THE UGLY MERMAID
AND OTHER AQUATIC TALES
Published and designed by:
Hayes Design, East Sussex, England
www.hayesdesign.co.uk/books
Copyright © Clifford James Hayes 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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The Ugly Mermaid, And Other Aquatic Tales, First Edition
THE UGLY MERMAID
AND OTHER AQUATIC TALES
clifford james hayes
www.hayesdesign.co.uk/books
also available:
Murkmyre
Nocturnia
Slugtopia
The Complete Murkmyre Saga
Verity Fruitt And My Magic Gonk
Hairy Tales
(A Collection Of Stories For Naughty Boys And Girls)
Podge
(The Pooiest, Ploppiest Pig On The Planet)
Grandma Grunt
For other titles available (printed and ebook formats),
go to: www.hayesdesign.co.uk/books
Introduction
Hello, my sweets. This little booky-wook is a collection of
three of my favourite Hairy Tales stories. As hinted at in
the title, they all have a decidely ‘aquatic’ theme. Having
explained what’s going to happen for the next 97,384 years
in all my Murkmyre Saga books, and revealed some dark,
unsavoury secrets from my past in Verity Fruitt And My
Magic Gonk, I thought it might be nice to dust off this trio
of watery tales for younglings and give them a book of
their own (it was something to do on a quiet Thursday).
The Ugly Mermaid is a perilous undersea adventure
with a twist. Our lonely, tragic heroine spends her days
mournfully wailing on lonely rocks, until an enchanted
dolphin comes to her aid. Tasked with retrieving the
Golden Beak of Binky The Squid, she begins her quest
and her struggle to break the terrifyingly evil WitchQueen of the Abyss’s cruel curse of hideousness. As The
Ugly Mermaid puts it herself; ‘Why have the undersea
gods forsaken me so, and left me with a face that’s as
lumpy as a toad’s back? Why do my arms look like fat,
tattooed saveloy sausages? What terrible, shameful thing
have I done to end up this way, with my bristly belly of
lard and facial jelly-moles the size of jellyfish? Why do
my boobs droop like a seal’s flippers, and why are my
jowels so bearded and stubbly? I only want to be
beautiful! I only want to be loved!’
Also included herein are The Walrus Story, and
Shipwreck’d Sarah and the Silly-Looking Pirates; both of
which have titles that are pretty self-explanatory in my
opinion, so I won’t waste any more of your time.
Oh, one last thing! I’ve bunged a teasingly-naughty
chapter or so of Verity Fruitt And My Magic Gonk on to
the end of this book, just in case you fancy a read.
Anyway, that’s (almost) enough of my introductory
waffling, so I’ll shut up now apart from inserting this
brief disclaimer about the contents herein (once again
included to try and dissuade angry parents from having a
go at me about my horribly unsuitable stories). Please find
herein a few reasonably short tales for persons of a fairly
youthful disposition. Hopefully one or two adults might
enjoy them as well (I doubt it). They are weird and stupid,
and a bit naughty and yucky (but in a nice way). It’s just
meant to be a bit of daft fun, so don’t get too upset if your
child decides to emulate The Ugly Mermaid by strutting
around naked on coastal rocks and bellowing and
screeching a bit. Believe me, it has been known to happen.
customary author’s note:
It may seem as if there are many, many shocking inaccuracies
and punctuation niggles lurking within this book’s waffle however, these are entirely deliberate. Please bear in mind
that my tales are set in the land of Hairy Make-Believe,
where bad grammar is commonplace and quite the norm.
Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.
THE UGLY MERMAID
THE UGLY MERMAID
3
nce upon a time, there lived a very ugly
mermaid. The End. Well no, perhaps not quite
The End, though the story certainly could end
there - no magic potion was ever going to make The Ugly
Mermaid beautiful, no mystical wizard of the sea was ever
going to cast a spell on her to get rid of her fat, blubbery
belly, and no handsome prince was ever going to fall under
an enchantment and see her as anything other than what
she was. She was ugly, and that was that. But, perhaps as
you’d expect, that didn’t stop her from wishing otherwise which is why I think there is a little more to tell.
Despite having a face that made seaweed shrivel and
made sharks cast themselves down into the darkest,
inkiest depths of the ocean in utter fear, The Ugly
Mermaid really wasn’t a bad person. Scary-looking, but
not bad. Quite the opposite, in fact - though anyone and
everyone who came into contact with her were always too
afraid of her to discover what The Ugly Mermaid was
really like.
And that made her cry. A lot. She cried so much (and
so loudly) she made ships crash into rocks. Her wailing
and screaming made sailors’ ears bleed and the frustrated
banging of her fishy tail on the rocks on which she lay
sounded like terrible thunder. Sea-farers’ minds became
so befuddled by the cacophonous noise that was the lardy
sea-siren’s screech they preferred to sink to the bottom of
the sea to get away from it. Whales and dolphins heard
her wails and moans from many leagues away and
mistook the noise for the tortuous grumbling of some
unknown, terrifying sea-monster.
O
Everyone, and everything, feared her hideousness.
They feared her wailing. And stayed well away. No-one
knew her real name - she was simply known as ‘The Ugly
Mermaid’ - which is fair enough, as it summed her up
quite nicely. Her given name was only ever uttered in
fearful, hushed tones, in case some ghastly maritime curse
fell on anyone brave enough - or foolish enough - to tell
tales of her watery deeds.
Every day, without fail and regardless of the weather, she
could be found perched on the same stretch of
treacherous rocky cliffs overlooking the same stretch of
gloomy, threatening sea. The tough, weather-beaten folk
who eked an existence from these unforgiving coastal
waters heard her plaintive wailing and moaning morning,
noon and night. Her distant cries sent shivers down their
spines; like the terrified sailors and sea creatures that
heard her cries carrying across the waters, they knew to
stay well away.
Were anyone brave enough – or foolish enough - to
venture close to her dwelling spot, they would see The
Ugly Mermaid holding a rusting, barnacled vanity mirror
in one hand, whilst teasing her long strands of seaweedtangled blonde hair with a brush held in the other. The
sounds of her melancholia would send them mad with
gloom and despair. As a consequence, no-one ever came.
