Eurovision 2012

Under 19's Sci Fi.

Lance Actraiser is simple man working on Space farm, all he wants is to plough his photon-crops.  In future instead of normal crops people have photon-crops because they plough them using photons instead of ploughs, also because the space farmers enjoy shouting “Photon Crops” during space-harvest festival. Popular Photon Crops include Astro-wheat, Cosmic Potatoes, Venusian land plankton and Cyber-Lemons.  All is not well because the farm of Lance Actraiser is attacked by Shadow Caliban, first man of the space king.

“This farm belong to king now, don’t be tardy or it’s the space-chop.” Says Shadow Caliban.

“Oh dear” Says Lance Actraiser “I not have the means for this battle at present time, in further periods I will reclaim this. Furthermore you will be space-sorry!”

Shadow Caliban turns round with imperiousness “Space Sorry! It will be you who is Sorry…for this space!” He is gesturing to the ruined crops.

At this Lance Actraiser has no answer and he is away into the desert lands to hide from Shadow Caliban and also to prepare for further encounters. He has failed to prepare for the current encounter of dust men who set upon him with upmost strength. ”From bad to worse” says Lance Actraiser “I did not expect this, these dust men will be the death of me or at least the maiming.” But some strange exclamation causes the dust men to flee, and the exclamation is being exclamated from Tech Wizard Albert Cider. “Let’s shift on, or the Dust men will return and shift us on…to graves.” Says Albert “Not repeat that to unnecessary extremes, let’s be away.” Replies Lance Actraiser.

The duration for getting to Albert Cider lair “Cide-lair” is short and soon they are discussing things to come. “Lance, I am Tech Wizard.” Says Albert Cider “Also those relations to you were Tech Wizard which equals you to be Tech Wizard!” At this Lance Actraiser is most uncomfortable “Fi! Tech Wizard is the talk of fantasy, show the facts and it will all become apparent!” “Well you say apparent but this will be apparent” Says Albert and as he says he causes object to levitate using only power of mind. Also he hold proton cudgel which is most impressive. “Then I agree become Tech Wizard, Tech wizardry to defeat Shadow Caliban.”

So it is agrees that Lance Actraiser will come with Albert Cider to the space –bar but so sad that a man doesn’t like him. Well Lance Actraiser cannot please everyone but on this occasion Albert Cider is bashing the man with his space cudgel. Also in the space bar they team up with Fenix Gambledor and friend Momo because they are needing outer space travel and Fenix Gambledor space boat “Bi-centennial Man” he claims it can “Alter the kestrel run in under five space seconds”. Momo just say “Rog” because Momo is space hound. In the future space hound are equal citizen even though they not allowed to vote because unable to vote for Rog. Well no one is believing this claim when they witness that the “Bi-centennial man” is more like a Bi-centennial ham! But with the forces of Shadow Caliban at the door it’s no choice but to go out the space window. (To space.)

You think that going into space is escape from Shadow Caliban, that is not correct because he is also present …in space.  So they must have final showdown and it is serious battle, at the end Shadow Caliban reveal “It was really earth”. And lance Actraiser is taken aback.  (Literally!)

Today's work - Tockenheim 11

The Inspector Tockenheim Mysteries - Tockenheim gives it’s a sporting chance.

It is the grand finale of the 2012 Olympic game.  People from around the globe have visited London to witness vaguely impressive feats of strength such as throwing a stick or leaping over some sand. For some reason they consider this more entertaining than watching Jurassic Park in HD. (High Dinosaur-finition). Chief of the OMD (Olympic medals Directorate) and renowned sports personality Keith “Tammers” Tamworth is approaching the podium to hand out the gold medals and all seems well with the world. Unfortunately things are about to go from “Athlete kings” to “Soured Grins”.

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth:  Before I hand out the medals, I’d just like to say a big thank you to all the athletes who went “Tammers and Hongs” to make these games memorable. I’d also like to thank the Olympic committee for giving me the chance to handle these medals despite my past “mistakes”. Now before we hand out the medal….

