A certain kind of person would ask how I felt that fateful day as I sat in my dad’s Polo, waiting for the lights to go green. Mortal dread? Foreboarding? Deja vu?
Those people are superstitious fools: I just wanted that light to go green so my scout leader wouldn’t grill me for being late.

The lights went green. We were still late, though, but it turned out that there was a stand-in that day, so it was fine.

Or so I thought…

I stood outside the scout hall, waiting for the stand-in to arrive. It took a while. At that extremely unspecified moment when nothing happened, nothing had been happening for a while now, and it seemed nothing would happen for all eternity, there was a roar. Not just any roar: this was the roar you get when you get a perfectly tuned, 1200-horsepower sports car engine and let all the horses out. This painful noise continued for a while, and then a sleek, shining Maserati rocked painfully up the hill and exploded.

A tall, gangling man in a silk shirt and baggy pants picked himself out of the remains, strolled over to the scout hall, opened the door (which had actually been unlocked the whole time) and walked in, whistling. ‘Well, come on!’ he said, jovially: ‘You’re supposed to come in, right? This is a tea party, right?’ We walked in, and he started pouring cups of steaming cups of fragrant jasmine tea, which had mysteriously materialised without noticing, out of his shoe. ‘Name’s Dr. Thingy.’ he stated, like we were supposed to give him a round of applause. He stared at us, confused ‘Dr. Jimothy Q.W.E.R.T.Y Thingy, Unseen University Postgraduate degrees in Cat Herding, Maple Syrup, and 4D Scrabble, among other things.’ He gave us that look again. ‘I really, really hate that roof." he stated, like this was a perfectly normal thing to say, ‘I think we can have some adventures with that roof… Maybe I’ll appreciate it more afterwards.’ He sipped his tea and said no more.

‘Doctor Thingy…’ Aoife McKinnon asked, ‘We’ve only got an hour left for this, can’t we hurry up?’ Everyone stared at Aoife, who had seemingly offered us all up for an hour of roof repair, until Dr. Thingy pulled an oversized kazoo out of his pocket, blew on it, and spontaneously combusted. Nobody noticed that last part because we were running from the huge winged pig that had just eaten the roof.

‘Are we missing something?’
We were standing on the scarred lawn outside the scout hall, watching the porcine scene of carnage, racking our brains for the thing we’d mysteriously forgotten.

There was an unearthly scream. As one scout, we all turned towards the source to discover Rhubarb Johnson standing there, eyes rolling and dribbling ectoplasm from her mouth. She stretched, and suddenly she somehow had the voice and bearing of Dr. Thingy.

‘Well, what are you looking at? Stop gawping like a bunch of gawpers and get into the Spacerati!’ Rhubarb-Thingy had turned around, and had somehow managed to put the suffering sports car back together.

The interior of the Spacerati was not what I had expected. Instead of smooth leather and polished mahogany, it was a huge room, all brutalist concrete, loose fuel lines, and a massive ICBM stood in the middle of it all, looking for all the world a rude hand gesture to the universe. There was also a stand of squashy chintz armchairs, which we sunk into gratefully. Rhubarb clipped a couple of wires together and gave the nuclear missile a kick. There was a sickening lurch, and though the concrete room had no windows, save for some frosted glass Art Deco doors that looked totally out of place, my stomach told me we were moving very fast and also could it have the day off please. ‘Really Damn Scary Drive,’ said Thingy, ‘Scares off Casualty so we can do whatever.’
Arthur Tinkle blinked. ‘What are we supposed to do about the roof then? Also, where are we going and why are you possessing Rhubarb?’
Dr. Thingy explained his plans: ‘We’re going to put the flying pig in a wedding dress, spray it with Drop Roof Spray, and send it off with my Anti-Pig Kazoo 3000. Also we’ll get some fuel plus a new body on the way.’
Arthur Blinked again ‘Why can’t we just use the spray and the kazoo?’
‘Allergies, Arthur. I’m deathly allergic to things that make even a small amount of sense: That’s why I combusted back at the tea party.’

There was a whimper of pain from the ICBM. One of the doors opened. We followed Dr. Thingy out, and saw a shop window full of massively frilly giant flying-pig size wedding dresses. The window had “ST. TANTONY’S FLYING-PIG SIZE WEDDING DRESSES'' emblazoned upon it. ‘Stay here, unless you want to get mauled by an engaged pig.’ warned Dr. Thingy.

A while later he walked out holding a massive wedding dress that looked like a Mandelbrot Set in 3D. ‘It’s made to look like a Mandelbrot Set in 3D.’ he explained.

After another rattling journey in the Spacerati, Dr. Thingy strolled over to a Welsh microwave the size of a bus and opened the door. Dr. Thingy’s body toppled out and picked himself up as Rhubarb fell, asleep, into one of the squashy chintz armchairs. Thingy stretched and went through the shabbiest of the Art Deco Doors set in the side of the room. The door opened before he touched it, revealing a sad looking Italian bistro. Empty glass bottles stuck in concrete filled with brass trinkets served as decoration. Massive raffia-wrapped bottles lurked ominously in the shadows. Thingy had a blazing row with the wine waiter and stomped out, clutching the dustiest, most massive bottle of them all. He slammed the door and fed the bottle to a mannikin, who subsequently vomited into a strategically placed plant pot. A dusty dial on the wall went up. Dr. Thingy looked at our astonished faces and said, as if it was any comfort, ‘Temporal lubricant. Give Casualty’s fear a big kick.’

The events of the next twenty minutes don’t really need much explanation. I’ll not regale you with tales about how we wrestled the dress onto the pig, or how we pulled on it to truss it up into a sort of cocoon, or the ear-splitting noise of the Anti-Pig Kazoo, or how we duct-taped the roof back on. The interesting thing, or rather, the first boring thing that had happened that day, is what happened next.

We trooped into the scout hall. Short-Fused Maz, our troop leader, had somehow materialised as people who spend many years with tired teenagers do, shouted ‘Troop Dismissed!’ at us. Dr. Thingy had thoughtfully skipped the flag ceremony for us. How nice. I jumped into my dad’s waiting Polo. ‘What happened today?’ he asked. ‘Mumblemumblemumbleitwasokmumblemumble,’ I replied. I’m 13: It’s traditional to do that sort of thing.

THE END?