Tuesday, July the 24th, 2012

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On The Nincompoops' Bazaar

Summer is here, and with it comes the annual Pointy Town Nincompoops' Bazaar. This year, as ever, the Nincompoops' Bazaar will be held in a particularly pointy part of Pointy Town. Preparations are well in hand, and several nincompoops have already laid out their stalls.

This year, among the bargains available to punters will be antimony, breadcrumbs, curd, digestive biscuits, egg tapestries, frozen milk, galoshes, hats, ink, joggers' funnels, kaolin, lemon meringue pie, mother's wreckage, narthex rubbings, obsidian cat helmets, preening equipment, quicklime, rusty pins, sausages, talc, urban pointy things, vulgar snoods, wax, xylophones, yeast bags, and zookeepers' cushions.

In the Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent we are promised Quetzalcoatl puppets, wind chimes, earmuffs, ratcatchers' trousers, tin, yoghourt, uncooked pork, instant mashed potato, offal, portable anvils, anchors, sock hoists, damp cloth, fierce wild beasts, glue, hornets, jam, kevlar dog helmets, limestone, zookeepers' pin-cushions, x-rayed innards, custard, vinkensport scorecards, bait, noodles, and marzipan. There will be a flag atop the tent, and a Tannoy belting out nincompoopised versions of the instrumental bits from Kathy Kirby's chart-toppers, played on the glockenspiel.

A map of the site should soon be available, done in crayon and pencil by orphans from Pang Hill Orphanage. The light is dim in the Orphanage cellar, and the orphans are somewhat cack-handed, so the map may not actually be very helpful. As an alternative, visitors can be guided around the bazaar by a goat on the end of a chain. There is only one goat, so expect lengthy queues. The goat is an authentic nincompoop's Toggenburg, with three natural legs and one made of wood. The wooden leg has been given a slap of bright yellow paint to aid visibility in the more tenebrous areas of this pointy part of Pointy Town, where the enormous pointy bits block out the sunlight with pointy black shadows.

In the lee of these shadows are several specialist stalls offering mole nets, nasal sprays, blood oranges, vapour, Chumpot patent soap, xysters for bone-scraping, zookeepers' pin-cushion holders, lettuce, kedgeree, jumping fleas, helicopter pilots' insignia, grease, froth, desk tidies, string, asbestos, potato novelties, orpiment, isinglass, unhelpful maps, yachting caps, trick propelling pencils, rotogravures, embossed badger badges, will-o-the-wisps, and quince jelly.

Following certain unspeakable tragedies that occurred at last year's Nincompoops' Bazaar, the organisers are at pains to point out that no nincompoops will be armed to the teeth this time around. Of course they should not have been allowed to bring all those pointy sticks and poison-tipped pointy lances and pointy swords. Signpost chaos meant they mistook the Nincompoops' Bazaar for the Nincompoops' Jamboree, which was unfortunately scheduled to take place at the same time, and not that far away, but in a marginally less pointy part of Pointy Town. That both the Bazaar and the Jamboree had a Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent only added to the confusion, and the bloodshed.

Just in case anything untoward does take place this year, there will be an ambulance on site, with a crate of bandages and various gooey substances. The ambulance will be stationed next to, or near, or at least in the general vicinity of the inky-black fathomless pond teeming with blind slithering horrors, next to the swings. For the duration of the Nincompoops' Bazaar the swings will be chained up and electrified, to discourage tinies from frolicking upon them. We do not want any swings-and-pond mishaps, after all.

If you are crawling towards where you think the ambulance is, pierced with pointy arrows like St Sebastian and rapidly losing both blood and the will to live, but cannot find the ambulance, listen out for the klaxon. The klaxoneer's podium is among the stalls selling zookeepers' pin-cushion holder's padlocks, yapping dogs, x-box wiring, weird coathangers, vouchers for dough, ungodly cravats, turps, siphons, rubber Beelzebubs, quartered pigs, pips, orreries, nothing, muck, lumps, klaxons, jugs, impenetrabilia, horrid squashed things, glove compartment tat, flimflam, earwiggery, dust, creosote, buzzy bees, and aniseed.

Just a reminder that you do not need to be a nincompoop to come to the Nincompoops' Bazaar. For a small fee you can be made an honorary nincompoop for the day, with a pointy cap and a badge and some embroidered emblems and your arm in a plaster cast and a small sluicing procedure to your brain through a trepanned vent, the trepanning carried out by a qualified nincompoop with a hand-held iron pointy twisty boring and screwing contraption daubed in a gooey substance and wiped clean with a rag between screwings. For directions to the Julie Felix Folk Singing ‘n’ Trepanning Tent, follow the pointy arrows in the flowerbeds, planted with lupins and phlox and bindweed and buddleia.

One small note about the werewolves patrolling the site, fangs bared, howling. Remember that these are nincompoop werewolves, and are generally harmless. They will cease stalking you if you toss them a bucketful of liver and lights and other innards from something freshly slaughtered. Even the innards of a goldfish or a newt will do. It also helps to pat the werewolves on the head, as if you are not terrified of them, and make gurgly cooing noises.

Tickets for the Nincompoops' Bazaar are available from a number of pointy kiosks in Pointy Town, and further afield, in unpointy places which aspire to pointiness. You will require several forms of identification in order to purchase tickets. These include a bus pass, a three-dimensional computer-generated hologram of your head, a fistful of your hair torn out at the roots, nail clippings, voice-recognition tape-recordings made on a clapped-out old cassette player, a letter from your priest, your dental records, a recent utility bill, and a replacement bus pass for replacement bus services.

The Nincompoops' Bazaar really is a spectacular day out for the whole family, including the dribbling and incontinent ones, and those with criminal records. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on, and we hope to see you there!