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lizann come under quickly sudden random screen ears turn moment bridge dimensions idea months farm girl finally doily cave asking suddenly
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Oh my God! exclaimed Doily. The code’s been tampered with! Now we’ll never get out of here!
Huh? said Pee.
The Coded Icons, they’ve been edited!
Oh NO! said Pee, aghast.

The clever Peasland Majorburgmester who had been informed of the unlikely and much untimely return of Pee’s group, had indeed asked his minion Muckus to move around some of the signalization icons in the hope of luring and losing the group in the part of the land where the Blubbit Mother of Them All was ruling in a fierce and unchallenged (and he would add ruthless) manner.
While Doily was having her back turned in utter bewilderment, Muckus put the icons back to the way they were — he really didn’t expect to have headless Peaslanders (some less headless than the others too) remarking any of that signalization stuff (and least of all the blond Doily who still managed to forget to maintain her head fast on her shoulders, as she had not yet found another replacement for her lost head fasterer).
‘BUGGER! it RooOOooOOlled agaAAaaain’ Doily whined while running after her head in the terrible black path leading to the Pit of the Furcano.
The others watched in horror, not knowing if they should follow her or not.
Did you notice that, Pee? THE CODE HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH AGAIN!
Isn’t it back to how it was in the first place, Doily? Pee scatched his, er, shoulders. (he couldn’t remember if he had his head with him or not)
NO! It bloody well isn’t, it’s a good jib I’m here with you, you’d have been hoodwinked just like the others. It’s MEANT to look like it’s as it was, but it isn’t, Doily said grimly.
What was it in the first place, then? asked Pee.
Buggered if I know, replied Doily, scratching her elbow.
Ann felt rather put out.
“How jolly rude to disappear like that.” she muttered
The truth was she had been feeling a tad out of sorts lately, plodding along, day in and day out, doing the same old things. She was finding Lavender rather dreary too, partly because she never seemed to be there when Ann called round. So the idea of helping the exotic, headless stranger with his mysterious request for “pea sauce” assistance had felt rather exciting. Ann loved nothing better than a good adventure.
And now the bugger had disappeared!
“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!” 
“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!” 
“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!” 
“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.” 
“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?” 
“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil. 
There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages. 
Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade 
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky, 
and the birds chattered in the trees, 

occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.


“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.” 
“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.” 
“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.” 
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?” 
“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:
Dear Goofenoff,
I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”
“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?” 
“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes: 
“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?” 
“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle. 
Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.” 
“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?” 
“He said:
Are you requiring a short or a long answer?” 
Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.
“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.” 
Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit: 
Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”




Who are you calling dreary, you rude tart?” asked Lavender. “It’s YOU that’s never around when I am.”

