Floods 8 (9 page)

but Betty could never outwit her mother and the sticker changed to:

Everyone who has read all the earlier Floods books really carefully and lots of times will know that King Quatorze and Queen Scratchrot were never actually divorced.
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This meant that when the ex-King married Countess Slab he committed bigamy, which is illegal, even in Transylvania Waters where you are allowed to marry a table
lamp. This meant Quatorze was (a) a criminal and (b) not actually married to the Countess. It also meant that he was still married to the wonderful, kind and lovely Queen Scratchrot.

‘Yuk,' said the Queen when she realised this. ‘I feel ill.'

‘No problem, Mother-in-law,' said King Nerlin.

This was very simple because in Transylvania Waters it was the King who granted divorces. All he had to do was write a note and pin it on a cow saying the Queen was divorced and why and it was done in an instant.

Here is what he wrote with his special New King Pen:

 

I, King Nerlin the First, hereby grant Queen
Scratchrot a full and total divorce
from Ex-King Quatorze on the grounds of:

 

• His dreadful moustache. (NOTE TO SELF: ALL moustaches are dreadful. In fact I, King Nerlin,
hereby decree moustaches are illegal. SECOND NOTE: Except for my Aunt Mildread and others like her due to their medical condition.)

• Bad breath.

• Unpleasant shape.

• Stupid.

• Cardigans. (NOTE: I, King Nerlin, hereby decree cardigans are illegal. SECOND NOTE: Except for my Aunt Mildread and others like her due to their medical conditions – insanity and advanced bad taste.)

• Being a member of the Belgian Trainspotters· Club.

• Being a member of the Belgian Cardigan Appreciation Society.

• Breathing.

 

It is a condition of this divorce that neither Ex-King Quatorze nor any minute part of him is ever to return to Transylvania Waters.
The same applies to Countess ‘Lardy Pants· Slab.

 

Nerlin also decreed that Ex-King Quatorze had to marry Countess Slab even though the Ex-King asked to be allowed to take poison instead. Here is the marriage decree:

 

I, King Nerlin the First, hereby pronounce Ex-King Quatorze and the Countess Slab husband and wife and that:

 

• They shall remained married forever, even after death and re-incarnation.

• They shall loathe, dishonour and disobey each other.

• They shall eat each other's toenail clippings

• They are banished forever to Rockall.

• As punishment for his bigamy, the Ex-King shall eat his trousers without washing them first.

 

And while he was at it he did another decree which pronounced Queen Scratchrot and her true love, Vessel, as husband and wife and gave Vessel the
honorary title of The Duke Of That Other Place Across The Lake Whose Name I Can't Remember.

‘What about the Hearse Whisperer?' said Queen Scratchrot. ‘Could we banish her to Rockall as well?'

‘Brilliant idea, Mother-in-law,' said King Nerlin, ‘but we shall send her there in little bits. We shall chip her out of the freezer and make her fall as hailstones on Rockall and when all the bits are there, they shall melt and re-form into the Hearse Whisperer, but she will now blame the Ex-King for all the bad stuff in her life and spend the rest of eternity persecuting him by singing the ten lowest-scoring songs in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest over and over and over again until Quatorze and Slab will go insane, but still sane enough to realise they are living in perpetual torment.'

‘You're still letting them all off too lightly,' said Auntie Mould. ‘What about making the hailstones boiling hot and full of lots of germs that give them the plague and noses that never stop running so
much that they keep slipping in it and falling on their faces?'

‘Germs and runny noses, OK,' said Nerlin, ‘but I am a wise and forgiving King so we won't make the hailstones hot.'

‘Really painful in-grown toenails?'

‘All right.'

‘And what about making him speak Flemish and her speak Portuguese so they can't understand a single word either one says?'

‘I like that one,' said Nerlin.

‘And…'

‘Enough, enough,' said Nerlin, holding up his hand.

‘There can never be enough,' said Queen Scratchrot.

‘Moving on,' said Nerlin. ‘I decree that from henceforth, Mother-in-law, you shall be known as the Queen Mother on account of being the Queen's mother,' Nerlin continued. ‘Until Valla becomes King, when you will be known as the Queen Grandmother, and then when Valla's son
becomes King, you shall be known as the Queen Great-Grandmother.'

