“Get carter!”

That was my instruction, that morning, from the overseer. But there were so many carters passing along the lane, driving their carts to, or back from, the market square in the village, that I had no idea which carter to get. Nor did I have a clue what to do with the carter when I got him, other than to take him to the overseer.

So I hid behind a splurge of lupins beside the lane, lying in wait for a carter weedy enough for me to overpower. I realised I may have to wait quite some time, for all the carters passing by were big burly types who would swat me aside with their fists and forearms. My name is Vercingetorix, and I am puny.

My instruction was to get a carter, not their cart, but I could not just leave a carterless cart abandoned in the lane. It would attract remark, and remark could lead to pursuit, and pursuit to capture, and capture to blows and bruises and blood. When getting my carter, I would have to shove their cart off the lane and conceal it behind a splurge of lupins or, better, a hedge, where it would go unremarked. This was going to prove more difficult than I thought.

The sun was high and searing when at last, along the lane, came toiling a weedy-looking carter pulling a creaky old cart piled high with what I took to be turnips. Fortunate for me that this was a land without horses, or indeed pack animals of any description, for that saved me an additional quandary. I had only to get a carter and hide a cart, not hide a horse or donkey into the bargain.

I sprang out into the lane in front of the weedy carter.

“Halt!” I cried.

The carter, startled, pulled from his cummerbund a firearm, cocked it, and pointed it at my head. Reluctantly, I had to let him pass, and I scuttled back behind the splurge of lupins.

The next few passing carters were of the big and burly type, so I dared not spring out in front of any of them. I hid and hummed quietly and smoked and popped open a can of Squelcho! to quench my thirst. Towards noon there was a lull in cart-traffic, so I took the opportunity to practise my springing, leaping out into the lane and waving my arms in an alarming manner, shouting my head off. In doing so I spilled some of my Squelcho! but the little puddle it formed was soon lapped up by a dog. This dog appeared to be a dog without a master, and I wondered if it might be a helpful ally in my mission to get a carter. If I sent it bounding out from behind the splurge of lupins, yapping, it might disconcert a weedy dog-frightened carter long enough for me to get him and shove his cart out of sight.

I beckoned to the dog. I have a way with animals. I inspire pathetic devotion in dogs, cats, squirrels, even geese and leafcutter ants, just by my beckoning manoeuvre, a sort of gentle sweeping of the arm accompanied by intricate hand movements and a whispered incantation. Sure enough, the masterless dog followed me to my place of concealment behind the splurge of lupins. Immediately, I set about training it to yap at a carter. For this purpose, I fashioned a sort of makeshift cart out of the empty Squelcho! can and some twigs and lupin-petals. It didn’t look much like a cart, but I mimed pulling it and pushing it in a straight line, as if along the lane, to represent which I scored a groove in the patch of ground behind the splurge of lupins with the heel of my winklepicker. The dog gazed at me adoringly.

All of this took quite some time, and I quite neglected to keep an eye out for passing carters. Indeed, several weedy specimens I could have overpowered, even without the dog, went a-trundling their carts along the lane, as I learned later when reviewing the CCTV footage, back at the depot. The overseer was not best pleased. He ranted at me, while the dog cowered behind a filing cabinet. He called me a nitwit and a knave and several other choice words. I had been given a simple task, to get carter, and instead I was found faffing about behind a splurge of lupins with a dog and an empty can of Squelcho! and twigs and petals. I was not only puny, I was hopeless and incompetent. Still, the overseer was willing to give me one more chance. He told me to report to him the next morning for a new instruction.

“Will do!” I piped up, trying to show enthusiasm. “Can I bring the dog?” I added.

He shook his fist in my face and told me to begone.

The next morning I turned up bright and early at the depot, dog in tow. The overseer was rummaging through paperwork and barely glanced at me. I wondered if he wanted me to get carter again. But no.

“Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!” he shouted.