“I think they’re lost beyond hope” Muckus went back reporting to the evil Majorburgmester
“Oh good!”
“Probably more hopelessly lost than being in the Eighth if you ask me, last time I checked on them, there was a woman running for her head to the Furnace of the Furcano, and all the others following her…”
“Sounds hairy.” the Major couldn’t help but add with a smirk on his face (framed and hanged to the wall) and a twitch in his left nostril.
Deep within the Furcano, the Mother of the Blubbits was growling. Her belly actually. She’d spent days and days, like every good blubbit alien mother, spawning a furry and ungrateful progeny.
For each of the blubbits captured and slaughtered, she was compelled to balance the loss. Balance was her motivation — at first. Now she was starting to think that maybe drowning them in baby blubbits would be a better and quicker way to end their (and her) suffering.
That was at that precise moment that something round and hairy rolled at her feet with a funny movement and strange soft sounds. How funny she thought, she suddenly felt compelled to balance that odd thing on her nose.
Imagine the expression (yes you’d have to imagine it, because they didn’t have one) on the faces of our favorite Peaslanders when they came into the cave running after the rolling head to see said head balanced on the nose (pink and soft) of a giant and furry Mother Blubbit.
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Screamed the furry ball without notice in what seemed to the Mother Blubbit’s lonely ear the most piercing sound she’d ever heard.
She was startled and threw that furry ball far away in another tunnel, the one leading to the lava chamber. Something in her inner alchemy had been altered with her moment of panic, one of the baby blubbit would be different for sure.
That’s when she realized she had visitors.
Mother Blubbit unlike her progeny wasn’t actually blue.
She had a more pinkish rosy tint that turned red around the ears, and probably should have been called a Rosbit — a deranged thought that crossed young Peackle’s head (still on the mantelpiece in Penelope’s pristinely clean house) as he was gasping before the sizable, yet furry, and giant, roasted blubbit saddle his aching stomach was making him see instead of the now puzzled creature.
Meanwhile, Phurt was distraught.
Perhaps it was an unfortunate consequence of her experimental breading but the thing was… she didn’t seem capable of spawning anything else than little hot buns.
“It is merely a matter of being aware of yourself and your direction and what you want and what shall serve you most efficiently in your exploration within your focus. Which fork at your table shall be the most efficient to consume certain cuisines? Which utensil? Shall you eat Peaslanders with a knife or shall it be more expedient to incorporate a spoon? The knife is not bad, but it may be more difficult to consume your Peaslanders. And what is it that you want? To consume the Peaslanders.”

Maybe we ate her 
Suprised by the unexpected visit, Mother Blubbit released a smothering plume of gases and ashes that started to fill in the tunnels of the Furcano.
The effects were not unnoticed, as miles around, Peaslanders stopped in their daily activities (most of them being either sending blubbits ad madres or regulating the size of the peas) to stand in awe of the reactivated Furcano’s tip.
If they had any such flying machines as they had in the Eighth dimension, they surely would have interrupted their activities too for a while… This was an event of grand importance, and maybe consequences.
Mother Blubbit had been challenged.
“Lilac! LILAC!” shouted Naturtium. “Lilac! We have to stop the Blubbit!”
Lilac frowned. “But I am too hungry to stop the blubbits.”
“Lilac, this is an unprecedented situation, we must stop the pea dust,’” said Naturtium, rather sternly.
“Well I am confused, are we stopping the blubbits, or the pea dust?”
Naturtium, a rather charming nickname bestowed on her when she was young – her christened name was Nasturtium, looked thoughtful for a moment. “Right” she said at last, “You go and eat. I am going to study the situation carefully. It is imperative we get this right and save the Peaslanders. I suspect they are going to need their heads back …..”
When Lilac had finished eating, she and Nasty considered the options. The first mission was to get the Peaslanders heads back, with or without Penelope, although it was hoped that Penelope, with her vast knowledge of Blubbit lavacology, would chaperone the heads back to the Peaslanders.
“The Fly Boat!” exclaimed Naturtium, who had just recieved an urgent transmission from the Daily Quote Dept. “We will initiate a Fly Boat mission.”
“Make the wind blow the other way!” suggested someone in the crowd.
“Yes! A west wind, blow it west!” piped up another.
“Wait!” shouted another. “That would be an east wind, not a west wind!”
“A westerly?”
“No, an easterly is what we want!”
“Let’s get this right, or we’ll have a fucking tornado” suggested Nasturtium grimly.
“Great idea, Natartium!” encouraged Lilac. “Blow those blubbit buggers away!”
Lucius Ludicrus had just arrived at the natarteum when he fainted.
Good thing for Pee and the others deep in the furcano; having no head to start with, they didn’t suffocate from the heinous Mother Blubbit attack.
Nothing of that sort could be said for the adventurer in the Fly Boat, as they sadly had to go back to the heliport, owing to the dreadful weather condition.
“WHAT IN THE NAME OF TARTINUN IS HAPPENING NOW!?” asked in a terribly raucous voice Pee, unable to see his way through the smoke. (Tartinun was the goddess of Peagemite, a holy yeastly paste made of fermented peas, consumed by shamans in order to bridge the gaps to the Great Unhead Aknown).
Unable to withstand the sheer amount of decibels of that raucous cry of despair, Mother Blubbit suddenly drop dead of a spleen failure.
“There’s no other way” said Lilac. “We must bring in the Bridge Tarts.”
A collective gasp could be heard ricocheting around the valleys as the news travelled, gasp by gasp.
The Peasland Natarteum was a sort of time travelling portello in the Elsespace Arrangement, staffed by bridge tarts. Just about everyone had focuses as bridge tarts, it was quite a group focus. They were always merging and shape shifting and what not, so it was hard to pin anyone down. Sometimes, however, it was rather obvious.
Dealea Flare was usually one of the most accomplished bridge tarts, so it was a surprise to hear that she’d apparently disappeared whilst day tripping in the Neroli dimension.





