Saturday, September the 25th, 2004

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What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim

This handy guide has been produced by the Tantarabim Tourist Board, a body riddled with corruption from top to toe, although its internal politics need not concern the innocent reader who merely wishes to spend a few joyous hours in the bailiwick of Tantarabim on a cold and blustery winter's day, swaddled in woollen garments against the elements. Let's start again. This is a handy guide to the sort of activities you and your family can enjoy in Tantarabim during the winter months, should you be unlucky enough to have your plane make a forced landing there due to storminess, surely the only reason to go anywhere near Tantarabim in the first place, given how frightening it is. Having said that, for the tourist who does not mind discomfort and privations, Tantarabim can be a source of much entertainment and interest, if the words are used loosely. So put on your hat and come with me now as we creep past the gore-splattered beasts with venomous fangs which guard all approaches to the town, and I shall list at least five things you can do when stuck in Tantarabim during a blizzard.

1. Plummet helplessly down one of the many hidden chutes which deliver you into a flaming pit.

2. Be poked at with pointed sticks by cloven-hoofed imps spitting sulphur. You will have lots of fun trying to shake them off, but we guarantee you won't succeed!

3. Take a guided tour of the choc ice factory. The price of entry includes the opportunity to taste their wares.

4. Become embroiled in a fight to the death with Bonecrusher Jim, an untamed python which has been deprived of food for months.

5. Spend a night in one of Tantarabim's many inns, where you will be entranced by the primitive gaslight, inexplicable night-time banging and crashing noises, swarms of phantom locusts, and walls and ceilings that seem to move when you are not looking. Most inns do not charge for children under sixteen, probably because they are likely to be abducted by strange amphibious monsters and dragged into the sea.