In the middle of Australia is a big dusty red lump, that many people think is a rock. Since time immemorial it has sat still and silent, under the baking Australian sun. But it is not a rock. It is Kevin.

Kevin was a great fat ugly green giant, who lived in Australia many years ago, before any people lived there, which explains why her accent (for Kevin was a girl) kept changing. After he sat down for a nap one afternoon, and slept for longer than he expected, the red dust of Australia covered Kevin, and by the time people arrived, he was the familar red lump that we know as Uluru. But Kevin was still just napping, and one day she woke up. She stretched, scratched, burped and pumped, and slowly stood up to her full height. Kevin was cross. She would have slept longer, but her sleep had been interrupted by the sun, beating down on her with all its force. Kevin vowed right there and then not only to steal the sun, but to destroy the sky altogether. When she opened her mouth for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, Kevin was as surprised as everyone else to realise that a lot of what she said was in rhyme.

“I’m going to destroy the sky,

But first I’ll have to learn to fly!”

She roared, and, feeling quietly pleased with herself, began to pluck kangaroos from the ground, and attach them to her feet, for bounce. And she plucked eagles and vultures from the air, and attached them to her arms as wings. Ths done, she began to sing the R. Kelly classic ‘I Believe I Can Fly’, which she must have picked up from some of the tourists who had climbed insensitively on her head when she looked like a rock.

As Kevin began to flap her arms , and bounce up and down on the kangaroos, a great wind began to blow across Australia. In Sydney, a man’s Flat White blew out across the harbour. In Alice Springs, the froth from a man’s beer blew up in his face. The people were getting angry. And when the people of Australia had a problem, there was only one person they could turn to. well, actually, two people.

Far away in Devon was a forgotten mountain called Forgotten The Mountain. On the Mountain lived a midget called Gretchen, who was four inches tall. The two were firm friends, although often Forgotten got quite down in the dumps because he was a but depressed. They would cheer each other up in a number of ways. Gretchen particularly enjoyed skipping, and Forgotten liked swimming in Gravy. In fact, they were out for a swim in the great brown Gravy lakes of Dartmoor when the people of Australia came to call, and said ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’.

Once they’d been told of Kevin’s plan to destroy the sky, Forgotten and Gretchenknew that they had to do something. It was with Forgotten but the work of a moment to swim across the oceans, creating gravy slicks as he went, until he was standing in the middle of Australia. Gretchen, fit as a fiddle from his skipping regime, began to jump up and down on Forgotten’s head. As Kevin flew by, withb the sun now under her arm, Gretchen leapt high into the air, and landed on Kevin’s shoulder. At that moment, Forgotten flung a great arrow at Kevin, and Gretchen bit her on the ear. Kevin spun to earth, releasing the sun from her grasp, from where it spun back into place, and began once more to beat mercilessly down on the outback. The kangaroos hopped free, and the vultures flapped away. As the sun beat down, Kevin got hotter and hotter, until he was completely dried out, in a sitting position, back where he had been sitting before as Uluru. The great green ugly giant of the outback became an even more sacred site, and a bigger tourist attraction than Uluru had been, and everybody was happy. Forgotten the mountain went back to Devon, where he and Gretchen passed their time skipping and gravy swimming until such time as Australia should be in peril again.

And that is the tale of the giant and the forgotten mountain.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy quite far away, a huge machine a bit like the death star but not quite exactly the same for legal reasons was floating through space. Somehow, the leader of this particular space station was not an iconic, heartless supervillain in a black mask and cloak, but a scary, firebreathing dinosaur. The dinosaur’s name was Dinosaurus Rex, and he loved to breakdance. He just loved it. He would spin around the universe in his space station, landing next to squares of lino at street parties, nightclubs and dance competitions wherever they may be, and he would pop some funky moves. He could do the caterpillar with surprising grace, and his headspins really had to be seen to be believed. If ever he turned up at a competition and, for whatever reason, the judges didn’t give him the winning score, he would simply breathe a jet of deathly fire from his mouth, and obliterate the judges, the venue and often the world that the venue was situated on. And it didn’t matter to him, for he simply hopped in his space station and zoomed off again to the next B-Boy battle.

