PICNIC

I decided I'd have a picnic the other day. Not sure why. Maybe I'd read about someone's famous one and fancied a piece of the picnic action. Anyway, I made some sandwiches (crab paste they were), grabbed a flask of tea, and I set off. Ended up on the Green.

They call it the Green, but it's not really very green at all. More the colour of something passed by a very poorly dog. And there's a big crater with a burnt-out van in it. I think the van was full of snakes, originally. Probably taking them to Snake Borstal. It had a picture of Vernon Kay on the side too... Definitely Snake Borstal, then...

Anyway, I spread my Thundercats duvet over the scrubby ground and sat down, taking a bite of sandwich. Tasted alright, as these things go, but the texture was funny. Leathery, like eating Robert Kilroy Silk's armpit.

But that's not the worst of it. I managed, by some kind of reverse Heimlich manoeuvre, to get the thing down me, washed down with a good slug of tea. As soon as it hit my tum, I began to experience a peculiar sensation, rising out from my gut through my arms, like my blood was fizzing. In seconds, all was black.

I opened my eyes to total darkness, deathly, deathly black. It was difficult to tell if I had actually opened my eyes at all, until they adjusted to the dark, and I could make out the vaguest phantoms of my hands. Both of them had puppets placed on them. As my eyesight grew accustomed, their forms became clearer. On my left hand was the punk svengali Malcolm McLaren, on my right a crude representation of the Devil, only with cow's udders.

'You're on!' hissed a faceless voice, like piss on a hot iron, seemingly behind me and to my right.

'Sorry?...' I replied, perhaps understandably confused by the whole affair.

'They're waiting for The Show to start!' it hissed again, closer to my ear, in a way I recall someone telling me their uncle once did.

All of a sudden, the darkness parted like stage curtains, and light flooded in. I felt a shove in my back and I was forced awkwardly forward. When my eyes readjusted to the glare, I saw that I was indeed on a stage in an amphitheatre. In the auditorium, seated row upon row upon row, were thousands of twisted old men, all staring open mouthed at me, drooling and expectant. All the men, every last one of them, it transpired, was as naked as could possibly be, wore puppets on their hands. In fact, on as close inspection as I could muster given the glare, the puppets were sealed onto their hands.

'Do The Show!' drawled one of their number.

And, after a second's hesitation, I began The Show, lucidly and without a single slip.

From what little I can now recall, it involved the Devil tempting Malcolm McLaren into his oversized larder with the promise of a go on his Wii, and McLaren crying during Resident Evil 5, and the Devil basically just spending the final act berating McLaren for being a big wet Jenny of a wimp, through a complicated sequence of tightly choreographed teat-gestures and chants...

I'd never seen a script, nor had I been taught those words, but they tumbled from my mouth like angel puke, ending in rapturous cries from the wizened throng. I saw tears of joy mark their scrote-like cheeks. 'Author!' they bellowed, 'Author! Author!...'

Then all was black for a second.

I came to back on the Green on my back, staring up at a clear night sky. I'd been away some time, it seemed.

When I got home, I looked at the empty jar of crab paste - 'Contains the souls of a thousand naked puppeteers', it read, next to the nut allergy warning.

On reflection, perhaps buying the Tesco Value paste was a false economy...