And every day she cried out the same pleading
questions. ‘Why, oh why am I so hideous?,’ The Ugly
Mermaid would cry out to the dark ocean. ‘Why have the
undersea gods forsaken me so, and left me with a face
THE UGLY MERMAID
5
that’s as lumpy as a toad’s back? Why do my arms look
like fat, tattooed saveloy sausages? What terrible,
shameful thing have I done to end up this way, with my
bristly belly of lard and facial jelly-moles the size of
jellyfish? Why do my boobs droop like a seal’s flippers,
and why are my jowls so bearded and stubbly? I only want
to be beautiful! I only want to be loved!’ And every day
her same pleading questions went unheeded.
And so The Ugly Mermaid’s life continued without
change. Until one day, something quite unexpected
happened. As she gazed dolefully and morosely at the
endless grey of the dull skies in her part of the world,
there was a sudden break in the clouds, and a tiny chink
of brilliant sunlight beamed down on to the murky seas
below. She followed the path of the sunbeam, and saw the
delightful sight of a playful dolphin arcing through the
water.
How happy it looked, as it danced and weaved
through the waves, before slipping beneath the sea and
out of view. Seeing the dolphin in this manner – a joyful
animal amidst a grim and gloomy sea - stirred something
inside The Ugly Mermaid. Perhaps hope and happiness
could be found where such things seemed nigh
impossible?
Quite without further consideration or reason, she
took it on herself to follow the creature; she carefully
placed her mirror and hand-brush on the rocks, before
flolloping on to her stomach and shuddering her vast
walrus-like bulk toward the ocean. The sea was only a few
feet away, yet her flabby body strained and struggled to
get her to the water’s edge. With a bellowing grunt and a
final thrust, she cleared the last of the rocks and bellyflopped into the icy water with a tumultuous splash.
As mentioned, the seas beside the rocks she called
home were dark and foreboding; she’d never enjoyed
swimming in them, even though they matched her many
mournful moods. Despite her dislike of the icy surging
waters and its strong tides and currents, she could move
at speed now that she was off dry land. She swam as fast
as she could toward the spot where she’d last seen the
dolphin, but already it was nowhere to be found. Diving,
she noticed the seabed dipped sharply at this point along
the coastline; if she intended to find the dolphin, she had
no choice but to swim deeper and further into the gloomy
depths. To give up now would mean defeat; a sad return
to her miserable life on the bleak rocks by the shore. She
decided to swim on.
The Ugly Mermaid had no idea how long she swam;
having previously spent most of her time wailing and
crying on the rocks (and combing her hair), it would be
fair to say she wasn’t used to so much physical activity.
You won’t be surprised to hear she soon became tired; her
wobbly, sausage-like arms and fish-like lower-half went
numb from the ache of swimming and diving ever deeper
into the ocean. And there was so little to see; dull, murky
water and a flat, lifeless seabed beneath. Yet still she
pressed-on in her search.
She wasn’t quite sure if it was her imagination, or
THE UGLY MERMAID
7
merely exhaustion playing tricks on her mind, but
eventually she became aware of a tiny glimmer of
shimmering light amidst the gloom. At first, The Ugly
Mermaid took the light-source to be merely the glow
from luminescent deep-sea creatures; some of the
millions of miniature thingys that bobbed-around
aimlessly at these depths. But, eventually she could make
out structure and shape amongst the glowing and
pulsating lights that danced so deep beneath the waves.
Swimming ever closer to the glow, she gasped as she
eventually realised what it was – a magical undersea
kingdom! And there, swimming slowly but purposefully
toward this aquatic underworld was the very same
dolphin that had inspired her to take the plunge and
begin her amazing adventure.
The dolphin soon became aware of her presence, and
turned to meet The Ugly Mermaid. Mermaids knew
dolphins could speak, but she was amazed at this one’s
eloquence – truly, she surmised, he must be a dolphin of
some importance.
‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, milady,’ the
dolphin began. The Ugly Mermaid had never been called
milady before. She felt herself blush, and noticed a few
embarrassed bubbles rise from her bottom. She struggled
to give a response to this well-mannered creature. ‘If
milady would care to accompany me,’ continued the
dolphin, politely, ‘I should be delighted to introduce her
to the King of the Undersea World.’
The Ugly Mermaid couldn’t believe her ears. Hours
before she had been merely a fat, lonely and forgotten
mermaid, who spent her days moaning and moping on
the shoreline. Now, she was on the verge of meeting none
other than the mighty King of the Undersea World,
whose power extended to every sea, waterway and ocean.
Timeless, wise and ancient, she knew the all-powerful
King had created every living thing that swam beneath
the waves – including herself.
‘Perhaps, at last, the truth will be revealed,’ she said to
herself. ‘The truth of why I’m so ugly and why I’ve had
such a miserable life. And perhaps there’s hope for me yet;
perhaps the King will find it within himself to transform
my hideousness into something resembling beauty.’
Trembling with hope and anticipation, she bade the
dolphin lead on.
Within minutes, she had been ushered through the
wondrous kingdom’s majestic pearl gates. She and the
dolphin swam past opulent temples and through golden
corridors that seemed to go on forever. Everywhere she
looked, The Ugly Mermaid couldn’t believe her eyes; she’d
never seen so many riches and such elaborate
architecture. And the aquatic creatures who went about
their business within the city walls looked so noble; there
were dolphins wearing coronets and capes and decorated
whales of all sizes ferrying smaller creatures from one
destination to the next. There were dressed crustaceans
carrying important-looking documents and jewels, and
many other kinds of fish and undersea animals busying
themselves with the daily functions of life within the
kingdom. Finally, she was led through a pair of immense
THE UGLY MERMAID
9
golden doors and into the Royal Court – and there, facing
her was the one and only King of the Undersea World.
The King sat on a magnificently splendiferous multicoloured throne made of carved coral, reading his
newspaper and sipping on a cup of tea. He was dressed in
his favourite brown cardigan (with patches over the
elbows), comfortable beige corduroy trousers and a wornout pair of old slippers. A ridiculously tall crown made of
crispy seaweed, crushed shells and crab legs wobbled
precariously on his head. Lobsters played gentle
background music on miniature violins, while a circle of
seals and porpoises gently swam above his head, fanning
him cool with their tails. The dolphin that had guided
The Ugly Mermaid this far swam over to His Majesty
and talked quietly with him for a few moments.
A look of intrigue came over the King’s face, as he
heard the dolphin’s report and studied The Ugly
Mermaid. He then brushed the dolphin away and put
down his newspaper, making ready to talk. The Ugly
Mermaid was then requested by the dolphin to address
the King – trembling, she slowly came closer. He bade her
speak.
