Cancer and Me: in isis-k's biggest adventure yet, she realises she is not immortal

Cheated!

From an early age, isis-k realised that life had a nasty habit of throwing googlies at unsuspecting bystanders.
After several years of being bullied at school, she kind of made it her mission to try and offend as few people and tread on as few toes as possible. 

Which is why
a) Her career, though interesting, never hit stratespheric and
b) She kept several pobbles as pets 

She and the weird sisters had many adventures battling the Evil Empress who ruled over a certain area of White City; while avoiding being sunk by the well-known shipping hazard in the Bermuda Triangle : Barry Manilow's nose.

Now I suspect she faces her biggest battle yet. All the tests the lovely doctors have carried out point to a diagnosis which - to quote the original big brother - is doubleplusungood.

No one wants to be told they have Cancer, but that's apparently not a choice I have. The googly has been bowled.

Strange how you meet so many acts of kindness at a time like this, from a London Cabbie being sympathetic when I threw up all over his nice clean Taxi (ok I still had to pay to have it valeted but...he told me to 'be lucky') to all the wonderful friends and neighbours who've done everything from Reflexology to cooking ready meals.

And of course: My Family.

You are wonderful and every day I am more proud.

Prognosis ? Profoundly pessimistic, but I ain't going down without a fight. 

As the truly great Dylan Thomas put it :
'do not go gentle into that good night
Rage rage against the dying of the light'

Peace (and of course - Love)

the gang's all here (with a few new members)

Back in west London, a light went on in Stan Lightbulb's head. He was sitting staring at his bacon and eggs, nursing a cup of hot sugary tea with the love and affection gentlemen usually reserve for pints of beer or football scores, when he realised he had a chance for a comeback.

Stan - as many are probably aware - had been King of Harlesden High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill and certain fields in Reading, where his tithes were as legendary as the fluorescent sheep (who had appeared some years after Chernobyl, but no-one had thought to question why owing to some fairly heavy infiltration of the local council by the infamous Tchaikovsky gang - who themselves had formed as a reaction to the Mozart Gang from North Kensington).

Anyway - to cut a long story short: Stan had been deposed following a coup staged by one of his henchmen who wanted to establish his own grazing rights and saw an opportunity while Stan was out of the country on business (buying up all the unsold copies of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in order to build a new castle). So now Stan wanted to get back to the dizzy heights he had once attained, when word got to him that the ghost of Colonel Ginsoaked (recently deceased, of the eponymous Gordon's Highlanders) was assembling an army to take on the Evil Empress in her hideout in Herne Hill.

picture by shugmonkey

Stan wasn't sure that he really wanted to ally himself with a bunch of soldiers who would not look out of place on the set of Carry on Up the Khyber, but thought that this could be a perfect way of getting back on top: taking on the Evil Empress herself: what could be a better challenge than that?

He wasted no time and while finishing his bacon, eggs and tea, Skyped his old friend Barry White, Texted a few random members of the Bow Street Runners (who were in town for the trial of an Alastair Simm lookalike who had tried to burn down a school he mistakenly thought to be the real St Trinians) and got on the train to Herne Hill...............

Prussians, Polyurethane and Planetary Parleys - continuing adventures in Libraryland

Meanwhile back in the Library, the King of Prussia popped in to inform our brave Librarian that he had been invited to a celebratory dinner to commemorate the old Battle of Waterloo. Dammit if I didn’t find that all our books appear to have been written by the Duke of Wellington, who – bless him –seems to have forgotten that he didn’t win the blessed battle single-handed.

And talking of history books: the dashing young writer (who is so busy being dashing that he has chosen to do several duels using first-rate top-brass as his Seconds, rather than sort out the copyright on his looted artworks) has nearly completed his tome on the history of our venerable institution….yes – you at the back – I said venerable, not any other similar-sounding, yet frankly unsavoury words (the very idea).

