The Umpire Strikes Back Out

Dawn was breaking wind on a warm and sultry day as Oberfeldwebel Darren Broz Parsnip hitched up his elastic-waisted baggy chartreuse dhoti and smoothed the front of his pink and lilac striped Markuri ka banyan. He took one final look in the mirror to make sure the war paint had been applied according to the detailed instructions printed on the back of his favourite box of cereal, before giving his six-foot tall, three-hundred-pound frame a delicate twirl, careful to support his impressive belly in baseball glove-like hands.

Satisfied (if not entirely happy) with what he saw, Oberfeldwebel Parsnip waltzed out of his wallaby-dung reinforced Nissen hut with a song on his lips and a rictus grin adorning his alabaster face: for today was the day he was going to sue the abdominal guards off those pansy, Kaffir-luvvin honchos of the Interdenominational Croquet and Curry Confessional – led by The Traitor, Milksop Spud – and once and for all wipe the silly-ass grin off the face of that inarticulate Saracen, Mahomet Ebd El Kudos Bin Zaman Khan, known to all the world as Maulana Miskey, and to his friends and admirers as, simply, Bin Zaman.

Certainly, it would not be as satisfying a victory as the one he had for years been unsuccessfully plotting against that limp-wristed Moor, Ali Darren (o why o why did he have to share a name with that double-tapping cheat), but hell, all those curry-munching triple-chocolate brownies looked the same, didn’t they? And one brownie down was as good as another brownie down, wasn’t it? Well, he thought so anyway. One at a time, mate, one at a time.

His head was buzzing with all these profound thoughts. So much so that he almost forgot to remove his slippers before climbing aboard his turbocharged bullock cart. Taking a moment to settle comfortably into the hay-lined driver’s bucket seat, Oberfeldwebel Parsnip put the key into the ignition, which involved inserting a callused big-toe up the bullock’s “exhaust” and giving it a determined twist. As always, this activated the vehicle’s powerful turbocharger and the cart set off with a jerk, quickly reaching a pace of thirty yards per minute.

Some twenty minutes later, once he had caught his breath and got used to this breakneck speed, Oberfeldwebel Parsnip resumed his croquettish musings. Those fabulously grand testicular-matches were in danger of dying an unnatural death if that beastly Backyard Croquet nonsense was allowed by the I.C.C.C. to flourish. Granted it got the public at large involved in the sport, but to his mind it just wan’t croquet.

But then the horrible realisation that he might never again umpire an interdenominational croquet match hit him square in the face. Suddenly the fact of the decline of the magisterial sport of croquet didn’t seem quite so important. The case, the case, the case was the thing. And by Gad he’d win it if it entailed having to shimmy semi-nude under the fullmoonlight for the prurient pleasure of Doctor of Spin, Shame Vaughan and his bevy of heavily made-up two-hundred pound Sports Balustraded bathing beauties. Come to think of it, he’d do that regardless of its effect on the outcome of his court case; Shame Vaughan’s homely beach beauties were the only humanoids he knew of who could put the lead back into the old 2B. Well, almost.

The sun was inching its way higher, and he was still a good three thousand yards away from the village courthouse. Commanding the compliant bullock to engage auto pilot, Oberfeldwebel Parsnip decided to take a short nap so that he would be fighting fit by the time he arrived. As he drifted off to sleep, however, the key slipped out of the ignition. Thus, soon after he’d dozed off, the turbocharged cart had ground to a complete halt.

Over by the courthouse steps, Parsnip’s lead counsel, Bubba Gryffindor, was in animated conversation with I.C.C.C. Head Honcho Spud and his lawyer Beat-Cycle Korsakoff. Things had been going well. Gryffindor had already got them to admit, off the record, that they had been wrong to deny Parsnip bathing rights in the village nala. But it was nearing time for the court proceedings to begin for the day, and there was as yet no sign of Parsnip. Gryffindor could feel the beads of sweat crawling down his spine and he thought furiously of ways to postpone the proceedings until his client showed up.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, a bright yellow light bulb lit up a few inches above his untonsured head. Inside it could be seen the cover of Frank Zappa’s We’re Only In It For The Money, an album that Gryffindor had heard many a time as a young lad, without being able to decipher the lyrics, while perched uncomfortably upon what he had been told was his sugar daddy’s left leg (s.daddy’s right leg had been the victim of a “war injury”). Gryffindor laid out for Spud and Korsakoff a simple but effective win-win plan for allowing everyone involved to save face. Beleaguered, and embarrassed by the way they had treated Parsnip, the I.C.C.C. management readily accepted Gryffindor’s plan.

Thus, when Oberfeldwebel Parsnip finally hove in sight, huffing and puffing along on his own stubby legs, cursing the entire bovine species in words of two and four syllables, he was greeted by the sight of a bright and colourful hand-painted banner which read,

At the sight of this Parsnip is said to have fallen to his knees weeping. It is not certain whether out of joy, or from fear of having to reveal details of an embarrassing bodily dysfunction which would prevent him from performing acts customarily required in order to initiate the process by which you can give someone your own babies.

Whatever the reason, Parsnip was obviously so overwhelmed by the sentiments expressed by I.C.C.C. officials that he promptly withdrew his case and disappeared into the undergrowth. He was never heard from again, except one Walpurgisnacht an octogenarian goatherd claimed to have seen him dancing wildly in a pink and lilac tutu on top of Mount Sillyminjaro.

And the shy, retiring Maulana Miskey, urf Bin Zaman, lived happily ever after, tending billy goats gruff destined for holy slaughter during the festive season.

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