The Never Ending Story

[IBob]

...Turbo had ridden in the Captain's Anglia when he was a boy. The Anglia had been worked over to it's last gasp, and was able to achieve a top speed of 86.3 km/hr if the bumpers, doors and spare tyre were taken off, and.......

 

...the Captain refrained from flaring his nostrils when shouting obscenities at inconvenient cyclists and other lesser examples of humanity.

 

Rumour had it that a similarly lightened Anglia, chopped and channelled had actually become airborn during speed trials on the Edinburgh to Inverness road, albeit accidentally and with the assistance of an entire series of remarkably humped hump-backed bridges. So it was that the Captain was determined to...

 

 

[turboplanner]

.....hump as often as he could to perfect the Anglia's suspension.

 

What new readers to the NES may not know is that “Spratts” was not always named Spratly; he is directly descended from Captain Cook (Cookie to certain FNQ tribes which now fly their flags over every Council in Australia and Tasmania) He’d changed his name by deed poll to avoid the constant obsequious requests for autographs from people in the street, and had flourished in the Motel business, ripping off enough hapless travellers to buy an oil exploration company when its shares were 2 cents each. His friend Turbo had provided funds for an old drilling rig, and it had hit oil on the third day of drilling. “You wouldn’t believe it!” the Captain told his friends “It was like walking up to a haystack, sticking your finger into it, and saying “OH SH!T!!!” These days he was the owner of a fleet of oil tankers……

 

 

[hihosland]

oil tankers all lined up in a neat row in the Straight of Hormuz awaiting ...

 

 

[planedriver]

Planedrivel recommended an upgrade using the new 997cc 105E OHV bangers to overcome the embarrassment of being passed by cyclist out for their Sunday ride.

 

Having been involved building some of the new robot welding equipment for the Dagenham Plant, he was confident it could handle the increase in power.

 

He was experienced in such matters and used to teach a girl who lived up the street how to service a her car. She was the daughter of a chorus girl without too many morals and got excited when told her nipples looked a bit short of grease. and so...

 

PS sorry hihosland got out of step there due to unexpected delivery.

 

 

[turboplanner]

......confused by Planey's behaviour at starting a double thread this ear;y in a story, and believing he may have turned psychopath, Turob decided to take a bath, but....

 

 

[turboplanner]

oil tankers all lined up in a neat row in the Straight of Hormuz awaiting ...

 

.........the go ahead from the Chinese to pass by the Spratly Islands, which were on the other side of the world, Turbo was luxuriating in the spa of his chalet in Switzerland, glass of champagne in hand and looking out at people skiing on the slopes. The phone range, the ID came up "SPRATLEY HERE" which was what he usually heard the minute he tried to answer. "Trumpy  (Turbo smiled, knowing President Trump didn't know the errant Captain from a bar of soap) told me he was going to tick it up the Chinese, but he didn't count on half their Navy showing up, what's going ON!" Turbo wasn't at liberty to say; he had sold the cat farm which was producing good profits, but when everyone you meet turns up their nose at the residual cat fat from your daily slaughters, it's time to move on and he was now a CIA operative, gaining the grey employee card previously held by people like Lee Harvey Oswald.  "What do you mean?" asked Turbo, "why are......"

 

Copy of Captain's call which went on too long for this narrative: 

 

 

 

 

[Captain]

......confused by Planey's behaviour at starting a double thread this ear;y in a story, and believing he may have turned psychopath, Turob decided to take a bath, but....

 

..... Turob had to ask the age old question, again, "How many times & how long can I wash this for without being suspended." Then, as usual he ......

 

 

[turboplanner]

told his friend he would see what he could do. He knew where he could get fighter aircraft, but he needed pilots and that industry was very small. He asked for the Challenger to be ready for takeoff in the morning and called Ahlox........