So today, I was so put out by the frankly inconvenient congregation of senior members of the Chemicals industry, who have taken up semi-permanent residence in my Library with their fancy bread sticks and fine

wines, that I decided to head off to chair a meeting of Astronauts at Galileo’s old gaff. Unfortunately, too many turned up, so there was no room in the space-ship and we had to settle for Tea in Piccadilly with a semi-functioning Teasmade which hadn’t been used since 1936 and therefore was a tad hard to handle.

Meeting went well though and I learned several new cleaning techniques involving miniature vacuuming apparatus, pipe cleaners and beeswax. All in a day’s work eh!

A hopeless passion...or is it?

This is NOT the 3-legged accordionist - it is his brother

Meanwhile back in Pigalle, the three-legged accordionist had picked himself up and reclaimed his dignity to resume his centuries-old watch on his stool outside the brothel where his love was employed, enchained in servitude by their hunger for survival. She turned tricks for pittance and he maintained vigil for a pious passion. 

The crowds snaked past, some throwing pennies, some hurling abuse, but all oblivious to the true love being demonstrated on the street before their eyes, while inside the paid love which some sought to fend off for a moment, the emptiness of loneliness, as they have for millennia, carried on: the meter ticking, the pennies dropping, tick tock kerchink plop. Love for a sous, ecstasy a Euro or two, pennies for pain that lives inside you.

'Alons-y Alonzo, mon ami' called David Tennant from his distant tenement, 'why not give up and flee this place, and start again with a new refrain?' But the accordionist knew no other way and could only stay, like a true disciple, clinging to a faith, forlorn and fearful.

'I'll toss you for her' sneered the jealous gendarme: 'a toss for a toss-off: fair exchange'. But the accordionist was implacable. Steady and steadfast, he sat on his stool and played a mournful ballad, like the martyrs of old: his expression fixed.

'I have lived for her love, and for her love I will die. This is no passing coquetry'

Gin-soaked rides again. Featuring Hobbits, Fondant Fancies and One Direction

picture by Shugmonkey

Meanwhile back in Tesco's, where Colonel Gin-Soaked of the eponymous Gordon's Highlanders Regiment, had recently repaired in search of Fondant Fancies, a sharp-eyed checkout girl had spotted he'd left the regimental colours and had left her post to run after him accompanied by several Community Policemen. Her actions had fortunately resulted in stopping him in his tracks before he could shoot down Lee Scorseby's airship thereby saving the day ...for the time being. It took several hours for him to argue his way out of the holding cell but when he did he got wind....of the fact that isis-k had had to dash off to help instruct the Weird Sisters.

Never one to miss out on an adventure, Old Gin-Soaked had rounded up his old regiment and there were now one hundred and twenty Gin-Soaked Gordon's Highlanders heading towards Herne Hill in an attempt to ambush the Evil Empress in her hideout, before she could hijack the new Bond Film. Unfortunately, this number of sozzled soldiers was never going to be able to act with ninja-like subtlety and subterfuge, and they had managed to awaken a whole troupe of extras who had been at an audition for the Hobbit Movie before realizing they'd missed out by a couple of years and were now desperately trying to get roles in a new One Direction biopic. The Highlanders were going easy on the out-of-work actors because - no matter how sozzled they were - they were still gentlemen, so had decided to slow them down by laying a trail of Fondant Fancies (being careful to save some for Ernestina the gargoyle, for whom they had to save some as a peace-offering-cum-bribe if you remember...and I'd not be surprised if you didn't as I lost the plot years ago)

Having thus disctracted their foes, the Highlanders headed for Herne Hill crying Scotland Forever as they went. At this point, isis-k wondered whether she should tell them that Sean Connery no longer played James Bond....

in which Librarians save the world

So this time the Weird Sisters determined to settle down to their homework which - if you remember - was set by Agent Fifi of Hebden Bridge and involved tracking down a genuine Bullshit Detector in order to defeat the Evil Empress of Shepherds Bush who was so supremely-versed in corporate bullshit that she had slid with ease into Elstree Studios and was well on her way to hijacking the latest Bond movie.