‘Y-your Majesty,’ she began, bowing, ‘I am truly
honoured to be in your presence.’
‘Nonsense,’ the King replied kindly, ‘it is we who are
honoured – your woeful story is legendary throughout our
kingdom.’
‘My story?,’ she asked, confused. ‘My lord, I-I don’t
understand. I have no story – I’m nothing more than a fat,
ugly mermaid who mopes about on rocks all day.’
‘Oh, no - not so,’ the King responded dismissively.
‘Word reached my ear many years ago about the curse
that was so cruelly laid upon you.’
‘Curse, my lord? But I know of no curse.’
‘Of course not,’ the King replied, with a knowing nod.
‘Part of the curse was to leave you with no knowledge of
who you truly are.’ The King took The Ugly Mermaid’s
pale and sweaty hands in his own. ‘You were once a
mermaid princess,’ he continued. ‘You were cursed for
your radiant beauty by the terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen
of the Abyss, who, in a rage of spite and jealousy, turned
you into the fat, useless lump you now are. It is lucky my
dolphin herald found you – it was by mere accident and
chance that he espied you on the black rocks of that
forlorn shoreline. Now, thankfully, we have the chance to
undo the dark magic done to you.’
The Ugly Mermaid didn’t dare to hope. ‘W-what, you
mean …?’
‘Yes!,’ continued the King, his eyes wide with
excitement. ‘There is a way to lift the curse.’
‘But how?,’ The Ugly Mermaid exclaimed, almost
unable to bring herself to hope it could possibly be true.
The King continued, with a grave look on his face. ‘To
break the terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the Abyss’s
curse you must first undertake a number of perilous - and
admittedly, pointless - adventures. You must spend exactly
one whole year looking for the Golden Beak of Binky the
Squid. Not a day more, not a day less. It can be found in
the Chamber of Nibbled Doom. Then you shall be set
free of your ugly thralldom. Simple at that, really.’
THE UGLY MERMAID
11
‘The Chamber of Nibbled Doom, Your Majesty,’ The
Ugly Mermaid repeated uncertainly. ‘W-where is that, my
lord?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ the King yawned absently. ‘Probably
somewhere dark, menacing and extremely dangerous.’
The Ugly Mermaid looked terrified at the prospect of
undertaking what sounded to be such a dangerous task.
‘Fear not,’ continued the King. ‘You shall not be alone. I
hereby designate my herald dolphin, Gerald, to be your
faithful companion throughout your epically perilous
adventure doo-dah. He is to guard you with his life.’ It
took a few moments for Gerald, the dolphin whom The
Ugly Mermaid had followed to the Undersea World, to
realize he was being talked about. When he became aware
of what the King had just commanded him to do, he not
surprisingly went more than a little pale.
‘Be off, then!,’ bellowed the King, abruptly. ‘See you in
a year’s time. Make haste on your adventure, and good
luck to you both in your search for the Golden Beak of
Binky the Squid. When you’ve been successful in your
quest, come back here and we will celebrate. Fail, and
don’t bother to return.’ He then went back to his
newspaper and cup of tea, and ordered his shrimp
servants to fetch him some nice biscuits.
Gideon, one of the King’s favourite shrimp servants,
bravely asked his master a question. ‘My lord, will
bringing the Golden Beak of Binky the Squid here really
lift the curse from The Ugly Mermaid?’
The King chuckled. ‘Of course not. But if she spends
a year doing lots of dangerous, adventurey things, she’s
bound to lose a bit of weight. And then we can tell her the
curse must’ve gone. As long as I get my Golden Beak, I’m
not bothered.’
And so exactly one year of epically perilous adventure
doo-dahs came to pass for The Ugly Mermaid and her
dolphin companion Gerald the herald. They battled
stormy seas and swam through five oceans in their hunt
for clues that might lead them to the Golden Beak of
Binky the Squid. They fought numerous giant deep-sea
monsters in the Pacific, were frozen into blocks of ice in
the Arctic and then almost roasted alive by hungry
savages in the Tropics. They braved treacherous storms
and fought with hideous ghost pirates. They were
temporarily turned into zombies by Haitian voodoo
fishermen and drained of their blood by vampire seafrogs. They were almost eaten alive by narbled jellybeasts
from the Shetland Isles, and battled the terrifyingly evil
Witch-Queen of the Abyss (she who had placed the curse
on The Ugly Mermaid) on many occasions. I could tell
you about all these (and other) adventures, but it would
take forever and I’m sure you’re keen to know what
happened when they finally found the Golden Beak of
Binky the Squid. So we’ll fast-forward to that bit …
And so it came to pass that, exactly one year after The
Ugly Mermaid’s encounter with the King of the Undersea
World, she and Gerald the herald dolphin finally found
the Golden Beak of Binky the Squid. It was lodged high
in the roof of an enormous undersea cavern; its golden
radiance showered the cavern in cascading rainbows of
THE UGLY MERMAID
13
brilliant light. Gerald read inscriptions etched into the
stones beneath its resting place, and recited the Golden
Beak’s tale to The Ugly Mermaid; many years before, the
terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the Abyss had battled
with Binky the Squid. Binky was the largest squid ever
born, measuring some five hundred feet in length. To
celebrate how cool he was for being five hundred feet
long, Binky had had his beak plated in solid gold. Jealous
of Binky’s wondrous beak, the terrifyingly evil WitchQueen of the Abyss sought to destroy the squid and claim
the beak as her own.
Their battle lasted two hundred and sixty-seven days;
eventually, the terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the
Abyss won by chopping his tentacles into little pieces and
eating him bit by bit. The weight of Binky’s fallen body
caused the sea-bed to collapse beneath him. Amid the
chaos and devastation of the collapse, Binky’s Golden
Beak became wedged in rock and remained hidden for
many years. Eventually, a legion of small, silt-eating blob
creatures noticed something shiny when silt washed away
the sea-bed surface after a storm. They swallowed the silt
and nibbled at the surrounding rock until Binky’s Golden
Beak was revealed in all its glory. They worshipped the
beak, and nibbled a huge hole out of the rock on the seabed. This hole became their place of worship, and the
blob creatures nibbled many inscriptions into the rock
walls beneath the beak. Their place of worship eventually
became the enormous undersea cavern The Ugly
Mermaid and Gerald were now swimming in; the fabled
Chamber of Nibbled Doom!