Remarkably, it is seven years ago today that Hooting Yard readers learned of the exciting radio serial Pie Shop Deep Space Six. My informants tell me that it is still at the development stage, beset by teething problems. Here is that original announcement:

Hurtling at inhuman speed through the universe, the thoroughly exciting spaceship Double Pneumonia was headed for a galaxy so distant that it would take billions upon billions of generations of leafcutter ants to reach it. In command on the bridge was Star Captain Barbara Bel Geddes, accompanied by First Officer Mister Unstrebnodtalb, who was only half human. No one had ever worked out what weird extraterrestrial life-form had spawned his other half, and it was best not to ask, for therein lay madness.

And a certain madcap frenzy is what you can expect in the new science fiction drama Pie Shop Deep Space Six, currently being developed by a crack team headed by Mrs Gubbins, who has returned to Haemoglobin Towers. The elderly crone has put down her knitting and, fuelled by lots of piping hot cups of tea, is conjuring up some thrilling ideas for this new radio serial.

In episode one, for example, hostile plasmatronic aliens launch an attack on space station Epsilon Nova X-977, cutting off pastry supplies to the pie shop. Mister Unstrebnodtalb outwits them using a supersonic brain-zapping process involving lots of sparks and whooshing noises.

Mrs Gubbins has asked Sir Harrison Birtwistle to compose the theme music.

I have often asked myself if I was born to boogie. Born to mewl and puke, yes. To scratch and gobble and preen, most certainly. And in the end, to kick the bucket, and feed the worms, or, wedged in my final box, ignited, to blaze in glory. But inbetweentimes, must I, can I, boogie? Was it writ in the stars, spread out across the firmament in their particular alignment at the moment of my birth, that I should boogie?

Once, on a Wednesday I recall, I studied and studied a chart of those stars, but I learned nothing. Partly that was because I did not really know what I ought to be looking for, partly because the chart had been dropped in a puddle and was smudged. I gazed at it for hours on that Wednesday, hoping for enlightenment of a boogie-related kind, but eventually I gave up and crumpled the chart in my fist and tossed it into a dustbin.

I was told, also on a Wednesday, but a different Wednesday, that to properly boogie one had to wear a boogie-hat and a shirt with boogie-cuffs and a pair of boogie shoes. But the person who told me this was unreliable, in matters boogie at any rate, for he had never, to the best of my knowledge, himself boogied. He just spouted off about boogie, one of those boogie-spouters who were so tiresomely prevalent at one time. Some people feel nostalgic for that time, of course, even weep when they think of it, but not me. I couldn’t give a monkey’s.

It was another person who told me, and not on a Wednesday this time, but a Sunday, that if I wanted to witness proper boogie I should make a beeline for the monkey house. Apparently, monkeys boogie better than any other creature on earth. They truly were born to boogie. I am not sure this is the truth. I hoped to study a chart, not dissimilar to the chart o’ stars, but a chart of monkeys, one that had not been dropped into a puddle and smudged, but try as I might I could not get my mittens on one. The whole monkey boogie business is still up in the air as far as I am concerned. And I cannot quiz the person who told me to get me hence to the monkey house, for in a quite unrelated development, he was found hanging from a bridge over an important river, his pockets weighted with stones. They said he had boogie in his eyes at the last, but what in heaven’s name that might mean I have no idea.

It has been pointed out to me, more than once, that had I been born to boogie I would have boogied by now. Well, frustum dustum, as they say, that is a persuasive point. If I started to boogie today, or next week, or in whatever years are left to me, would there not be something forced and artificial about my boogie, a knowingness that would be fatal to the boogie itself? Thereagain, some have posited the idea of the past-it boogie, or the creaking wizened boogie, as not uncommon variations on the classic boogie, which I suppose might be defined as the boogie practised by monkeys, if indeed monkeys do actually boogie, and I was not being lied to, yet again.

I shall retrieve that smudged star-chart from the dustbin, and hop it down to the monkey house, and perhaps, perhaps, things will become clear to me, at least in terms of boogie.