“Tammers” is interrupted by Henry Rioja the Mexican table tennis coach.

Henry Rioja: “Stop! These medals are a sham, you are bringing shame on the name of Mt Olympus.”

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth : What is the meaning of this outrage. You better be able to substantiate your claims or I’ll drop on you like the “Tammers Dozen.”

Henry Rioja: “I apologise if I come over as brusque, but I have uncovered a dark conspiracy the likes of which should not exist within the bright corners of the holy village we call Olympic. If you examine these photographs that I happened to take with my special Mexican long lense you will see that all three finalists in the Table Tennis tournament were not what they appeared to be.”

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth takes the photographs and examines them closely.

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth: “Those cogs, this can only mean one thing.”

Henry Rioja: “That’s right my friend, the finalists were all ….robots!”

There is uproar in the Olympic Stadium as people begin to realise the severity of what has happened. After all if you can’t trust an athlete who can you trust? Neighbours and families turn on each other and the question is raised. Who is man and who is cog (man)?

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth: “Is this true table tennis finalists, are you just machines.”

Tabletennis bot 1: “Greetings human, this question does not compute.”

Keith “Tammers” Tamworth: “Inscrutable! I don’t know how we will get to the bottom of this.”

Out of the crowd steps the master of deduction Inspector Tockenheim along with his idiot assistant Constable Cogsworthy.

Tockenheim: “I believe its tocken-time for me to lend a hand.”

 Keith “Tammers” Tamworth: “Inspector, thank goodness you’re here. Can you help sort out which athletes are computer powered and which are man powered?”

Tockenheim: Any fool can see that the only robot here is you “Tammers” or should I say ROBOTAMMERS!

Robot Keith “Robotammers” Tamworth: "It’s true, I must admit that the real Keith “Tammers” Tamworth died several years ago in an unspecified accident. However his brainwaves were uploaded to me “Robotammers” and from then on I’ve done my best to go all out “robo tammers and robo hongs” to honour his memory."

The crowd look uneasy at the thought of a cheeky sports personality actually being a cold, emotionless cyber-person.

Henry Rioja: “But what about the table tennis finalists?”

Tockenheim: “That’s simple, Robotammers simply used his inbuilt illusion beam to make it appear as though they were robots to draw attention away from himself. It didn’t help that some of the players looked quite square and emotionless anyway.”

Tabletennis bot 1: “It’s true, when you devote your life to mistress table tennis you have no time for your fellow man. But after all this I know what’s truly important. I’m in love with Henry Rioja and I want to be in a civil partnership with him but not married as that would be an affront to God. Henry will you sort of marry me?”

Henry Rioja: “Yes I do…I do!”

They embrace fondly.

Tockenheim: It looks like love conquers all.

Constable Cogsworthy: But what about Robotammers, isn’t he contravening some sort or robot rule?

Tockenheim: Again Cogsworthy your lack of mental power proves no surprise to anyone. The only crime Robotammers has committed is telling some criminal anecdotes on “They think it’s all over.” While it’s true robots cannot take part in the Olympics there is nothing to stop him giving out the medals, or conducting wedding ceremonies….

Henry Rioja: Then let’s get married right now and you will be my best man Inspector Tockenheim.

Tockenheim: Tockeneheim is always the best man!

-Fin-

Today's Work - Mr Eisner’s videogame aggressive corporate takeover.

“All your wishes can come true so long as those wishes involve all your intellectual property being owned by Disney.”