Unfortunately, just as she was about to swim up to the
Golden Beak wedged in the rock above their heads and
claim it for the King of the Undersea World, The Ugly
Mermaid realized they were not alone. With a boom of
thunder and a crackle of lightning, the terrifyingly evil
Witch-Queen of the Abyss made herself known.
‘So, ugly fish-lady,’ cackled the terrifyingly evil WitchQueen of the Abyss, ‘we meet again.’
The terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the Abyss was
dressed in her favourite spookily tatty black dress, and
carried her black, staff-like magic cane. Silky, long black
hair hung down her face and trailed behind her. Her face
was white and wrinkled, and had a single, huge,
unblinking eye placed centrally above her slit-like
nostrils. Too much black eyeliner makeup made her look
like a skinny, evil, one-eyed sea-panda. When she spoke,
it sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard. ‘You
and your pet dolphin will not escape me this time, and I
shall finally claim the Golden Beak of Binky the Squid as
my own.’
Now for the action bit! Gerald the dolphin made a
desperate lunge for the Golden Beak, but a bolt of
lightning from the terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the
Abyss’s magic cane sent him plummeting to the ground.
In retaliation, The Ugly Mermaid thrashed at the water
with her tail and sent herself in a dive toward the
terrifyingly evil Witch-Queen of the Abyss. At the last
moment, The Ugly Mermaid straightened herself so that
her fat stomach would hit the terrifyingly evil WitchQueen of the Abyss with maximum impact. The plan
AN EXTRACT FROM
VERITY FRUITT
AND MY MAGIC GONK ...
THE UGLY MERMAID
43
THE TRUTH
opefully you’re too young to know very much
about offices. Take it from me, they’re utterly
horrible places (I recommend reading the rest of
this paragraph in a painfully slow and whiny drone, in
order to see exactly what I mean) ... just lots and lots of
grey, stale-smelling rooms with harsh lights that give you
migraines, the occasional feebly wilting half-deadlooking plant in a pot, and row after row of cluttered,
coffee-stained tables. The walls are covered in drab
message boards with out-of-date notices that nobody ever
reads, while dry, discarded corners of ancient sandwiches
grow mould as they’re squashed and kicked around under
desks. Thrill to the buzzing mosquito-hum of computers,
fax machines and photo-copiers; fill your nostrils with the
heavenly odour of stale dust intermingled with the whiff
of cheap air-freshener. Clocks on walls seem to go ever
backwards instead of forwards, and it is always February
10th (the bleakest day of the year). Your boss will always
have an endless list of boring, boring, boring things for
you to do, and the glass-prison windows to the outside
world seem to laugh at you and say ‘tough luck, matey you’re stuck in here until 5 o’ clock at the earliest’. And
then, just as you think it can’t get any worse, you look
around at your equally miserable colleagues; imagine
spending half your entire life alongside persons you have
nothing in common with; persons you don’t like very
much, and who don’t like you. Persons who sometimes
H
(actually, often) smell pretty funky, or have vile habits, or
are just generally not very nice at all. See? I told you
offices were horrible; I highly recommend you seek an
outdoorsy career that involves painting pigs’ toenails,
milking chickens, shaving capercaillies in the Scottish
Highlands, or something else just as equally worthwhile.
Anyway, the reason for this literary waffle (that I have
the audacity to refer to as ‘a story’) is that I felt the need
to advise you there is something else you should know
about offices; something rather more macabre and sinister
than grey, dull rooms, matching stationery items and
endless tedium. When your mum or dad groans and says
‘Oh, my boss was a bit of a monster today’, believe me
when I say that nothing could be closer to the truth. For
you see, Managers really are secret monsters; I’ve seen the
proof for myself.
When bosses say to one another; ‘Dahling, let’s go to
the toilets, in order to have a nice, refreshing poo
together’ (as they often do), they actually mean (in a
screechy, alien-monster-style voice) ‘Let’s go to the
toilets, in order to exchange evil information about our
foolish lesser-being slaves, using our mandible-monsterantennaetrons.’
And believe me, there’s even more sinister stuff to tell;
bosses are able to peel off their human outer skins, in
order to reveal their monstrously frightening creatureselves beneath! I have discovered that bosses are actually
hideous beasts beneath their skin-suits, and can take many,
many monstrous forms. Despite often being gargantuan
in size, they are seemingly able to compress their true
THE UGLY MERMAID
45
dimensions into the relatively tight confines of a human’s
shape and physique, in order to fool us all.
I’ve every belief that once they’ve slipped off their
people-suits, they love nothing better than to extend their
mandible-monster-antennaetrons from their heads and
transfer evil, secret messages to one another about their
unsuspecting human servants; I can only deduce this is all
something to do with secretly taking over the world
(unless they’ve already done so). How do I know all this,
and how did I find this out? Well, when I worked in an
office (many years ago, thankfully) I happened to
accidentally walk into the ladies’ toilet (yes, it was an
accident, actually, or at least I thought so at the time), and
I discovered the horrific truth for myself. This is what
happened ...
I went to the loo one tedious afternoon (for a break
from the eye-glazing monotony of staring at a computer
screen all day) and dozily opened the door marked
‘Ladies’. I sauntered inside, and was aghast with
gobsmacked, disbelieving astonishment at what I saw
standing in front of the sink/mirror combo area of the
toilet room. My own boss (a ‘lady’ named Octavia
Flangewhippet, who was foul and loathsome even in
human form) had removed her own outer dermal layer,
revealing the head of some form of hideous interdimensional space-tarantula (with eight black, unblinking
eyes) and the oozing body of the slimiest slug ever. Beside
her in the toilets was Miranda Gravelpitt (an equally
hideous boss from the Department downstairs), who’d
also unpeeled her fake human skin; beneath it, Miranda
turned out to have the head of a preying mantis (with
swirly, psychedelic red eyes and a snappy, vicious-looking
beak) and the body of a purple cockroach. Their
unsheathed skins lay at their feet like discarded lumps of
tripe, and their face-masks (and wigs) lay on top of these.
