A STRANGE AWAKENING

Back in the days when primitive hominids were the best nature had to offer, my ancester Owongo bumped into a most alluring woman and her time machine...

Owongo was in a pensive mood.

Mirumda was heavy with child, so heavy she was revoltingly ugly even to his eyes - and we must try to remember that he loved her with a passion almost as powerful as his love for crab apples - and he felt an almost constant stirring in his nether regions that he recognised as a deep and enduring need for lurve.

But Mirumda, besides being almost totally revolting with hugeness, pushed him away every time he went anywhere near her. And not only did she push him away with a terrifying glare on her weathered face, but she called him the sort of names he felt uncomfortable listening to.

So in the end he was driven (by hormones, about which he knew less than nothing) to find an alternative to the apple of his eye. In fact, he was driven by powerful forces in the direction of being unfaithful to the terrifying Mirumda. And he knew exactly where he should look.

Quite recently there had been an explosion deep in the forest, one of almost unprecedented power in a time when any kind of non-stone based technology was an unbelievably distant thing and explosives were as unknown as laptop computers. He had gone to investigate, of course, and had nervously, almost reluctantly, sneaked towards where he guessed the explosion had occurred. And he had found, in a clearing that hadn't been there last week, a strange unearthly object that had caused his naked body to deposit a large quantity of raw sewerage there and then, where he stood.

He had seen, in fact, a stranded time machine but he knew nothing of time except for the things the sun, moon and stars did and he knew nothing of machines. But less than those nothings, he knew nothing of blondes.

And standing by the stranded time machine was a blonde. She was tall, had legs that seemed to stretch forever until they vanished into a tiny tunic, and her milky bits at the front were extraordinarily pert. Her hair was long and looked fine, as though some unknown creature had woven it out of the purest silk (of which he knew nothing) and he could just tell, even from a distance, that it smelt gorgeous. He had done the only thing that the most primitive of hominids could do, and had run away as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.

Now, with Mirumda the way she was, he felt (let's be honest and call it by its right name) sexually frustrated, and he found himself, completely out of the control of anything but his gonads, furtively returning to the spot where the time machine had been stranded. He told himself that hair the colour of summer clouds in a blue sky was quite a novelty, and he wanted to take a second peek.

And there the machine was still. Shining like an instrument from the gods, it lay on its cylindrical side in the clearing that it had obviously made for itself.

And standing right next to it was the blonde.

Hair shouldn't be that colour, thought Owongo, recalling Mirumda's black matted locks, and suddenly despising the memory.

Then he did the bravest thing he had ever done in the whole of his life, and started walking, from the shadows where he lurked, towards the long-legged, tiny-skirted blonde.

Now, remember who Owongo was, or rather, remember what he was. He was an ancestor of mine living roughly 100,000 years ago, which puts him very early in the family of man, so early that some might say he still bore chimpanzee-type features. And he shambled along, upright but occasionally allowing one hand or the other to touch the ground, and he was totally and utterly naked.

To the blonde's eyes he might have been an animal. A wild beast living in primeval times. A creature that, perhaps, represented a threat to her perfect (and still fragrant) skin.

But she saw his nakedness, and swallowed.

“Well well, what have we here?” she whispered. “And if you know what to do with that mighty weapon of yours, my sweet little man, you can come and get me right now!”

And with a saucy kind of wriggle she slipped herself out of her short and bewitching tunic to reveal her true self, which was even more bewitching.

No sooner had he seen what could only have been an invitation than Owongo let the last threads of control leave him, and he ran up to her, noted the wonderful sweetness of her fragrance, marvelled at the softness of her pale skin, toyed for a moment with the pure, clean hair than cascaded from her head, and did what his hormones said he had to do. And he did it with the kind of enthusiasm that firstly took her breath away and secondly encouraged her to join in.

He had only just finished, and was feeling as light as air, when a third figure came out of the time machine. It was a man, that much was clear, and for some reason I can't begin to explain, he failed to notice that Owongo was even there.

“That's fixed it,” he said, “come on " we can finally get back to the twentieth century. I do hope they've sorted out that Hitler fellow " things were beginning to look dangerous.”

“Okay, Grobbim,” whispered the blonde, and after one last brief glance at Owongo she pulled her skirt back on and climbed into the magical and mysterious shining cylindrical thing, which, to Owongo's total amazement, started humming and whining and, after a few moments, faded from being as though a fog had come down and dissolved it away, like fogs never do.

He sauntered off, not knowing that a hundred thousand years later a blonde woman gave birth to the ugliest baby born in generations, which is one of the reasons why I know I can claim Owongo as a direct ancestor of mine.