Peter and Brian in Tampering With Nature

The Gabberleys

Wallace looked over the whole town for some Strongium, but he failed to find some.

"What are you looking for, Mr. Wallace?"

Then he noticed that he was standing outside the newsagents and Mrs Gabberley was behind the counter.

"Hi, Mrs. Gabberley," Wallace said. "I'm looking for – um, uh – You know, I've completely forgotten what I'm looking for." Then he looked around the place to see if he could find what it was that he had forgotten what he was looking for, but he failed again. Then he found two plants on the window ledge above the newsagents. "Wow! What beautiful flowers you have."

"Oh, my purple pansies and my yellow violas," Mrs. Gabberley said. "Yeah, they're gorgeous, aren't they?"

"Just a bunch of (bleep) useless weeds, if you ask me!" her husband Mr. Gabberley shouted through his bedroom window.

"And no one asked you, you pain in the (bleep) balls!" Mrs. Gabberley shouted.

"Like you never asked me about anything at all!" Then Mr. Gabberley slammed his bedroom window down, knocking the yellow violas down to the pavement, smashing the pot.

"Now, look what you've done, you stupid arsehole!" Then Mrs. Gabberley went out of the newsagents and looked at the window. "And open that window when I'm screaming at the top of my lungs at you!"

"Fine!" shouted Mr. Gabberley, opening his window again. "But only to prove to you that your insults don't get to me at all!"

"Is that so?"

"Damn right, it is so! I can deflect them!"

"Oh, do you have to use a lightsaber?" Wallace asked.

"A lightsaber?" Mr. Gabberley snapped. "What the hell are you on about now?"

"I mean, do you use a lightsaber to deflect your wife's insults like how the Jedi use their lightsabers to deflect their enemies' laser bolts?"

"You and your useless nerd friends, Winnie!" Mr. Gabberley yelled. "Why can't you find any better friends?"

"Boy, that bastard!" Mrs. Gabberley snapped. "He makes my blood boil like a kettle."

"If only there was something we could do to get back at him, right, Mrs. Gabberley?" Wallace said.

"That's it!" Mrs. Gabberley cried. "He's harsh with me, so I'll be harsh at him back."

"How?" Wallace asked.

"I'll say words to hurt him," Mrs. Gabberley said. "The only problem is I don't know which words to use. Can you help me out, Wallace?"

"Well, okay."

"Great. Let's start with a verb. An action word. Any ideas, Wallace?"

Wallace looked for words on the newspapers, magazines and sweets.

"How about 'Flush'?" Wallace asked, looking at the word on a 'Toilet Geek' magazine.

"Good one," Mrs. Gabberley said. "Next, a thing."

Wallace looked at the newspapers, magazines and sweets for more words and the best he could come up with was 'Turd' from a 'Rude Words' magazine.

"Great!" Mrs. Gabberley cried happily, as she wrote it down. "Next, a descriptive word."

Wallace looked around all over the newsagents and could only find the word 'Stinky' from 'Stinking Bishop' from a cheese magazine, which impressed Mrs. Gabberley.

"And now another thing or a person or an animal or a creature or something like that," she said.

Wallace looked around the newsagents again and all he could see was from the Muppets on a TV magazine. "How about Muppet, Mrs. Gabberley?"