The target kids were people like me (as a child) and mine, lively minds able to see the fun that underlay the literary allusions. The problem was that Marketing at Murdoch Books, a house that was going under, apparently didn't do anything literary or get anything vaguely intelligent. Just think of Scotty from Marketing.
See what I mean?
Anyhow, even though Cartoon Connection had taken an option on the series, and I had done a dozen or so story lines, bloody marketing tossed the whole thing into the remainders pile as the company collapsed, though the revived skeleton decided on keeping the ebook version on sale through Amazon. The price was, in my view, set too high.
Well, as I slip away into the mists of advanced middle age, I'm still pitching a few ideas that exist only on my hard disc, and that means the booklets are currently under scrutiny once again. Here's a sample, the title that features two mud alligators, Murray and Mustard.
The Mud Alligators who liked
kitchens
Gordon the noisy chef shouted loudly when he saw a snout in
the custard pot. “Mustard, you’re busted, get out of the custard!”
Gordon’s roar made the other kitchen workers jump and
drop things. They knew what it meant when Gordon shouted those words. He always
shouted a lot, because he thought shouting made the food taste better, and he
believed that mud alligators in the pots made the food taste worse. Gordon
wasn’t a good chef.
Mustard and Murray, the mud alligators, knew they
actually improved the flavour of the food they swam in. Everybody in the
kitchen, except the chef, knew this, so the workers did not mention to Gordon
that if Mustard had crept into the kitchen, and was in the custard pot, then
Murray was probably nearby.
The cleverer kitchen workers had already turned to look
in the curry pot as the chef picked up a pointy stick and started jabbing it
into the custard. “Hurry, Murray, get out of the curry!” a molar mole worker
called, quietly.
Two small snouts appeared in two pots, one
curry-coloured and one custard-coloured. The kitchen crowd cheered, and the
chef roared again. “Out!” he bellowed, waving the pointy stick and scattering
blobs of custard all over the place. “You’ve spoiled my two signature dishes
from tonight’s menu!”
“But we make such a nice match,” said Murray. “Me in the
curry, and Mustard in the custard.”
The chef waved a large mallet, the sort used to make
meat tender. “Well, those pots weren’t made for you. Now be off, before
I decide to add
mud alligator stew to the menu!”
There was a snarl in his voice.
Sadly, slowly, dripping curry and custard, the two mud
alligators went out the door, and into a gloomy alley. They walked along the
dark and shadowy passage until they bumped into a gutter otter.
“Sorry,” they both muttered.
“Oh, that’s all right,” the gutter otter said with a
smile. “You’re very light. Anyhow, I’m Highbrow and I’m not mad—who are you and why
are you so sad?”
“We’re Mustard and Murray,” said Mustard. “We were
hiding in the custard and the curry, but Al shouted ‘Hey!’ and sent us both away.”
As you may have noticed, if you have ever met one,
gutter otters like rhymes, so Highbrow raised one eyebrow, because Mustard was
rhyming as well. Everything about gutter otters is heavy, so he quickly put the
eyebrow down again, but the strain made him forget to rhyme. “Mud alligators
are named after rivers starting with M, but where’s the Mustard river?”
Mustard pointed over her shoulder. “It’s only Mustard
Creek, really, and it gets its name because it’s fed by hot springs. I’ve never
been there.”
“You should go and find it,” said Highbrow. “Maybe it’s
full of trout.”
“It’s a very hot creek,” said Mustard. “I think they might
all be fish stew by now.”
“Or fish soup,” said Murray.
“Yummy!” shouted Mustard. “Let’s go!”. They packed up
all the disguises they used to get into kitchens, tucked in their tails,
climbed onto their unicycles and headed off into the hot dry centre of
Australia.
“I hope there’s water in the creek,” Murray called out.
Mustard laughed as she swerved to avoid a bandicoot.
“Maybe it’s full of dry mustard!”
They unicycled under fruitbats, slipped around wombats
and almost ran into three numbats on skateboards. They saw potoroos, wallaroos
and kangaroos, and then they saw a sign. It said “Mustard Creek, 800 km. Bring
yer own water.”
“I think it’s going to be dry mustard,” said Murray, but
they needn’t have worried. Further north, something was happening. A cyclone had rushed in, over the coast,
where it calmed down and began soaking the land. Pitter-patter, went the rain.
Then the rain went splish-splosh, then flimp-flump, then
it went BUCKET! The ground got wet, water soaked in until no more would fit,
and a flood started to flow, slowly and quietly, out across flat Australia. It
filled the runnels, then it filled the channels, and it annoyed many animals by
filling their tunnels.
In the hot dry south, Murray and Mustard unicycled north
and west as the water dribbled south.
Before they got within smell of it, Mustard
Creek was full and gurgling.
More water had flowed over the sunny plains, and just as
they got there, Mustard Creek was disappearing, covered by a sheet of water,
and pelicans and other water birds were flying in from the coast to build
nests. Grandma and Grandpa Mactavish saw the birds fly past their home by a
billabong, and got worried. They lived in the dry inland for a very good reason,
because they could not swim.
“The tractor’s bust, the truck’s full of rust, but the
bike works just,” said Grandpa, looking at their tandem bicycle, leaning
against a gum tree. As a boy, he grew up with gutter otter neighbours and he
sometimes used rhymes.
“Not too sure about that, the tyres are flat,” said
Grandma, who had learned rhyming from him.
“Drat,” said Grandpa. “And the boat’s got a leak, so
we’re quite up the creek.”
“We’d better walk to Little Mountain, then,” said
Grandma, who had stopped rhyming, because she was always the practical one.
Little Mountain was well-named. City folks who saw it
called it Mount Speed-Bump or Mount Molehill, but it was the one place on the
plain that was always dry.
