AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last episode, Wolfcastle, Elvis impersonator impersonator Ddwwchllyff and the lady killers argue about the significance and likelihood. How are Samantha Panther and the rest coping with the changes under foot?
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 69

Disencumbered of the superflous Mr. E, abrupt absconder from the George Walker home for the Criminally Insane and Marginally Demented, the lifft crept upward carrying its precious cargo to the welcoming surface of Cymru. So eager was the Welsh terrain to greet the cargo, it was actually sallying down to meet it en route. In no time at all the doors creaked open on rusted hinges, revealing the top floor of Mr E’s erstwhile domicile. Through the high barred windows could be seen a lot of soil, yet a lactescent sheen shone along the uppermost third of the permanently sealed glazing, casting an eerie glow across Che’s logoic brow, glinting off the pushpins that held him in place.

Lassie and Samantha Panther padded out of the antique wrought-iron lift cage. The lift sighed, and without needing to be told, swung its door shut behind it. Chains clanking, it began another long journey to the center of the earth.

‘Lassie, I have a really bad feeling about this.’

The dog looked up at the ace reporter as she spoke and frowned a worried look at the same time. The journalist was highly trained and multiskilled and more than able of pulling off vocalisations and facial expressions simultaneously at once. They had shot up through the bowels of the earth and were now, she guessed, somethere in the colon region: possibly the semi-colon; it was hard to tell. The ever intrepid Miss Panther did not know where she now was, but she did know that it all seemed wildly familiar in a strangely recognisable way. …

The bus wove and weaved it’s way to completing it’s new mission of returning the recently acquired passengers to Cardiff. Their journey had been long and difficult. This wasn’t entirely the fault of the vehicle but was something largely attributable to the laughable road signs that marked out the route back through southern England and into Wales. Not wanting to be out done by their recently estranged neighbours, the English government had ordered their own bilingual road signage. There had been a great deal of consultation about what the second language ought to be. French was suggested initially, German was also proposed. A small but vocal pressure group demanded that Esperanto should in fact be the second language on the signs. Unfortunately for them they had campaigned wholly in their language of choice and nobody was able to understand their demands. In the end it was decided that the only way to truly assert the global importance of English as a world language was to have English as the second language on the bilingual signs.

Due to a large error in the computerized sign design computer the bilingual wordings fell out of sync. This resulted with road signs all being produced with contradictory place names. What with the enormous cost that already been spent it was quietly decided to just go on with the scheme and hope that not too many people notice. Not too many people did.

Short Mat had spent half of the journey refusing to entertain his young seekers, and the others on the bus, with any kind of story about his past. This was a great relief to all present. By all accounts Short Mat’s past wasn’t that interesting at all. Professor Erm took a different approach. He flatly refused not to not talk from the off and by the time they reached Stone Henge for the third time everybody was wondering when he’d shut up.

Erm had a lot to say. Oh, yes, a great lot. Measuring his verbal output in washing machine loads, it would have been about an army transport planeful. It was fiendish! He told them all, at length and in astounding detail, his idea. They all listened intently, hanging on every word (and other cliches). And when he had finished, but only after digressing to give a long lecture about how beginning sentences with ‘and’ wasn’t ‘propper English’, every person present was none the wiser... but several hours older. That was the upshot of the whole thing… And where was everyone else?

Another matter had still to be determined: what was the liquid like substance under and beneath Cardiff in particular and a certain luxurious mansion in general?

Investigations were launched, secret bore holes were sunk, a wave of speculation rippled through the executive toilets in the ARCORGI head office. Samples were retrieved and shipped back to the very same head office of ARCORGI mentioned just one sentence before.

After the low down tricks enacted to get the samples a high level meeting was called. A top scientist, the best in Europe, was called from the basement to announce the findings at the Very Extraordinary General Meeting.

‘Black gold’ he proclaimed. There was much murmuring and mumbling in the room. Broad grins began to appear on the fat faces of the assembled ARCORGI top executives. In their minds they were already spending the money they would surely all make from this discovery. Maybe a new sports car factory or a nice long holiday resort? Then one of them spoke.

‘You mean oil?’ he dared to say. More murmurs, knowing winks and the nodding rippled around the room like a Mexican wave.

‘Errr, no. Black gold’, the top scientist repeated. ‘Gold that is black.’

This was a body blow. Black gold was less than worthless. They didn’t want to discover that. Nobody wanted to discover that. If this got out ARCORGI shares would drop off the face of the international stock markets. That sealed it, this could never get out. They would have to seal off the area and seal up the ground so that the matter would remain forever a secret.