The wigs were the only way I could recognize these
fiendish creatures. Both Octavia and Miranda had their
mandibles extended, and were transferring information
betwixt themselves at an alarming rate (this spectacle of
data-transfer resembled the way ants communicate with
one another, with lots of touchy-feely antennae action). A
lake of what I can only describe as oozing pus was seeping
from their knees for some reason, and was accompanied
by a symphony of bizarre, squelching sounds and highpitched ‘bibbling’ noises. A ‘wubba-wubba-wubba’
pulsating throb emanated from the hideous creatures’
bottoms, while hundreds of little root-like tentacles were
sprouting out of their lower legs and rapidly making their
probing way across the floor toward me. Thankfully, so
engrossed were they in their message transfer they never
saw me and I was able to fearfully slip away and avoid
being eaten alive (or worse). Anyway, it’s all completely
true (and I have similar suspicions about school teachers,
too). My magic gonk later informed me that it had
planted into my brain the suggestion that I should walk
into the ladies’ toilets; I’d only believed I’d walked in there
by mistake, and my magic gonk had actually done it to
prepare me for the terrible truth about bosses. So who (or
what) is my magic gonk? You’ll soon see ...
THE UGLY MERMAID
47
DISSECTING A TOAD
Leaving gonks aside for a short while, we must now
plough ever forth through this bonkers dirge, so that I
may bring to your attention the main protagonist of this
tale; a certain Ms. Verity Fruitt.
Ms. (pronounced muzz - ugh, I know; vile) Fruitt also
worked in my office - though she was oblivious to all the
monstrously fantastical goings-on between the bosses.
Verity Fruitt was probably the most horrible person you
could ever work with (human, monster or otherwise), and
she had something called ‘ambition’. Verity wanted to
become a boss, which I realized meant she would probably
one day transform into one of the loathsome, repellent
creatures I had seen in the office toilets.
How shall I describe Verity? Well, imagine a five foot
tall orange toad sitting squat behind a desk. That’s Verity,
that is. With canary-blue eyeliner, a permanent sheen of
sweat and darting, beady eyes that scan everything they
survey. Imagine an ill-fitting ‘power-suit’ outfit (that’s
ready to burst at the buttons at any moment), a bristly,
caterpillar-like orange moustache sitting atop scabby
gherkin lips and a deep, gravelly voice so booming and
scary it could crack rocks. Imagine a heart as caring as a
swinging brick, completely devoid of any sympathy,
warmth and compassion.
Imagine someone who always arrives late for work
(blaming the train and/or others), who stops working the
second the boss is out of the room, and who always takes
very, very extended lunches (but expects ‘underlings’ to
work through their own). Imagine someone who takes
every opportunity to make everyone else and their work
look incompetent, but who makes sure she spends every
available moment with her boss; giving her compliments,
hanging off her every word and whispering horrible
wormy-tongued lies about her work colleagues. That’s
Verity, that is.
Imagine a narrow-minded little walnut of a brain
rattling inside that toad-skull, designed for one thing and
one thing only; the self-preservation and advancement of
Ms. (pronounced muzz) Verity Fruitt. Shudder!
And she was just as vile outside the office. Every night
after work, she’d pick up a giant doner kebab and a large
bottle of cola from her local take-away. When she got
home, she’d sit in bed with her skewered gristle and
tooth-rot soda pop feast, stuffing her face as she watched
trashy late night tv until she passed out. She had a vat of
lard beside her bed that she dipped pieces of kebab ‘meat’
into. She’d then finish off with an immense bar of (lardsmeared) chocolate, eating as much as she could until she
felt sick (there was a bedside bucket, just in case). The
giant kebab, chocolate and cola combo would mean her
duvet would rise and fall regularly throughout the night
(explosive bottom-expulsions, you understand). When
dawn came and her alarm went off, she’d wake with a
bleary ‘Eh? Wazzat?’ and find herself amongst a mound of
discarded oily food wrapping and shrivelled chunks of
stale junk food. Dried drool and ‘matter’ that had
somehow missed her enormous chasm of a gob would be
THE UGLY MERMAID
49
encrusted on her chin and moustache. Grumbling to
herself, she’d stumble to her bathroom, squeeze a few
spots and then take a shower (to wash the discarded,
matted food-chunks from her exterior). She’d then comb
her moustache and making herself look vaguely
presentable, before picking up some waste kebab gristle
off the bed (or carpet) and popping them into her
handbag for lunch. She’d then set off for another day at
the office.
How do I know all this? Simple; she told the whole
office (when our boss was out, naturally). She was proud
of being so grotesque and loathsome. And no-one in
authority would believe it of her anyway, as she was such
a sycophantic, fawning crawly-creep to them.
So, despite her being (technically) human, you can see
that she wasn’t far off becoming a monster already. Verity
Fruitt had ambition and hideousness; she felt
‘untouchable’, and was well on her way to becoming what
she wanted to be. However, fate and my magic gonk were
there to intervene ...
It would be fair to say that Verity and I never got on from
the moment we met. When I joined that office, I quickly
got the measure of Ms. Fruitt and of her schemes and
ambitions. Her hideous, toad-like appearance and
shower-sauna-created orangeness were understandably
off-putting, too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she took an
immediate dislike to me too - she knew I couldn’t be
fooled by her slipperiness. She saw my job as nothing
more than messing-around with words and pictures on a
computer screen (fair enough, I suppose). She also
thought me just plain weird, which is also fair enough,
when I think about it. Anyway, our boss Octavia quickly
picked-up on our mutual dislike and thought it best to sit
us within inches of one another, as she thought the
inevitable friction would be quite amusing (bosses are
good at things like that).
The thing she disliked most about me was my magic
gonk. What’s a magic gonk, I hear you squeal? Why, a
gonk with magical skills and powers, of course. So what’s
a non-magic gonk? Well, your parents may remember
them; a gonk could take many forms, but it was usually
just a used toilet roll tube that had a bit of shaggy, groovycoloured fake fur wrapped around it, with a pair of
cardboard eyes stapled or glued on to the front. Oh, just
go and Google ‘gonk’ and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway,
I had a gonk, and luckily for me it was the magical
version; one of my fairground relatives had given it to me,
back in the seventies. It had sorcery skills and knew spells
and enchantments, and protected me from Verity and
Octavia. It could also predict the future. And I kept it on
my desk so that it could stare at Verity (and cast spells at
her) every day. And just generally annoy her.
