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The day Carly decided to take Christopher Carter in hand was a motionless Ambridge day of summer, creamy, dark and stout-coloured, with the oak trees standing in heavy rain as though clogged with wild wet amber nectar. It was the time of muck-spreading, so when school was out, kids would hang about the village and farms armed with clothes-pegs.

The whirr of the muck-spreader was oblivious to Joe Grundy as, with his MP3 player filling his ears with Wurzels tunes, he splattered the cars and cottages, as he drove through the village. Firecrackers jumped like rabbits as the children threw them at him as he passed, and the skunk-grass smelt rank & sweet. The farmers' men were all hard at it, spreading it here, there and everywhere. Tall slap-headed fellows rolling the grass, their chests like welcome mats. The air hung foul with their coughs and wheezes as they shovelled the muck from the wagons. The farmer gave some kids a short shovel each and they all pitched into the dung heap…

Christopher stumbled on Carly behind a muck cart, and she grinned up at him with the sly, blackened teeth of her mother. She wore her tartan mini-skirt, school blazer, cheap leather pet collar and her bare legs were brown with fake tan.

'Get out of there,' he said, 'Go on'.

Carly had grown awesome now! And he was stunned by her. In her made up eyes and lip-glossed mouth he saw unnatural yearnings, more promising than he could imagine for! The last time he had met her he'd smacked her with a riding crop, she bore no grudge, and just stood chewing gum.
'I got sumfink to show ya'.
'Push off ' he said. He felt high and dripping, icy hot! Her eyes twinkled, and his feet were rooted. Her face was a sea of badly applied make-up and her body seemed to glow with glitter-spray.
'You thirsty?' she said.
'I'm not' he said.
'I fink UR' she said. 'U come wiv me.'

He chucked the dung shovel into the heap and followed her like doom. They went down to the bottom of the fields, where a turnip wagon stood, over-loaded. Piles of turnips were piled up all around it. They crawled down under the wheels, into a rotting, root vegetable scented grotto of smelliness. Carly ferreted about and revealed a bottle of vodka from Varrington. 'It's vodka,' she said. ' You ain't to drink too much like, cuz, like I want me fair share of it! Clear and bright the bottle rested on a turnip like love potion No.9. They lifted it up and unscrewed the top, and smelt the paint-stripper- like odour of the clear liquid. He held the neck to his mouth and his eyes rolled like a rabbit's on exhaust fumes. 'Go on,' said Carly. He took a deep swig… Never to be forgotten that shot of clear fire-water, rough grain spirit, juice of the iron-curtain, wine of freeze-proof radiators, of Soviet winters, of red flags and a similarity to Carly's cheap perfume. Never to be forgotten, and hope fully tasted again and again… He put down the bottle with a cough and a rasp.

Then he turned to look at Carly. She was muddy and smeared with make-up and seeming to be pouting in the gloom; her hair was lank, and like a bird's nest and her eyes were full of eye-liner. He did not know what he wanted to do. But had a few ideas. She looked pale and swollen, a thing in need of a good meal, and perilous as custard! 'Carly…' he said… on his back and shaking. She crawled with a squishing of turnips towards him, slowly and with stealth. Her hand was in his, like a small wet bogey which you can neither hold or throw away. Then Carly, with a yearning , greedy yank, pulled him down, down into her bad dental smile and on to the squelching turnip carpet. Then Christopher remembered little, and that little, even less littlely! Native drums beat in his brain. Carly was close-up, salty, real but unreal, and as solid as wood. The turnip wagon seemed to rise, and floated like a Spanish galleon, washed with ocean spray and rising and tossing on wave after wave of surrealistic tides.

Then she took off her boots and stuffed them with turnips. She did the same with his. Her reedy voice cackled like chickens in his ears. More fires were started. He drank more vodka. Carly told him some filthy jokes. She liked him, she said, better than Ed Grundy, or Will Grundy, Johnny Depp or even Alan the vicar. And he admitted to her, in a loud, drunken voice, that she was even prettier than Betty Tucker (but then again she was dead!) For a long time they sat like kissing fish, glued together, smoking the same cigarette, till the leaves of rolling papers struck to their lips. At last the gulls stopped their cawl, kewl, cawling, and headed to the landfill site. The muck-spreaders went off to the Bull. They heard Neil and Susan calling their names, across the fields of Willow Farm, till they heard them no more.

They lay in their wagon of turnips poking at each other's ribs, while she whispered 'whatever' to him, and the vodka beat like KGB guards in his head… Night came at last and they crawled out from their wagon, and stumbled over the turnips. Bright dew and cowpats shone out from the grass, the heat of the day waned. Christopher felt like a giant, BIGMAC, he swung Tarzan-like from trees and landed in a patch of stingers! Carly carried her boots and smiled and hoped that condom had still been in date. 'Well, Whatever' she thought to herself. The vodka was reaching other parts previously unreached in Christopher, and the long hills reared up like crimson dragons, one foot seemed nailed to the ground, the pond seemed full of piranha fish. Carly left him to it. And legged it home.

Christopher lay in the ditch at various times gazing at the stars. They stared back like acid drops, trees and bushes stalked him like a hunter. Reaching Willow Farm, he sang rugby songs till Neil flung open the bedroom window, rushed out, frog-marched him to bed, with Susan flapping nearby…..

Next day all that was found in Christopher's bed was a turnip.

He was never the same again.


More parodies - from Agatha Christie to Damon Runyon



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