THE TALES OF MISTER CARBON BUSINESS
NUMBER SEVEN
MISTER CARBON BUSINESS and the LIMPING TENT-PEG
Mister Carbon Business was sitting at home one day, watching the news and eating a flower, when his pet cat Goo Head ambled in and started sparking.
‘Stop that!’ shouted Mister Carbon Business, waving at the cat. The cat waved back and one of its ears fell off. A suspicious look spread over Mister Carbon Business’s ancient and cratered face, and he accused his cat thusly:
‘You’ve been nicking my tent-pegs again, haven’t you?’
The cat mutated into a set of fireplace tools - two pairs of tongs for legs, and a poker for a face - and looked blankly at Mister Carbon Business.
‘There’s no use looking like that,’ he said to his cat. His armchair seemed to agree. Defeated, the cat coughed up seventy tent-pegs which immediately sprang to attention and began marching around the room in a neat line, yelling ‘Hup’ occasionally and flattening small insects.
Mister Carbon Business looked round as there was a knock on the door. The door fell to its knees and was pushed aside by none other than This.
“Hi,” said This, bumping his shin on a scratching post.
“Are you responsible for my cat?” asked Mister Carbon Business, his eyebrows in a knot.
“No,” said This and fell over.
Then, there was a puff of battery acid and a monkey appeared.
"Poonzy," is said, as monkeys often do, and kicked a tent-peg. It started limping.
"Now, that wasn't very nice," said Mister Carbon Business.
Then bits fell off.
The limping tent-peg strapped on a nearby jetpack and rocketed out of the room.
"Hey, my jetpack!" yelled This and jumped out a window.
Luckily for him, he landed on a marshmallow and wasn't hurt.
Meanwhile, Mister Carbon business was getting panicky, as he could see the danger the Limping Tent-peg presented to the world if it was allowed to rocket around at will.
"What if it rocketed into the squirrel factory and exploded?" he pondered. "Then there would be no more squirrels. And without squirrels, there would be no more bank holidays!"
How Mister Carbon Business made this brilliant leap of logic, remains a mystery to this day.
"Or what if the tent-peg fell out of the jetpack into a campsite? All the campers would have fierce and limb-threatening arguments about whose tent-peg it is. There would be grudges and blackmail between rival factions of angry campers for centuries. It may well develop into full-scale nuclear war!"
Mister Carbon Business could bear to think about it no longer. There were only two things he could do. His first option would be to go on a hunt for the tent-peg, searching high and low, peering into every nook, cranny and cardboard box he found, interrogating every seagull, bribing every horseraddish and threatening every hedgehog with graphic and vehicular consequences, in order to find, and quite possibly duel, this tent-peg. His second option, which was equally ingenious, would be to forget it all and go back to sleep.
Eventually, he decided on the latter.