Verity detested my magic gonk. At first, she just
thought it weird that a grown man (I’m stretching the
definition here when referring to myself, I’ll admit)
should have a hairy, staring toy on his desk. As time went
on, I increasingly mentioned the magic gonk’s influence
on my life; if I missed a meeting with Verity, I said the
magic gonk had told me to miss it. And when I did attend
THE UGLY MERMAID
51
a meeting, I took my magic gonk with me. If she asked
what I did at the weekend (nosiness, you understand, not
frivolous curiosity or genuine interest), I said I took my
magic gonk to the circus/zoo, et cetera. If I ignored
Verity’s instructions on work projects, I said the magic
gonk had told me not to listen to her (besides, Verity
wasn’t my boss; she was just one of those persons who
liked to think she was). All very childish of me, I suppose,
but it was essential that I kept Verity ‘on her toes’, so that
she didn’t feel comfortable around me. A word of advice;
if anyone ever bullies or bothers you, just be weird around
them; it confuses them and they can’t handle it.
My gonk-centric weirdness got too much for her at
one point. I remember walking in from lunch and
catching her trying to remove my gonk from my desk. So
insistent was she on getting rid of it, she was standing on
the table heaving at the little purple fur-thing with all her
(not inconsiderable) might. I’ll never forget that
loathsome vision; her white stiletto shoes were wedged
precariously on the table-edge; the already-stressed
stitching on her power-suit ready to rip; her orange manmuscles straining on her neck and upper arms.
Unfortunately for Verity, I’d superglued the gonk to the
table, so she didn’t have much luck there. On another
occasion, I purchased a dozen identical-looking gonks
and left them in some of the unsavoury places I knew she
frequented (making sure I had a word with the proprietor
of each establishment, in order to gain the most
prominent, easy-to-see positions for my gonk army). I left
the first gonk in Amal’s Ok Meat! Grill (which was the
dubious name of her favourite kebab shop), a second gonk
was left in The Broken Spirit (the seedy dive-of-a-pub on
the corner), one in Honest Ron’s Bookmakers, and several in
Kinky Tim’s Go-Go Nightclub. I stuck the next gonk in
Sticky Dave’s Discount Chocolate Outlet, one in Swarthy
Bill’s Sweat ‘n’ Solarium Boudoir, another one in The Filthy
Spoon (her favourite breakfast café), and a couple in Nasty
Nigel’s Wrestling (the local cage-fighters’ gym, where
Verity would regularly pick up her ‘boy’ ‘friends’). Based
on my previous experience, I decided to avoid placing one
in the ladies’ lavatory at the office. The gonks had the
desired effect; seeing them everywhere she went made her
very paranoid indeed. But angry. She tried to get Octavia
to do something about the gonk glued to my desk, but the
thought of it stressing Verity out so much brought much
cruel mirth and amusement to our mutual boss.
‘The gonk stays, dahling,’ Octavia declared, with a
cackle and a callous smile.
There were others in our office, of course. There was
Bazwell, who didn’t seem to have a specific job (or much
work to do); he just ... wobbled around in his very large
swivel armchair, sighed a great deal and reminisced about
‘classic rock’. He never took his enormous Reactolight
shaded spectacles off (except on one occasion, only to
eerily reveal a pair of very tiny little eyes that looked like
raisins). There was also sweet-but-timid little Pweeee
(I’ve no idea if that’s how you’d write her name, but that’s
what it sounded like), the Intern from Hong Kong; she
worked for free and was so utterly terrified of Octavia and
Verity (who’d both threatened to get her ‘shipped back
THE UGLY MERMAID
53
home’ on many occasions) that she was their virtual slave.
Then there was Marys, an elderly Secretary from
Papua New Guinea. She was also a compulsive bingo
gambler, living a (not very) secret life squandering her pay
every lunchtime down at the Gala bingo hall. Full of faith
(she worshipped some New Guinean deity called Oomballapapalalla Shaka Manaloko), she’d spend each
afternoon flushing her head down the toilet, being full of
guilt and repentance. Old Hubert, the Jamaican Janitor
was a bit of an odd-bod; he shuffled around naked (apart
from an oversized trenchcoat) and was convinced he was
a witch doctor from the far future named Papa Spookeh.
After work, he went back to his home on the terrifying
jungle planet of Nocturnia. Apparently. And of course, I
mustn’t forget Egbert the Snail-Fancier. He didn’t fancy
snails ‘in that way’, he just liked them as friends, and
always kept a few about his person in ‘moister’ places.
Egbert’s job title was Senior Photo-Copy Assistant; he
stood by the photo-copier all day, every day, pressing the
machine’s start button. That was all he did.
It was all very sad. So worn down were my colleagues
by the incessant tawdriness of that office (and by Octavia
and Verity’s vileness), I regret to say they were all almost
as grey as the wallpaper; the malevolent Dyson that was
life in that office had utterly cyclone-sucked the souls out
of them, and they seemed resigned to enduring a lifetime
of endless days of that woeful existence. I vowed to never
become like that.
That said, I was young, skint and I needed to make a
living, so I kept my head down, worked hard and did my
best to tolerate Verity and her relentless foulness (some
examples of which now follow) ...
Verity had a habit of breaking wind just before leaving
the room (making it look like I was responsible for the
whiff ). Anyone who knows me knows that my bottom is
incapable of any such expulsions (and even if it were, the
trouser-trumpets would be sweet and fragrant). Due to
her rancid kebab-and-cola diet, her bottom-burps
smelled worse than a rotting sheep (actually, I suppose
they were the smell of a rotting sheep, knowing what
kebabs are supposedly made of ). When Octavia was out
of the room, Verity’s orange vanity mirror was whipped
from her dreaded desk drawer (a Pandora’s Box of
grimness, believe me) and her gouging-out of ‘t-zone
blackheads’ using the button-end of her biro would
immediately commence. She used to collect these
removed pore-blockers in a large matchbox; she would
wait until they had congealed into a solid lump of fat and
then reapply them as ‘hand-cream’. Delightful.
Being a sweaty so-and-so, she also used to keep The
Rag in her drawer of doom. The Rag was a worn, utterly
stinking piece of cloth that she would regularly wipe her
shiny face, belly-button and rainforest-like armpits with;
she would occasionally give it a bit of a spray with some
cologne, but not very often. You could see the sweatsteam rising from The Rag, and it was quite
unmistakable; she’d marker-penned a large ‘V’ letter on it,
to make it clear it was hers and no-one else’s (as if anyone
would ever willingly go near it).