Suddenly it all became clear to Nasturtium. The Releasing of the Bird had gone awry with The Tampering of The Code. The giant invisible spider web tea bag that was to enclose all that annoying blubbit nonsense that was wreaking havoc all over Peasland had blinked out while nobody was focused on it.
Obviously, as any well versed bridge tart would know, it could just as easily blink back in.
“Are you saying that all we need is a giant blinking teabag?” inquired Lilac politely.
“Yeah, I think if you get the guage right on the net, it should work like a dream.”
“And what do we do with a giant teabag full of volcano dust?”
“Lava dust tea? Are you kidding? Sells like hotcakes in some dimensions. The bridge tarts are always smuggling it through portals.”
Lilac was rendered momentarily speechless by Nastytart’s words. Picking up her Lee Mon novel, “Making Sense in a Crazy World“ she opened it at random:
Maybe you’re not ready for the profound revelation of utter sense?
Of course! That was it. She was not ready! 
“Hot cakes!” Nasty shouted. “HOT CAKES!”
Lilac rolled her eyes. I don’t think I can take much more of this nonsense, she thought.
Nasturtium knew what Lilac was thinking and added “Hot cakes is the clue, Lilac! YEAST!”
“Yeast?”
“Yes, yeast! There was too much yeast in the furcano mixture. Too much yeast and what happens? It rises too much! We must find a way to neutralize the yeast!”
“Well I think I can help you there” replied Lilac helpfully. “I’ll give old Dophilus a ring. Never been a saucerer better at sorting out yeast problems. You know Horace Dophilus!” she added, seeing Nasty’s blank look. “He was a guest speaker at the Worserversity once, remember? In some circles he’s known as the Biotic Man.”
“Oh, HIM! Go on then, give him a ring.”
“Really, Godfrey, do you think it’s wise to let the children play tea parties down there? Every time I take a peek, it looks like they’re making a hell of a mess,” asked Elizabeth with a worried frown. “Just look at the mess they’re making with that cake. I dread to think what will happen when they ice it.”
“I think part of the problem” Godfrey replied wryly “Is that they iced it before it had finished rising.”
The ice is melting,
That tart won’t rise,
We’d better off meringuing
To get off this maze
All the others were flabergasted at all the (seeming yet inspired) nonsense Doily would speak by the minute.
They had to admit her Porette syndrome if not getting worse everyday, was making her do the oddest things.
“There, you see? I told you Dealea was on the case!”
“You didn’t say any such thing!” retorted Lilac. “You said she was lost!”
“Oh that’s a euphemism for “on the case”, it always looks like lost at first.”
Peackle dragged his father by the sleeve and showed him the delirious aunt speaking in tongues.
See, dad, I think she got that special direct line with the Eight’s Dimension now…
Oh, I see… a broken Pee said
Their victory over Mother Blubbit seemed utterly and bitterly Pyrrhic at the moment, considering all the nonsense (damned be the Eighth Dimension) their trip has brought to otherwisely very non-nonsensical Peasland. Would they ever get back to normal again?
He preferred to believe she’d just again overindulged on Peaskol, the famoul (famously foul) alcohol brewed from overripe peas known though all Peasland to clean old clogged pipes. That and smoking tea leaves of course…
Auntie Mac Asser wasn’t the only one speaking in tongues.
Meanwhile, Landelin was perfecting his blubbit duct-tape traps.
Landelin was a quite reclusive man, some Peaslanders considered him even a bit mentally challenged with a reputation for having teafing as a secondary hobby. Yes, secondary. Before teafing, came duct tape; duct tape always came first.
