Nigel Goes to the Moon - chapter 2: tuna sandwich

'Got 'em!' said Nigel, as he flung himself into the room, flung his rucksack onto the bed and waved about the items he had in his hands.

'McGinty?' he said, to what appeared to be an empty room. 'McGinty?' - his eyes scoured the place for his short, scaly friend.

'Don't worry about me,' said McGinty, as he crawled out from under Nigel's rucksack. 'I was just getting forty winks, before tackling Newton's Arithmetica Universalis.'

'Sorry, McGinty,' said Nigel. 'But look!' He waved the items about again.

McGinty squinted. 'What's that?' he said.

'A PlayStation 2 memory card and a--'

'--old tuna sandwich?'

'Oh drat it!' exclaimed Nigel. 'I was so quick to get my hand out of the bin, that I pulled out the wrong thing!'

'Never mind,' said McGinty. 'I'm sure we can make it work.'

'But it says on www.buildyourownspaceship.com that it has to be a Snickers wrapper - preferably one which has only been disposed of within the last three days!'

'Does it absolutely have to be a Snickers wrapper?'

'It says on www--'

'Give me that tuna sandwich,' said McGinty, as he held out his claw. 'Let me see what I can do with it.'

Nigel passed McGinty the tuna sandwich. It was a particularly smelly tuna sandwich. McGinty figured, with his well-honed sense of lizardy smell, that it had probably been in the bin from which Nigel had extracted it for at least four-and-a-half days. McGinty didn't mind too much, however, as he was used to eating weeks old left-over salad, dead insects (even though he was a lizard, not a frog) and whatever the cat dragged in.

'It's still got some life in it,' said McGinty, as he sniffed at the sandwich and poked it a bit. 'Now pass me that memory card.'

Nigel did so.

McGinty carefully opened the sandwich. He scraped some of the tuna onto the floor, then, as if it was radioactive or something, ever... so... slowly... placed the memory card into the memory-card-shaped hole he had just created. He replaced the top slice of bread. He then handed the tuna'n'memory card sandwich back to Nigel.

'Now,' he said to Nigel, 'place this... carefully!' - Nigel let out a strange little sound - 'v-e-e-r-r-r-r-y-y carefully... into the appropriate slot in the spaceship.'

Nigel held the sandwich straight out in front of him. He walked over to the spaceship, sticking out his tongue in concentration as he did so.

The spaceship was in the corner of Nigel's bedroom. It wasn't very big. It looked as though it was made mainly out of corrugated iron, Lego, chocolate bar wrappers, bits of fluff, elastic bands, toilet role tubes, empty washing up liquid bottles and randomly attached parts from videogame consoles. Which it was. McGinty (being a highly intelligent iguana, who knew about such things) had doubts about whether it was going to work. He was, however, good friends with Nigel, so decided to humour him. And so, here he was, frowning and tapping the side of his head with a Biro, as Nigel put the final touches to his so-called-space-so-called-ship.

'Inserting... the final... component,' said Nigel, as he (carefully) squished the sandwich in between a folded mouse-mat and a stack of six batteries sellotaped together. 'Done!'

Amazingly, a low rumble began to emanate from the bowels of the machine.

McGinty's jaw dropped. He lost consciousness and fell off the bed.