One day, he was zooming past earth, when he remembered that the biggest, most important competition of the breakdance competition season was about to occur in Burton Joyce, which is apparently a village in Nottinghamshire. So D.Rex brought his space station in to land on the village green, thereby destroying most of the village, and stepped out. Immediately he could hear the telltale sounds of beats and rhythms coming from the Lord Nelson Pub. He approached the pub, and burst through the doors. The joint was rocking. The lino was set. Rex ordered a refreshing pint of ale, and watched a few of the other competitors dance. Most impressive among them was a pregnant woman, who could still do the caterpillar, the headspin and a few other moves besides. But she was no match for Dinsoaurus Rex and his fiery breath. Eventually D. Rex took the floor,and began to bust some of his best moves. but the judges didn’t like him. He was getting 2.5s where the lady had been getting 9s. His blood began to boil, and he decided to show the people of Burton Joyce just what his fiery breath could do.

But at that moment, down the stairs of the Lord Nelson pub, came a trip trapping sound, and a quiet whinnying. For what D. Rex didn’t know was that this pub was the home of Stripey, the village zebra, who was quite thoughtful, although this didn’t stop her from sometimes being stupid. Stripey clopped into the bar just as D. Rex was taking a deep breath. this took him a surprisingly long time, so Stripey had time for a good think. She ordered the strongest whisky that the Lord Nelson had to offer, swilled it around her mouth, and hiccupped. Out came a roaring jet of fire, just in time to meet that coming from D. Rex’s mouth. The dinosaur was astonished - he’d never met anyone else who could do what he could do. They fought each other with their jets of flame, as all the other dancers ran away. Soon the pub itself was a wrecked shell, and Dinosaurus Rex ran completely out of breath, and died on the dancefloor. Despite the fact that their pub was completely ruined, the people of Burton Joyce declared Stripey a hero, and she was greeted in the village square with a loud ‘Hurrah’!

And that is the story of the Thoughtful Zebra and the Breakdancing Dinosaur.

*We should point out that we’ve never been to the Lord Nelson pub, or indeed heard of it before today, and we think it probably doesn’t have breakdancing competitions.

It may not have escaped the attention of some of you that we have yet to post the stories from last Sunday. If you were there and are looking for your story we apologise most sincerely - Sarah slaved away for hours yesterday writing them up, and then the computer ate them up and sicked them out into the wastelands of the blogosphere, never to be seen again, and she was too disheartened to start again straight away. But she will write them up again as soon as she has finished looking after Dulcie, who has the shiveryjeebies. Until that time, which will hopefully be tomorrow, stick around for my versions of the stories we told today, Tuesday the 21st of Nearly Christmas…

A handsome young man!

Once upon a time on Doncaster train station, a fey young man was hiding behind the bins. He was no ordinary young man, however. His name was Unite, and he was a vampire. In fact he was the head of the union of vampires. He was evil, he was fast, and he spent a lot of time feeling sorry for himself and whining about girls. But he was crouching behind the bins because his favourite way of working off the frustration of being brooding and misunderstood was to race the trains. As the 9.15 to Grantham pulled away, Unite burst out from behind the bins and ran, almost flew, along the platform. The astonished passengers looked out of the windows as he flashed past, and he raised his arms in triumph. But the victory was a hollow one. For Unite didn’t really care about racing trains. He cared about Barbies.

For as long as he could remember, Unite had been passionate about collecting Barbies. In his busy life of sucking people’s blood and being moody, his only respite was hunting down and collecting all different sorts of Barbie doll. But over the centuries, there was one type of Barbie that had evaded him. He sat down and flicked through the catalogue, and saw all the Barbies he had collected. There was swimming pool Barbie. There was poodle Barbie, and Camping Barbie, Ballroom Barbie and Athletics Barbie, all of which he had. But he had never managed to find the semi-mythical, supremely rare, Miami Barbie. And it was this quest that was making him more and more frustrated, and more and more evil. But here in Doncaster was the world’s biggest toy warehouse. His moment was coming. Once Miami Barbie was in his grasp, he would be the most powerful toy collector in the world!

But he didn’t know that the warehouse was guarded. One of the first toys that had arrived in the warehouse was Cinderella, a pink plastic doll who could spring out of her box and terrify trespassers, with her plastic face and cheeky demeanour.That night, Cinderella got some of the other toys to wind up the key in her back, and set the spring on her box, just in case anyone were to break in.