Need I go on? Why not; she had a crystalline stalactite
THE UGLY MERMAID
55
of snot forming beneath her desk; she would pick the
gunged contents from her nose and carefully apply them
to the same place under the table in order to build up a
miniature bogie spire. She also had a separate under-table
stalactite made from any plaque and food chunks she’d
managed to remove from between her teeth. Her earwax
was so bad you could smell it from the other side of the
room; I once saw a brown wax lump the size of a Malteser
chocolate fall from her ear after she’d given it a vigorous
poke. The lump plopped into her coffee. She then drank
it. Twice a week she went to Swarthy Bill’s Sweat ‘n’
Solarium Boudoir at lunchtime, to ‘get a sweat on and get
all oranged up’; she’d have an hour in one of his solarium
sun showers (set on maximum-setting; thermonuclear),
and would return looking (and smelling) like a lump of
burnt charcoal that had fallen off the barbecue.
The worst thing associated with Verity was probably
her cyst. She had a ‘benign’ (I use the term very
generously) lump on the back of her left shoulder that she
would ‘play with’. When bad-tempered and/or stressed
(ie. always) Verity would knead it with her fingers,
making the cyst flare up in size until the surrounding skin
was close to rupturing. And then she would deliberately
pop it, making the rancid-smelling gunge-fluid inside
propel into the air at high velocity and force. The
‘popping’ was always done when Octavia was absent from
the office, and the cyst was always pointed in my
direction.
As if all these personal unpleasantnesses weren’t
enough, you won’t be surprised to hear her working
manner and general demeanour toward her supposed
colleagues were just as repellent. She’d spend her working
week doing very little (apart from doing her nails, yapping
to friends on the phone and preening herself in her orange
vanity mirror), then would land ‘urgent’ projects on my
desk at 5.29pm on a Friday evening - knowing full well
that Octavia would need me to have it done by first thing
Monday. This went on for many months, scuppering any
chance of me having a decent weekend; there was no point
complaining to Octavia because she had no interest in
how her underlings conducted themselves in the office, so
long as the work was done to schedule and it didn’t impact
on her in any way.
Here’s some more Verityesque horridness for you; as
mentioned earlier, she would bully Pweeee the Intern
with threats about deportation back to Hong Kong. She
would also (literally) drag her down to the file room, and
give her a list of impossible-to-source (and often nonexistent) folders she supposedly needed immediately.
When Pweeee naturally failed in her unfeasible tasks, she
would have to report to Verity at the end of the day, in
order to be locked in The Shame Cupboard overnight.
Resenting the fact he did so little, Verity also tried her
best to be horrible to Bazwell. But Bazwell was pretty
indomitable; any attempts at offloading work on to him
were met with a sigh, an anecdote about Mott The
Hoople from 1974, and a meandering three hour saunter
to the coffee machine.
She struggled with Egbert the Snail-Fancier, too. He
was so wrapped-up in his pet escargots and his photo-
THE UGLY MERMAID
57
copying machine that any other subject just didn’t
compute with him; try and give him a bit of filing or
typing to do and he would just wander off to his Secret
Snail Chamber (this was a room on the fifth floor that
only he had a key to; when stressed, he would go there, lie
on the floor with the lights off, and let the thousands of
snails he kept within crawl and slime all over him). Verity
had much better luck with Marys the Secretary, however;
she would bully her in much the same way as she did
Pweeee, making her do all her typing for her by spitefully
threatening to tell her deity Oom-ballapapalalla Shaka
Manaloko about her bingo habit if she didn’t.
Verity even tried to pick on Old Hubert once, which
was a bit pointless seeing as neither he nor his janitorial
duties had anything to do with her. She tried to force him
to ‘run errands’ for her (a lard sandwich from the café, a
flutter at the betting shop, a ‘you’re dumped’ message to
one of her ex-beaus at the wrestling gym), and tried the
nasty ‘deportation’ threats she successfully used on Pweeee
if he objected. This was a bit of a mistake; Hubert simply
removed his unpleasantly stained overcoat to reveal his
ageing, wrinkly nudie-nakedness and summoned ‘the
spirit of Papa Spookeh’ into his body. He then followed
the horrified Ms. Fruitt around the office, bellowing
voodoo incantations, shaking his ju-ju beads and
throwing curses on her head for the rest of the day.
Hubert continued doing the same when she tried to leave
for the evening; he followed her home and spent hours
casting spells outside her front door until the police
finally carted him away. Assuming that was an end to the
situation, Verity was shocked to see him return to work a
day or so later. She immediately tried to get him fired,
until a Manager explained that Hubert wasn’t actually on
the payroll; Hubert was happy to work for free, and they’d
no intention of turning away someone with that kind of
commitment.
I guess I could spend all day going on about Verity’s
vileness, but I’m pretty sure you get the idea by now. I’ll
conclude by just mentioning what she grimly referred to
as ‘Verity’s Friday-Night Man-Treat’. She always saw the
last day of the working week as ‘party night’ - which
meant a quick trip to Nasty Nigel’s Wrestling at lunchtime,
in order to ‘check out the talent on offer’ and make the
appropriate propositions to whichever confused
individual was demented enough to go out with her. Sure
enough, every Friday evening there would always be a
bull-necked human gorilla waiting by the office’s exit
(holding a single red rose for her, just as she’d prearranged at lunchtime). An evening meal (at the kebab
shop), followed by drinkies at The Broken Spirit, then
dancing at Kinky Tim’s Go-Go Nightclub, followed by ...
ugh, I really don’t want to know, and neither should you.
Hideous.
Anyhow, it’s probably about time that I got on with
the story, so here goes ...
THE STORY CONTINUES IN VERITY
FRUITT AND MY MAGIC GONK
AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON
AND ALL GOOD BOOK STORES.
Right, that’s enough of all that. Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed
these words of utter nonsense, please tell your friends
about The Ugly Mermaid and command them to buy lots
of copies. Or buy them one for Christmas, Easter, their
birthday, the anniversary of the death of their gerbil, et
cetera.
Overleaf is some info about my other booky-wooks (for
grown-ups, children, and those surly in-between people).
Most of them are now available in both printed book and
ebook formats. More details can be found online at
Amazon and at other online stores. Please also see the
links on my website at www.hayesdesign.co.uk/books
books for younger readers:
Podge
The pooiest, ploppiest pig on the planet!
Podge the pig’s belly turned others to jelly;
His bottom-emissions were rotten and smelly!
The pig often found himself in a foul mood,
(Mainly because all he ate was junk food).
His animal friends said enough was enough,
And mutually agreed it was time to get tough.
The question remained, though - what could they do,
About Podge the pig’s bottom-burps, splatters and poo?
A hilarious tale about the
evils of eating bad food.
