Goat Notes

Oh sod it! It has to be expelled from my system, sooner or later!

Here, found in the ashes of a burnt-out village hall whose surviving walls bear strange and troubling markings about which I will not and must not think too curiously, are the only remaining documents in the case of You Won't Believe It!, the ill-fated off-Millbank musical based on Stephen R Donaldson's First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.

The necromancy and bibliomancy involved in assembling our all-star, all-volunteer cast has been strictly investigated by the proper Authorities, who inform me that it is not to blame for any of the subsequent unfortunate events.

 

( The Cast, who are all completely innocent, especially the ones with tentacles. )

 

As to the specific cause of the disaster, the Investigator diagnosed 'Natural Justice' and departed.  I have no idea what she was talking about.

Those who have perused the cast list will readily understand that certain... improvements were necessary to render the original story fit for public performance.  The surviving passage - which it appears that the fires refused to consume, no doubt for reasons which seemed good to them - is given below the cut, and translates a notoriously problematic episode from Lord Foul's Bane into popular and family-friendly entertainment, in a style we like to think will prove both edifying and touching.

 

( That Scene from the first act of 'You Won't Believe It!' )

 

Concerned citizens may be reassured that High Lord Elena turns out (perhaps unsuprisingly) not to be Covenant's daughter; so that after Lord Foul is laughed to destruction in the classic audience-participation number Behind You!, and the Creator cures Covenant's leprosy and resurrects Elena into our world to live happily ever after with him and all Drool's gold and their very own herd of Ranyhyn ponies on Haven Farm, there is nothing in any way illegal or tasteless about the miracle.  Nor about the closing song.  Believe This! is a very superior song, especially when Campaspe is performing it.  And she is not rude, as the vulgar-minded would have it.  She is a cultural and classical treasure of the Western tradition!

Concerned citizens may also be reassured that we can no longer get permits or insurance to perform this big marabou stork anywhere within the Sirian Sector or for twenty parsecs around it.  Also, everybody who knew the script in any detail was rehearsing it in the hall when... that which occurred, occurred.  No least human remains were ever discovered, so it is possible that they will some day return and enlighten us on the matter; but it is also, after all, possible that they will not very much care to talk about it.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: About another 500 words last night, and a field of strange parley.

No new words this morning, because I dreamed that I was stuck for several days at a godforsaken station a very long way from anywhere, even Rhyl, while the train company waited for the rails to dry out in the rain. I whiled away the time by writing a bestseller, which had already been published before the blooming train arrived. It was a pastiche Victorian melodrama with every cliché turned up to 11i, and it might moderately be described as kind of racy.  Amazingly, I remembered the principal plot when I woke up, and spent my breakfast-write scribbling it down before I forgot it.

In extreme nutshell: Villain twirls moustache, swindles hero out of his estates, gets his marriage to heroine annulled by a Wile E. Coyote trick, and constantly attempts to seduce said heroine.  Heroine follows hero into poverty and disgrace.  They rescue saintly matchgirl from certain starvation on streets, and share many hardships, since neither fisticuffs and speechifying (hero) nor weeping and swooning (heroine) prove very lucrative career skills.  Also hero Respects heroine, or something, too much to touch her following annulment.

Heroine ends up accepting villain's proposal, as she comes to appreciate that not only does he Truly Love her, but also that his kinks and hers are an irresistibly good fit.  Hero marries his secret soulmate the saintly matchgirl - who talks exclusively in Dickensian homilies and Sunday school platitudes just like his own - to full angelic choir.   The very-naughty-but-super-nice comic relief characters marry each other.  Heroine and villain live in happy and harmless wickedness ever after.  Hero and matchgirl, with generous funding from villain, sail ecstatically into the sunrise to find their true vocation as missionaries to the benighted heathen.

Everybody has a considerable deal of sex, by no means all of it missionary, but a discerning public buys the book anyway because it is all artistically integral to the plot, especially that scene in the back of the flower-shop from p.134 where the spine always cracks.

I would like to finish by reporting that I am rich and get to live it up also, but in fact by the end of the dream I am still on the train and waiting for my enormous advance, and wishing I was anywhere that was anywhere, even Rhyl.

Should I somehow ever end up writing this and garnering riches beyond the dreams of avarice, I will be indebted to Librivox, Jerome K Jerome's Stage Land, and the fact that I am finding it rather hard to drop off at present.