofficial sight-seeing, a little shopping for cheap shite at Walmart, took the opportunity to vaporise Elvis for crimes against popular music and then went home to reconsider our whole approach.’

  ‘Quite understandable, Ambassador. May I press you to the last buttered crumpet?’ asked the P.M., feeling quite out of the conversation and quite annoyed that the chocolate on his chunky Kit-Kat had melted more than he wanted and had dripped down his old school tie. Stocks were getting low these days of Grimsby Whitgift Comprehensive stripe in a pure polyester clip-on.

  ‘Oh. Would that be appropriate? I’m afraid that you’ll have to show me how. It’s not hot, is it?’ replied the Ambassador.

  ‘Well spotted, Ambassador, no, it’s gone cold – I shall send for more.’ The P.M. nodded to a footman who took the offending crumpet away and hurried to fetch fresh in well-warmed Georgian silverware.

  As soon as he was out of human sight the waiter scoffed the crumpet. A slightly worried ambassador had used a removable eye on one of his telescopic stalks to watch the waiter hurry away and whispered a query to his personal alien-aide. ‘“Press you to” – purely idiomatic or possibly painfully literal in a hot butter sense? Research and report please, Priority Maximus (for that was the aide’s nickname when on duty).’

  ‘I must confess, Your Majesty, that our earlier overtures also involved what I believe - from memory, correct me if I’m wrong - was then known as the socialist red “Union of Soviet Cyclist Republics” or something with a backwards “R” or an upside down “P” or some such. Mockba or Moss Cow, I think was the chosen population centre for our approach – they seemed to have a really nice, wide open square space in the middle of the main conurbation where we could land. Our choice was based purely upon geographical extent this time, rather than the volume of electric radio and television wave output and sheer fossil-fuel consumption that had led us initially to Hollywooden.’

  The P.M., hoping that this “Your Majesty” referred to him, opened his mouth to make some witty diplomatic quip about his own experiences with upside down pees and gravity but was beaten to it by The Queen.

  ‘Oh yes? They always seemed obsessed with Uranium too whenever we tried to contact them. They seemed to want to send us large and unsolicited quantities of Uranium 235 and Uranium-238 derived Plutonium 239 for some unfathomable or possibly inscrutable reason. We sent them some nice homosexual boys – Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Quite-Blunt. At least, I think that’s what they were called. Philip would know, I should check with him later.’ The Queen looked quizzical and brushed scone crumbs from her lap. ‘Perhaps you had more success?’

  ‘With Philip?’

  ‘With the Russians.’

  ‘Oh. No. They seemed to think that we were from Hollywooden. They shot at us too, although with less ammunition than the inhabitants of Hollywooden, I believe that there was a shortage of bullets of a calibre to suit the age of the guns in use. Early research suggested that they had used almost all of their ammunition before we arrived to shoot dissidents, poets and university professors.’

  ‘Oh dear. Did you try sending them some Cambridge nellies?’

  ‘We sent them the framed original schematics for the Wartburg 353. All variants including the Estate model and the pick-up.’

  ‘How kind and thoughtful of you. What exactly is a Wartburg 353?’ enquired Her Majesty, trying to fish a scratchy little pebble of un-dunked Ginger Nut out of her cleavage.

  ‘It was an abstract mechanical sculpture by one of our more avant-garde artists, intended to communicate the finer points of sub-faster than light species’sies two-stroking fossilised-fuel local transport policy in a fictional off-world engineering-dystopia. It had wheels so that it could be moved easily from exhibition to exhibition.’

  ‘Did the Rooskies like it?’

  ‘They seemed to think it was a “fine proletariat motor vehicle” and promptly made and sold over one million scaled-up copies of it – commercially! To this day they haven’t let on that they are anything but serious about misusing it. It had drum-brakes, all round, and a top speed of nearly eight fretspliggs a quilliquode on the flat. They seemed to think that the only guidance system it might need was along the lines of a semi-industrialised peasant called Boris who was out of his skull on home-brew, Karl Marx and the unaccustomed velocity. It’s quite, quite terrifying. When not slaving in some dark satanic factory, whole Rooskie nest-groups ended up screaming around the countryside in poorly-manufactured copies of some purely sardonic artwork.’

  ‘Oh dearski’ said Her Majesty, not wholly in response to the Ambassador’s automotive-related dystopian terror, for the Ginger Nut crumb was proving to be beyond her dignified reach. She looked absentmindedly to the horizon, as one might during a medical inner-knee or upper-bottom examination, thus triggering the Official Biscuit Retriever’s professionally impersonal white cotton glove with tea-stained fingers to fish it out on her behalf and to toss it to a ravening corgi.

  ‘Indeed, oh dearski indeed. The Rooskies also randomly either offered us scalding hot potato soup and freezing Stolichnaya while they shot at us or else insisted that we ingest salted, pressed, eggs from an amphibian known simply as “The Sturgeon” - while they still made preparations to shoot and dissect us.’

