Tag: Falcon Boy
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Having been stuck in the back of the lorry for some time, our two favourite superheroes looked even more crumpled than they normally do.
Falcon Boy was not much taller than Ellis. He was still wearing his beak-hat-mask and a yellow t-shirt with the feather logo surrounding his initials. His trousers were covered in dust and his stout hiking boots were in need of a polish. When Ellis looked closely, she could see the beginnings of a moustache growing on his top lip.There was nothing about Falcon Boy that would cause anyone to think that he was capable of much, really, let alone saving the world. As Falcon Boy would tell you himself, albeit rather too grandly, he was just an ordinary person who had taken it upon himself ‘to be doing extraordinary things’.
Actually, as we are all aware, Falcon Boy’s ‘extraordinary things’ so far don’t amount to much more than rescuing an elderly gardener from a tough of toughs. Since then, his career had been more of a matter of being seen than actually being seen to be doing things, extraordinary or otherwise.
This means that the sole justification for his continued existence is the perfect example of Panic Town’s fascination with celebrities. It is more a case of him being in the right place at the right time that created the whole mythology that now surrounds him than it was him dazzling the world with daring feats of derring-do.
If you follow the logic of this argument, then you might further consider the possibility that his subsequent kidnapping by Dr Don’t Know was actually because he was in the right place and the wrong place at both the right time and the wrong time, at the same time. However, you probably don’t need to follow the logic of this argument too closely. It will probably hurt your head.
Whether rightly or wrongly, it is a simple statement of fact that Falcon Boy, just like we decided with Ellis earlier, had been imbued with an extraordinariness that perhaps he might not have been imbued with, were he not central to this particular story.
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelesshero
She couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwell
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And she did.
Ellis had stopped next to the lorry. It was an ordinary articulated lorry that had been parked up like all of the other ordinary articulated lorries that had been parked up backstage. Nothing about it was in any way suspicious, but somehow it still seemed different.
‘This is where Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird have been hidden,’ she suddenly realised.‘And – I – have – found –them!’
The relief flooded through her like a rush from the sort of sugary drink that she was never allowed to drink.
‘I – have – found –them!’
Ellis looked around, expecting something horrible to happen, like a booby-trapped spring with a boxing glove on it, a very loud and scary alarm complete with spinning, flashing lights, or an enormous arrow made of light bulbs pointing straight at her head. She waited but nothing happened.
‘I have found you,’ she whispered to Falcon Boy. ‘I know where you both are.’
‘Where?’ asked Falcon Boy excitedly. ‘Where have you found us?’
‘Here,’ exclaimed Ellis, excitedly. ‘I have found you both here.’
‘Where is ‘here’?’ asked Falcon Boy plaintively.
‘Here is where,’ replied Ellis triumphantly. ‘That is where here is.’
And then she realised that Falcon Boy didn’t know where here was. It was her turn to talk slowly and carefully.
‘You are both imprisoned inside an articulated lorry, backstage at the Doodah concert. I am standing outside the lorry talking to you.’
Ellis looked over her shoulder, still convinced that something bad was about to happen.
‘I need to get you out straight away,’ she said.
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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When he had finished laughing, Falcon Boy started explaining the joke to Ellis.
‘Goldfish have really short memories,’ he said, ‘so every time the goldfish swam past the frog, it forgot that it had already asked the question. This is why it asked the same question again and again.’ Falcon Boy paused to let the ‘profundity’ of his joke sink in.
‘This is also why,’ he continued, ‘when the frog asked the goldfish why did it keep asking the same question over and over again, the goldfish said that it didn’t. It couldn’t remember that it had.’
‘But it’s not funny,’ protested Ellis accurately.
‘You didn’t say you wanted a funny joke,’ said Falcon Boy with equal accuracy. ‘You asked for a joke. You didn’t say it had to be funny.’
‘And it wasn’t,’ replied Ellis, wishing she had kept her silly mouth shut.
‘Don’t worry,’ declared Falcon Boy, delighted to have an audience. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from. Do you want another one?’
‘No, thank you very much,’ said Ellis rather too quickly. ‘I don’t think I need you to say anything else just now.’ She stopped. ‘I think I know where you are.’
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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Falcon Boy laughed triumphantly and Ellis suddenly wished that she had just kept quiet. Falcon Boy interpreted Ellis’s response as a desire for more.
‘Perhaps you’ll get this one,’ he said excitedly. ‘What cheese do you use to hide a horse? Mascarpone. Why did the fish cry? Because the seaweed. How many women do you find in a monastery? Nun.’Falcon Boy was warming to the task. ‘What about a riddle?’ he asked. ‘If it takes a week to walk a fortnight, how many apples in a barrel of pears? I have three legs standing and four legs sitting. How many legs do I have when I go to sleep?