Order in the court! Once upon a time Uncle Werner Herzog Disney might have been the ice-man at the top of the adventure land totem pole. But now I Michael “Iron Fist” Eisner am the one making all the hard decisions, or at least I was during the 90’s until I was forced out for indecision regarding the Power Rangers franchise. Old Wodan might have thought he had explained the delightful electronic content that the Disney corporation have on offer but everything he says is just fairy stories, much like the stories you hear about people being killed on the small world ride. While the ice-man is back in the chest freezer allow me to present a series of graphs representing our ability to harness the power of a child’s imagination and turn it into cold hard cash.  (Specifically Eisner-dollars which will become legal tender once I offer England’s Queen a role in High School Musical 4: Secret of the Ooze)

Aladdin:

Whether it be a Chinese boy fighting his evil uncle Abanazer or an Arabian trying to stop an educated man from deposing a useless monarch, the moral of Aladdin is always that you can’t trust a foreigner. The videogame adaption takes this theme and runs with it, vertically across a series of platforms. Speaking of platforms this game was released for both the Mega Drive and SNES. The Mega Drive version allowed Aladdin to swing a sword at the friends of democracy while the SNES version reduced Aladdin to throwing apples at the face of man and giant snake alike. Like Disney, Nintendo are a family friendly global corporation and they didn’t like the idea of children accidentally slicing each other’s arms of with scimitars. I for one agree with this decision, children without arms are no good to the Disney corporation as they slide through the restrains on space mountain. That’s another frivolous lawsuit waiting to happen, if you read the small print on your ticket you’ll see that Michael Eisner is not responsible for events that transpire in outer space. It’s much safer for children to risk brain damage by hurling apples or similar round objects at each other, that’s just more brain damaged children coming on charity. trips to Disneyland. Whether the money comes from your own parents or the make a wish foundation makes no difference to me, I’m still just going to give it to Haim Saban.

Disney’s action game featuring Hercules:

 I was so sick of people coming up to me asking whether the Bambi game was a FPS or an RPG. The only thing I hate more than acronyms is ice cream vans which use images of Disney characters without paying the proper licensing fees. Listen “Uncle Whippy” just because you provide the ice necessary to stop our founders cadaver going gangrenous doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to depict Goofy asking people to mind that child. Goofy is a registered trademark of Disney and any public image of Goofy should be in keeping with his image as an idiotic dog who would no sooner mind a child as follow proper safety procedures while putting up wallpaper. It is true that the rights to our popular characters are sold at a price too high for most to afford, but have you considered using one of our less famous characters? Your ice cream van could feature official sanctioned images of Gurgi from the black cauldron for as little as $50,000 a month. The point is that most games are mysterious like a Cornetto and you never know what is luring at the bottom of the cone but Disney’s action game featuring Hercules is straight forward like a Cherry Brandy lolly. Only instead of unpopular cherry flavour it features unpopular 2D platforming and a Cyclops who quotes the names of Magic the Gathering Cards.

Toy Story:

 If you ask Michael Eisner (and everybody does eventually) Toy Story was the beginning of the end (for Michael Eisner). But I am not bitter at the fact that John Lassiter has hoodwinked his way to the top by remaking the Brave Little Toaster. In fact I wish him all the luck in the world because after Cars 2: Back in the habit  he is going to need it.  However this game comes from a time before films such as “Old Man misses dead wife” “Robot makes futile attempts” and “Not the Fantastic Four” and as such we can enjoy it’s pre-rendered graphics without knowing that eventually all the characters will be destroyed in a furnace. I’m particularly fond of the sections which see Woody carry toy aliens around the windows maze screensaver, as Tom hanks cheaper brother might say “There’s a serpent in my footwear!”

Toy Story 2:

 From the producers of “Apocalyptic sentient automobile future” comes Toy Story 2, the Toy Story sequel that isn’t an hour of suicide inducing melancholy and ten minutes of hilarious jokes about Ken. This time the men from Disney have gone all out to move away from 2D platforming and bring you ….3D platforming. You can recreate all your favourite moments from Toy Story 2, such as the bit where Buzz Lightyear repeatedly tried to jump between tree branches or the scene where Buzz Lightyear can’t work out how to get up a desk and uses the level select code to go straight to the airport level. As a down on his luck due to drink driving charges Tim Allen might say “To Infinity gauntlet and beyonder!”