 

 

[turboplanner]

The Challenger made a stop at Wagga Wagga and Turbo briefed Ahlox on the Spratly situation, and what the Captain expected of the old team. Ahlox, as some readers might remember, was one of the fastest firies on the scene of a fire in Australia with a record 1 hour and 42 minutes, one day to a house fire (although it WAS next door to the Fire Station). An athlete in his day, Ahlox had shacked up with the only female Japanese prisoner in the Cowra Prison Camp, and his sons LokSe and AnLokd, were the result. How he got her out of that secure prison we’ll never know, but…….

 

 

[facthunter]

... the piece of wood holding it in 2nd gear didn't cripple you by hitting you on the kneecap.. Nev

 

 

[IBob]

... the piece of wood holding it in 2nd gear didn't cripple you by hitting you on the kneecap.. Nev

 

...was essential equipment when fending off the foul-mouthed Sulphur-Crested gang which now infested the region, stomping flat all and any caged linnets, canaries and budgerigars in their path, and perpetrating acts of unspeakable immorality at the annual Chicken and Duck show, while.....

 

 

[turboplanner]

also using it to block one of the throttle levers of his three holer, which had a bad habit of sliding back to idle  just after take off, leading to a..........

 

 

[IBob]

...a variety of low passes that....over time, not only cleared the flight path of all dwellings, but trimmed residual hedges and foliage....off the end of every airstrip in the district and.............

 

 

[turboplanner]

....in fact Foxhunter had won severak "Clean City: awards as a result, and once was requested to attend Buckingham Palace to be knighted, but.....

 

 

[turboplanner]

STOP PRESS: MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA AUGUST 23 2019

 

The Herald Sun, believed to be reporting from comments made by Een Butcher on a Social Media Website normally confined to discussions on Cessnas and other aviation matters, says that Australia may be arming China by selling it iron ore. Dr Davis ( who, being a Dr, should know) said “If ore exports were not confirmed for civilian use only, it was “an issue we need to consider to avoid inadvertently assisting China to develop a more powerful military.”

 

Source, quotation and photos: Herald Sun 23/8/19

 

Turbo started; the Destroyer Xian was built from Terra Cotta and invisible to Radar; something had to be done to protect the Spratlys quickly, but....

 

 

[hihosland]

something had to be done to protect the Spratlys quickly, but....the  problem quickly evaporated once Donald offered to buy the Srpatleys an offer  to which his very good friend Xi responded most generously with...................

 

 

[onetrack]

... a counter-offer to buy the whole of the USA, apart from the Trump properties and the White House itself, for $2.5M, with a long-term, low-interest loan from the Bank of America, which invited .....

 

 

[hihosland]

an prompt response from Mexico stating that they were immediately going to start on building the border wall, a notification much welcomed in the White House until it turned out that this wall was planned to be erected along the original US/Mexico border a detail that ...........  

 

 

[turboplanner]

..President Trump had misjudged. Mexico had wanted the wall all along, because the country was being drained of its coffee shop waitresses, supermarket staff, park cleaners, laundromat operators and theme park staff, but in not correctly stating the DATE of the Border Wall hereinafter called the BW, Trump, who had confirmed the sale when he tweeted 'told you we'd build the wall" in that clever technique of claiming credit for work that others had done, had just lost Texas, New Mexico and California, and that.........

 

 

[hihosland]

Now Xi was offering only $1.8million because ..

 

 

[turboplanner]

....he valued Texas for its quiet reclusive atmosphere, and California, where he liked to roller skate on the LA beaches.

 

STOP PRESS: MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA, AUGUST 23 2019

 

“Melbourne Age reports that China will impose retaliatory tariffs in the latest tit for tat exchange….”

 

President Trump had tweeted “he’s only realised there’s no market for tats”, and the fight was on.

 

Australia has immediately responded: The Herald Sun reports that Australia has reopened a WW2 naval base in Papua New Guinea.

