HOPPING MAD

The conclusion to the story begun in 'LIVING A BOY'S ADVENTURE TALE'!


"Tell me, friend - are you John Barrowman?"


The bandaged man suddenly shouted "look!" and pointed at the telly.
Boris and the boring pillock turned to see what he was pointing at. Nothing particularly exciting seemed to be happening, so they returned their attention to the bandaged man - only to find that he was no longer there.
"He's getting away!" cried the boring pillock, leaping out of bed towards the door. He grasped the handle and heaved with all his might, but the door had been locked from the outside. The boring pillock - who suddenly did not seem so boring anymore - hammered on the door in frustration and cursed loudly in Norsk.
Boris looked on in both amazement and confusion.
What is going on? he wondered.
The not-so boring pillock was now back at his bed, fumbling about in his bag and wincing a bit too. Clearly he was still not well enough to be jumping about. A moment later he pulled out a mobile phone and made a call.
"This is Agent P," said the pillock, speaking fluently in the native tongue. "Barrowman is loose. Repeat: Barrowman is loose." Then he slammed the phone down on the bed and half-leaped, half-hobbled back to the door, which he continued to pound on.
"Somebody open this door!" Agent P shouted in frustration. Then he rested his forehead on the door, closed his eyes and muttered, "Barrowman will be halfway to the Hopping Championships by now."
Boris finally found his voice. "What's going on?" he asked.
Agent P turned and looked Boris in the eyes. Then he came to a decision.
"I'm an agent employed by the Norwegian Secret Services," Agent P explained. "I've been following John Barrowman for some time now. We have reason to believe that he wants Norway's greatest secret for himself." And with that he turned to look at the television, on which one of a-ha was grinning away.
Boris frowned. "Norway's greatest secret?" he repeated, confused. "You don't mean... a-ha?"
The agent shook his head. "Look again," he said, pointing at the pop star on the screen. "Look more closely. A-ha first got together in the 1980s..."
"...and yet they've hardly aged a day," Boris realised.
"Exactly," the agent agreed.
A lightbulb appeared above Boris's head. "Norway has the secret of eternal youth!" he declared excitedly.
"No, Norway doesn't...but a-ha do," the agent corrected. "And Barrowman wants it for himself."
"We've got to stop him!" Boris cried, forgetting his aches and pains, leaping from the bed on his one leg and grasping the door handle. "If Barrowman gets the secret of eternal youth, there'll be no stopping him. Ever!"
The agent agreed. "He'll be like Sir Cliff Richard, only much more dangerous."
Just then there was a noise out in the corridor. The door opened and a bemused looking nurse appeared. The agent rose to his feet and made to push past her, but Boris held him back.
"No. Let me," Boris said, looking down at his one leg. "I'll be much faster."


On the podium at the Norwegian Hopping Championships, Lars Larsen of Trollstigen was about to receive his winner's trophy from one of a-ha.
"So, which one of a-ha are you?" Lars whispered conspiratorially, as they shook hands and he took possession of the trophy.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the distance and everybody turned to see what was going on. Something was mincing towards them exceptionally fast. It looked like roadrunner, only a bit gay.
And behind it was something else, also closing fast.
Was that...a one legged man?
The crowd began to part as the two human bullets bore down on them.
The ex-member of a-ha up on the stage suddenly looked very nervous. He had every right to be.
"I'm not really a member of a-ha you know!" he blurted out. Nobody was listening. "I'm just a stand in! Look!" He pulled off a mask to reveal the man underneath - Sir Bruce Forsyth! "The real a-ha are being experimented on in a secret underground bunker..."
But it was too late. Barrowman had leapt up on to the podium and floored him.
And yet, Barrowman had little time to do anything else. Behind him, in the centre of the gathered crowd, in slow motion and with a loud cry of "nooooo....!", Boris Tattersall boinged high into the air on his one leg, landed in front of Lars Larrsen, grabbed the Norwegian Hopping Championships winner's trophy and clobbered Barrowman over the back of the head with it.
Lars Larsen fell back and Sir Bruce gasped as Barrowman's face suddenly took on a fake, rubberlike hue and fell away like the mask that it was. The man who had been disguised as John Barrowman climbed to his feet and turned to face the audience. There was a huge collective gasp as they saw that he was, in fact, Sir Cliff Richard!
Norwegian authorities leapt up on to the stage, grabbed Sir Cliff and began to drag him away. "Give us a twirl," said Brucey, dusting himself down. 
"I would have gotten away with it," Sir Cliff shouted defiantly, "if it hadn't been for you pesky, meddling, one-legged nobodies!"
"Oh, wasn't that a shame..." Sir Bruce waved with more than a hint of sarcasm as Sir Cliff was bundled into a waiting car. "Nice to see you, to see you..."
Elsewhere on the stage, Boris offered the winner's trophy back to Lars Larsen.
"No, friend," said Lars, refusing to take the trophy. "You keep it. You deserve it." He pointed at the trophy. "Besides which, it's bent."
Boris shrugged, turned to face the crowd and lifted the bent trophy. Everybody cheered.
Sir Bruce put his arm around Boris's shoulder and hollered, "Didn't he do well?"
The Norwegians had no idea what he was on about but cheered again anyway.