‘This man is my sort of King,' said a cockroach that was sitting under Nerlin's throne. ‘Everything nice and accurate. Though if it were me, I don't think I would have gone so far as to call her “Great”. I think Queen Pretty-Good-Grandmother would be more accurate.'

‘Well, actually,' said another cockroach, ‘she's not pretty. If you want to be really, totally accurate she should be called Queen Old-And-Wrinkly-But-Very-Nice-Grandmother.'

‘Yes, but…'

‘I also decree that from henceforth all Transylvania Waters cockroaches must be a lot more laid-back, on punishment of being sent to a small dark hole on the rim of the volcano on Tristan da Cuhna,' said Nerlin, and added, ‘My eldest son Valla, who will one day be King, shall be known as Crown Prince Valla, and his soon-to-be-born son, Prince Corduroi, shall be known as Prince Corduroi.'

‘I think you should assemble parliament and bring democracy to Transylvania Waters,' said Mordonna.

‘Do I have to?' said Nerlin.

‘Of course you do. You don't want to be a dictator like my awful father, do you?'

‘No, of course not,' said Nerlin. ‘It's not that.'

‘Well, what is then?'

‘Politics and all that stuff is boring.'

‘I know, but as King you have a duty,' said Mordonna.

‘Well, can I stop being King now?'

‘No.'

So King Nerlin issued a proclamation saying that parliament would be assembled for the first time in the entire history of Transylvania Waters and everyone could vote and whatever. Up until then there had never been an election or any MPs or councils. In the old days there had always been a prime minister, but as he had always been the eldest son of the King's eldest son, he had just been a puppet who had done whatever his grandfather had told him.

When he had first seized power King Quatorze had built a grand Houses of Parliament. It had been constructed to fool the people into thinking they were actually going to have some say in how Transylvania Waters would be run. For the first ten years the King had pretended the building was
being finished off inside and just as soon as the painters and decorators left, parliament would be assembled after wonderful fair and free elections. This, of course, never happened and the huge parliament building lay deserted for many years until a group of chickens looking for an alternate lifestyle moved in.
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But it wasn't just Nerlin who thought politics was boring. So did the whole population. They'd managed without politics for hundreds of years and couldn't see the point of it now. It would just mean more taxes – which, even if they were only one cent a year, would be one cent more than anyone paid at the moment. But this was the twenty-first century and Mordonna thought it was time for a change.

Once upon a time a very famous comedian called Spike Milligan said, ‘Anyone who wants to go into politics should be banned,' and he was
right. King Nerlin, who was now incredibly wise and getting seven points wiser every fifteen seconds, consulted his father, the ancient and just as wise Merlin the 84th. Together they agreed that the only way to have a true democracy was for every single person in Transylvania Waters over the age of sixteen to be a Member of Parliament. After some complaints the age was reduced to ten and then again to five.

This, of course, meant that no decisions could ever be reached because it was impossible for everyone to fit into the Houses of Parliament at the same time to vote on anything, and they couldn't do a postal vote on account of Transylvania Waters not having any Post Offices or letters or stamps.
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So everyone agreed they would just let the King decide everything, which was exactly how it had been before, except that now everyone felt they were involved, and as they all liked Nerlin, they were happy for him to decide all the important political things like how many stripes there should be in a zebra crossing and what was the best colour to paint the toilets in the town square.

‘And you know what?' said King Nerlin. ‘Now that we aren't going to use the Houses of Parliament any more, I suggest we turf out the chickens and make the buildings into television studios.'

‘What a brilliant idea,' said the entire population, except the chickens, who had to find somewhere else to live. ‘Umm, err, what's television?'

King Nerlin handed over to Princess Betty to explain, but that's another story.

Because the mountains that cut Transylvania Waters off from the world are so high and dense and made almost entirely of really heavy iron ore, no television or radio signals could ever get in from the outside world. Because the iron ore is so incredibly magnetic, all compasses just spin round and round so fast they actually get hot enough to melt. The magnetism also stopped any television or
radio signals beamed down from satellites getting in. They simply bounced right back up again and flew off out into space where they all ended up on a very remote planet in a galaxy far, far away where the radio hadn't been invented yet. This was on account of the fact that the most advanced life on the planet, although being ten times more intelligent than any human, had soft floppy arms like giant slugs and no thumbs, which means that although they had worked out all sorts of incredibly advanced science in their heads, they couldn't do anything with it because they were totally crap at making anything that required precision handling of small components, medium components or any other size components.
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So, almost no one in Transylvania Waters had ever even heard of television or radio, never mind actually seen or heard it. Of course, as they were all
born outside of the country, all the Flood children knew a lot about television.