Landelin had been fond of duct tape since he was a kid, since he’d glued his first nanny to the cellar door and then went off buying more duct tape at the local grocery store with the money he’d teafed from her. Teafing always came second.
Plagued as all Peaslanders with blubbits, he’d reasoned, quite reasonably for someone as mentally challenged as him, that blubbits were like worries and warts (and he knew quite a bit about the former and the latter), and none could stand a chance if administered the right amount of duct tape. By right amount, he meant, as much as needed to cover them in silver linings and eventually, maybe erradicate them — but that was a bit besides the point anyway.
Pity there wasn’t more than a few blue pelts’ hair to teaf from a blubbit, he thought quite reasonably again, as his last prototrap worked like a charm and had a few blubbits suffocating under a fair amount of stickiness.
Well, from blubbits, perhaps not so much, but from Peaslanders waiting for naught but a savior, maybe… After all the other treatments have failed, they surely would turn, as they all do, willingly or forcibly, to the raw power of taping.
We may never know (or maybe we will) if it was the giant tea bag, or the duct tape, or indeed, the efforts of the Biotic Man, but a sense of normality was returning to Peasland.
Meanwhile, however, the bridge tarts were very busy. There was plenty of tartying and bridging going on in the Elsespace arrangement, and out of it.
After his failed attempts to gain control over the Land of Peas, and his being thrown out of the Majorburghouse body first and framed head second by an angry mob of infuriated Peaslanders (which was something to be noted, since Peaslanders were usually quite the happy bunch), the Majorburgmester now bereft of anything but his will, was thinking it was high time for a u-turn in his carreer.
His dear blubbits had apparently mostly vanished out of sight, some said trapped in a blinking giant spider’s cobweb blinked out of Peasland, some others said suffocated under shiny duct tape, and even some said baked in ashes and almonds — those last obviously were the maddest of the lot.
It seemed like all the Dimensions had conspired to his defeat.
Now hardly a Majorburgmester, the title having now been offered by the cheerful crowd to the raucous and unexpected hero (after they hesitated for a good hour if it should be given to the herald of the liberation, that stupid Gandfleur whatever its name of a dog), he was now again known as B. Weazeltweezel (the B. standing for Bartabous, his mother having a fondness for names in “-ous” like Precious, his elder sister, and Pulpous his second sister; a chance his father was a man of more common sense, otherwise he surely would have been named Houmous himself).
The newfound venture didn’t wait long to manifest. In the not so distant past, he had already suspected something fishy about Lady Fin Min Hoot and now he knew. She was a high member of the Bridge Tarts Order, and though it was a secretive and feminine order, he had always loved a challenge.
He felt he could muster all the tartiness and bridginess needed to be granted access to their secrets.
Galvanized as he was, were he to successfully infiltrate the order, he knew he didn’t really stand a chance without something else. By nothing short of a synchronistic chance, Fwick, the saucerer had given him the leftovers of a potion he didn’t know what to make of.
In a gulp (and a few gargppls) Batabous was rapidly changed into a rather convincing dame matron, with slight mustache and ample bosom.
Tarty Bridgies, here I come… he said in a falsetto voice that needed work. … soon everybody will know about Lady… Bartaba



