Not long after the beginning
and a bit before the end the Almighty said to Noah: “Is that your real name?”
“Yeah”, said Noah; “you gave it to me, your ever generousness. I was hoping for
something a bit more romantic and maybe even an extra syllable or two, or become
all psychedelic and have a hyphen and a double barrel, but Noah is functional.
I’m not complaining; a lot. After all what’s in a name? Wouldn’t a cactus be just
as uninteresting if it was called something else? Why am I and my not very exciting
name so humbly in your almighty and quite tedious presence?” asked Noah. “I’ve
had a great idea”, said God “and I want you with the very boring name to be the
first to hear it.” “Can’t wait to hear it, your Denseness, even if it is only
half as brilliant as the square wheeled chariot and deep fried ice cube you
nearly invented for us last week; and as for the three-armed jacket; well what can
I say? Jacob wears his every day and I won’t tell you what he does with it at
night, as it involves folk music. And didn’t the Paisley patterned boulder
illuminate the landscape?” said Noah. “Oh good”, said God “I do so enjoy it when
the minions are attentive to my every word and trembling syllable. What’s the
point of being an Almighty if you can’t Almighty it over the lower orders from
time to time?” “I couldn’t agree more, your Bampotness. Even if you do appear
to be a few slices short of a full loaf on occasions. So what’s this big idea
you’ve had?” said Noah. “I want you to build a boat, the biggest and bestest
boat there’s ever been” said God. “Why”, said Noah, “we live in a desert, we
don’t do boats; never have done; don’t get a lot of call for them in these
parts, your Obliqueness. Ordinarily you’re every utterance is a symphony of
sound and beauty to the sticky out bits on the abstract countenance you have so
generously created for me, O Guano features. Couldn’t you do another plague of
frogs and locusts? We loved those. Your subjects haven’t eaten so well since. Very
tasty they were indeed, and so much more nourishing than the daily fare of
cactus bark and centipede you dish up to us as we go about our increasingly
diminishing mortal trespass. I hope you weren’t baffled by the paradoxical
construction of that sentence. One Almighty’s punishment is another lowly minion’s
business opportunity. I was running a
fast food joint while it lasted. Made a change from the normal feast, where you
have to catch your dinner before it catches you. Eat before your eaten - that’s
the Law ‘round here. It makes you feel more like a recipe than a person on
occasions, your Compostness.” “Be that as it may, said God, “I’ve got some
drawings which Eve helped me to make” “Eve?” said Noah, “did you say Eve?” “Yes” said God, “Eve”,
that’s what I said. She likes me more than all the rest of you put together and
that’s why she’s my favourite.” “This will be good", said Noah, let’s be having it.
Let’s see the cosmic blueprint of a less than useless boat that Eve devised”. “I
helped to devise it as well”, said God. “In fact I done all the pencil sharpening,
and here it is”. Noah sniggered and said, “That’s not a boat it’s a camel”. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”, said God, “you’ve got to hand it to Eve; she’s a genius
at this kind of stuff, and she says it will make me look jolly clever as well.
And that will stop all you ungrateful and wretched minions from smirking and
sniggering every time I have a wonderful idea.” “This is even better than the
ten commandments - three dos, six don’ts and a maybe," said Noah. “My Ten
commandments were wonderful” said God, “even Moses said so.” “The only reason
you have ten commandments”, said Noah “is because you have ten fingers. If you
had seventeen fingers we would have seventeen commandments; one for each digit.
People who use their toes to count their fingers should avoid life’s
mathematical complexities. And as for Moses ‘The Born Leader’ - he’s a party
hack. He’ll agree with anything you say as long as he gets his name on the
tablet. He’s publicity mad. When he grows up he wants to chisel the definitive
text on cactus attraction, for the benefit of future desert wanderers. Eve says
he's a bit of a Freudian fruitcake on the quiet, whatever that is. She also says,
his mother told him he was adopted and he’s never quite got over it.” “Why
would Moses want to get over a cactus? Seems jolly silly to me” said God, “He’s
a complete basket case, according to the local grapevine." " Never mind all that, let’s
see the blueprint.” said Noah, “A wooden camel; only a cosmic idiot could
imagine it. If it was a wooden horse it could have been sold to the Trojans, or
a wooden cat to the Pharoahs, and I’m told the antipodeans go a bundle on
timber budgies, but camels; nobody wants one, not even other camels. How did
someone as colossally dense and as infinitely thick as your self acquire the
surreallness of thought to imagine it in the first place?” said Noah. “You’re a
bright little chappie for a minion”, said God. “Eve told me about the Greeks
and their wooden gee-gee and I suggested a boat, then Eve pointed out that this
was a desert, and consequently we need a desert boat. 'One that floats on sand',
I said. ‘Not quite El Plonkero’ she said. Then Eve said we have to adopt and
then apply some lateral thinking to the problem. She pointed out that we live
in a desert and that we need a boat that sails in the desert. And then I had
the mostest cleverest thought I’ve had in ages. We need a ‘desert boat’ I
exclaimed. And Eve said I was a true plankton eater. She says the nicest things
to me. A ‘ship of the desert,’ she says, ‘and what’s a ship of the desert?’ Quick as a flasher in the rush hour, I said ‘a
camel’, and Eve replied that I was quite bright for a log, and that camel plus
ship equalled wooden camel to sail away from here to some other paradise she
called Hollywood, ‘Land of heavenly bodies and the drop dead gorgeous Brad
Pitt.’ “And you believed her?” said Noah. “Of course I believed her, said God, “she’s
Eve and if you can’t believe in Eve what else is there to believe in?” “There’s
an answer to that”, said Noah, “but you’d toast me like a heretic on the happy
juice if I repeated it, your Doorknobness.”