Groovin’ With Mr.Bloe

Geoff Gust could not recall the exact moment when his life slipped out of sync and he ceased to become at one with the universe, although he had a sneaking suspicion that it was approximately 10.46 am on the morning of Saturday June 16th in a gazebo belonging to a so-called friend who went by the name of Dave The Rave, which was something of a misnomer considering he was an overweight PE teacher from Nottingham with a smokers cough and dodgy knees, a combination of circumstances that had prompted Geoff, on later reflection, to seriously question the validity of their relationship and the whole point of travelling all the way to Wales to pitch his Tesco Two Man Tent half way up a mountain only to suffer the slings and arrows of extreme precipitation.
As he slipped into what he later figured was a parallel dimension, he couldn’t help but ponder on the fact that he hadn’t yet arrived at the end of the journey. In short, he was almost there, but not quiet, a bit like that bloke with the crazy eyes and dirty raincoat who sold copies of The Big Issue outside Poundstretcher and regularly proclaimed to any passer by foolhardy enough to meet his manic stare that he was a traveller across many galaxies and was merely visiting Earth in order to raise funds for the homeless. Although Geoff’s ingrained socialist leanings meant that he had an instant affinity with life’s poor and dispossessed, even if they did reside on some planet six million light years away, he felt a twinge of anxiety in his bowels and was consumed with fear that the movement it was generating may end up in his underpants which, thankfully, were only his fourth best pair, the brown ones with the squiggly patterns emblazoned with the logo ‘Tradesmen – Use Rear Entrance’, which he’d brought on a day trip to Blackpool, a move which had seemed like a good idea at the time. However, they had singularly failed to impress Mrs.Golightly, his next-door neighbour, whenever he pegged them on the washing line. Geoff had often contemplated alleviating this somewhat embarrassing encounter with the purchase of a tumble drier, but had decided against it on the grounds that such an item would be an unnecessary drain on both the earths rapidly diminishing resources and the contents of his wallet.
Anyway, this story is getting way off beam, which is exactly how Geoff felt as he exited the marquee after witnessing a less than memorable set from some Dutch hippies who played what could only be described as a freeform transcendental acid blues jam to an audience of three freaks off their heads on bathtub speed and a mangy dog with one ear and half a tail who appeared to have wandered in out of the rain. Oh, and Geoff, who had manfully hung around on the off chance that the really cool chick who wore extreme clown make up and played bass for a bunch of cosmic dropouts from St. Helen’s might just show up, especially as he’d spent the entire set perched on the end of her monitor gazing lasciviously as her fingers ran up and down the neck of the Fender Precision Bass, providing Geoff with a small stirring in his loins and a large bulge in his underpants which, coincidentally, were the brown coloured fourth best pair he’d brought on a long weekend on the West Coast. That’s the West Coast of England by the way, and not Southern California, a place he had always dreamed of visiting but had never quiet got around to. A bit like tantric sex and colonic irrigation.
I sense at this point that some of you may be beginning to wonder as to where this tale is going and, to be frank (a name Geoff had always fancied having), the honest reply would be absolutely nowhere. But seeing as we’re dealing in science fiction here, telling the whole truth is never going to be an issue. Which meant that as Geoff stumbled out of the dry ice and bad grass haze of the marquee he very nearly tripped over some idiot who had deposited himself lotus position style right by the entrance or, in Geoff’s case, exit, which is a bit like life really in the sense that it all depends on which direction you’re heading from as to how you get to see things. The thing Geoff saw was the crazy bloke who sold The Big Issue outside of his local discount food and household accessories outlet, which seemed a bit strange seeing as that particular establishment was some two hundred miles down the road and this frazzled looking specimen with matted dreads and deep fried eyes didn’t even own a pair of shoes, let alone a motor vehicle or similar means of conveyance. The wild one looked up at Geoff and flashed a black-toothed grin.
“Ah, there you are” he wheezed, immediately prompting Geoff to revise his ciggie consumption estimation upwards to at least sixty a day. “I’ve been waiting for you, man”.
