Established 2005 Registered Charity No. 1110656

Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

current issue

April – May 2025 : Second Chances READ ONLINE

RECENT TWEETS

Time on fire

April 01 2025

A time-bending story from the world of O’Haggis, the time-travelling super sleuth. From the mind of Chris Sampson


O'Who?

This story is the latest installment of the adventures of O’Haggis, a detective with time-travelling abilities. Last issue (154), O’Haggis was caught up in a chase to hunt down Adam Ant’s missing nose stripe. Now he must find a monstrous time anomaly in the distant future.


O’Haggis was called into Chronological Preservation™ HQ. Why? Because some blighter had set history itself on fire. How? The culprit has rubbed two eras together, causing a temporal explosion, burning time itself. Who? Well, someone playing God, obviously. It is a hideous, needlessly long story, and it goes like this…

A jar of marmalade manufactured on a grim industrial estate in 1966 was accidentally mixed with mucus when a factory lid-put-onner sneezed while lidding the jar. Said jar was wrapped, packed, driven to a shop, bought – for a shilling or thruppence, or some other small sum in the baffling pre-decimalised money of the era – but left on a window sill by its buyer, where groovy 1960s sunshine heated the horrendous mixture, while its owner whistled atonally to the Dave Clark Five. Or something.

Anyway. Perhaps surprisingly, this was a perfect storm, providing perfect conditions for the gruesome blend to become sentient. Unfortunately, it developed into an evil genius and soon flipped its, erm, lid and escaped the window sill, through a carelessly left open window. No one stopped it, because it was the ‘60s and, as such, its owner was almost certainly high on psychedelic drugs and, as such, assumed that sentient marmalade was a far-out side effect of their drug taking.

Cursing its creator, the evil Marma-Sneeze naturally yearned to destroy history itself, as you would, reasoning that doing so would prevent its own monstrous existence in the first place. But to achieve this, it of course needed funds: the two pounds, seventeen and sixpence-style prices of the 1960s were insufficient funds to build a time-destroying contraption.

So it filched and invested said two pounds, seventeen and sixpence in Tiddly!, a musical about an aspiring tiddlywinks champion who – on the verge of the Tiddlywinks World Cup final – loses both thumbs in a bizarre sunbathing accident.

Surprisingly, this proved a flop, closing after the opening night, never to darken the boards of a West End theatre. Marma-Sneeze’s cash – or “bread” in the parlance of the hippie era – was lost forever. It then turned to drink – getting tiddly, fittingly – and despaired of ever accruing enough cash to finance its evil plans.

And so, sozzled, it lay low at the back of a garage shelf, forgotten and dust coated, until the greed-ridden 1980s era.
By 1981, having diddled pensioners, the disabled, homeless orphans, etc. in true Thatcherite style, it was finally rich enough to afford the laughable ‘80s computer that its evil marmalade-y plans required.

But it needed a disguise, lest eagle-eyed Chronological Preservation™ Agents should spot sentient preserves bent on destroying time itself. They’re trained for such eventualities, so it’s not as unlikely as you might think. Ahem. But how to evade CP™ agents?

The United States military has spent millions of dollars trying to perfect an invisibility cloak for its soldiers. Yet in Britain, it has long been known that to stand behind a homeless person when they ask passers-by for small change will guarantee that most people won’t see you. So Marma-Sneeze did so and, right under CP™’s nose, was able to implement its filthy plan.

Fast forward to 2075, to the Webo district of London, where the temporal explosion took place. O’Haggis arrived in the era, only to find bits of 1935 amid the charred husk – clear evidence of two eras having been rubbed together, causing the time fire.

After the rise of right-wing politics fifty years earlier, 2075 was unthinkingly, casually dumbed-down. In a similar way to 1935 during that decade’s rise of fascism.

O’Haggis was surprised to bump into Rupertitia Cavendish, an etiquette tutor whose Overcoming Frightfulness course he had endured during his own recent jaunt in 1935.

“I say! What a corkingly marvellous future this 2075 is,” she enthused.

O’Haggis winced; if Rupertitia approved of the amalgamated eras, then it would likely appeal to Trump voters and other c***s from 2025; the sort of future they wanted. Already, he noted, the sort of censoring AI that prevented him calling fascists a bunch of c****s had taken root in the 50 years up to 2075 [as predicted in the Pavement, last ish].

But where was Marma-Sneeze? Had the fiend travelled to 2075 to witness its dastardly handiwork? It would help the plot [Plot? There’s a plot to this? Really?] if he had. For it was time for the hero’s showdown with the antagonist, but where was the sentient preserve?
O’Haggis heard a genteel smacking of chops. A peckish Rupertitia Cavendish was tucking into toast and marmalade. Surely she couldn’t have?

Marma-Sneeze’s screams as it was consumed confirmed O’Haggis’ fears: the evildoer had been scoffed down by the famished language corrector from the mid 1930s. “I say!” she beamed. “This futuristic marmalade is f***ing super duper!

Oops! Pardon my French!”

So, O’Haggis was robbed of his clichéd showdown with the villainous Marma-Sneeze. But did the latter’s evil die with it? Was history ruined by mixing two eras, making a new chronology much less than the sum of its parts?

To be on the safe side, O’Haggis decided to perform a Hitler-ectomy on 2075: de-right-winging the year and returning history to its original state. Returning to base in 2025, he pondered that there was still a bit too much of 1935 about the present; the rise of fascists that he wasn’t allowed to call a bunch of c****s.

But he had picked up a souvenir from 2075: a can of Excrement Spray™, which could – and would – be used on those in favour of the rise of the right. Never mind stopping the fascism of the 1930s returning to haunt the present and future, O’Haggis mused, the current bunch of c***s are unwittingly dragging humanity back to the Dark Ages.

And he sprayed them accordingly. And sprayed and sprayed until all fascists were covered in shite, as befits them.

< News in Brief 155: April – May 2025 Cuts deep >
April – May 2025 : Second Chances

CONTENTS

BACK ISSUES
BACK TO PAGE TOP