And it was lucky she did - for this was the very night that Unite had chosen to creep into the warehouse, along with all the other members of the vampires’ union. They sneaked in through a window, and across the floor towards the vault where Miami Barbie was kept. But Cinderella’s spring was attached to a tripwire that even the fast, floating vampires could not avoid. With a loud, shrieking hullabaloo, she bounced about on the end of her spring, terrifying the vampires, so that all the union members ran, flew or vanished away. Only Unite was left, and Cinderella, despite having a bit of difficulty speaking because of all the work she had had done, put him firmly in his place, and dragged him off to toy jail. In the toy jail were all the toys that had got broken, or had been made wrongly, or had gone off the rails. Unite saw all these frightening toys as they circled round him chanting strange things, and he realised that he just wanted an easy life. He didn’t want to spend his days chasing down Miami Barbie. He wanted to settle down. And he wanted to settle down with Cinderella. Their eyes met through the prison bars, and, as Cinderella was feeling particularly cheeky,  an unspoken agreement was made. Unite turned into a cloud of smoke, and flitted through the bars. He tried some of his slinkiest vampire moves, and Cinderella was impressed. He even took Cinderella out of her box, and showed her that she was free. She was mighty pleased, and more than a little inspired. Clinging on to Unite’s arm she felt  a strong urge to sing. It welled up inside her, and burst out uncontrollably:

“I can show you the world, unforgettable feeling…”

On hearing this, Unite was immediately sick on the floor.

And that is the tale of Unite the vampire and Cinderella the plastic doll.

Once there was a very powerful and fecund Queen Hamster who lived in the far reaches of an ancient rainforest. She was tended to by all the little worker hamsters who helped her grow good and fat and more lazy by the day…”Bring me food!” she called, “where’s my brush?”…”Massage my feet!”….”Bring me my golden potty!”, and so on as the poor worker hamsters, who never questioned their fate, scurried to and fro breathlessly tending to her every whim.

All the while she popped out little baby hamsters on her huge purple cushion who were swiftly taken to the worker nursery to learn how to serve. The Queen declared the name of every new arrival as each little fur ball catapulted out…Pop!…Roberta!…..Pop!….Keith!…..Pop!…Brian!….Pop!…Mercedes!…and so it went on.

One day the Three Thousandth and third hamster was popped out….POP!…Ralph!…. but the Queen being a little lacking in focus and care did not notice that the baby hamster before her was in fact a girl not a boy. The baby girl ‘Ralph’ was most offended by the wrong giving of her name and fate unknowingly was set that day as she was carted off to the worker nursery.

Ralph grew up very embittered by her name and the treatment of the Queen whom she was always tending. “Ralph! Do that faster!”…”Ralph! Go and do the hoovering!”….”Ralph! Wash under my arms!”….and all the while dark thoughts were being churned around Ralph the hamster’s head. She was sick of serving this huge and lazy queen hamster with all her purple robes and finery, sick of living in this hot, damp rainforest when she longed to be running about in some snow but most of all she resented being called a boy’s name and not having the power to change it.

One day she stole the Queen’s great purple hot water bottle that she had had her eye on for a long while and went and got a Ryanair flight all the way to the South Pole (she sat next to a very nice passenger that any other time might have marked the beginnings of a fine romance, but as it was fate was not going to work that way in this story and she had her mind set only on the South Pole and a terrible thing she was going to do……)

At the heart of the South Pole was a rather wonderful ice palace, this had been built on the profits of winning Britain’s Got Talent or, if you like, Britain’s Got Talons - for this was the home of Barker the chicken, a rather stupid but talented foul. He was busy practising for his next try at winning the talent show again. He squatted down and put on a face of supreme concentration….Plurp!…nope, an ordinary egg….hmmph!……no, an ordinary egg……Oik!….no, an ordinary egg….haranger!…nope….ooops! that’s a poop!….he just couldn’t get a golden egg out at all…….and then he noticed an angry little hamster coming towards him furiously clutching to her a big, purple hot water bottle.

“Don’t come near me” she screamed in her tiny, high pitched hamster voice, ” I am going to melt your palace and the south pole with the boiling hot contents of my great purple hot water bottle!”. Yes, she was going to spoil all the fun of everyone who had had the freedom to live in a nice cold land whilst she had had to swelter whilst serving the great fat magnitude of the Queen Hamster.

Barker pecked his way towards Ralph as she tried to open her hot water bottle. He pecked and pecked until the contents of the bottle went all over her and she fell into the snow where she swiftly froze with her little feet up in the air. The ice block she froze in was used as a stage for the coming talent show with her little enraged face looking out.

