The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin Page B

as a somnambulant shepherd, a period notable only for his inactivity, exemplified by his famous haystack slumberings, which permitted his untended sheep to carouse in the meadows whilst his cows laid pats amongst the corn; a brief history follows.
    According to his best-selling autobiography,
I May be Blue, but I'm Always in the Black,
his rags-to-riches rise was an overnight affair, with his self-penned rhyme going straight into the charts at Number One, toppling Mary Mary, who had held the position for fourteen consecutive weeks.
    This is not altogether true, firstly because Mary Mary did not achieve her own fame until several years later, and secondly because Boy Blue did
not
write his own lyrics.
    They were the work of a professional rhymester by the name of Wheatley Porterman, whose distinctive lyrical style can be discerned in several other 'self-penned' classics of the genre,
Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie
and
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
(the house version), to name but two.
    Wheatley Porterman's gift was for identifying social problems, which he set in verse that touched the public's imagination, in the case of Boy Blue, the scandal of child labour in rural areas which drove underage shepherds to exhaustion.
    With
Georgie Porgie,
it was sexual harassment in the playground, by teachers against schoolgirls, Porgie being an overweight geography teacher whose notorious behaviour had previously gone unreported, due to his connections in high places.
    Regarding
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
Wheatley's finger was once more unerringly upon the button of the public conscience. Whether there actually
was
an old woman who lived in a shoe and had so many children that she didn't know what to do remains in some doubt. Wheatley asserted that she was allegorical: a cipher, or symbol, for the hideous overcrowding in certain inner city areas.
    A consultation with the curator of
Tlie Hall of Nearly All the Records
discloses that the rhyme is registered as the 'exclusive property of Old Woman Inc.', the chairman and sole shareholder in Old Woman Inc. being one W. Porter-man, Esq.
    But be this all as it may (and well may it all be too), Little Boy Blue, either in partnership with Wheatley, or under contract to him, claimed to have written the rhyme himself. And a world which didn't care much either way, but appreciated celebrity for the sake of celebrity alone, took his claims at face value.
    Within weeks of sleeping rough beneath haystacks and smelling strongly of sheep dung, the Boy had made it to the big time. His trademark shepherd's smock, now blue silk, with pearls upon the cuffs, was adopted as
the
fashion look of the year (blue, as ever, being the new black, when some other colour isn't having its turn).
    His establishment of an exclusive haute couture fashion house,
Oh Boy!,
was inevitable. In less time, it seemed, than it took to shake a crook at a scurrying lamb, Boy Blue found himself lionised by the cream of Toy City Society. Facsimiles of his famous portrait,
The Blue Boy,
still hang in many homes.
    And in Toy City, blue is still the new black.
    All of the foregoing Eddie passed on to Jack as Jack passed through the streets of Toy City — rather more speedily than Eddie cared for.
    'Fashion House, eh?' said Jack, swerving, to Eddie's relief, around a number of teddies who were crossing the road. 'The fashion in my town was for grey overalls. That's all the workers ever wore. And as all the townsfolk were workers, that's all anyone ever wore.'
    'You weren't wearing grey overalls when I met you,' Eddie observed.
    Jack laughed. 'I traded them in at a farm I passed by, in exchange for a new set of clothes, although the cap was somewhat inferior. The farmer was convinced that grey overalls must be the very height of town fashion, seeing as all the town dwellers he'd ever met wore them.'
    'This wasn't the same farmer whose ear you shot off?'
    'That was an accident. But no, that wasn't him.'
    'Hey,