 

Material Sources: The Age and Herald Sun

 

A worried Captain called Turbo: “This is a DISASTER!” He spluttered, “I have six oil tankers ready to go through the South China sea in just a few weeks time.”  but turbo reassured him the US and China were only playing, the ship in the photo was powered by a 40 hp Evinrude and its guns couldn’t reach the South China Sea anyway. “We need to have a meeting” the Captain said. “On it” replied Turbo, we’re on the way to Cowra now.”

 

Turbo wished to draw the attention of NES readers that the NES is right there at the cutting edge of world events as they unfold. He’d also like to pay tribute to those New Guinea natives who made effigies of aircraft out of sticks, unfairly called “Cargo Cult”. They’d also made stick ships, to try to lure them back to enjoy more chocolate bars and nylons, and sure enough it had worked, but on the horizon………

 

 

[IBob]

...and when nobody was looking, a periscope rose furtively above the waves. Below decks, Nemo, suitably unshaven and with peaked cap reversed, made a fast 360scan for shipping and wayward Jabirus, before settling to study the little boat and the natives that streamed from it waving silk stockings and chocolate bars.

 

A cruel smile played across his lips: we don't know what it played, this being a silent story, but play it assuredly did..........

 

'Ha' he said, when his lips had finished playing. 'Let us see them make one of THESE from bamboo!'

 

And with a steely glint in his eye he called down his speaking tube..........

 

 

[turboplanner]

"WHO DROPPED THAT ONE!!!???", but there was no reply, the crew were all staring at Nemo's Iphone which....

 

 

[IBob]

...and desperately hoping the stripey goldfish wouldn't appear.

 

Nemo himself had tried to laugh it off, but surfacing from a voyage of 20,000 leagues, days and weeks of interminable ownerless farts, to find some small fish with adenoids had hijacked his name.........had been too much. Something inside had snapped.

 

Snap, it went.

 

They had all heard it,

 

And it didn't sound like those things for holding up the silk stockings while eating the chocolate either.

 

Or not so far as they could remember.

 

Somewhere, it was a dark and stormy night and.....

 

 

[turboplanner]

.........Hideo grabbed Eye Bolt by the scruff of the neck and said "You coming with me to build aircraft".

 

"What's thet?" asked Eye. "You going to build Flying Hose" said Hideo  "and anyone who build Savannah know rot's about hacksaw and hammers."

 

"Hecksaws and Hemmers? I hevn't funished eating my fush and chups yit", but Hideo flung him into the Challenger and they set off back across the Tasman to Cowra.

 

Cowra is a town in New South Wales established in 1846 by the grandfather of Ahlox for the purposes of gambling and opium smoking.  It has a population of 10,063 people officially, plus 2,132 undeclared people of Japanese descent.

 

During World War 2 a large POW camp was built at Cowra to house Japanese Prisoners of War. There was a big break out one night, and a lot of prisoners escaped, with deaths of soldiers on both sides. Most were rounded up. Earlier we talked about a small group which got away and blended in with the Cowra population, and we went on to tell the stories of Soichiro Honda, Kiobaji Kawasaki, and Yasika Yamaha up to their escape down the Hume Highway to Melbourne riding BSA Bantam farm bikes. We missed one, Tamiko Takata, who spent his time trying to make rapid deploying balloons capable of spraying shrapnel on the enemy below. He eventually became successful, but that’s another story.

 

The remains of the Prison Camp can still be seen, and there’s a beautiful garden cemetery for the war dead. Nearby is a large restaurant/souvenir shop. What we couldn’t tell you at the time because of the Official Secrets Act was than not all went home. A small group dug a tunnel from the garden cementery and carved out very comfortable living quarters under the restaurant. This gave them coffee and food and they gradually infiltrated the Cowra population as their accents disappeared. Inevitably some married, and there was a mixed population in the town. Heading up this dynasty was our old friend Nobushi Kobayashi, known to us as Nob, and a skilled Mitsubishi Zero Pilot, but today………