A green bean, a red ball and a yellow bicycle are in a blue bucket. Which one is broken? When I went to bed, I was the oldest man in the world. When I woke up, I wasn’t. What happened? Three men. One spade. Two holes. Discuss. I’m equal to, but not less than. I’m in and around, but not under. I’m about and between, but not nearly enough. How close am I?’
‘Enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ cried Ellis, echoing the thoughts of the entire planet, past, present and future. ‘I don’t need to hear any more.’
You probably feel the same way as Ellis. People say that laughter is the best medicine but these people haven’t heard what we have just heard. Jokes as bad as these are likely to make people ill, not make them feel better.
Falcon Boy laughed loud, long and heartily. The kind of laugh that is just so infuriating that anyone laughing this way should be fired into space strapped to a rocket, marooned on a desert island, forced to knock on every door in Panic Town to apologise in person, or be sprayed bright red with irremovable paint as a permanent reminder of how irritating their laugh really is.
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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I warn you in advance that Falcon Boy may be reasonably good at some things, reasonable at other things and useless at other other things, but he is neither reasonably good nor reasonable at making up jokes, concocting riddles or telling them. He is simply useless.
Falcon Boy cleared his throat and though no one could see him, he still felt self-conscious enough to make sure that he was smiling. Presentation is always everything.‘There was a frog sitting on a stone, washing his trousers in the pond. A goldfish swam by.’
Falcon Boy paused. This would normally be the point when whoever he was telling the joke to would start shifting uncomfortably, looking at their watch and mumble something about catching a bus. When none of these things happened, Falcon Boy continued.
‘‘What are you doing, Mr Frog?’ asked the goldfish.
‘What does it look like?’ answered the frog.
A little later on, the same goldfish swam by again.
‘What are you doing, Mr Frog?’ asked the goldfish.
‘What does it look like?’ answered the frog.
The goldfish swam past several more times and each time, he asked the same question. Each time, the frog gave the same answer.
Eventually the frog got so annoyed that he stopped doing what he was doing and waited for the goldfish to swim past again. Sure enough, he didn’t have to wait long and this time it was the frog who asked the question.
‘Why do you keep asking me the same question each time you swim past?’ asked the frog.
‘I don’t,’ said the goldfish and swam away.’
All the while Falcon Boy had been telling his joke, Ellis tried to use the sound of his voice to tell her where he was hidden but the joke and its punchline made her stop still in her tracks.
‘I don’t get it,’ she told Falcon Boy. ‘I don’t get the joke.’
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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‘What’s the matter?’ whispered Falcon Boy, as if he suddenly knew that he needed to reach out to Ellis and reassure her at this particular moment in time. ‘Why are you worrying about where you stand in relation to a seemingly indifferent world?’ He paused reassuringly. ‘You do know that none of this is your fault?’
Ellis was about to reply when she stopped herself. Aside from the indifferent world thing – which hadn’t really occurred to her – she was very impressed that Falcon Boy knew exactly how she was feeling even though he didn’t know anything about her.
Somehow, and she wasn’t really sure how (but perhaps it was directly related to a gift for ‘empathy’ that Falcon Boy believed he had suddenly and mysteriously acquired), it felt like Falcon Boy was much closer to Ellis than when he had been speaking to her earlier. She thought for a second.‘You sound like you are bit closer to me than when we were speaking earlier,’ she said.
‘I’m like that,’ said Falcon Boy proudly but mistakenly. ‘I seem to have suddenly and wonderfully acquired a real knack for feeling how people are really feeling.’
Ellis shook her head.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said.
Falcon Boy suddenly felt less proud.
‘Oh,’ he said, feeling slightly deflated. ‘You mean you don’t think I’m somehow closer to you emotionally now?’
Ellis wasn’t really sure what Falcon Boy was talking about. She thought he sounded confused.
‘Say something else but say something different,’ she said, looking up.
‘Why?’ asked Falcon Boy
Ellis looked around.
‘Keep talking,’ she told the superhero. Ellis had the feeling that Falcon Boy was very close.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ellis replied. ‘Just keep talking.’
‘Should I tell a joke?’ asked Falcon Boy hopefully.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Ellis recklessly. ‘Do whatever you like. Just keep talking.’
And so Falcon Boy cleared his throat and told Ellis one of his favourite made-up jokes of all time
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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Sometimes this uncertainty can make us feel uncertain for far longer than a simple while, and this was exactly how Ellis was feeling right now. As many of you have perhaps also experienced, feeling uncertain also colours how we feel about the future.
‘What is going to happen to Panic Town if I don’t find Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird?’ Ellis said to herself. ‘Will everyone blame me if things turn out really badly for everyone?’ Her poor small heart began to sink.Ellis wasn’t the only one feeling worried right now. I am very concerned about putting a young girl in such a terrible position. I’m also making her feel these really big and bad-feeling feelings.
Perhaps I should have left her happily at home? Are people going to start blaming me for how she is feeling? Now I’m starting to worry. It’s getting contagious.