Disney’s Epic Mickey:

 This game tells the familiar story of an old relic being “sent away” and replaced with a younger model who knows more about maximising corporate revenue streams. With this being a game of course Oswald the lucky rabbits family don’t team up to oust you from your position after a few mistakes that anyone could make, that is because un like real life games have to be fair. If Oswald the lucky rabbit was so great how come he is a frozen shell while I Michael Eisner am a vigorous man who does not rely on liquid nitrogen to stop his eyes falling out. Even Mickey Mouse can make a few mistakes, I mean who would think a film about a sassy cow in the wild west could be anything other than a massive success?  Well in this game Mickey say’s “no” to the irrelevant men of the past and erases them with paint thinner. However it’s not all “black and white” as much like myself Mickey has some difficult decisions to make along the way, for example should he erase Tron –Pete from existence or simply edit out all his politically incorrect moments? Should he help a pirate marry a cow or report him to the authorities and should he create a Roger Rabbit franchise or have his attempts to create a Roger Rabbit Franchise fail due to outside interference. Of course in the end Mickey escapes from the backwards world he is trapped in and gets lucrative jobs in network television. Again Nintendo were happy to allow this game to be exclusive to their Wii system as it does not encourage children to attack each other with weapons, it merely encourages them to drown each other with paint thinner.

Kingdom Hearts:

 Combining two popular franchises to create an all-powerful mega-franchise is just the sort of practice that Michael Eisner approves of. It’s just a shame that instead of working with Square-Enix we weren’t able to buy them outright and acquire rights to all their characters. Let me tell you I had big plans for a new series of Bonkers where Bonkers Bobcat pilots a wanzer. (I also had an idea for a Saturday morning Tobal cartoon called Oliems Troop, but I was advised not to talk about that in public ever again) We weren’t able to release the main Kingdom Hearts games on Nintendo consoles due to the gratuitous use of giant keys as weaponry. In fact the main character’s “Keyblade” stirred up a lot of controversy at the time with people making statements such as “A key should open the door to peace, but these keys bash the faces of all key loving people.” and “This is a key moment in the fight against the deformation of keys.” All the stories of key-related violence in the media didn’t help (boy pokes own eye out with key/ childhood keytastrophe/ Asylum seekers given free keys by government.) and for a while many shops were refusing to stock Kingdom Hearts due to the high level of key based violence. Eventually cooler heads prevailed and everyone was free to enjoy the simple story of the boy from the sixth sense travelling through the magical worlds of Disney and producing a lot of unnecessary portable spin offs.

Jungle Book Groove Party:

 Everybody likes hastily made cash ins of popular fads that cheapen a once highly regarded artistic achievement, just ask the people that made the Jungle Book 2: Jungle in the city. With Jungle Book Groove party Disney were able to combine the classic songs from the Jungle book with very slow dance dance revolution style gameplay to produce an unsatisfying experience for all. On my personal recommendation Lou Bega was invited to record his own version of “I want to be like you.” Because if you were Lou Bega I can’t imagine anything more than wanting to be more like someone else. (Specifically someone who wasn’t Lou Bega.) Still it was nice for everyone to hear from Lou Bega again a good few years after Mambo Number 5 just to make sure he wasn’t dead. This game was actually supposed to restart Lou Bega’s music career and had it been successful we would have launched Black Cauldron Groove Part featuring Shaggy and Basil the Great Mouse Detective Groove Party featuring Aswad. Unfortunately the “Groove” franchise was not to be ad the Kettle Drum version of the Rattigan song must remain in the Disney vault…for now.

Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix:

Where other men might fear to tread Michael Eisner struts in confidently. After the failure of one “groove” game you might think an intelligent business man would shy away from the whole foot-arrow genre. But as Michael Eisner says “If you aren’t prepared to fail then you aren’t prepared for (Vicki) Vale.” With the help of Konami we were able to produce a dancing game that mixed classic Disney songs with other not Disney songs that didn’t really have any business being there. That said until you have heard a house remix of Chim Chimmeny then you haven’t lived and we even included an exercise mode to count calories for those gelatinous beasts that have enjoyed too many official Mickey Mouse Club House pasta shapes. Yes those shapes may have contained an almost lethal dose of salt, but nobody told you to eat them and going blind is just a natural part of life.

