The story so far ..... lying in a Suffolk field, our ornithological hero, Martin Blojobski is watching a dogfight between a Sopwith Camel and three Messerschmidt ME109's. Aboard the Camel, Biggles is throwing both plane and some bad jokes about, while Algy attempts to recapture a loose experimental sea gull and Ginger is sharing the gaseous effects of last night's curry with his companions. High above the South of France, in geo-stationary orbit, is an alien spacecraft containing two baffled aliens, a stolen American ISDN phone and a human flea. At a small café, James Bond is watching the spacecraft through a miniature telescope cunningly disguised as a monogrammed Dunhill lighter. His every move is being carefully watched and noted by the evil Boris Adidoff, cunningly disguised as Mangy Azadinuf who has gained temporary employment as the café's seductive waitress. A surprised Cessna pilot has made a fleeting, but irrelevant, appearance. NOW READ ON ......
Biggles pulled the stick back and left, kicking the rudder bar in the opposite direction to turn the plane in the fast Immelmen Turn, giving Ginger a clear target for the Lewis Gun.
"Yahooo," yelled Ginger. "Oooh," moaned Algy.
The Lewis gun chattered a second time, but as it had nothing interesting to say, Ginger ignored it as he squeezed the trigger. A stream of deadly red-hot lead poured out to hit the leading Messerschmidt dead centre. Ginger and Biggles watched in fascination as the enemy plane bucked out of control behind its smashed propeller, while Algy moaned quietly in the co-pilot seat. The enemy plane twisted and dived, its port wing tip clipping the second plane in the formation. Biggles and Algy watched in horror as the 2 planes, locked in a mortal embrace, fell from the sky to smash sickeningly straight through the third Messerschmidt. Algy moaned again.
"Are you alright, Algy?" Biggles enquired, worriedly.
"Yahoo," yelled Ginger as the pall of smoke from the exploding planes faded into the number `1000'. "A Bonus. Another hit like that and I will be on to the next level!"
"Quiet!" snapped Biggles. "Something's wrong with Algy."
"No, I am alright," groaned Algy. "But the Seagull it's, it's gone!"
Biggles looked worriedly at his watch.......
Little did Biggles know that earlier in the day, standing outside the only cinema of the small rural town of Boumkins-de- la-Campagne, in the narrow Rue de la Plume de Matante, 14-year old Jacques Delecarr looked at his watch. Only an hour to go, and he was already sweating in nervous expectation. Yesterday he had plucked up the courage to ask his classmate and simple peasant girl, Marie Enbread, to watch a film with him. It was his first date and he had arrived three hours early. During the past ten minutes he had noticed a Gendarme eyeing him suspiciously, and the officer was now walking purposefully across the road towards him.
"Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour," frowned the looming menace of the law, in the well-worn opening phrase used throughout the world. "What are you doing?"
"I am waiting for a girl," stammered the blushing teenager.
"Mais oui," replied the Gendarme, relaxing into a smile. "But there is no need to wait, here try this." He handed the squirming adolescent a business card from a brand new pack. As the Gendarme strode back to the parked police car, Jacques pondered briefly the folly of employing a Gendarme who spoke no French. Glad that he was top of his class at English, he read with interest the stylish card:
"Sadie Bontime, 75-22-88. French Lessons. Tel 36-24-37." Looking once more at his watch he furtively crossed the street to the Public Payphone. He lifted the receiver and dialled the number. He was nearly as disappointed to receive the `Number Unobtainable Tone' as, later in the week, the business card printer was to receive a truncheon from the Gendarme.
"THAT's her phone number, and THAT's her vital statistics," the Gendarme emphasised the two numbers with more blows to the head. The short-sighted printer was surprised to feel the Gendarmes charged breath fanning through his thinning hair.
If only Biggles had realised, that only that morning, High above the South of France, one alien turned to his compatriot. "Start the engines," was the meaning attributed to his ultra-high pitched whistles, sounding like Colonel Bogey played 10 octaves too high.
"On your marks, get set, GO, engines!" whistled Qwerty Uiop, a typewritten Alien name, finishing with an alien giggle that sounded like a rasping noise.
Ignoring his joking companion, Sqeechy Zbusxt strode over to the control panel and turned a key. With a grinding of mal- adjusted gears and a low pitched hum, the spacecraft, Number Q931 set off. Inside the complex program of the main navigational computer, a small sub-routine was still algorithmically calculating the location of a small soft-drink stain on the galatic chart. It was this stain that had sent Q931, an inter- planetary milk float of the Imperial Fleet, light-years off course to the planet Earth. If, however, it had been a craft of the Metric Fleet it would never have happened, being litre than air
How different our story might be, if only Biggles had known that in a small village towards the east of rural Suffolk, later that day, Sheila Putzitabaht, a housewife (and proud to be so) and mother (of three wonderful children) opened the front door of the modest three bedroomed abode (oil fired ch., 2 Receps., fttd ktchn.) and placed on the door step three empty milk bottles, dressed only in her nightgown. A surprised relief milkman, later that day, returned the flimsy lingerie through the letterbox, not knowing it was a secret sign to his injured workmate. What did the sign mean? Only the exhausted usual milkman and Sheila knew. They kept it a secret from everybody (except 'er at number 10).
From the interior of the house came the dulcett ringing tones of a telephone. As Sheila moved back towards the half open front door, neatly avoiding the terrible ajar joke, she called out "who is it, dear?".
