MY DIARY: ALPHIE POTATO VISITS THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Day One.

Sol, outside Pluto {Mickey’s pet dog!] Orbit. My yacht returns to N-Space. We pick up Esteeler Polity Anthem: ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in march time. Then the Presidential Music: ‘Hail to the Cheese’! They get the protocol spot on here.
Arrival at the M25; pleasantly surprised to be met by LZ [Lee Zhang, First Minister of the Empire] himself, and he proves to be an excellent host though a bit obscure sometimes. For example, he asked me if I wished to be accompanied by my equerry. I told him I didn’t have one and didn’t know what it was. After an embarrassing pause, one of my aides calls up his dictionary software and tells me it’s ‘an officer in charge of the horses of an exalted personage’. Horses? So I tell LZ sorry, I didn’t bring any horses, and he pulls this sort of pained expression, [see left.] Note added later: I get a lot of that over the following days!
By the way, as a native of DISNEY WORLD, I have SUPERHUMAN POWERS here because of EARTH’S YELLOW SUN ;-). I have to try hard to hide my incredible abilities from the Earthers and I succeed [mostly.] heh heh.
Lee makes a joke [I think]. He tells me that I am to be ‘the earth-apple of {his} eye’ during my visit. And laughs. I don’t get it, and nor do my aides.

Days Two to Five.

We cruise in to Earth, which is Sol Three, doing a great flyby of some neat shipyards [Tight’Un, I think it was called?] and that famous planet with neat-oh Rings, very pretty and totally like, neat.
The hospitality is stunning, the food and drink excellent. Everyone is so swutting polite! They eat food with funny metal implements, one is a kind of knife but useless for fighting, and a ‘fork’ which has four spikes on it and they use as a food-shovel or to prong things like a giant cocktail-stick. I ask LZ why they don’t use their hands, is it a hygiene issue? We Esteelers wash our hands so we don’t need what LZ called ‘cut-lery’ as he showed me how it works with one of those pained looks.
At Ganymede we pick up a fabulous and very famous rockband and I am entertained as befits an exalted personage, hahah.  Female lead singer K**** H****** [name withheld for legal reasons] is charming and has had the most stunning plastic surgery, I ask for a personal meeting, and though she is very busy that evening, she fits me in.

Day Sex. I mean, Day Six.

Earth – what an amazing planet. It has this huge moon handily really close in, endless spaceships and stations, and Earth [or ‘Dirt’, ‘Terror’ or ‘The World’ as it’s also called] itself is COVERED in cities! The dark side is so sparkly it looks like stocktaking day at a cubic zirconia merchant. LZ had never heard that metaphor before and was kinda taken aback. He really is a marvellous ‘old stick’ and seemed really interested, asking me loads of questions about GFA politics and such as he kept pouring this tremendous drink called ‘scotchensoda’ and a tasty Earther snack called ‘hash browns, made with genuine hash’. Like, whoa.

Day Seven.

Down by shuttle to Earth itself; to the impressive yet oddly understated Imperial home of Lord Henry Ratsbane? Ratbone? [check spelling] the First Citizen. It’s just a rather modest seventy-two roomed marble and bronze august edifice, tastefully furnished and generously garnished with antiques, many of them looking like pre-spaceflight weapons, uniforms and armour. It’s on an island beach called ‘Why? Kiki’ in Ha, Why E?’ on Cuba in the middle of the Specific Ocean, not just any old ocean. I notice that ‘Earth’ is not a good name for this planet, as it’s about three-quarters wet. ‘Water’ would have been a better name, and I point this out to Lord Henry, and he gives me a wintry smile, such an honour, and when I slap his back in a chummy fashion all his old-style uniformed guards snap to attention and point their weapons in a very quaint way! Henry tells the ‘pretorians’ not to use force to prevent me touching him; what a fine ‘chap’, such a ‘bloke’! How I laugh! Then it’s a barbecue, mammal-meat, but no horse, which Lord H cooks himself, a signal honour to me, while LZ does the salads and pours drinks; one called rummencoak and another called jinnentonix which is mighty fine, though I could give the slice of lemming a miss. Later Henry gives me a go on his favourite antique bulleting fire-gun, a shass-poe he calls it. Bang! Wicked! Crack! Neat-oh!
We do karaoke. LZ teaches me this great song: ‘What’s it all about….Alphie?!!!’ and I tell him I don’t know what it’s all about and he isn’t surprised. Nor is Hen.
And we chat as the yellow sun goes down into the blue ocean and I reckon we are firm friends by the time I stagger back to my room in what is called the East ‘Wing’ – though I see no pacifier squadron.

Day Eight.

Did I dream those explosions last night? No, my bodyguard heard them too; something was going on down by the jetty and the beach. But LZ is cagey at breakfast and tells me it was perhaps a thunderstorm. My ass it was! But that’s all I’m getting so I try to forget it. My shuttle crew can shed no further light as they were ten clicks off at the little spaceport. Hmmmm.
The rest of the day is a very quick aerial jetcopter tour of The Wonders of Earth! Mostly it seems to be places that look like they’ve been bombed [Anchor What, Babbylon, some big battered stone pyramids in a desert, a ruin on a mountain called Machoo Pitchoo], then a city called Roam and another called Istanbull, with big temples in them. Then I saw a very sad place, a big crater where a city called Jakarther had been, and they told me it had been destroyed in some ancient war. Then some very tasty and truly gigantic modern cities which are much more to my taste, my favourites were Tokyosaka, MegaCity One and best of all BritCity, though they were all brilliant, noisy, vibrant and VAST!
Another ‘joke’ from LZ. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed to wear my turquoise and cerise check shirt that night in BritCity, because it was a crime to ‘wear a loud shirt during the hours of darkness’. The Earthers all laughed, but I don’t get it. This shirt isn’t loud, it doesn’t even have a soundchip embedded. These guys are weird.

Day Nine.

Anyhow, I got to see Old London, where the famous Treaty was negotiated, and I saw some hilariously funny animals called ‘pengwins’ – they looked like LZ dressed for dinner – then it was off I went back into space and Asteel-bound, laden down with gifts of fine Earth produce, e.g. scotchensoda, wine, honey, spices and fruit including a misshapen lumpy yellowish thing that LZ told me, with a grin, was an ‘earth-apple’, a staple crop on Earth but neglected elsewhere, and it grows underground. I bit a lump out and LZ told me it was better cooked, but it tasted fine to me, and I asked for some seeds so I can plant it on Asteel in memory of this wonderful visit.

By Alphie Z. Potato