Sadness, whilst not being entirely unheard of, was alot more uncommon during the days of the Gardenation. The weather was kindness itself, and everyone, naturally enough, was at liberty to grow whatever they wanted in their gardens. There were no rules and regulations in the Gardenation; it worked on a sort of expanded “pay forward” system, not that there was any pay, or forward thinking for that matter, involved. The genesis of the new collaberation of independant garden nations (although it was actually more of a renaissance, simultaneous time notwithstanding) had come about as a result of the widespread discontent of the populace with all of the political parties, in just about every nation on the planet.





During a particularly wild and raucous bridge tart birthday party (they were always having birthday parties; it was always somebody’s birthday somewhere, after all) the avant garde shift pioneers, as well as the twelve Wisp rats, came up with a plan ~ of sorts. It was more of an imaginative play really.





One of the children had been bemoaning the fact that his friend in another nation could grow whatever he wanted in his garden, and he couldn’t, in his own nation. He asked the bridge tarts if they could create a new nation, from all the independant garden nations all over the world. The bridge tarts decided that it was a fine idea and set about bridging the independant garden nations all over the world together, in energy.

Some of the bridge tarts worked on the connecting links between the garden nations all over the globe, and some of the bridge tarts were instrumental in innovative new gardening ideas. One of them experimented with pulling funny faces at the seedlings, which resulted in bizarre comical blooms. New ideas bounced from one gardenation to another, originating you might say in all gardenations at the same time, so connected were they in energy.

Given sufficient motivation, the Gardenation might have started sooner ~ notwithstanding simultaneous time. Or perhaps they already did.

Dear OW’s and Favourite Daughter,
I had a dream last night. It went like this … . I was in the garden when I noticed an alien space ship coming down from a great height above me. It was humming, humm, hummm, humming. Like that. There was a smell of old cabbages and kitty litter.
It landed a few feet away from me. It was like a saucer and coloured olive green. A door opened on the underside and a ladder lowered. The ladder was made of wood, which surprised me. The aliens started down the ladder. They had no arms or legs. Just heads. They came down the ladder using their lips.
There were eight of them. The leader (at least I took it to be their leader as he had the biggest head) approached me. He said “Where can we get some hats?”
Next thing I remember I was in the back of a pickup truck eating a prawn cocktail. Next to me sitting on some old sacks was the head alien slurping down uncooked carrots direct from the tin.
He said to me “We would like you to make a tv commercial for us”.
Then I woke up.
I’m afraid to report this encounter with the third kind to the authorities in case they just laugh at me.
I need your advice on this one. What should I do?
Uncle Garnet
Once upon a time….
“What would you have me do, Lizzie darling?” Godfrey asked slightly puzzled, as he was still longing for a good cup of anything to get him into the present and into the morning.
“You could start a new thread if it would help, I would even reopen the very first one, yes I would do that…” Godfrey continued
“Truth is, things are never quite the same during Finnley’s winterly vacations” He said to the cup that Elizabeth just brought him “She was the one with the brilliant rewrites and scissors magic…”
“I don’t really know, Godfrey, do I have to have you DO something? I’m not even sure what the word thread means anymore, there seem to be so many threads already everywhere. Can we start a cloth instead?”
“A bloody cloth?” Godfrey asked, scratching his balls. “And I am not scratching my balls, Lizzie, what on earth did you say that for?!”
“No idea, was it a sync?”
“Well, those were not my balls, mind you, but the cute little rabbits I bought to entertain the miniature giraffes which looked awfully bored making the goats faint over and over.”
Godfrey wouldn’t admit he was slightly taken off-guard, being reminded of a dream of late, where he was in a bollocks museum, with grapes of pairs hung all over the places in a sort of disturbing triball art arrangement, fig-like and glossy in nature.
“Anyway,” Godfrey continued, putting the soft hairy rabbits aside, “speaking of cloth, or ball of yarn, or whathaveyou… I was about to suggest we do some snowflake experiment…”
He looked at Dory-Ann and sighed a grey smoke of mild disparaged despair, “… but I guess we should have to start it all over”.
“You’ll find me on the other side” were his last words while he jumped off the twenty third level of the building, disappearing in mid-air, never to be seen again, or from this side of the thread at least.