A few minutes later, Boris hopped off the podium to find Agent P standing beside a taxi and holding the door open for him. Boris climbed in and Agent P joined him on the back seat.
"Well done," said Agent P, with genuine gratitude. "You've averted a terrible disaster."
Boris shrugged. "You realise the real John Barrowman is still out there somewhere?"
Agent P nodded. "Yes, he is. But so is Sir Bruce Forsyth. And he has a vested interest in protecting the secret which Barrowman so desperately wants."
"A vested interest...?" Boris waited for Agent P to elaborate, but he did not. 
Agent P smiled, then changed the subject. "So. After all this excitement, I bet you're quite hungry. Shall we get a bite to eat?"
Boris grinned. "Oh - now you're talking! As a cockney might say, I'm Hank Marvin!" he said, laughing.
Agent P laughed too.
In the front of the taxi, the driver pulled his cap a bit lower. 
"Driver, take us to an expensive restaurant!" Agent P declared.
The driver was in the shadows. 
"As you wish sir," he said. 
He really was Hank Marvin.

LIVING A BOY'S ADVENTURE TALE

Even as a child, Boris Tattersall had always dreamed of competing in the Norwegian Hopping Championships. But Boris had been born in the UK, which meant that his involvement should not have been possible.
Most people would have been deterred, but not Boris. He spent years working out a way to get involved and even more putting his plan into action.
The first thing Boris did was enrol in language classes. It took five years, but Boris stuck with the classes until he could speak Norsk fluently. Next, he bought the Rough Guide to Norway, a book about Fjords, a traditional Norwegian costume and all the albums by Norwegian pop group a-ha - including solo work by Morten and Magne, the various releases by Pal's "other band" Savoy, and the seminal a-ha live 'Homecoming' DVD. Then he renewed his passport, moved to Norway, finally got a job, lived there for a decade and successfully applied for citizenship after marrying a local girl called Linnea who he had courted for five years. Finally, there was only one thing left to do: so Boris chopped one of his legs off.


Two days before the championships, a very happy Boris Tattersall hopped on board a plane bound for Norway, having spent a few days back in Blighty visiting his mum. Not even the fact that he had to sit next to a boring overweight poetry-writing pillock from the Cotswolds could dampen his spirits.
"Would you like to hear some of my poetry?" asked the pillock, out of the blue.
Boris shrugged. "Why not?" he said.
The fat pillock cleared his throat theatrically, then recited his ode, a poem entitled 'The Blackbird'.


"What was it thinking about
Staring down the chimney pot
The blackbird
Framed by sloping roofs
Wires and aerials
A breeze getting up
Pink and pastel evening sky
The noise of the locals
At their barbecue below
And the blackbird
Nothing more than a silhouette to me."


"Very good," said Boris politely, when the recital was over. Even that strange outburst had not dampened his spirits.
There was an awkward silence. 
"So, why are you going to Norway?" the boring fat pillock asked eventually, in his spectacularly monotone voice.
"I live there," Boris stated, with a grin. "But more importantly," he added excitedly, shifting in his seat and indicating his one remaining leg, "I'm going back to take part in the Norwegian Hopping Championships!"
The boring pillock pulled a face. "Oh." He did not appear to be very impressed, but to be fair, he had the sort of demeanour that suggested that nothing would ever impress him. 
"I'm going to stalk Morten Harket," the pillock said after a while. "As you probably know, a-ha decided to call it a day back in 2010. But I'm going to read Morten my poetry in order to inspire them to get back together."
Boris was impressed - this bloke really was boring. "Well, good luck with that," Boris said politely, before donning a pair of headphones and taking a look at the in-flight entertainment provided by the airline. A music video was playing. It was 'Take On Me' by a-ha.


Up in the plane's cockpit, the Norwegian co-pilot was at a loose end and reading a glossy magazine.
The English pilot was at the controls. He had been flying the plane solo, but was satisfied that everything was as it should be, so he glanced over to his co-pilot and tried to engage him in conversation. 
"What are you reading?" the English pilot asked of the Norwegian.
The co-pilot looked up. "An interview with Morten Harket."
The English pilot squinted over at the magazine, and saw a full page photo of a man standing next to a swimming pool.
"Really?" The English pilot was surprised. "That looks like John Barrowman."
The Norwegian co-pilot, a burly fellow, wasted no time getting to his feet and rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Are you calling Morten a puff?" he asked aggressively, and punched the pilot square in the face.
Two minutes later, the aeroplane crashed into the sea.


Boris Tattersall did not make it to the Norwegian Hopping Championships. In fact, he was languishing in one of Norway's fine hospitals when the championships took place. On the plus side, the whole thing was broadcast on the telly. 
Three days into his hospital stay and Boris stared enviously at the TV as Lars Larsen, a one-legged native of Trollstigen, was handed the winner's trophy by somebody who used to be a member of a-ha. 
Boris was confused. He could not work out which ex-member of a-ha it was who was on the telly. Boris thought about asking the patient in the bed opposite, but realised that the patient had been paying the television no heed and had, in fact, been busy scribbling in a notebook for quite a while.
"Would you like to hear my latest poem?" asked the fat boring patient eventually, looking up from his notebook for the first time in an hour.
Boris sighed. He was wondering how to turn the poet down politely when the ward's third patient, a man whose face was entirely wrapped in bandages, urged the boring fat patient to read his ode.
The bandaged patient had not spoken much over the past few days, but each time he had, something about his voice had seemed awfully familiar to Boris. It had a distinctly American lilt to it.
"Hang on a moment," said Boris. He turned to look at the mystery man, convinced that he had finally worked out who lay there behind those bandages. Boris lifted a finger, pointed it at the man and asked, "Tell me, friend - are you John Barrowman?"