Geoff was momentarily taken aback as it was a policy of his never to talk to strange men, a doctrine his mother had instilled in him from the age of five when she’d caught him in the potting shed with that nice Mr. Jezley from across the way, who had an elderly mother bedridden with angina and a gammy left hand, strangely misshaped following an accident with the home made printing machine he used to run off copies of God Talk, the esteemed organ of the local church. That and made to order picture galleries featuring butch young men clad in crotch hugging Speedo’s pulling Charles Atlas type poses with a touch of colour in their cheeks and a twinkle in their eye that hinted at an interest in the type of leisure activities not normally encountered in polite society. Anyhow, Mother had chosen to make her somewhat unexpected entrance at the exact moment Mr. J had inserted the entire contents of his gammy hand into the front of Geoffrey’s khaki Junior Explorer shorts under the pretext of searching for a mint imperial he’s misplaced earlier. While the look on mums face could only be described as a mixture of puzzlement tempered with a degree of resigned inevitability, the kindly neighbour had a sudden turn Geoff had often heard described as a hot flush and had mumbled something incomprehensible, but which sounded like needing to go and get the tea on, all while engaged in a Titanic struggle to relinquish his vice like grip on our hero’s meat and two veg.
Anyway, I digress. The frazzled looking dude was sitting cross-legged on the floor like some park bench Buddha. Spread out in front of him was a tatty looking map with images on it like no place Geoff had ever seen. I mean, I know this was Wales, but the squiggly lines and weird looking shapes scrawled across the tatty paper were too far out even for this remote corner of the universe. Geoff was just about to administer a sharp exit when his eye was caught by a large hole in the top right hand corner of the parchment; a hole so oddly shaped that it resembled nothing less than a pair of Y-Fronts. He was just about to point this out to the freak when there was a blinding flash of custard yellow light behind his eyes and a voice in his head that reminded him of nothing less than a Tellytubby on acid.
“Go home and wash your underwear”, whispered the voice in a slightly sinister tone. “Then await the arrival of the mothership. Do not disappoint us as we have travelled far in search of the one true direction”.
One Direction, thought Geoff. What the hell did a dodgy boy band, a shoeless freak and interstellar travel have in common?
He looked down but the weird looking dude had evaporated.

Geoff returned home on Sunday afternoon and, as was his habit, unpacked his bag and deposited his dirty laundry directly into the washing machine. As the suds soaked their way through the festival grime he opened a tin of macaroni cheese which, following the briefest of warming up’s in the microwave, was consumed with two slices of lightly toasted wholemeal bread and a mug of tepid tea that, for a thoroughly fastidious individual such as Geoff, constituted nothing less than a feast fit for a king. After rinsing his plate and mug he collected the washing from the drum and took it out into the back garden for the final step in the process.
The pegging out.
As the net curtains in the house next door began to twitch with an ever-increasing urgency, Geoff carefully hung out the contents of his washing basket. One pair of Matalan jeans, a faded Uriah Heep t-shirt, three pairs of grey woollen socks (complete with holes where the big toe goes) and four pairs of underpants; one pink (a present from his Mother), one yellow (half price in Poundland), one blue (Marks & Spencer’s snug fit) and one brown, the pair from Blackpool emblazoned with the cheeky logo.
Oh how Geoff had chuckled the first time he’d pulled them on, sucking in his ample beer gut, gingerly checking himself out in the bedroom mirror. These will get the ladies lining up at my front door he’d speculated, perhaps somewhat over optimistically. The pants had no effect whatsoever, and Geoff was soon back to scouring through the Lonely Hearts pages of the local rag. A sad little man in a sad little town leading a sad little life.
A life that, within the hour, would change the whole course of the universe.