"Wrong number, love," her husband replied from upstairs. "Somebody misdialled the Met. Office - they wanted to know if the coast was clear." It was the third time this month it had happened, and Jim was sure he recognised the voice.
"Put the cat out, love."
"Its not on fire," she quipped, picking up the purring animal and placing it on the door step. As she straightened up she glanced across the road, over the wire fence and into the field beyond. Hesitating momentarily at three tons of loose soil and stubble, piled obtrusively in the north-eastern corner, a movement in the far hedge attracted her attention. Turning a little pale she rushed back into the house, pausing only to bolt the front door behind her and set the bucket upright again. Sheila picked up the phone and dialled three digits ......
Little did Biggles know that in the back row of a French Cinema, Marie Enbread, also on her first date, had revelled in the pampered attention thrust upon her by her newly found suitor. He had payed for the tickets, bought her chocolates, listened attentively as she verbalised her feelings for her latest pop idols, concurred with her views on the advertisements bought two ice creams and let her consume them both. Now the lights had gone down and he had turned into an octopus.
"Give her a good feel, mate," his best friend had told him, with a nudge and a wink. He had confided in Jean Lezip that morning as Jean was the class womanizer. He had been on no less than four dates already.
Jacques slid his left arm around the back of Marie and squeezed her shoulder. She had not confided in anyone, so had received no advice on what to do in such circumstances. She giggled. Finding his fumblings unresisted, Jacques pressed home his advantage. As his left hand explored her neck, her ears and her hair; his right hand fondled the delicate bones of her ankle, before sliding over the bulging muscles of her calf (over developed by years of kick starting her fathers ancient tractor), until he found her knee. Marie giggled with each new squeeze. In a flurry of adolescent ignorance, Jacques missed every possible erogenous zone and jumped to her stomach. Marie giggled again, and in the exasperated darkness, Jacques whispered in her ear.
"Why do you keep giggling?" he hissed.
"Because the chocolates are in my handbag on the floor, you silly boy," she giggled back.
Before Jacques could explain any further, he felt a nudge on his right elbow. Turning away from Marie, he found the Cinema Manager sitting next to him.
"I'm much to young to drink," replied Jacques, his nervous anticipation completely ruining the joke.
"Psst," the manager hissed. "When you have finished, I'm next!"
Jacques was worried. He had never felt a Cinema Manager before.
Unknown to Biggles, Martin Blojobski, our intrepid hero stared in surprise as a large white bird landed heavily on its back in the centre of the field.
"Its, its a ... hmmm ... well it looks a bit like a seagull," mused Martin, flipping the pages of his Observer Book of Bird Spotting. He wiped some of the spots away, cursing the loose bowels of flying birds.
"Quuaaaaack," came the first sound from the upset experimental seagull. "It doesn't sound like a seagull," was Martin's unspoken thought, as he desperately searched the book for a gull that sounded like a duck.
Martin dashed across the field, grabbed the stunned seagull and set off in the direction of the coast......
Biggles was totally unaware that, earlier on, James Bond was still sitting outside a small café in the South France observing the Alien spaceship. Mangy Azadinuff glided seductively to his table.
"Yourrrrr drrrrrink, Misterrrrr Bond," she said, her heavy Eastern European accent nearly obscuring the meaning of her words.
"Thank you," James smiled, furtively glancing down the front of Mangy's dress at the ample bosum revealed as she bent forward and placed the glass on the table. Without changing his expression, James noted the false bosum, concealing the phial of poison. He looked up into the sky in time to see the UFO move off. James leapt into action, pushing Mandy aside and upsetting the table with its lethal drink, he sprinted across the road.
Gendarme Alfons Dêplode turned his attention to shouts at the café. He watched as a man left the wreckage of a table, glass and transvestite waitress to sprint across the road, into an Aston Martin, and accelerate up the street at an "excessive" speed. With the lightening reactions of all Policeman, he put his foot down and accelerated off in hot pursuit. He hardly gone a couple of metres when a truck pulled out of a side turning, causing him to career across the road, up onto the pavement, hitting two departing cinema-goers, before running head first into a lamp post. Lying on the ground at the foot of the lamp post, he dwelt briefly upon the folly of chasing a 180 mph Aston Martin on foot.
Jacques Delecarr dazedly picked himself up off the floor, then bent to assist Marie to her feet. He wrinkled his nose and gazed at the mess spread down Marie's back. It was then that he realised one of the great philosophies of Mankind - "There is a 90% chance that anybody falling over in the summer will land in a discarded Ice Cream. During the winter it will be a dirty puddle of water. It is this Mathematical Law of Probability that maintains Dry Cleaners as a viable business proposition."
In a Secret Underground Bunker somewhere in Western Europe, Biggles was unaware that NATO forces were tracking the Alien Spacecraft. Corporal Steven Punishment glared at the spot on his screen moving at an impossible speed. Picking up the `Incident Phone', as it was called, he was immediately in touch with that contradiction in terms - Military Intelligence. The out of date apparatus crackled badly.
"Hello, Corporal Punishment here," said Steven.
"You must
"Shall I wind you up?" The crackles on the phone nearly drowning all conversation as Steven wrestled with the problem of making Military Intelligence understand.
"
"No, its Thursday." Steven knew this old joke.
"So am I. What do you
"UFO," said Steven, feeling he was getting somewhere.
"And the same to you Mate." The receiver was slammed down at the other end with a finality that suggested he didn't try again.
Elsewhere someone else was having trouble with their phone... and we shall find out what in the next thrilling episode of:-
BIGGLES FLIES UNDONE