What do I really matter to a world that might be too busy to really care about me? Should I be feeling these bad-feeling feelings? Is there anybody out there even reading this? Is there anybody out there who will ever read this?
With both of us now overwhelmed by a glimpse of our smallness in the vastness of such a giant world, I feel really bad.
I thought that this would just be a lovely adventure for Ellis. I thought she would see some funny things and meet some lovely people, before going home to her lovely life. But now look what has happened. There isn’t much that’s lovely about having to save the world from impending doom.
Instead of evil super-criminals and angry robots, perhaps Ellis should be having great fun with talking ducklings and cuddly kittens before going for a small walk down a country lane with an overly-protective sheepdog called Wayne, and then heading home for a jolly tea of apples, cake and milk, lovingly prepared by a kindly farmer’s wife called Mrs Bess.
What do you think?
I think we need someone to do something very quickly to dispel all this doom and gloom and make Ellis feel better about herself, her situation and her position in relation to the world. But not just for Ellis. I would like to feel better about things as well.
If this is going to happen, then it had better happen straight away before we are all too depressed to continue reading (or writing).
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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Despite her usual self-assurance, a similar thing once happened to Pearly Stockwell in Pearly and the Harvest Moon. A mysterious meteor shower just happens to brainwash the whole of Fallstown. Pearly wakes the next morning to find that she was the only person who hadn’t been turned into an emotionless shell of her former self.
Pearly walks through the streets of Fallstown, desperately trying not to show emotion as she seeks to determine the cause of the shower. She feels alone in the world and it isn’t a nice feeling. Everyone looks so blank and dull. They smile, but Pearly can’t see anything behind their eyes.Even despite the fact that the blank dullness that now confronts Pearly is not too much different from how the town had been before, Pearly still realises that things need to be returned to how they used to be.
Eventually, as always, Pearly triumphs, by remembering that the autumnal equinox was rapidly approaching. This allows her to realise that the rays of the next harvest moon would be strong enough to reverse the effects of the meteor shower and as she does so, her feelings of complete and utter aloneness are banished once again.
‘I’m not alone anymore,’ says Pearly as the moon’s rays begin to work their magic on the townsfolk of Fallstown and they return to the people that they had been before.
As she remembered this story, Ellis was able to take some comfort from it but what did she know about rays from the moon and meteor showers? More importantly, how would any of this help her find Falcon Boy?
We have all felt occasionally, or more regularly than that, that the world is full of more questions than answers. Indeed, if Dr Don’t Know gets his way, then this is exactly what the future is going to look like for all of us.
Uncertainty is an uncertain thing and causes us all to be unsure about how we feel about things sometimes. We start to worry about who we are, and what we really mean and matter to a world that seems too busy to really care about us at all.
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
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The pass that Ellis found gave her unlimited access to all areas of the stadium. Showtime was rapidly approaching and everyone was so busy that no one really paid too much attention to a young girl wandering around on her own.
Hundreds of people swarmed backstage, some pushing boxes on wheels, others telling those pushing the boxes where to push them. Other people were up ladders, fixing things.
Up on the stage, she could see technicians straightening microphone stands and taping their cables safely to the floor. Ellis saw that most people were walking normally but every now and then, someone would be limping as they went about their business.
Television crews were also setting up, and Ellis could see large cameras being moved into position, ready to transmit tonight’s concert all around the world. Ellis walked past a giant mixing desk with more buttons and dials than she had ever seen before in her life.There was so much going on that Ellis began to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of her task. When you don’t know where to start looking for something you know you really need to find, it can be a very overwhelming thing. Everything seems too much and nowhere seems like the right place to begin. This is how Ellis was beginning to feel.
‘Mind out, kid,’ someone shouted as they dragged a trolley past.
‘Go home to your Mum and Dad,’ said a long-haired man wearing a baseball cap and carrying a clipboard. ‘This is adult pop stuff.’
‘If you are not part of the crew or one of the acts, I need you to vacate this area immediately,’ said a big, broad man with ‘Security’ written on his t-shirt.
‘If you want an autograph, you need to apply via the website,’ said a harassed-looking lady with a telephone in each hand.
Tired, scared, and beginning to wish she hadn’t been quite so brave in the first place, Ellis found a quiet corner backstage and sat down next to a massive lorry. She felt like crying.
He will be thrilled if you follow him on Twitter! Falcon Boy @PBoyProductions #afairlyhopelessheroShe couldn’t care less if you follow her on Twitter! Pearly Stockwell @PearlyStockwellIf universal destruction is more like your business then why not follow Dr Don’t Know on Twitter @drdontknowShare this:
I’m not being cruel when I say this. The simple fact of these paragraphs is more than enough to demonstrate that just like his friend, but possibly for a slightly different reason, Bewilder Bird has still been imbued with the same kind of extraordinariness as his partner.
BARNABY TAYLOR 