They packed tents and swags and billies,
and started off for Little
Mountain.
By the time the Mactavishes had finished setting-up on
top of Little Mountain, they were hungry, and that was when they realised they
had forgotten to bring any food. They hurried back to their home by the Mustard
billabong and filled a big wheelbarrow with food. Then they started pushing it
back to Little Mountain.
It was too late. The flood arrived, turning the ground
to mud and bogging the wheelbarrow. As the water level rose, the barrow floated
free, and they were able to push it along, but soon the water was too deep for
them. They started floating along with the barrow, but the current was pulling
it away from Little Mountain.
That was when the monsters came around to help. You see,
the Mactavishes had never seen any of them, but the billabong by their home on
the banks of Mustard Creek was full of monsters.
These were music-loving monsters who crept out and
lurked in the shadows and lolled in the shallows whenever Grandma and Grandpa
sat on their verandah, either playing duets on the viola and violin, or
listening to evening concerts on the radio.
They always hid, in case they frightened Grandma and
Grandpa, but now all the monsters agreed that they just had to help them.
“If they get flooded out,” cried a small moat monster,
“they might sell up to a tuba player!” The other moat monsters quivered at the
thought. None of them liked tubas.
So she and the other moat monsters swam up to help the Mactavishes, giving them something to stand on in the deep water.
That worked until Grandpa said “This is rather fishy—the
ground here feels squishy!” As quick as a flash, the moat monsters knew they
had been noticed, and they swam away, leaving Grandma and Grandpa clinging to
their barrow, and drifting.
The billabong’s only Moby duck started pushing, but she
almost capsized the floating barrow and that made the Mactavishes panic. Next,
the local Schrödinger’s Cheshire elephant tried to help, but every time she
appeared, Grandma and Grandpa screamed, and that made her disappear. A team of
Invisigoths came up in a canoe and tried to help, but the Mactavishes got
worried because they couldn’t see their helpers. The motets (which look like
hats) tried to help, but Grandpa had a hat-hating attack, and started to panic.
Murray and Mustard had unicycled in through the flood,
with just their snouts and eyes out of the water, and they had seen all of
this. “They’re nervous,” said Mustard.
“Yes,” said Murray. “I think they’re scared of monsters,
the silly things.”
“Maybe we could help, if we used our disguises,” said
Mustard. “Good idea!” said Murray, opening the disguise kit. They put on false
moustaches and chef’s hats and swam over. “Hello,” said Murray in a bad French
accent. “Hello! Who are you?” Grandma asked.
“We are Gascon
and Gourmand, ze famous unicycling chefs of Normandy. May we ‘elp you?” Grandma
and Grandpa spotted the phoney accents, but the Mactavishes were both keen
cooks. Not knowing Gordon, they thought anybody in a chef’s hat should be
trusted, and so they accepted Murray and Mustard’s help to get back to high ground.
When they all came ashore on Little Mountain, Grandma
saw that their two new friends were a funny build for chefs, but they did have
unicycles, and when she unpacked the barrow, they praised Grandpa’s choices of
curry powder and custard powder.
Even when
Murray and Mustard sniffed the curry powder and sneezed their moustaches off,
the Mactavishes still trusted them. When the other monsters came out of the
water and apologised for scaring them, the Mactavishes began to relax.
The couple cooked a meal for all their guests, gave them a concert, and felt quite sad when a
helicopter came to rescue them, forcing all the monsters to hide in the water.
Two months later
when the flood had gone, the Mactavishes returned and went down to
the billabong with their violin
and viola. They played the Mozart first
spring duo for violin and viola in G Major,
(K. 423), and all the monsters came out of the water, smiling.
Now, as soon as Grandma Mactavish hears the swish and clang of unicycles on the cattle grid, she starts making a large pan of curry, while Grandpa makes the custard. Then later, they give a concert, always ending up with their own version of Duelling Banjos, arranged for violin and viola, and Murray and Mustard live as happily as two mud alligators in curry and custard. The other monsters have settled back into the billabong and started the world’s first and only lagerphone band that provides backing for violin and viola duets.
Notes (for groan-ups):
All words in this story were
prepared in hygienically monster-free kitchens (if you don’t count the
sue-troll and the plongeur bucket bogle).
Please note that
on alternate Sundays, the sue-troll becomes litigious and should not be annoyed. Say Nothing.
The flood was provided
by Cooper Creek,
where it takes three rivers
to make a puddle.
The third moat monster
was played by Madame Brownell,
our willing morphing murphy stand-in.
Warning: curry
powder in this story
may contain traces of lead chromate. This was the Visigoths’ idea, so don’t blame us if your toes
fall off! I mean, when did we suggest paddling in the curry, huh? Take it up
with the sue-troll, but be warned: this is the second Sunday, and we told him
you called him a suet roll.
Reference: Glenn Miller,
In the Mud.
·
The Deconstructionist who liked books;
·
The Mud Alligators who liked kitchens;
·
The Sensible Cow who wanted to be bigger;
·
The Pudding Monster who saved a city;
·
The last of the Copywrong Pirates;
·
The Invisigoth who wanted to stand out;
The
Bucket Bogle who slept in a barrel;
·
The Quarking Duck who hated bridges;
·
The Molar Mole who wanted to live outdoors;
·
The Schrödinger’s Cheshire Cat who forgot how to
smile;
·
The Gobblesock who was scared of water;
·
The Piano Tunas who forgot their scales;
·
The Dwarf Underbed Lion who went outside;
·
The Hairyoddity who wanted to be smooth.
\ And by the way, the book is now available. That link also tells you more about the seriously weird illustrations, and how they came to exist.
A
