You know, sometimes the simplest verbal exchanges can snowball into full blown screenplays.  And here is one which came from a conversation on FaceBook with my (now) girlfriend.  YES, she is quite bonkers…

Anyone who ever saw the films Journey To The Centre Of The Earth or The Time Machine (the ones made before 1970) will understand where we were going with this.

I don’t know if I’ll ever complete it, but if you want more, let me know.

So, to the story. 

Professors Barrie Ullah and Kait Farbon are in a laboratory somewhere in darkest Victorian London.  A single gas lamp lights the room.  Poorly.

Skeletons of various animals sit on dark wooded benches and glass fronted cabinets filled with jars containing a variety of dead things line the room. 

In the background, something can be heard bubbling.

Kait
*** fumbles around in pocket for loose change, produces 53p, a button and some fluff ***

“I’ll take the lot.  Here.”

Barrie
*** studies fluff with comically over sized magnifying glass ***

“Good lord! This looks like….no, it couldn’t be……could it? Where exactly did you get this fluff?”

“I was given the ‘fluff’ as a parting gift from a strange old woman I met during my travels deep in the caves of Umbilica, I had forgotten until now that it was still in my possession.  My dear old chap, you couldn’t be suggesting what it think….surely not…it’s not possible!”

Barrie
*** strides across the room in an urgent manner, thrusts the fluff under a suitably victorian microscope and bends to view ***

“Incredible, just incredible. I didn’t think it was possible. Here, professor Farbon, see how the fibres are held together in a manner unlike any other fluff seen by human eye.”

*** Kait hovers over the microscope briefly ***

“Great Scott! It’s true! And to think it’s been in my pocket all these years….”

“Well, you know what this means, don’t you?” said Barrie, one hand waving his pipe in a sophisticated, learned manner and the other tracing a finger across an oversized world globe.

“You… you don’t mean…” stammered Kait.

“Yes. We’re going on a typical Victorian adventure to another continent, possibly underneath it, hopelessly equipped for the journey, where we’ll meet a previously undiscovered race of people whom we’ll destroy because we don’t understand their ways, discover strange plant life and find the remains of a dear old friend who disappeared (which will reveal the reason for him keeping his work a secret).”

“We’ll also need to take a pet, so one of us can risk life and limb to rescue it and we’ll take your cousin, you know, the one who’s frightened of everything, screams constantly and faints a lot.”

“Good god man!!…you can’t be serious…but we haven’t had tea!!
I’ll bring the teapot, cat and cousin Jeffrey. Meet you at 12pm under the giant clock, next to the obligatory family somewhere behind the cloud of smoke coming from the overly noisy steam train……And, Barrie….do be careful!”

“Be sure to wear your smartest, finest and indeed, stiffest clothing and bring suitable evening attire. Don’t want to let the side down by turning up at the dinner tent in your day clothes now, do we?
I’ll arrange for a caravan of porters to carry our unfeasibly large trunks through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet only to find they all scarper when one of them gets spooked by a skull on a stick, leaving you with the awful decision of whether or not to abandon your best scientific equipment. Which you will and later regret when you inconveniently lose your notes and illustrations, leaving you to the face being ridiculed by the scientific community when we get home and tell everyone about our journey.”

*** Later that evening, professor Farbon is working in her candle lit laboratory when she is attacked by an unknown assailant. She wakes sometime later to find her navel has been broken into and several samples of rare fluff missing. ***

This could only be the work of one man. The long presumed dead, Doctor Sputum. Kait had suspected all along that he had survived the sinking of the Creosote in the Baltic sea three years earlier.
But how had he come to learn of the old woman’s gift and of what use would it be to him?
Unless of course he had the map of Umbilica’s forgotten valley of the dinosaurs…

“Mrs Spitherington! Would you kindly get my trunk from the cellar,please. I’m going away immediately!” she called to her housekeeper.

“Very good ma’am” she replied. “I’ll see that all the furniture is covered up with giant white sheets, the windows and front door are boarded up and the garden is left to overgrow for your return.”

*** midnight at the docks and a shadowy figure emerges from the fog and slips silently up the gangplank of a small steamer. But that’s enough about about the secret sex life of sailors.
Our two intrepid heroes are standing dockside as dark, stocky men in stripy tops and baggy trousers gently manoeuvre a box large enough to house an elephant with ‘Fragile’ stamped on it at a crooked angle aboard the steamer, “SS Joe Blob”. A foghorn sounds out. ***

“Well, Barrie, old chap, that’s our cue to board.”

“Um, no,” replies Barrie, “That was Mrs Biddyford’s steamed sprout pudding. Sorry.”

“ALL ABOARD!”

“Ah, that’s us. And not a minute too soon. My eyes are burning!” says Kait, wiping a tear.

“By the way, Kait, what is in that box large enough to house an elephant with ‘Fragile’ stamped on it at a crooked angle?”

“Tea, dear Barrie. Tea.”

“And where’s the cat?”

“I had her put down. Mrs Spitherington wasn’t able to look after it and because I’m not entirely sure that I won’t die heroically in the name of science near the end of the adventure by losing my footing on a narrow path three hundred feet feet up a cliff only for you to grab me but unable to hold on because I’d pull you down with me and no-one would live to tell our incredible tale, it seemed like the kindest thing to do.”

“Oh I see. Good job I brought this duck with me, then.”