Introducing Podge - the pig
who revolts in more ways
than one! Will Queen Sheep
and the farm be able to do
anything about Podge the
pig, or will his bottom win in
the end? ...
FULLY ILLUSTRATED THROUGHOUT. Available in
full colour, laminated, large paperback format from Amazon
and all good booksellers.
Grandma Grunt
Children of all ages (and adults)
will squeal with delight at
Grandma Grunt’s horrendous
habits! Edgar and Wilhelmina’s
grandma is the worst in the
world. Don’t believe me? Read
this for yourself! Grandma Grunt
(and her slimy son, Uncle
Disgusting) make the children’s
lives an utter misery with their
loathsomely weird ways and
selfish cruelty.
In desperate retaliation, Edgar
and Wilhelmina come up with
The Plan - but will it be enough to put an end to Grandma
Grunt’s loathsome ways? Also included are a couple of separate
story-poem things; The Lurgatron and Creepy the Clown.
Available in paperback format from Amazon, from all good
booksellers and in eBook format.
Hairy Tales
A collection of stories for naughty boys and girls
Fans of irreverent humour will
love these short tales for younger
readers: come and join The Ugly
Mermaid on her fab and amazing
undersea quest to discover why
she’s so hideous, and find out why
Veronica the Velociraptor has such
very bad teeth!
Find out about the perils of
smoking in Aubrey’s Smelly
Adventure in the Land of Bernards,
and learn that it can be cool to
look different in Shipwreck’d
Sarah and the Silly-Looking Pirates! See what happens to
horrible Horatia, the Selfish Slug ... and dare you read the
spooktastically creepy I’m a Scary Spider? All this (and much
more) can be found in Hairy Tales!
Available in paperback format from Amazon, from all good
booksellers and in eBook format.
books for grown-ups:
Murkmyre (Book One)
Betrayal. Revenge. Insatiable
frogs. Prince Voltron Murkmyre
wants two things; revenge, and
the throne of the Murkmyrian
Empire for himself. Enduring a
seventy-four year prison sentence
- for crimes he didn’t commit has left him in a bit of a bad
mood. To achieve his ambitions,
he and his dogsbody slave Plip
must evade his psychotic
mother’s Empire and many
shadowy forces - and survive a
series of unfortunate crashlandings on worlds populated by ridiculous races and
nonsensical creatures. And then there’s the mystery of the
Darkstar of Glümdyyk to unravel, a fabled gemstone of
unimaginable power ...
A silly space fantasy for grown-ups about a dystopian
dysfunctional dynasty. With frogs, snails and slugs. This
revised, reformatted edition of Murkmyre sets the scene for
the apocalyptic events in Nocturnia - Book Two in The
Murkmyre Saga.
Available in paperback format from Amazon and all good
booksellers and in eBook format.
Nocturnia (Murkmyre, Book Two)
More betrayal. More revenge.
More insatiable frogs, snails and
slugs.
Available in paperback format
from Amazon and all good
booksellers and in eBook format.
Slugtopia (Murkmyre, Book Two-And-A-Half )
Even more betrayal. Even more
revenge. Even more insatiable
frogs, snails and slugs.
Available in paperback format
from Amazon and all good
booksellers and in eBook format.
The Complete Murkmyre Saga
A science fiction epic like no
other. Welcome to Dystopia’s
most dysfunctional dynasty! For
the very first time, Murkmyre,
Nocturnia and Slugtopia have
been compiled into this single
volume. Meet the vile and
unscrupulous Prince Voltron
Murkmyre, and join him on a
series of hapless misadventures
that will change the course of
future-history. In his relentless
quest to seize the Empire’s
throne, Voltron (and his long-suffering slave, Plip) encounter
amorous alien frogs, giant, vomiting slugs, vampiric spiders,
lascivious snails and an endless array of vengeful ‘lesser beings’.
The perpetual wrath of the three Lady Tyrants (the bonkers
Supreme Galactic Empress, the foul-smelling Queen of the
Skanxian pirates and Voltron’s deranged sister Pestilencia) is
also a matter of some concern. Oh, and then there’s the
mystery of the Darkstar of Glümdyyk to unravel, a fabled
gemstone of unimaginable power.
The Complete Murkmyre Saga also contains the epic Murkmyre
timeline and Planets and People guide, plus many hilarious
illustrations of its characters and creatures. Large format and
over 470 pages in length, The Complete Murkmyre Saga is a
remarkable achievement of grandiose storytelling ... so come
and join the legion of fans of Prince Voltron’s dystopian
universe! Available in paperback format from Amazon and all
good booksellers.
a note about ebooks:
I’ve recently converted ALL my literary curios to eBook
format, as a variety of separate titles - so now you can
download all my ramblings on to your Kindletron, and you’ll
never be free of me.
More details of my eBooks can be found online at Amazon
(search CLIFFORD JAMES HAYES on the Amazon
website), at other online stores and on my feeble website at
www.hayesdesign.co.uk/books
about the author:
Clifford James Hayes is a burnt-out, fat old woman in his
forties. Most people think him weird, mad and antisocial,
which he quite enjoys. He is always ill.
There is more to tell ... he was grudgingly taken-in by merciless
Russian blubber pirates when he was but an infant. He
endured a childhood of abject cruelty, humiliation and slavery,
before being forcibly ejected for ‘looking at his foster parents in
a funny way’. Remarkably, this rejection was turned into
academic success - despite further abject cruelty, humiliation
and slavery being administered on him by callous, disinterested
tutors, who were ever-keen to administer the birch, whip and
‘Uncle Ezekiel’ - their dreaded earwax and toadjuice-powered
torture device.
Enticed by the alluring colours and shapes of London town,
the author eventually found some meagre, slug-infested
accommodation - before enduring a young adulthood of
further abject cruelty, humiliation and slavery at the hands of
loathsome taskmasters. To improve his lot, he eventually
escaped - to labour night and day on the punishing chaingangs in Alabama. A period of introspection followed, during
which time he became a distraught, ravaged fixture in
Victorian London’s East End. The resultant, inevitable
financial ruin necessitated he resort to a life of easy virtue. Now
in the fading autumn of his life, he spends his final, painwracked days hanging precariously from rocks as he tearfully
gazes out toward the southern seas.
If you’re remotely interested in what he does as a ‘day-job’,
please go to www.hayesdesign.co.uk, or drop him an email at:
[email protected]
Thank-you for buying and reading this book. In doing so,
you’ve proved you’re bonkers, but quite scrumptious.