I’ve been working on this for a while now, it’s what I do when I’m bored of guitar, mates and games. It’s designed in order to offend myself and all of my friends for the sake of comedy. A quick note though, this story wouldn’t be funny if you didn’t know the people in question. A problem is that I have so many people I’d like to include and only four pages of text. I will be continuing on this as a work in progress and the plot will thicken and stuff.

It was a frosty day in the Queen Mary’s College grounds in late November. I suppose it was frosty in other places too, but as this is set in QMC, it doesn’t matter, okay? Anyway, this made the floors slippery, so people were dropping mistakenly to the ground regularly, which made spectacularly funny viewing for the sadistic maths teachers who enjoyed prime views over the front of the college. One funny looking lad called Mark made his insecure way to the main corridor/seating area a.k.a. the Street. He managed to divert his gaze away from girls for about two seconds in order to negotiate the steps at the front of the college, which required both sides of the brain for successful completion of the terrible task. This proved too complicated a matter for the mentally incapacitated idiot and he stumbled, flung his arms high in the air and landed flat on his face. He finished off the movement with a pathetic tuck and tumble in an unsuccessful attempt to hide this and ended up on his back instead.

Eventually, after much self-degradation, Mark found himself standing inside and walking towards his “friends” who were burning themselves on the hot pipe lining the hallway as a form of entertainment. These estranged people consisted of Dan, Will and John, who were generally nice people who did stuff sometimes, if they wanted to. Mark made his entrance by emitting a loud and utterly garbled shout involving pies, which would have puzzled his chums if it didn’t happen every morning. This was followed by greetings towards Dan, Will, John and Hair, who was currently lying dormant on Dan’s head in a dark, nest shaped, um… nest.

“Hi,” said Dan.

“Hi,” added John.

“Greetings, associate,” declared Will.

“Rustle, rustle,” added Dan’s ‘fro.

“You’re here early,” noted Dan, “it’s only a quarter to nine.”

Mark peered at his watch perplexedly. It was only a quarter to nine, but nay! This was not why he was perplexed. He wondered why this made him early.

“Your first lesson’s at 10:30,” came the helpful explanation from behind him. He turned violently and looked for the source of the voice, but in turning missed the floor and landed on the ceiling. The ceiling then remembered that it was breaking the laws of physics and decided to release its victim before the police that specialised in the properties of matter and energy appeared holding scary anti-gravity roof murdering toad guns or something. Anyway, the point is that Mark eventually landed on his back on the floor for the second time that morning. Not that this really was the point. What was the point? Why are we here? How many opened tubs of butter does it take to invent a dead cat? And stuff.

Actually, I think the point was that some unknown voice explained why Mark was in college early, and with a bump, Mark realised that he’d under-slept by two hours and didn’t know what to do. He eventually decided to persuade his pals to skip their first lessons so that they could go to town and have adventures and things. Luckily, Mark was a persuasive speaker and managed to talk Dan, Will and another random comrade called Joe into having a town party with him, which involved going to town and buying Tesco’s Cornish pasties and cheap energy drink, which was not so cheap anymore. In a whirlwind of new business ideas, Tesco had waited until the sales of their energy drink, ‘Kick’, to increase, meaning that customers had become sufficiently addicted, and then nearly doubled the price, so unfortunate students suffered financially, which was nice.

Actually, it was not Mark’s persuasive speech skills that convinced his friends to indulge in having a town party, but the proposition of bunking off Electronics. Anyway, they went to town. And then they didn’t know what to do, because their plans had already been completed. On their slow painful way back they decided not to return via their usual route. Instead, they found a strange little muddy trail. Will suggested that they investigate the Mystery Trail of Eternal Fulfilment. They investigated the said Trail with a sense of gravity and solemn audacity. Then, through a small gap in the overgrown bracken, a small light shined.

From the entrance to the Mystery Trail, a leafy canopy served as a poor roof, described thus because of the amount of moisture that had gotten into the now muddy ground. Foliage had grown up around the trail, and the mixture of green walls and brown floor created the illusion of walking through a long entrance hall, and traipsing up this trail increased the expectations of the companions of something Big to happen.

Following the shaft of sunlight that had made its way through the green barricade, the adventurers pushed their way through an even muddier trail that opened its leafy arms to the skies. Pale winter sunlight cascaded slowly over them, and shone onto their path helpfully; the sunlight could do nothing but warn them, however, of the danger they now faced. The lack of the basic shelter the first part of the Mystery Trail of Eternal Fulfilment provided had allowed the rain to churn up the ground into a sludge-like quagmire. Passage was treacherous and more than one of the partnership felt the tug of he oppressive brown ground on their shoes, the first sign that it had intentions of devouring them all.

