its still very warm here at the moment , it wont be long till we get that autumnal chill in the evening air .Its very evocative of childhood winter evenings snuggled up with Ma and Pa Beasty in front of a roaring log fire , toasting crumpets on a long ornate toasting fork , the gusting winds booming in the chimney , roaring in the trees and rattling the windows .It was evenings like this that Pa Beasty used to tell us stories , On particularly stormy nights it would be ghost stories , but normally it was stories about Pa Beasties own creation and our childhood hero Sausageops .In the very first story , Sausageops(A one eyed sausage) was discovered by three children(Me and my two brothers) on a Greek Island , and was first encountered escaping from cyclops and from then on lived in the forest that surrounds Pa Beasties French house and got up to all sorts of malarkey with the three boys and a cast of other characters.Sausageops was a selfish , gluttonous rather stupid little beast . every Sausageops story followed a similar course . Sausageops would be forced into an undesirable course of action by his greed and stupidity against the sage advice of the children , usually upsetting the Prince schmoozing plans of the dimwitted and vain princess and her unpleasant aunt (The witch) in the process . Sausageops always at some point falls into or drinks water by mistake .Being stuffed with breadcrumbs he will then swell up and explode.The children at this point usually have to find a genie or a wizard to magic the little blighter back together and deliver some strategic punishment before peace and goodwill are restored to all parties (Except the witch , who was traditionally left gnashing her hatred and vowing revenge on the little devil). Pa Beasty wrote all our favourite stories down and illustrated them .I to this day have a bound copy of the stories , a second edition was made changing the children's names for both sets of grandchildren .
Incidentally a good few years ago while the whole family was holidaying in France , my brother though it would be very funny to wait till the kids were out with Ma and Pa Beastie , open the shutters in the kids bedroom and prop a ladder up against the window , spill some water and breadcrumbs on the bedroom floor and hang a burst balloon skin from the beam above their beds.As the children were about 4 and 6 at the time and utterly convinced that sausageops was real and lived nearby the house , went absolutely hysterical on finding the evidence of his untimely demise without a wizard or genie in sight…….. I remember it took some finessing to get out of that one without causing childhood trauma.
Pa Beasty has since had a book of cartoons published (I think under the nom de plume of spyder look him up on Amazon) and was asked by the publisher if he had anything for the children's Christmas market .When he showed them The Adventures of Sausageops , the editor almost had an embolism at the thought of a 'one eyed sausage' character that befriended children and a whole host of politically incorrect characters. A bemused Pa Beasty could not understand why…….
how we laughed at my exasperated little brothers attempts to explain the possible connotations of a 'one eyed sausage' in this child molestation obsessed age , twas a memorable family dinner indeed
Always wear your best knickers if there is a chance of meeting a one eyed sausage