And they missed it.

So did Mordonna and Nerlin, but since Nerlin was now King Nerlin and in charge, he could do something about it.

‘We will bring TV to TW,' he said.

Obviously Winchflat, with all his technical genius, was just the person to do it.

Winchflat was in seventh heaven.
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He could imagine nothing more exciting than big rooms full of really complicated electronics, except perhaps big rooms full of really complicated electronics and his beloved Maldegard Ankle.

Although she'd never seen electronics before, Maldegard soon realised that she too adored computery, electronicy stuff.

With a fiancé who was an incredibly gorgeous
prince with a monobrow that looked like two very hairy caterpillars snogging, the most extensive collections of pliers, soldering irons and coloured electric wires in the whole of Transylvania Waters,
and the knowledge of how to use them, how could she want for more?

A life of programming meetings, tinkering with gadgets, getting married – hopefully live on TV – and having a string of super-intelligent babies that also adored electronics stretched out before her.

There was just so much to look forward to. Her dreams of inventing a perpetual motion machine and running petrol engines on water, dreams that she had always dismissed as silly fantasies, now all seemed possible.

Together Winchflat and Maldegard scoured the world's television stations and put together their first year's list of programs. Maldegard, like all the population of Transylvania Waters, had never even heard of television, let alone seen it, so her choices were strange to say the least. She thought a show where a lot of morons were locked up in a house for a month while everyone watched them talking drivel and showing each other their bottoms might be popular. But her favourite suggestion was
an even more ridiculous show called
Transylvania Waters's Got Talent
, where endless people with absolutely no talent at all stood up and did really pathetic things while a team of judges with even less talent told them they were wonderful.

‘Like your mum does when you sing really badly at Christmas,' she said.

‘I'm not sure,' said Winchflat. ‘I think both programs might upset people because they might think that we think they are stupid enough to actually enjoy them.'

‘Aren't they?' said Maldegard Ankle.

‘For the rest of the world, you're probably right,' Winchflat agreed, ‘but Transylvania Waters people are much too intelligent for that sort of show.'

In the end they decided that instead of watching a house full of morons do moron stuff for an hour, they would broadcast the RockallCam so everyone could watch three morons stuck on a very small rock, trying to cook seaweed while not falling into the sea, and moaning at each other all
the time. The show was named after the Countess Slab –
Big Blubber
.

It was a huge hit because everyone had hated King Quatorze and the Countess and this allowed the viewers to hate them over and over again.
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Viewers were invited to phone in with extra punishments to be meted out to the Ex-King and the Countess. These were entered into a competition, with a prize for the nastiest, meanest, most enjoyable one voted for by the viewers.

Top punishments were shown over and over again and there was a special every Sunday afternoon –
Big Blubber Uncut
– where a lot of sharp knives and running with scissors were usually involved. A firm favourite was watching the Ex-King as an invisible elf tore the arms off his teddy bear and unravelled the left sleeves of all his cardigans. When
Quatorze tried to pick up his wrecked teddy, it bit off his little finger and spat it into the sea where it was eaten by a lobster. Also very popular were the plagues of gross insects, cockroaches, slugs, limpets, etc., that kept infesting the Countess's ears.

Transylvania Waters's Got Talent
was not a great hit because Transylvania Waters was actually full of people with lots of talent, so no one who went on the show ever looked stupid or useless, unlike other countries.

‘You see, the point of these rubbish reality shows,' Winchflat explained to Maldegard, ‘is to make useless people watching them feel good about themselves by watching people who are even more useless than they are, and Transylvania Waters is a useless-free zone where everyone is clever.'

Winchflat brought the rest of the family in to make programs.

Satanella and Brastof hosted a gardening program, which wasn't so much about growing things as digging up stuff and burying it. Their show was called
Better Bones in Gardens.

Morbid and Silent ran the children's TV programming. They decided that most human children's television was much too frightening for Transylvania Waters children.

‘I mean,' said Morbid, ‘wouldn't two adults dressed up like giant bananas scare the willies out of you?'