Thanking the first firm ground that they set upon after that, the attention of the wanderers was drawn to an irregular shape visible through the undergrowth. A closer inspection of this unknown item revealed something that none of them were expecting.

“It’s a wheelbarrow!” exclaimed Joe, pointing out the obvious in a semi-comical voice, for it was indeed a barrow of the wheeled sort. None could recall afterwards whom it was that suggested that the students took the wheelbarrow, which was a feature of the barrow’s mystic energy, but it is likely that it was a joint decision made by both Mark and Joe, the more eccentric of the group. Regardless of who made the decision, they left the trail wheeling the barrow from its proverbial grave, in which it lay in squalor, rust, and decay.

It turned out that the tyre on the wheel of the barrow was rather, or even, completely flat, which made it ever so slightly exceptionally hard to push. So the assemblage took it in turns to push the wheelbarrow (except for Will, who was reluctant to do any of the pushing, but was extremely helpful in that he coordinated the transportation of the vehicle).

With no real physical input, Will thought it necessary to ask, “So, does this make us car-jackers of wheelbarrows?”

“BarrowJackers!” blurted Joe apoplectically, to which everyone agreed heartily.

“Therefore,” continued Will, “the Barrow shall be declared the voice of God and must be given a name befitting: WillBarrow!”

“Alas, no!” shouted Mark for no reason whatsoever.

“Why,” questioned Will, “what’s wrong with it?”

To which Mark answered knowingly, “What were we talking about?”

After short explanation, Mark learned the story of the finding of the wheelbarrow: “Then it must be called, BillBarrow, after the infamous Bill May!”

“Bananas!” shouted Dan unexpectedly, “Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, and stick ‘em in a stew!”

“Dan’s possessed!” screamed Will fearfully, tearfully, cheerfully, “drive a stake through his/her heart!”

Soon enough, the gang reached home (home, as in college), and were faced with the difficult questions: “what do we do with BillBarrow?”; “what are we going to do with BillBarrow in the future?”; “how do we keep BillBarrow safe from the evil general public?” and “why have we named a wheelbarrow?” The answers were, “hide it”, “don’t know”, “hide it in a hidden place” and “because it is a mystical being that deserves our respect and Tesco’s chocolate bourbons”. And so they hid BillBarrow in a bush behind the college and left an offering of chocolate bourbons and charged some passing squirrels with the task of guarding the hallowed Barrow. The squirrels, with the help of a friend’s (Tim) fevered imagination, were called Colin, Nigel and Trevor, amen.

With that, the boys returned to college in a good mood and Mark even managed to enjoy physics through the constant persecution distributed by Rob. Rob was Dan and Mark’s physics teacher, who seemed to hate Mark with a passion for no perceptible reason. This was proved once when Mark was held behind after class by Rob and personally blamed for the disruptions caused to his teaching by the chatter of the entire class bar one: Mark, who was working quietly for a change (this is actually true, for those of you who care). So, Mark began hatching a plot to mentally torture his evil teacher/tutor without ever leaving evidence as to who was causing the pain.

That night, sitting in darkness in front of his computer in his room, Mark began his plans to thwart the forces of evil in his college. After two hours of deep-thought he had come up with nothing, and decided to present his case to Will on the next day. And he went to bed.

Morning came, the sun rising majestically over the AA and IBM buildings, clouds sweeping across the sky like a shoal of fish with a mission, slowly drifting off to the north with the mild breeze that was blowing the trees gently with the typical rustle of leaves. The grass in the fields swayed to and fro with the audacity of a fourteen-year-old chav in a playground. The mass of trees over the roads of Hatch Warren whispered majestically like Nicole Kidman sweeping along a red carpet in Cannes. The concrete blocks of flats in Oakridge stood stock-still and emitted a mild pitter-patter of splashes with the torrential rain like a block of flats in a storm. The sky, with the exception of the small part of it in which the sun was shining, was dark grey; so dark it was almost slate-like. A bird chirruped and then gave up its attempt to cheer up the episode with an air of defeat. A loud beeping noise ruined the scene and led Mark to roll over and strike an alarm clock with a vicious blow, not only stopping the beeping, but shattering the plastic window through which the hands of the timekeeper gave its verdict. Mark slowly edged his way up onto his elbows to peer out of the window and immediately lay back down and rolled over in a deep depression, cursing Will and his rain dances. Recently, his life seemed to have taken a turn for the worse at some point and led him to an emotionless void of an existence, though he couldn’t quite place exactly what had caused this. He had worried for a short period that he would turn emo and start joining in with the crowds of scene-kids at college, but he soon realised that emos only pretend to be depressed. This had cheered him up for an afternoon, but the feeling soon wore off. He dragged himself out of bed with a huge heave and went to tart himself up for college and steel himself for an hour’s walking in torrential rain.