After attending to the washing Geoff, feeling somewhat drained following his wild weekend in Wales, retired to his boudoir with a mug of cocoa and two rich tea biscuits to dream of Helen the bass player with the yellow dreadlocks and ice cool demeanour. After three evenings in a tent being kept awake by chronic flatulence brought on by a dodgy Fairtrade kebab coupled with the inane ramblings of a bunch of hippies from Bognor Regis who spent the entire night talking crap about time travel and free love, Geoff was sleepy-pie eyed and could soon be found slipping steadily into The Land Of Nod, a pleasant little hamlet inhabited by fluffy pink bunnies and buxom bass players, a place Geoff would willingly throw good money at for a two week vacation, all in, mini bar included.
He had just got to the interesting part of his dream, the bit where Helen was teaching him the lick to ‘Rebel Rebel’, when he was awoken by a strange whirring noise. For a second he thought he’d left the washing machine on spin, but the fluttering curtains, eerie green light and slight trembling of the buildings foundations suggested that this might not be the case. Something was most definitely amiss.
Pulling on his Rupert The Bear dressing gown and sliding into his King Kong slippers, Geoff made his way cautiously downstairs. I say cautiously as the whirring sound was becoming increasingly louder to the point where a letter from The Residents Association could very well be heading in the direction of Geoff’s house, post haste. Not only that but the blinding green light was now illuminating the entire street, turning the otherwise quiet cul-de-sac into the set of a cheap 50’s Horror flick. All we need now, thought Geoff as he stepped gingerly out of the back door, is some bloke in a badly fitting robot suit.
Strangely enough, that’s exactly what he saw.
“Do not fear us, Earthlings”, mumbled the bloke in the robot suit. “We come in search of both peace and underpants”.
Now Geoff, being a bit of a sci-fi buff on the QT, had read some crap in his time, but this bloke took the biscuit. Literally. I mean, he actually nicked the half eaten rich tea Geoff was still clutching in his left paw. The look of total incredulity Geoff was wearing obviously struck a chord with the tourist from another dimension as, removing his dodgy helmet, which resembled something you might encounter in a Junior School nativity play, he revealed himself to be the freak from the festival.
“Allow me to explain, Earthling,” he drawled in that mechanical way so beloved of ham actors pretending to be aliens from outer space. Why was that, thought Geoff, a man who had watched far too many Midnight Movies for his own good? “That map you saw me holding the other day is the key to my planets future. Allow me to explain”.
Allow him to explain thought Geoff. Why do they always say that? Like he’d got any choice. This bloke was seriously beginning to do his head in but Geoff, politeness personified, was far too much of a gentleman to broach the subject. So instead he opted to keep his trap shut, a policy he’d maintained for the past forty-nine and a half years.
“We are travellers from a distant galaxy many light years away who inadvertently took a wrong turn just to the left of that yellow dot you call your Sun. Unfortunately our map is somewhat incomplete, missing a vital parchment that will lead us in the direction home”.
Blimey, thought Geoff, feeling a little chilly as the cool night air wafted around the edge of his stripy pyjama bottoms, this bloke is seriously out to lunch. It was at this point that he noticed Mrs.Golightly, the nosey neighbour from next door, retrieving his fourth best pair of underpants from the line. He watched in mute amazement as she walked across the parched lawn, up the steps of the saucer, and handed the aforementioned undergarments to the brother from another planet. The robot bloke must have sensed Geoff’s confusion for again he spoke with that weird B-Movie intonation.
“Do not fear,” he mumbled, which was pointless as Geoff was beyond being frightened. If anything, he was mildly confused. “This creature you call woman is merely our representative on this place you call earth”.
Geoff was just about to point out that woman was the last word he’d have chosen to describe the old battle-axe from next door when there was a blinding flash of light and a loud whirring sound.
“Now our map is complete”, proclaimed the alien, holding up Geoff’s fourth best pair of pants triumphantly. “We bid you farewell, Earthling. Our mission here is complete, and we must now return from whence we came!” And with that the saucer began to spin wildly, emitting a loud clanging noise as it rose into the night sky.
That piece of scap will never pass its MOT, thought Geoff as he entered the kitchen and put the kettle on.
Tomorrow he’d go shopping for a new fourth best pair of pants.