The Weird Sisters - Mounitchka and Leilitchka - being relatively young in witch terms (less than three millennia) were still reluctant to knuckle down to good old-fashioned studying, something which drove their mother - isis-k to despair on several occasions, particularly when it led to basic errors in spell-making calculus resulting in - for example - Mounitchka accidentally materializing as Chaka Khan instead of the Aga Khan, and attempting to fight the first Anglo-Afghan war armed with nothing but a damned good backing track and a first-class vocal.

Brunhilde by Ferdinand Leeke

So this time, isis-k got her friends on the case: Agent Bary Brown, first rate warlock of the Librarian School  - who had links via his special technical networks, to all sorts of hidden reserves of knowledge; and Brunhilde the Vegan Walkyrie, who had a way with tattoos which - when handled correctly - could come to life and decipher several layers of bullshit. The only trouble was, Barry and Brunhilde appeared to have got locked in the Spaniards Inn with Dick Turpin somewhere around 1736 and didn't look likely to emerge for several days. They had actually ended up there while at a gig a few hundred years later with another Dandy Highwayman called Adam. Such was the power of Brunhilde's tattoos that they had started working on his songs and transported the pair back to Hampstead mid- 'diddley qua qua'.

As is often the case: mum had to step in and sort out the girls' homework and isis-k found herself having to put Lee Scoresby, Colonel Gin-soaked and their fondant-fancy plan on hold, in order to extricate Barry and Brunhilde from the tavern so that they could track down the bullshit detector which would enable Mounictchka, Leilitchka and Agent Fifi to carry out their daring raid on the Evil Empress's hideout ( a cunningly conceived and devilishly disguised fortress hollowed into the contours of Herne Hill).

Finally, Barry and Brunhilde emerged triumphantly form the eighteenth century with the latest model: a BS-D 17 (aka Dr Johnson's 1755 Dictionary) - proving (if proof were needed) that come the Apocalypse, it will be Librarians who save the world

in which the Weird Sisters encounter Scheherazade, Sherbet Dabs and Civil Wars

Aubrey Beardsley

You may remember we left the Weird Sisters doing their homework, which is never a good thing to watch and unsurprisingly, it wasn't long before Leilitchka - the younger of the sisters by one hundred years or so - started reminiscing about some of her past adventures. One story which she had later recounted to Scheherazade (who used it to great effect in one of her books) involved rescuing Iseult, who was trapped behind Fascist lines during the Spanish Civil War. She had joined some Irish Volunteers thinking she'd be helping old ladies cross roads and - at a push - darn a few socks, but had been somewhat shocked to find what it actually involved, having accidentally arrived in town via a portal from the eleventh Century while working on a few love potions with her mother.


Leilitchka had armed herself with some Sherbet Dabs and a Beretta, the latter being loaded with Chewits. Unfortunately (there always seems to be a hitch when the Weird Sisters get involved in rescue missions), the girls had got distracted by a rapper from Belgium who - in a fit of poetic pique - had stolen all the wrappers from the chewy sweets. Now you all know that one of the first rules of artillery is to 'keep your powder dry', but this is obviously tricky when a rapper's stolen the wrappers. So when the Weird Sisters went into battle, they found - somewhat inevitably - that the damp Chewits got stuck in the mechanism, which consequently jammed, so not a shot could be fired. The Sherbet Dabs proved useless in the situation too, so they had to call for help from their old friend and mentor Janka the One-eyed Wonder, Queen and most beautiful of the Bulgarian witches who was honoured to be asked to aid an Irish princess.

Janka flew in with her trusted cat Salem, who had been a shape-shifting salamander working for a giant rat called Putin (poisoning a speciality), before Janka had rescued him, and had had a spell as a lighthouse keeper, so was accustomed to keeping a beady eye and knew all the ins and outs of Health & Safety, a subject upon witches are notoriously lax. The pair set up a diversion in the form of a few conjuring tricks which produced visions of lusty ladies in luxury lingerie, while the Weird Sisters, sneaked in, grabbed Isuelt and whisked her away hidden inside an empty box labelled 'free porn', whose contents they had previously emptied from a height of about thirty feet (just enough to provide a double diversion).

Obviously owing to issues of National Security, the whole incident was covered up by the authorities, so this is very likely the first time you will have read about it. Now Leilitchka - back to your homework!