He’d walked for what had seemed forever in the downpour and had, in all his glum daze, begun to enjoy the sensation of being drenched through. He had taken his waterproof coat off and used it to line his bag in an attempt to stop his entire term’s work being washed away by rain and was wearing just a white shirt. As he trudged happily down Cliddesden Lane (Basingstoke’s most depressingly straight, long, and uneventful road) in his pessimistic optimism that he seemed to be capable of, he thought about the cars passing and seeing his drenched form wearily traipsing through the heavy torrent. Maybe in one of them there would be the love of his life who would stop the car and kiss him and make him feel great. Hey, maybe she’d even offer him a lift! And with this pathetic train of thought he continued his journey in a sort of delirious stupor. Soon enough, he’d reached the warm, dry haven that was college, and he realised that his reverie would never come true. Once again, Mark wandered into the Street. But something seemed different and unnatural. He looked around and saw nothing unusual. It was when he got to his friends that he realised that there was less sitting space: the college had unhelpfully replaced the Street floor with benches! Big pine benches designed in such a way that only three people could feasibly sit where eight could have sat without the benches. The forces of evil had really made their entrance to college.

Surprising his chums, Mark made his entrance with a “hello” as opposed to “pies”, “histrionic” or “sex” or any other word that you’d find if you put your finger in a random dictionary page blindfolded.

This was so outrageous that Charlie even managed to stop masturbating for a moment to comprehend what had happened. Reeling in the shock, Joe and Will started to foam at the ears and the elbows respectively. “Argh!” they both shouted, “I’m foaming at the ears and/or elbow!”

With a sudden swoop of heroics, Dan turned and grabbed a small child and did a strange tribal (probably Zimbabwean) dance with it that, calling upon the almighty powers of BillBarrow, eradicated the evil foam with a burst of Wine Gums and florid dressing gowns.

“Oi! That’s my small child!” yelled John.

“Ah, Chris! So glad you could join us!” ejaculated Mark, helping the vulnerable child to his feet. He turned to Will. “We must call upon the forces of BillBarrow the splendid in order to fight the forces of evil in the Kingdom of Queen Mary!”

“Yes, my friend, we will declare war on Rob and all the damned of the Staff Room with the help of BillBarrow, Bill May and the combined forces of the Street Elite!” declared Will.

“My Russian and Cuban friends give their full backing to you, Comrades!” saluted Dave in his infinite communist Judaism, looking down his gargantuan Jewish nose at the people of regular height. Dave’s extreme left-wing imagination was internally declaring war on the fascist regime that held a fierce grip over his thoughts.

“A bee with a lisp!” exclaimed Tim, a frenetic fellow (the one who helped name the guardian squirrels) with a taste for the type of jokes that only he and Mark could find funny.

The group held talks, at the end of which they had made a pact: Mark, Will, Dave, Tim, Joe, John, Chris and Dan were to set off on a whimsical quest to bring down the evil forces of Rob, and the entire Science department who would, of course, vow to defend him.

Roughly an hour later, the warriors appeared at the end of the Science Block with one goal in mind. Mark turned to the group and issued instructions: “I am going to storm the staff room to try and release Bill May and return him to his rightful alliance. Do I have any help?”

The team looked sheepishly at each other. To even go near the science staff room was a terrible task, let alone to go in there: the stench of bad breath, coffee, and over-excited science teachers with their lunch boxes was terrible.

Mark looked around at his squad. “No support then? I must retrieve Bill in order to provide a direct link to our almighty BillBarrow so that we have some unstoppable power on our side!”

At this, one brave soul stepped forward. “I have strength enough to aid you, fellow,” stated Will. Thus followed a heart-warming scene displaying the wonders of unconditional friendship, blah, blah, drone, etc. But, at this precise moment, Bill wandered out of the room looking lost and bewildered, mumbling something about a hammer and waving his hands around aimlessly.

“Hi Bill!” declared Dan immediately, as his brain is programmed to do.

Bill’s brain ran through its BillBasic scripts in order to respond to this confusing matter.

if{

[speech(student,“Hi, Bill!”);

happiness > 10;

studentReputation($speaker) > 10;]

then

[speech(Bill,“Hello”);

findHammer;

happiness ++;

studentReputation($speaker) ++;]

}



“Hello,” replied Bill, who immediately returned to his hammer search in an utterly bewildered fashion.