Disney’s Think Fast: 

Is there a controller more pointless than the buzz controller? All it does it make the buttons slightly bigger, for most of the games you don’t even use the big red buzzer to buzz anything. Personally I (Michael Eisner) feel that the people that made it must have been “buzzed” by illegal substances when they created it. That doesn’t mean that we here at the Disney corporation aren’t going to take advantage of it to produce Disney themed quiz games. After all if we were that picky about employing drug addicts we wouldn’t have hired the crack head that came up with Sebastian the talking crab. I mean what sane person would ever even imagine a crab could talk? They don’t even have mouths just pincers and a negative attitude towards being boiled in pots. I found this out the hard way while trying to make a romantic meal for Mrs Eisner and from that day all crabs have been disbarred from Disney property. That is why the new DVD release of the Little Mermaid instead features a Monkfish called Hydrogen V. What more is there to say about this game other than that it features a man who isn’t Robin Williams or Dan Castalanetta voicing the genie quizmaster and also that it features a disproportionate amount of questions about Treasure Planet. Even I didn’t like Treasure Planet and most of it was based on my own life.

I must now leave the writing desk as it’s time for Meister Walt to be defrosted and last time he caught me touching his things I was forced to watch Lilo and Stitch. Do not worry though Eisner will  be back as that old frost giant won’t live forever and even if he does I will eventually discover the codes to the Disney nuclear submarine.

Your Pal – The Great Eisnerheim

Today's Work - Solve my game.

The Photon Shock

Doctor Doom helps Terrax choose a new phone , Ms Marvel takes a creative writing course.

The Sunday Best

The Air Walker looks through the window while Luke Cage is on the toilet ,Moon Knight makes several negative comments on a you tube video.

The Disassembled

Sunspot says something racist to the Wendigo. The Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man try to buy the same wheelbarrow.

The Owned Curse

Ghost Rider dates a woman in a haunted wheel chair,  Banshee inadvertently ruins a village fete.

The Aim of Hawkeye

Taskmaster gets a job as a door to door salesman, Hawkeye disapproves.

The Cosmic Cube

Firelord Visits an unconventional dentist , Purple Man writes a list of his regrets.

The Secret Wars

The Inbetweener goes on a lads holiday with the Beyonder and Ego the living planet, Bloodstone runs for district attorney.

The Infinity Gauntlet

Thanos paints a boat, Adam Warlock starts lying on his CV.

The Cerebro

Gambit takes in stray cat, Mr Sinister proves a point about fruit.

The Mandroid

Iron Man tries a different barber, Klaw enters a children’s mah-jong tournament.

The Mystic Stare

Shuma Gorath writes a novel about trees, Doctor Druid’s tries not to look at his manager’s eye.

The Vibranium

Morph starts a chain letter, Jubilee discovers  her boyfriend doesn’t recycle.

The Ten Rings

Crimson Dynamo assists the wrong man, the Mandarin makes the perfect pancake.

The Nova Force

Moondragon starts her own bank, grey Gargoyle gets his hand stuck in a jar.

The LMD

Carnage inherits a haunted house, Nick Fury gets a catholic pen pal.

The Wakandan

Red Ghost picks at his food, Namorita goes undercover at a shoe factory.

The Hellicarrier

Ant Man beats his mentally ill friend at tennis,  Mysterio tries to get a restaurant closed down.

The Spider Slayer

Alistair Smythe swallows a key, the Kingpin obsesses over a pinball machine.

The Watcher

Galactus interrupts a speech, Mr Fantastic discovers the true meaning of Christmas.

The Terrigen Mist

Black Bolt goes vegan, Karnak is disappointed by a yo yo champion.

The Ultimate Nullifier

Sauron takes the bus, Morbius meets a famous author.

The Savage Land

Ka-Zar frames his boss for mail fraud, Quasar hires a one legged maid.

The Optic Blast

Longshot purposely engineers awkward social situations, Shatterstar develops a sleep problem.

Proud Men, Pointless Lives: The story of mining.