Now Barker had to concentrate on his audition for Britain’s Got Talent and whether he really did have the ‘Eggs’ Factor. The auditions were doing their rounds at The South Pole….the panel of judges were ready….the music was cued….Barker prepared….”Chick chick chick chick chicken lay a little egg for me…Chick chick chick chicken…..” and so all the audience sang along, they were right behind him, after a few false starts - two brown speckled eggs and a poop - he finally produced a beautiful, astonishing and huge GOLDEN EGG!! WINNER!!!!

And that is the tale of Barker the Chicken and Ralph the Hamster.

And the badger ate. And he ate and he ate and he ate and he ate.

Once a huge thunder storm raged across the skies of the world. The thunder roared over villages, towns and cities and all the people cowered and retreated deep within their houses, their huts or tents. The lightning ripped across cities setting buildings alight and causing great ruts in the roads of the countryside so no-one could travel anywhere. And all the while, for days and days and days it rained in accompaniment to the wild winds and exclamations of thunder.

High on a monstrous, craggy hill a huge Elmwood tree stood strong against all these rampages. In this tree there lived a very powerful Vampire and there he stood, his victorious black silhoette caught in the branches everytime he was lit up by the lightning.

Smelly Sticky Feet was his name and killing was his game.

He planned to kill someone just for the pleasure but first was causing terror and havoc throughout the world. He laughed in a crazed way, “HAAAAAA HA HA Ha Ha haaaaa!” over and over again with his eye balls rolling in their sockets. He flourished his huge black and red cape all around him and each time he did another roll of thunder roared out across the landscape. Another flourish…and even brighter and more dangerous lightning was sent across the skies on a destroying mission. His feet were safely suctioned onto the branches so he was safe. Now his plan was coming into fruition for the seas of the world were rising with all the incessant rain….soon he would be the most powerful person in the whole wide world!

So, the waters rose  and rose. It took over buildings, offices and homes. People had to swim about to get anything, sheep, cows, elephants, camels and every other animal had to swim around desperately searching for food. Very soon the great Elmwood tree on the craggy mountain would be the only thing left above the water!

Deep under this water however lived Pongy Sticky Feet, a rather stupid duck who live just as happily underwater as she did above water. She often conversed with the Puffer Fish, The Clown Fish and the Jelly fish quite happily…but something was wrong…the waters were being disrupted and polluted. Above her she could see lots of flailing legs of people and animals trying to survive by swimming around.

So she went up to the surface to investigate, and there the duck bobbed on the biggest ocean of water she had ever seen, with a monstous thunderstorm raging over head. It seemed like the end of the world but there on a rugged outcrop of land, the only bit of land she could see, was the top of a huge tree. And there in it was a most frightening figure of a strange man, in a cape that blustered and flew around him. Pongy paddled with difficulty through the gargantuan waves to the land and there used her very useful sucker feet to start walking up the slippery rock and then up the cracked bark of the ancient tree.

Smelly Stinky Feet was just reaching the apex of his hungry victory over the world when he heard loud squelching and popping sounds below him. He was most shocked to find a duck making its way towards him up the vertical trunk of the Elmwood with the aid of great big sucker feet just like his!

Pongy Duck would not be put off by the rage that burned in Smelly’s eyes, but steadfastly kept schlurping up the high tree trunk, one sucker foot in front of another until the two sticky footed creatures were finally face to face (well almost, after all a duck is much smaller than a vampire). Smelly opened his cape to try and magic down lightning onto Pongy the duck - but it didn’t work, for Pongy had whisked out her secret weapon - a laser! And thus she charged it up - whirrrrsiiingggggdiiiiingweeeeeeeeeeee! until it was lit up before her and then she lowered it down on to Smelly the Vampire’s head.

It deftly cut him in two.

You would think my friends that that would be the end, but no! Stinky Sticky Feet instead of falling dead to the floor swiftly became TWO vampires who together made the loudest, crazy laugh in the world “HAAAAA Ha HA Hahahaaaaaaa”. They threw open their capes to let forth their evil magic..Pongy duck closed her eyes…but nothing happened…..

Their magic had been taken by the laser! Hoorah!

The thunder and lightening began to subside. Pongy the duck quickly dived into the water deep down and with the help of her sea faring chums pulled upon the huge plug of the world that quickly got rid of the superfluous water with a great WHHHHOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSHHHHH!!!

The land, villages, towns and cities were once more restored. The people and animals of the world could once more walk on land if they so desired.

On a rugged mountain with a great Elmwood tree atop of it two powerless vampires decided to buy a cottage and retire to the countryside and be quiet for a change.

And that is the tail of Pongy the Duck and Stinky the Vampire.