In books by T Pratchett, a hairy 'un,
You might think a total barbarian,
Was once a real man,
Now an orang utan,
And acts as the college librarian. (1)

Now Pratchett don't give him a name,
But such are the rules of my game,
To aid later rhymes,
When I fall on hard times,
I'll call the ape Fred, just the same.

Now after an evening of sin, you are
ODing on granny's slow gin, you are
Both keeling and reeling,
That's much like the feeling
Of a drop through the space-time continua. (2)

And thus fell our ape through the ether, a Split second, he's now in Ibiza, a (4) A flash, then he's found
He's slipped to the ground,
Like a leak from an old maid's urethra.

You see, then, through matter ethereal,
He's landed on solid material,
Down there in old Spain,
Where it rains on the plain,
In a manner most wholly sureareal. (5)

Now attitudes racist have long
Existed on Earth, but King Kong
Shows clearly the schism
That pure speciesism
Is wholly and utterly orang... I mean wrong.

So poor Fred's career literary,
He finds is now quite stationary.
He can't get a job,
Till he meets cockney Bob,
Who runs, with his half-brother Barry...

...A seedy hotel, called The Joy
Of Sax, (as such sounds they enjoy,)
Who says: `Hey, you oughter
Come be our hall porter,
For peanuts most all we employ.' (6)
Now Mr and young Mrs Offerstone
Were taking a trip far away-from-home,
but she's getting angrier,
He's off drinking sangria,
And calls the receptionist on-the-phone.

They send up Fred with his banana,
He finds Phyllis there sans pyjama,
The great big orang
Soon gives her a bang,
And takes her damn near to nirvana.

What happens when hubby comes home,
On finding his wife not alone?
The tale's pretty groovy,
It's all in a movie:
`Hairy Porter And Phyl Offerstone.'

1. Terry Pratchett's Disc World novels. A leakage of magic transformed the librarian into a simian, and he found that accessing books from the top shelf now much easier and decided to remain thus.
2. Plural of continuum, This is the multiverse, after all. op. cit. (3)
3. That's pig latin for `look at previous notes.' This saves space as it uses fewer characters than `see note 1 above.'
4. Pronounced, here at least, I-beetha.
5. Limerick rule46B - the making up of words to fit the rhyme is to be deplored. Luckily I've not read that rule.
6. Merkins, That's a bell boy, hence the expression `You orang, sir?'
7. All characters are fictitious except, of course, for the orang utan.
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   Thursday, January 31, 2002