Part 6 (1/2)

'Oh! It's bound to be the murderer. They always return to the scene of the crime. And what if they're not done murdering?'

'Quick, we'll pretend to be a piratical diorama.'

'What should we do?' said the albino pirate in a panic. 'What goes on in a piratical diorama?'

'Pirate stuff. You two, pretend to be having a duel,' said Jennifer.

'What about me?' said the pirate in green.

'Pretend to be in the middle of ravis.h.i.+ng me.'

'I don't really know what that means,' said the pirate in green, turning crimson. 'We tend to stick to the pillage and plundering part of piracy.'

'Here, grab my dress like this.'

The pirates had just frozen into an exciting diorama when two gigantic statuesque blonde ladies with long blonde pigtails marched into the room.

'Jennifer,' whispered the pirate in green.

'Sssh,' hissed Jennifer.

'What if one of the bees comes and lands on my nose?'

'What are you talking about?'

'The bees that make the wax.'

'Please be quiet.'

'It's just I'm allergic to bees.'

'Shut. Up.'

'Did those pirates in that piratical diorama say something?' said one of the statuesque blonde ladies, peering at Jennifer suspiciously.

The other statuesque blonde lady came across and looked the albino pirate up and down.

'Don't be stupid, Helga,' she said. 'They are wax. Look, this one isn't even particularly realistic.'

The first statuesque blonde lady shrugged, and grabbed a couple of the remaining crowned heads under each arm.

'Oh, this one's heavy.'

'I think that's Poland. It's all the meat in their diet.'

'Is this the last of them?'

'Yes. Let's get them loaded up and be on our way.'

The third group of pirates were sat in the audience of the Folies Bergere. Whilst they weren't having as good a time as the pirates at Madame Tussauds, they were having a better time than the pirates at the Louvre, although they were having to sit through a lot of boring acts that the programme a.s.sured them contained biting satire whilst they waited for the dancing girls.

'I heard that when they dance they blow kisses at the men in the audience,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand.

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

'I heard that you can see their bare tummies.'

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

In the row in front of them sat a small group of Parisian gents, knocking back absinthe and smoking cigars. They were talking about how the Folies Bergere wasn't as popular as it usually was.

'Excuse me,' said the pirate in red, leaning forward, 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but why do you think that is?'

'Peuh!' said one of the Parisians with a Gallic shrug. 'Who can say? Perhaps it is the Ring Cycle opera of Monsieur Wagner? It's the talk of the town.'

'But that's on in London,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand.

'Oh, no,' said the Parisian, 'it's on a tour of Europe. It doesn't stay in one place for very long.'

'Like a tramp!' said the pirate with long legs.

'Do tramps sing?'

'Do you remember that adventure when the Pirate Captain decided that he should do something about the homeless and he adopted that tramp? He sang quite a lot if I recall.'

'Especially when he drank all the Captain's grog.'

'Yes. Poor Trampy. I wonder how he's getting on in Antarctica. He looked quite cold when we left him.'

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

The pirates waited while yet another comedian went through a routine about relations.h.i.+ps. While they had always wondered about what was up with women stealing the duvet, they were getting very impatient. Fortunately, the comedian was followed by the cancan dancers, who high-kicked their way on to the stage. The music speeded up. The dancers kicked higher and higher. The pirates craned forward for a better look, in the antic.i.p.ation of having absolutely nothing left to their imagination.25 'Oh,' said the pirate with rickets.

'Oh dear,' said the pirate with long legs.

'That's not what I was expecting at all.'

21 The Soviet s.p.a.ce flight Voskhod 1 took a fragment of a banner from the Paris Commune into s.p.a.ce. A fragment of the Jolly Roger has yet to go into s.p.a.ce, presumably because the pirate s.p.a.ce programme is not very advanced.

22 Thomas More coined the term 'Utopia' in his book Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivas, de optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia of 1516. Though of course his version is flawed, because it was written over four hundred years before the young Julie Christie and tubs of Haagen-Dazs even existed.

23 A recent a.n.a.lysis of the Mona Lisa using emotionalrecognition software showed her to be eighty-three per cent happy, six per cent fearful, two per cent angry and nine per cent disgusted.

24 There is a waxwork museum in Prague that has possibly the least convincing Michael Jackson you could ever hope to see. But it makes up for this with several quite scary golems. Recently, Madame Tussauds in London had to cover up Kylie with a longer skirt because so many visitors were patting her b.u.m it was starting to wear away.

25 The 'cancan' literally translates as 'scandal' or 't.i.ttle-tattle' and fi rst appeared in Paris in 1830.