In Pantoland-1

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    "I"m bored with television," announced ankey from her easy chair in the Empyrean, switg off The Late Show and adjusting his/her falsies inside her eous red bustier. "I will desd again to Pantoland!"

    In Pantoland,

    Everything is grand.

    Well, lets not exaggerate -- grandish. Not like what it used to be but, then, what is. Even so, all still brightly coloured -- garish, in fact, all your primaries, red, yellow, blue. And all excessive, so that your castle has more turrets than a regular castle, your forest is siderably more imperable than the average forest and, not infrequently, your cow has more than its natural share of teats and udders. Were talking multiple projes, here, spikes, sprouts, boobs, bums. Its a bristling world, in Pantolaher phallic or else demonically, aggressively female and theres something archaic behind it all, archai the worst sense. Something positi<tt>..t>vely filthy.

    But all also two-dimensional, so that Maid Marians house, in Pantolands fictive Nottingham, is flat as a pahe front door may well open when she goes in, but it makes a hollow sound behind her when she slams it shut and the entire fa?ade gets the shivers. Robin serenades her from below; she opens her window to riposte and what you see behind her of her bedroom is only a painted bedhead on a painted wall.

    Of course, the real problem here is that it is Baron Hardup of Hardup Hall, father of derella, stepfather of the Ugly Sisters, who, these barren days, all too often occupies the post of Minister of Finan Pantoland. Occasionally, even now, the free-spenders such as Princess Badroulbador take things into their own hands and then you get some wonderful effects, such as a three-masted galleon in full sail breasting through tumultuous storms with thunder booming and lightning breaking about the spars as the gallant ship takes Dick Whittington and his cat either away from or else back to London amidst a nostalgic series of tableaux vivants of British naval heroes such as Raleigh, Drake, Captain Cook and Nelson, disc things or keeping the el safe flish shipping, while Dick gives out a full-throated tralto rendition of &quot;If I had a hammer&quot; with a chorus of rats in masks and tights, courtesy of the Italia ti school.

    Illusion and transformation, kit into palace with the aid of gauze etc. etc. etc. You know the kind of thing. It all costs money. And, sometimes, as if it were the greatest illusion of all, there might be an incursion of the real. Real horses, perhaps, trotting, neighing and whinnying, large as life. Yet &quot;large as life&quot; isnt the right phrase, at all, at all. &quot;Large as life&quot; they might be, in the text of the auditorium, but when the prosium arch gapes as wide as the mouth of the ogre in Jad the Beanstalk, those forty white horses pulling the glass coach of the princess look as little and insequential as white mice. They are real, all right, but insignifit, and only raise a laugh or round of applause if one of them iently drops dung.

    And sometimes therell be a dog, often one of those sandy-coloured, short-haired terriers. On the programmes, it will say: &quot;Chuckles, played by himself,&quot; just above where it says: &quot;Cigarettes by Abdullah.&quot; (Whatever happeo Abdullah?) Chuckles does everything they taught him at dog-school -- fetches, carries, jumps through a flaming hoop -- but now and then he fets his script, fets he lives in Pantoland, remembers he is a real dog precipitated into a wondrous world hts and pungend rustlings. He will run down to the footlights, he will look out over the daisy field of upturned, expet faces and, after a moments puzzlement, give a little questioning bark.

    It was not like this when Toto dropped down into Oz; it is more like it was when Toto landed back, alas, in Kansas. Chuckles does not like it. Chuckles feels let down.

    Then Robin Hood or Prince Charming or whoever it is has the titular -- and &quot;tits&quot; is the operative word with this one -- ownership of Chuckles in Pantoland, scoops him up against her bosom and he has been saved. He has returo Pantoland. In Pantoland, he  live for ever.

    In Pantoland, which is the ival of the unaowledged and the fiesta of the repressed, everything is excessive and gender is variable.

    A Brief Look at the Citizens of Pantoland

    THE DAME

    Double-sexed and self-suffit, the Dame, the sacred trae of Pantoland, mas him/herself in a number of guises. For example he/she might introduce him/herself thus:

    &quot;My name is ankey.&quot; Then sternly adjure the audience: &quot;Smile when you say that!&quot;

    Because Twankey rhymes with -- pardon me, vicar; and,

    Once upon a distant time,

    They talked in Pantoland in rhyme. . .

    but now they talk in double entendre, which is a language all of its own and is ated, not with the acute rave, but with the eyebrows. Double entehat is, everyday discourse which has been dipped in the infinite riches of a dirty mind.

    She/he stars as Moose. In derella, you get two for the price of oh the Ugly Sisters. If they throw in ders stepmother, thats a bonanza, thats three. Then there is Jacks Mum in Jad the Beanstalk where the presence of cow and stem in close proximity rams home the &quot;phallic mother&quot; aspect of the Dame. The Queen of Hearts (who stole some tarts). Granny in Red Riding Hood, where the wolf --  &quot;Ooooer!&quot; -- gobbles her up. He/she pops up everywhere in Pantoland, tittering and squealing: &quot;Look out, girls! Theres a man!!!&quot; wherever the Principal Boy (q.v.) appears.

    Big wigs and round spots e oher cheek and eyelashes lohan those of Daisy the Cow; olihat dip and sway and support a mass of crispy petticoats out of whies running Chuckles the Ding behind him a string of sausages plucked, evidently, from the Dames fu.

    &quot;Better out than in.&quot;

    He/she bestrides the stage. His/her enormous footsteps resoh the antique past. She brings with him the sa<bdo>?9９ｌiｂ?</bdo>cred terror i in those of his/her avatars such as Lisa Maron, the androgynous god-goddess of the Abomey pantheon; the great god Shango, thunder deity of the Yorubas, who  be either male or female; the sacrificial priest who, in the go, dressed like a woman and was called &quot;Grandma&quot;.

    The Dame bends over, whips up her olines; she has three pairs of knee-length bloomers, which she wears acc to mood.

    One pair of bloomers is made out of the Union Jack, for the sake of patriotism.

    The sed pair of bloomers is quartered red and black, in memory of Utopia.

    The third and vastest pair of bloomers is scarlet, with a target on the seat, tred on the arsehole, and this pair is wholly dedicated to obsity.

    Roars. Screams. Hoots.

    She turns and curtsies. And what do you know, she/he has shoved a trun dowrousers, hasnt she?

    In Burgundy, in the Middle Ages, they held a Feast of Fools that lasted all through the dead days, that vat lapse of time during which, acc to the hairy-legged mythology of the Norsemen, the sky wolf ate up the sun. By the time the sky wolf puked it up again, a person or persons unknown had fucked the New Year bato being during the days when all the boys wore sprigs of mistletoe in their hats. Filthy work, but somebody had to do it. By the fourteenth tury, the far-from-hairy-legged Burgundians had fotten all about the sky wolf, of course; but had they alsotten the iasti-time of the Solstice, which, once upon a time, was also the time of the Saturnalia, the topsy-turvy time, &quot;the Liberties of December&quot;, when master sed places with slave and anything could happen?

    The mid-winter ival in Old Burgundy, known as the Feast of Fools, was reigned over in style by a man dressed as a woman whom they used to call Mère Folle, Crazy Mother.

    Crazy Mother turns round and curtsies. She pulls the trun out of her bloomers. All shriek in terrified <s>藏书网</s>delight and turn away their eyes. But when the punters dare to look again, they enter only his/her seraphic smile and, lo and behold! the trun has turned into a magid.

    When ahe Queen of Hearts/Moose taps Daisy the Cow with her wand, Daisy the Cow gives out with a chorus of &quot;Down by the Old Bull and Bush&quot;.

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