Chalky and Shirt…

…I Love Lovely I Scream

(Guest Starring Chris Cwej)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The unthinkable had happened.

Dufus had deserted them. Some pathetic excuse about it being his birthday and wanting to go home to see his mummy. Aaaah.

Enigma was also reluctant.

Chalky and Shirt would just have to meet the stars of I Scream, BBV's latest audio adventure, by themselves.

Of course, the main reason they were going was to meet the writer, Lance Parkin, the mighty pen behind such modern classics as Just War, The History of the Universe, The Dying Days and Cold Fusion.

The fact that Chalky had only read the first two of his grand opuses, and Shirt hadn't read any of them (although he had at least listened to the audio version of Just War), was immaterial, as was the fact that Lisa Bowerman and Jo Castleton were also going to be there. The presence of two attractive leading ladies was incidental. Honest.

7th Galaxy had been, the previous week, the site of an enormous signing with Peter Davison, India Fisher and Andrew Cartmel. The queue went on for quite a way.

This week it didn't.

Oddly, considering the presence of Lance Parkin (oh, and those two girls as well), the queue struggled to reach about 12 people.

Chris Cwej, who had joined the two friends in the queue, surmised it probably was to do with the presence of Lance Parkin, who had apparently been making himself quite unpopular on the newsgroup of late.

Chalky had missed most of this argument because it had been based on points raised in The Ancestor Cell and considering that Chalky had only just finished Option Lock, he tended to avoid such threads due to not wanting to spoil the future EDAs when he came to read them in the year 2006.

Suffice to say, the lack of numbers was a little disappointing, especially considering how cheerful Lisa and Jo were.

"Where's your leader?" asked Big Ted, noticing the absence of Dufus.

"Cheek!" cried Chalky and Shirt.

"The Lone Gunmen are down to two," commented Jemima.

"Cheek!" cried Chalky and Shirt.

"There are other establishments we can go to," said Chalky, "We don't need to come here to be insulted."

"Yeh," agreed Sparrow, "But they charge you for insults there. When they show you their teeth, they ain't smiling!"

The lack of attendees meant that Chalky and Shirt got to go around twice, principally because they hadn't had the chance to have a photo with Lisa, being as they had been far to caught up in making sure they got everything signed to the right person (also having a bunch of CD covers - most of them identical to their own - from Dufus).

"Do you know when Dragon's Wrath is going to be released?" asked Chalky of Miss Bowerman.

"Oooh, don't talk to me about that!" muttered an obviously incensed Miss Bowerman.

 

"I'll just sign over this, oo-er!" said Miss Castleton, scribbling over the image of the Nestene on Dufus's Auton 3 cover.

"What do you mean?" asked ever-so-innocent Chalky.

"Oh, I just meant this wonderful special effect," covered Miss Castleton, hastily avoiding a conversation about what the Nestene picture resembled.

But eventually, they left, happy-go-lucky and cheerful in the knowledge that Jo had hugged them in front of a Dalek.

 

 

[AE]