Silent nodded.

So they created their own programs such as
PlayGhoul
where kids could learn simple spells including how to give your teddy bear a throbbing heart that dripped real blood and how to turn your annoying baby brother into a garden gnome.
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Probably the most popular item ever was making a real living-dead zombie out of two cardboard boxes and some sticky tape.
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Merlinmary was the only one of them not to
make any TV shows, not because he/she didn't want to, but because she was so electric that every time she went into the studio, all the equipment blew up.

Valla and Mildred Flambard-Flood created a lifestyle series set in Transylvania Waters' most famous graveyard and their show was called
Better Tombs and Gargoyles
. Each week they opened up a different grave and brought its occupant back to life to take part in a quiz where they could win exciting prizes like having a famous interior designer re-decorate the inside of their coffin, which would normally cost a fortune. This led to a whole new fashion for designer coffins. Some were decorated
with so much gold and so many jewels that people would die early just so they could enjoy them. The really cool people had several coffins, each in a different beautiful location around Transylvania Waters, where they would go and die just for the weekend.

Valla added the ‘Flambard' to his name too, and the two of them became famous television personalities and very, very rich – they owned the company that made the fancy coffins and a chain of five-star funeral parlours. They were the closest thing Transylvania Waters had to yuppies and even owned a set of French red-enamelled cauldrons that they used on the cooking segment of their show. These saucepans were just a few of the things they imported from overseas and sold for a wonderfully huge profit.

Maldegard was put in charge of current affairs, which was a bit ridiculous considering she was the only one of them who had never been outside Transylvania Waters and knew almost nothing of what was out there.

‘This will give her a fresh, unbiased view of the world,' said Winchflat, when everyone suggested that she might not be the best person for the job.

Maldegard was a bit deaf. This had been caused by her two brothers bursting a lot of Lake Tarnish Codfish bladders in her ears as a child. This meant that she sometimes misheard things. Because of this, the daily news on TWTV was unlike other countries where a newsreader sits at a desk and reads the news from a TV screen or a sheet of paper. Instead, Transylvania Waters had newsbleeders. Someone stood in front of a white wall and wrote the news with their own blood. How much news there was each day had nothing to do with what had happened in Transylvania Waters that day. It depended more on how long the newsbleeder could write without fainting. Unlike other countries where the news is usually very boring, the news in Transylvania Waters was one of the most popular programs.

When the mistake was pointed out, everyone agreed that Transylvania Waters' news program was much more interesting so it stayed that way.

The first broadcast from overseas was a stunning concert by the Belgian Primary School Mass Harmonica Band.
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This lasted for seven hours while seven hundred children on mouth organ, accompanied by five howling dogs, played the entire ABBA songbook thirteen times.

The Belgian Primary School Mass Harmonica Band opened the floodgates and suddenly everyone in Transylvania Waters wanted to know about the outside world.

‘Never in our wildest imaginations,' people said, ‘did we imagine the world could hold such wonderful treasures as the harmonica.'

‘And shoelaces…'

‘And handkerchiefs!'

‘And
clean
handkerchiefs.'

The list was endless. The world had so many,
many wonderful things to offer, it was impossible to know where to begin.

‘For all your saucepan, harmonica, shoelace and handkerchief needs,' said Prince Valla Flambard-Flood in the first commercial to be shown on TWTV, ‘be sure to visit The Flambard-Flood Shopping Channel.'

Most countries arrive in the modern age from an age where their grandmothers pulled the plough and soap was merely a rumour. Because these countries are usually very short of money, they usually chop down all their trees and they sell them and then dig up the most beautiful bits of the country, which is always where the most precious minerals are, and sell them too. Luckily Transylvania Waters did not have to do this because, as each family had at least one wizard or witch, it only took a few quick spells to turn the family's pile of cabbage leaves into a pile of hundred-dollar notes.

The evil King Quatorze had imposed a total ban on anything from the outside world getting into
Transylvania Waters. This was because if everyone knew about the outside world then they would realise just what a rotten King Quatorze was and how much they were all missing out on the good things in life, like baked beans and PlayStations and socks and sticking plasters.
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What little information had filtered in was both incredibly out of date and completely wrong, so those people who had actually heard of America thought it was like it had been back in the 1920s and that the King of America was called Mickey Mouse.