Coal mining has been the subject of many terrible films but the reality was a far cry from the likes of “Brass Man: The untapped story”,  “Kes 2: Kestrel in the city” or “Jozza Jones’ big day out”. In fact it may shock you to learn that rather than going into alternative careers with hilarious results most miners just died of shame. (coal dust related lung disease.)

 Even before the times of turmoil the life of a miner was not all honey and roses. Mining was a dangerous business especially before the invention of the wooden pit prop. In those days men called “bagsleys” were employed to hold up the pit on their backs. It was tiring work and an untied shoelace could lead to untold disasters. Many was the time the call came out “the bagsleys gone to sleep and so has the workers” meaning that they had gone to sleep underneath lots of rubble i.e. died. Thankfully bagsleying was finally outlawed by the Eu on account of it really not being possible to a man to hold up the earth unless that man was Atlas and he had enough problems. In some parts of the world bagsleying still goes on, mostly in exploitative diamond mines but people don’t care so much about that because having something that looks nice in a ring is more important that turning the cogs of industry with steam power.

The mining man also had to be wary of brushing up against his friend in the dark. It’s hard to see underground due to the lack of solar rays and you didn’t want to be accused of fondling for the other team when the coal face you started working on turned out to be the next mans prized leek. Especially as in those days that kind of behaviour was punishable by putting you in prison with lots of men. Eventually a young boy tired of the constant special miscalculations of his uncle invented night vision goggles as a way of seeing in the gloom. That boys name was “Nicholas Night Vision” and for the first time the men of the mine were able to tell what was coal and what was mere bottle caps. What they weren’t able to see was that his uncle continued to advance on the young boy, luckily child abuse hadn’t been invented so it wasn’t a problem.

Another essential piece of equipment for the proud men of the digging industry was the pick axe or “Paxus” used to dig into the earth. In those days men had to provide their own work tools, so often instead of the metal tools we use today they would bring picks that had been knitted by their wives or broken bottles from the local pub. Even worse if anyone forgot their pick or it broke on a particularly hard piece of coal they would have to dig with their hands like a mole man until they could afford to replace it. One miner renowned for his thriftiness became known as “Shovel hands” because he refused to buy any digging equipment. Eventually his hands went into the shape of shovels mainly because of all the clawing at the rock face but also because he lost his hands in a digging accident and had them replaced with shovels. (because shovels were cheaper than bionic arms)

Shovel hands eventually learned the error of his ways when he was visited by three ghosts and used his shovel hands to clear snow out of the road so that the Christmas presents could be delivered to the orphanage. As Shovel Hands himself says “Merry Shovel-fest everyone.”

Another famous (or should I say infamous!?) miner was “Hog Holston” who was famous for being the world’s largest tunnel dwelling mammal. More often than not Hog would get himself stuck in a shaft by eating too much coal and would have to be dragged out by pit ponies. Needles to say the mine bosses had to dock his pay for use of the ponies as well as for all the coal he had eaten. It might seem unusual for a man to eat coal but in those days people often had to top up their meagre diets with fossil fuels. A popular meal at the time was Gronk Cake – a baked bread type food made from flour, salt and petrol. People would also go swimming in the North Sea to try and inhale the North Sea gas. This became so popular that the government had  to make a special warning poster “North Sea – Not Be!” as people kept dying from hyperthermia and the corpses were clogging up the propellers of  fancy steam ships.

Despite these hardships the mine men still look back with fondness to the times when “Coal was king and mining was mega”. For one thing even the most slow witted of knaves could get themselves a well-paying job pushing around the coal carts and after work they had all the fun of communal showers.  Former mine-mongers will often get together and share a shower for old time’s sake, two former colleagues from the Gragglesthwaite colliery even took to living together and sharing a shower every day. The mysterious thing is that they weren’t even miners!

