Someone asked me the other day how long I’d been writing for and it reminded me of the first full story I ever wrote. It was in primary school so I was maybe eight or nine. I think the story was called Quest for the Teabags and was about a boy and his pet monkey. I’m sure the monkey’s name was Slobocholos which was a name derived from a Madball I had. Remember Madballs? They were toys from the 80s that were in similar vein to the Garbage Pail Kids only ball shaped. They had disgusting mutated faces. The 80’s were great for gross out kids toys.  My Madball was called Slobulus and had a head full of ooze and one eye hanging out.

Anyway I digress. The boy and the monkey had ran out of teabags. Clearly a world where a boy and monkey drink tea together is not a world that has a local shop. They took their rocket to space and went on an adventure of which I remember few details. I do recall that they crash landed on Earth in the middle of an ocean.

They drifted in the ocean for a while until they ran into an iceberg which they were able to climb onto. They discovered a string band playing God Save the King at the top of the iceberg. The boy wondered why they were playing a song about a King and not God Save the Queen but it turned out that the band had been aboard the Titanic and had been stuck on the iceberg ever since it sank.

I don’t know if the boy and his monkey ever got their teabags. Knowing how much of a little bastard I was when I was younger, probably not. They iceberg likely melted drowning them all.