  ‘How unfortunate. One remembers being presented with potato soup at some state visit function or other. Quite inedible, even after a whole bottle of emergency Stolly in the back of the official Rolls.’ Her Majesty impatiently batted away the white cotton glove with tea-stained fingers that was gently squirting anti-Ginger Nut talcum powder between the otherwise already quite alabaster royal boobie-woobies.

  E. Rex – as her household rather gender-inaccurately and wholly
unofficially referred to her amongst themselves - poured herself another china cup (and saucer, naturally) of Rosie Lea and popped in three little sweeteners. These were of course saccharine sweeteners, not rolled-up and untraceable used banknotes of One’s realm. One added some pasteurised cow-squeezings too. That is to say, the milk was pasteurised, the cow was quite untreated in terms of heat, although the farmer had been known to poke it with a stick on high days and alternate dry Bank Holidays. One’s first sip produced an expression rather like a chimpanzee in a tiara and a cloud of talcum powder trying to smile for the cameras. One’s second sip produced an expression rather like a chimpanzee in a tiara and a cloud of talcum powder trying to smile for the cameras. We can’t be bothered telling you what the third sip did but if you got through the Eleven Plus successfully then you might just be able to guess. It was a very good tea despite being picked in a humid foreign climate by people who were, worryingly, not to be seen in any textbook actually ever washing their hands.

  ‘Ambassador, I’m awfully curious – what was it that eventually made you realise that the only way to make meaningful contact with the peoples of the Earth was through England?’

  The Ambassador, mentally distracted by tourists waving from an open-topped red tourbus, failed to stop one of his awfully curious nose-eye stalks peeping down Her Majesty’s cleavage and sniffing at the talc. A flunky in buckled court shoes and wig swept under the roving nose-eye stalk imposition with a silver tray and offered it back to the Ambassador. I should hastily add that the flunky was also wearing other standard clothing as well as the buckle shoes and wig – the weather was warm but one should never push the seasons in re string vests or insulated y-fronts.

  The Ambassador accepted the eye-nose stalk, not quite sure where it had been or why. That was one of the disadvantages to having several discrete functional brains that only shared information with each other once or twice a day. You never quite knew what your other more domestically-minded brains were thinking or doing. Some male Humans have a similar coordination problem with their internal brains and their trouser attachments – so much to ogle, so few opportunities to think about it properly or discreetly or to run reality checks.

  ‘Oh, well, do let me tell you your Maj.’ The Ambassador re-crossed several of his legs, ready to enthuse. ‘We finally noticed that the English seem to do a rather splendid line in Pomp & Peaceable Ceremony, as opposed to the rest of the planet which seems to specialise in Pump-Action & Bloody Acrimony. Our researchers had begun their early global explorations in Cape Spear and worked roughly West-wards following the sun. I’ve never seen such a rate of researcher burn-out, it was quite depressing and never more so than during meal times. After we’d been ritually offered MackyDee’s Cow’s-all Burgers, Colonel Sodbucket’s Kentucky-effed Chicken, French Toast with icing sugar on it (can you believe?), over-cooked Lau-Lau with “Fries”, sushi and Fugu, live Witchetty grubs, thousand year-old eggs, boiled pet doggy, fried locust, sheep’s eyeballs, mozzarella and basil “pizza pie lika da Italian Herr Doktor Professor Mamma Öetker Limited-a used-a to make-a freshly frozen”, smoked AnimalWurst with boiled and then re-pickled cabbage, and finally frog’s legs flambe we were quite prepared to just go home and cross Earth off the tourist maps. Tea with lemon rather than with milk was the final, non-potable straw. It was all quite, quite ridiculous.’

  The ambassador forgot himself and reached out to touch Her Majesty’s psychedelic-paisley pattern kaftan sleeve cuff for emphasis, and patted her on the wrist.

  ‘Then, at last, we slipped into England and realised that we weren’t the only ones who recognised that just because you can eat something it doesn’t necessarily follow that you should.’

  Everyone present nodded, like novelty toy St. George’s flag-waving Bulldogs on the rear parcel shelf of a Triumph 2500TC being driven on the correct left-hand side of a tree-lined black tarmac road with decent white lines, proper self-cleaning cat’s eyes, pedestrian pavements, well-tended hedgerows and mercury-vapour lighting on concrete lamp posts.

  The Ambassador was waxing lyrical, obviously as deliriously happy as a Lincolnshire badger with freshly laundered white cotton underwear and the whole day off from being gassed, shot or baited.

  ‘I tell you, your Maj - roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, proper trifle, treacle sponge and custard, asparagus, Cox’s Orange Pippins, Bakewell Tart, Cheddar cheese, Stilton, free-range boiled egg and volunteer professional “soldiers”, Marmite on decent hot toast – we knew we’d found hog heaven. Then one of our researchers nipped out during the Men’s Finals at Wimbledon and came back with strawberries and cream. We wept, we literally wept.’