The tunnel people also have fond memories of the constant brass bands that would play, even at the risk of caving in the tunnels with loud trombone vibrations. Each mine had a brass sections whose job it was to play contemporary tunes to make the miners dig faster. This tradition was started by an innovative mine boss who would wander around his mine with a brass claw dealing out punishments to those that weren’t working fast enough. This practice was eventually banned by the EU due to harsh conditions in the brass industry and that is where we get the term “brass banned” which was later shortened to brass band during the war because of ink rationing. (The allies were saving as much ink as possible to put into a giant robot squid that had been built to fight U-boats. Unfortunately it went wrong and most of Berwick was destroyed.)

Like all good things the work of the mine men had to end, eventually they were all dragged back to the surface to live with their ugly wives and children. Coal was made obsolete by the invention of tesla coils and the pits were closed down. Entire towns of men became unemployed with protestations of “Ah dunt know wat ta dae, I dinnae have de no oover skills.” This was dismissed as sheer laziness on the part of the miners there were lots of other digging related jobs available.

·         Diamond Miner

·         Grave Digger

·         Man in the army that buries landmines

·         Pirate

·         Gold Miner

·         Snow Shoveler

·         Badger Baiter

·         Salt Miner

·         Hitting people over head with shovel for money

·         Morlock

Thus the time of the coal-getter came to a close, but the work of those stout hard working fellows will live on through former mines becoming museums about mining. They will also live on through this short play I have written entitled “Coal: the Hardworking Lads”

Act 1/Scene 1 – Down the Pits

Three miners Henk, Loggins and Castor are working in the mine. (It is not actually a mine but a stage made to look like a mine through use of black crepe paper)

Henk: “Cor-eck ees t’ard work doon yon pit und nay mis-teek.”

Loggins: “Aye lad tis hard graft but honest. Meks this strong lark Ox, none ov this paper pushing fer us.”

Henk: “Aye und eets hall us northern men cin be deein, taint nay need fur aspirations rund these parts.”

Loggins: “Oor kid Belmont went on ‘avin aspirations to work ont’ gas boored ant look wier that git im.”

Henk: “Nar whier that’s wier!”

Loggins: “Like mi dad said…ee said ‘Son t’only graft rarnd ere is coal graft’”

Henk: “That dunt want ideas above tha’ steation!”

Loggins+Henk: “Cos that nowt a’bo station bit moore coil!”

Castor: “Hello chaps. It’s my first day down the mines and let me tell you it’s no picnic.”

Henk: “Wha dunt that belay that talk,”

Loggins: “Yeah, thas nowt better un digging ard graft fur a living. Mebbies tha does less martfin off and tha’ll get moor diggin’ dun!”

Castor: “But don’t you find all this digging a little…dreary. Don’t you men dream of anything other than coal?”

Loggins: “Whats that toorkin’ abart. Taint nowt better than coil and if there wa it wunt be fur larks of us.”

Henk: “Aye ooh does thee think thy is tarkin boot not geeing darn marns – Dickie Bird!?”

Castor: “But my friends. Don’t you want to see life  beyond the coal hole? There’s a whole world out there just begging to be explored!”

Henk: “Thas’ livin in’t clard cuckoo land. All theer is in larf is graft ant gooin darn pub ‘t weerkend.”

Loggins: “Ees not wrong. Yung un. Ah once went ont ‘t self catering olliday ‘t magaluf and it wah no great shakes. Tha cudn’t get ah decent Sunday roast nae ware ant all prices wer in ‘t euro!”

Henk: “T’euro! Dunt meck me laugh. Arr can it be legal if it dunt ‘ave queen on it.”

Loggins: “Aye its cos of dat Euro that we can’t ‘ave dangerous working conditions no moor!”

Henk: “Aye, mi old man wor int Vietnam an’ tha dint ere nowt bout elf and safety back then!”

Castor: “Well you do make a convincing argument. I suppose I should resign myself to a pointless life of mine based drudgery.”

Henk: “Good lad, nar lets get some serious digging done”

Mine Owner Bill Tannen enters

Bill: “Sorry lads there nay moore work, mines av bin closed by Thatcher”

Henk, Loggins and Castor: “Grooo!”

-Fin-