The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag Read Online Free Page A

and cattle in a
hideous feeding frenzy, before moving on to destroy the towns and cities.
    To ban
foxhunting was to do little less than herald in the End Times and welcome the
arrival of the Anti-Christ.
    Blimey!
    This
all came as a bit of a revelation to the townie. For one thing, the townie had
always believed that the greatest threat to a fanner’s crops came not from the
meat-eating fox but from the strictly vegetarian rabbit, which was, by a
curious coincidence, the all-but-staple diet of the fox. And surely only one
and a half per cent of the British populace actually lived in the country, and
the countryside only contributed three per cent to the Gross National Product.
And surely most farmers had guns? After all they were always pointing them at
townies who inadvertently picnicked upon their land. Couldn’t they simply shoot
the foxes?
    It was
indeed a bit of a revelation, and one that served to pave over that
aforementioned divide which had for so long, er, divided the rural community
from its urban brother. Foxhunting provided full employment for the country
folk, and spared the town-dweller from the rabid attentions of the demonic fox
pack.
    Harmony.
    So
where did the fox farms come into this? Well, as I thought I’d explained, there
weren’t enough foxes to hunt.
    It was
the town-dwellers’ fault. Their love of motor cars and motorways. You see, ten
times as many foxes are killed by motor cars than are killed by foxhunts, which
explains why country folk always protest so much about new motorways.
    It’s
all so simple when it’s explained, isn’t it?
    So my
Uncle Brian worked on a fox farm. It was one of the new ones. A fox factory
farm. My uncle was employed as a genetic engineer. The aim was to breed the
super-fox. A vegetarian fox that was a really slow runner, as so many
foxhunters are old and fat, just like their hounds.
    My
Uncle Brian enjoyed the work. Playing God and tampering with the laws of nature
had always appealed to him. But he became unemployed in 1997 with the change of
government, and this in turn led him to lose the thirty-five quid which in its
turn came to bring down the British book publishing industry.
    Allow
me to explain.
    What
happened was this. The new Labour government was very keen to save money.
Having the nation’s interests ever at heart they decided to cut back on
government spending, and one way they found of achieving this was by amalgamating
certain top secret departments and restructuring them so that they would run at
a profit. Lumping them all together, as it were, sharing jobs. Fox farming,
which was Very Top Secret, got amalgamated with UFO back-engineering,
which was Above Top Secret. UFO back-engineering is when a government
acquires a grounded flying saucer and then takes it apart in order to see what
makes it run. This has not as yet been successfully achieved, which explains
why we do not at present swish around in flying saucers and commute between the
planets. But we’re trying.
    So UFO
back-engineering got amalgamated with fox farm genetic engineering, and a chap
called Hartly was put in charge with the remit to make the enterprise run at a
profit.
    Hartly
was a bright young spark and almost immediately he saw a financial
opportunity. Fox pelts. As townies were now convinced of the good of foxhunting
and the evil of foxes, surely they would be prepared to purchase fox fur coats
just like the good old days? Hartly set about the genetic engineering of the
angora fox. It was a brilliant idea, but where he slipped up was in using
genetic material taken from a UFO.
    As all
those who have access to Above Top Secret information will know, UFOs are
mostly organic. Which explains why they don’t show up on radar. The UFO genetic
material used for the creation of the angora fox did not result in the creation
of the angora fox. It resulted in the creation of the stealth fox.
    Now,
whereas the Stealth Bomber does not show up on radar, the stealth fox didn’t
show up