  ‘Why? Who was playing?’ interjected the P.M., completely missing the point again to make it forty-love up so far in favour of the intellectually-challenged corgi licking his balls under the table.

  He was ignored by All and Sundry, the other two of the three corgis under the table who were licking their own balls (ready for evening tennis in the kennel yard).

  ‘Then our researchers noticed something really curious – at service bottlenecks you voluntarily auto-sort chronologically into linear displacements, even during periods of high consumer motivation!’

  ‘You mean, in England we queue?’

  ‘Yes! Not even the Vulcans are civilised enough for that - and you seriously do not want to try your luck in a Klingon Home-Base DIY January Sale on Kro’nos.’ The Ambassador absent-mindedly touched an old half-price mixer-tap shaped scar above one of his foreheads before shuddering, burying the memory and continuing. Klingons could be so single-minded when it came to home improvements.

  ‘In England traffic really does give way to pedestrians on Zebra crossings. Flashing one’s headlights actually does mean “after you”, not “get out of my way, eat my unburned hydro-carbons, kiss my GT arse and die”. Access to an ambulance is not via chip & pin swipe card! You even bury your dead!’

  Lord D. Masser, the amply-arsed sitting head of a standing committee charged with extracting metaphorical oil from literally troubled foreign waters so to speak, leapt to the defence of damned continental Europe on the last point. ‘Well, to be fair, Ambassador, the ground is awfully hard throughout most of Europe. You need a stonemason’s chisel to just bury the news in any place East of Calais. You just don’t see a really decent English flower garden anywhere abroad for that reason.’

  The alien ambassador was in full flow though and dismissed the flimsy foreign excuse with a snap of an opposable-claw and a tightly-targeted melodious but malodorous disbursement of largely-gaseous alimentary by-products. Notable Benny: it was the evolution of the aliens’ opposable-claw that had allowed them to drop down from the flaming purple coral trees of Epsilon Four-Zero Gamma and begin using power-tools and soft toilet-paper

  ‘If only we’d started our research at Pen Dal-aderyn and worked eastwards – we would only have had to travel as far as Lady Wood Park before we began to find civilisation.’ Disconcertingly, the Ambassador made his last remark in English but with an amazingly good Welsh accent. At least, “good” in the sense of briefly amusing perhaps or quite telling, socially, since he’d only flown over Cardiff once, and that at some high velocity.

  The Ambassador, as during his fly-over of Cardiff, was almost unstoppable and continued in spite of his very recently sprained tonsils. ‘Pimms! Three-day eventing! Bristol cars! Lawns! Stonehenge! Morris dancers! Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span! The Boat Race! Joanna Lumley! Chatsworth House!’

  ‘Ah - on that happy note, Ambassador’ said the Queen, butting gently in, ‘we would like to offer you full use of Buck Hice during your stay. Cook’s quite competent. The staff can arrange the best seats at any of the London shows of course and there’s also an open invitation to appear as a guest on Breakfast Television tomorrow. I believe it’s a “popular entertainment show” whatever that might be, and that it is supposed to be very good if you have a book to promote, or something. A biography perhaps, or something on the recent fall of the Ro
man Empire.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Maj ...’

  ‘Oh, no formalities here, please. Just call me Rex, Ambassador. Everyone else does. I believe it’s short for E. Rex.’

  A lady in waiting twitched, nervously, disastrously, and then froze like hunted prey, as a regal and royal E-Rex very carefully and very deliberately caught her eye. The silent look communicated, quite simply; ‘Lavinia, my curtsy-dipping dear, I thought I told you to get this thing fixed – if it ends up in someone’s soup this evening I shall confiscate it, prescription prosthesis or no, and then you’ll have to wear the pirate patch instead and you know how that makes the corgis behave when they are in rutting season.’

  The alien Ambassador appeared oblivious, at least in terms of the ophthalmic gaff. Several of his tentacles were casually stroking a corgi, assessing the bone to meat ratio, while one of his buttocks was calculating the cooking time required for a Rutting-Corgi Wellington.

  ‘E-Rex? Oh I say - are you any relation to the T-Rex’s? We did briefly call on the Surrey T-Rex’s a few million years ago but they weren’t very amenable to friendly but impromptu social visitation.’

  ‘Well maybe they thought you were Hollywoodens too, Ambassador’ quipped H.M. Queen, only slightly in jest and while wiping optical grade Vaseline from her hands. One ignored the rather indelicate sucking “plopthunk” sound One’s Lady in Waiting made while reinstating her Waterford crystal eye.

  [Unfortunately the Lady in Waiting’s technique was a little clumsy and she spent the rest of the day with both upper and lower eyelids folded inwards. She looked rather like an apoplectic Colonel in a lemon gingham dress and a hurry-up who had lost her monocle but found a dark-matter paperweight in the shape of an eyeball. Of course everyone was far too polite and sensitive about her feelings to say anything and generally anyone who saw her just quietly ran somewhere to throw a little kedgeree around the u-bend for Messrs Hughie and Ralph.]