The Witches Of Mad Glen continued.

Only slightly hiccupping 80 proof green bubbles covered with gentle little gooseberry hairs, Chrissie-Peigi drew herself up to her full 4 foot 11 and waggled a brass contraption under the noses of the other two witches perched precariously on the tiny island.

“Oi, watch what you’re doing with that thing! You nearly had my third eye out there!” squawked Effie. “What is it anyway?”

Smoothly ignoring Effie’s dramatic reeling and clutching of her forhead, Chrissie Peigi fumbled with the tiny brass lever on her thaumometer. “It seems to me, *hic!* It seems to me that the craziness coefficient of the surrounding atmosphere has increased slightly, meaning one of several things. Either we have been burning up too many fossils in our cauldrons and releasing excess irrationality into the air, since magic is, after all, 4 parts irrationality; or things have become so absurd in the world outside the Glen of The Mad, that people leaving and entering barely notice any difference in the state of things at all. Or, there is a breach in the magic membrane surrounding the Glen of Insanity.”

“Well, which is it?” asked Mabel, adding to the air in general “And Jack Frost, if you ever, ever attempt to put your fingers there again I will majick a big ole pair of Helly Hansen mittens on them and you will never again nip so much as anyone’s nose, you nasty freak. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Get a proper job!”

There was a slight breathy mumble of “Sorry” in a Dorsetshire accent and the surface of the lochan crackled icily as something retreated over it.

“Well, really, it’s a bit of all 3,” continued Chrissie Peigi. “Witchologists and Wizardographers have noted a rise in thaumaturgical energy over recent decades and, if you read the papers, you’ll know how vocal they’ve been about the need to cap necromantic emissions. There’s been an alarming lack of political will to clean things up though. The President of the United Sorcerors of Ardvourlie says that the jury is still out on occultic climate change. He is also, however, also widely considered to be the stupidest man ever to draw breath. The other week he was informed that 3 Brazillian people had died in storms as a direct result of his laissez-faire magical climate policy. His aides were puzzled by the President’s extreme reaction:

“Oh no! But this is terrible news! Calamitaneous! How are we going to get out of this one, Ouihomme? You, Sihombre, what’ll we do? I overpay you for this kind of thing. Oh, this is horrible, horrible! Tell me, how many exactly is a brazillion?”

“I hear he still has his mammy cut his toast into soldiers which he then sends off on spurious, preemptive missions half-way around the lazy-susan, where lie the vast reserves of the pancake syrup he covets,” said Mabel. “You can’t help but wonder what would have happened if a man more involved in, say, ketchup or double mayonnaise than in Big Syrup was our leader.”

The three witches paused to consider this for a moment in the freezing air, their condensing breath forming shapes of rabbits, toads and a great big wolf that ran after the rabbits and toads and ate them before dissipating. Chrissie-Peigi scowled at Effie, who imperceptibly licked her chops. Without comment though, pleased in her new role as Explainer Of Modern Stuff to her elder sisters and proud of her ability to talk in html, she took another swill of Mabel’s gooseberry schnapps and went on:

“Also, studies show that the real world is actually becoming more and more insane. You need hardly look further than Fox News Channel to see that. It’s very widespread. In the US, for example, lots of people routinely vote against their economic interests because a very powerful wizarding conglomeration known as The Southern Baptist Convention, bewitches them to care more about boys kissing than their own futures. The Irish have gone batshit crazy and just reelected that third-rate conjurer Ahern, who can’t even make a pile of laundered money disappear effectively. And the British, well, The Spice Reunion is now more popular outside the Glens of Insanity than in them. Plus, this is the kind of mad thing dominating their news media lately. And of course, there was this guy.

“But most alarmingly for our duties in this wee corner of the world, of which we all know the regulation of the Hebridean Glen of The Mad is a large part, there appears to be a change in the relative craziness inside and outside of the magical membrane around the valley. As far as I can tell with my thaumometer the magico-osmotic potential of the membrane, the MOP, is still within normal range despite the increasing extra-membrane lunacy I’ve just described, so that only leaves me with one conclusion: Ladies we have a leek.

“You mean a leak, surely?’ said Effie.

“No, I mean a leek. I have reason to believe that the Welsh Glen Of The Mad has sent a spy up to our glen to see how we have managed to win the coveted “Best Kept Mad Glen” and “Most Spiffily Dressed Lunatic Ghost” competitions these last 6 years in a row. The theory is more complex obviously…”

“Hmm, obviously, very, very obviously,” chimed in Mabel, eager not to appear the technodoofus she felt. (The technodoofus she felt was really Torquil MacLeod but she could tell she was one too.)

“…but, whenever the mad soul of someone non-resident in Scotland for 12 months prior to expiring enters the glen, a tiny puncture is made that is unfixable by the puncture-maker. Derangement leaks out. The Welsh witches protect against the English dead-mad from coming to build holiday homes in their Glen Of The Insane in this same way; the English protect against the French; the French against the Belgians, etc. Sistren three, we must face the fact that we have been penetrated. We have a mole in our Glen.”

“I thought it was a leek.”

“Shut up.”

Pan out.

Mabel: “Oh God, they’re panning out! No! Come back!”

Effie: “She is, isn’t she? That bloody Problemchildbride is going to write To Be Continued again and leave us standing here for another week in the perishing cold. She thinks that having 6 adults and 2 children in her house ’til the New Year is our problem somehow. That we have to wait here on a soggy little island in some ridiculous but totally true Glen of The Mad lochan, while she busies herself with decorating and baking and jumping onto the consumer treadmill to engage in the profligate consumption of which she herself is embarrassed but nevertheless does. She’s gonna effeeng well do that, isn’t she? Beeyatch that she is.

Chrissie-Peigi: “The bint! I shall cast a spell to ensure her mince-pies explode all over the inside of her oven.”

PCB: “Not if you want a speaking part in the next episode, you won’t. Who else is going to give you work at this time of year, eh? If it wasn’t for me, it’d be slim pickings for you ’til next Halloween. If not for me-hee, you won’t be able to find the leek, meaning the Authorities will relieve you of your Mad Glen posts and replace you with corporate witches from Glasgow.”

Mabel: “I thought it was a mole.”

PCB: Shut up.”

To be continued…

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 8:08 am and is filed under Fictionoids, True Tales From The Hebrides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.