Continuing Akira Diaries - Part Three

The story so far....

Hello. Pleased to meet you. I am Akira and I am an intrepid, brave and
handsome, not to mention self-depricating, young time-and-space
traveller and this is my diary.

I had just been plonked down in the middle of the Houses Of Parliament
in Old London Town with absolutely no knowledge of who, what and why I
am. I was immediately accosted by a young lady who reeled off a list of
horrifying horrors that I needed to deal with immediately. Not least
amongst them are - horror of horrors! - my Income Tax Arrears. I looked
at her, horrified.

Now read on, as the young lady standing before me amazingly burst out
laughing...

Day Nineteen

"....No, only kidding. There's just today's mail for you to read. Look
at you, you've gone white as a sheet. I thought you recognised my silly
sense of humour by now."

This was obviously my secretary (and, hopefully, my beautiful young
assistant). What a sick, twisted mind she must have...I could see we
would get along famously. Now somehow I had to find out her name
without raising her suspicions.

"Sorry my dear, I seem to have been struck with a sudden and
inexplicable attack of temporary amnesia. What's your name
again?"

"You really should go and see a doctor about that, it seems to be
happening more and more often lately."

Strange name....

"Let me see if you can guess,"she went on playfully. "It'll pass the
time while we walk down to your office."

Susan? Jane? Frampton? Bunny? Billy-Joe? Nigel? Where could I start?
Seruptitiously I glanced over at the stack of folders she was carrying.
Hah! There was my answer.

"Could it be 'Department of Transport' perchance?"

"No silly. That's where we work. Okay," she sighed." My name is Meghan
Falseleg. You are Sir Akira Cholmondley-Smythe. You are Minister for
Transport, Trade and Table Tennis. (Remember when the PM thought it
would simplify things by putting all the ministries in alphabetical
order?). You are married to Lady Stella, daughter of Lord Howling, the
peat bog magnate. You have 2.4 children and your constituency is
Reading South South East by North West. Anything else you need to know
at the moment?"

"Yes. Can you explain to me why I was addressed as the Prime Minister
in the Commons, but now you're telling me I'm the Minister of T, T
&;amp; TT?"

"Oh, that's easy. That's what we call a 'continuity error'. It means
that the idiot who's writing this can't remember from one day to the
next what he's written."
That made sense.

By this time we had reached my office. It was either that or a very,
very small store room, but it did seem to have my name on the
door....

"This is ridiculous," I spluttered. "How can I work in here? There are
no desks, no filing cabinets, no windows. Just a coat rack and a place
for putting umbrellas."

"Idiot. This is the lobby. There's the main room." And Meghan opened
another door that I'd missed just behind the coat rack. This was
better, I thought, as I strode passed my secretary. I appeared to have
an office that had been modelled on the Windsor Castle State Ballroom
(and we've all been there, right?). I walked over to my desk. Twenty
minutes later I finally got there and sat down for a rest.

Meghan had left me alone to go off and get some sandwiches. This gave
me time to think about things. Obviously the situation could be far
worse, but how long could I keep up the ridiculous amnesia story? I
thought about Meghan for a while to pass a pleasant few minutes. She
was not unlike what I imagine a daughter of Chris de Burgh would look
like. She had told me on the long walk across my office that she had
recenly won two million pounds on the lottery, that her father owned a
brewery in my constituancy and that she was currently having
psychiatric treatment for her nymphomania. (Look, this is my fantasy,
all right?)

Suddenly there was a massive explosion outside and all the windows were
blown in by the blast......

Day Twenty

I found myself under my desk when the dust settled. What in God's name
had happened? I rushed over to the space where one of the windows had
been just in time to see a fleet of small boats speeding up the Thames
towards the MI5 HQ building. I counted them up...5, 6 and ...7. Good
grief, the whole British fleet was out there! They seemed to be chasing
a larger sinister-looking vessel which was leaving a trail of
devastation in its wake; bridges had been blasted out of the way,
buildings had been indescriminately fired upon, the London Eye was
leaning at a precarious angle and it looked as if a large fire was
blazing where the Millenium Dome stood. Hmmm, at least I knew this
maniac had good architecural taste even if he was an evil genius,
possibly bent on world domination not unlike Dr No or Goldfinger.

Meghan suddenly appeared at my side. She was shaking and I could see
she was on the verge of tears.

"What can we do? There are no tuna sandwiches left in the
canteen....and apparently London is under attack"

I wasted no time. "To the bat poles! We have work to do, my trusty
sidekick! The world is depending on us!" I cried.

"Uh-oh. I feared this might happen," cried Meghan, fearfully. "As well
as your strange amnesia, you appear to have the SPITS. (or 'Super
Person In Times of Stress' Syndrome). (I thought "Super Hero" was not
so tasteful in this context) It's very common amongst people who write
a diary in the first person featuring an attack on London by an evil
genius; an evil genius they think that only they can tackle."

"No time for all that technical mumbo-jumbo now, Robin," I ejaculated
(Odd, isn't it, the involuntary reactions the body gives in times of
stress?), leaping through the window-sized hole and plummeting into the
Thames below. Luckily I missed the fetid water and landed on a passing
barge stacked high with landfill rubbish heading downriver.

"Ho, good captain. I commandeer this vessel in the name of the Queen.
Please be good enough to turn around and follow those speedboats!" I
exclaimed, striking a heroic pose.

The crew of the barge were still laughing as I transfered hurredly to
pedallo belonging to the prime minister. (He had three tied up
alongside the Houses Of Parliament jetty in case of emergencies just
like this. What a visionary!) Pedalling as fast as I could, I pulled a
collapsible telescope from my utility belt and tried to discern the
whereabouts of the fast-moving CMC (Criminal Mastermand Craft). It had
by this time reached the MI5 building, as I guessed it would. This
appeared to be its target, as I had previously ascertained. Some times
I am so clever it scares me!

Meghan was by this time in the seat next to me.

"What's the plan, boss?"

I noticed that she had changed into a tight-fitting black leather
outfit that showed off her stunning figure to full effect. She had tied
her long, blonde hair back in a ponytail and she reminded be suddenly
of Uma Thurman in the awful Avengers film. As I said earlier, this is
my fantasy....

"I think it would be best to try and infiltrate ourselves into the MI5
HQ rather than charge in with the navy boys. I have a feeling that the
evil genius - whoever he is - will win this part of the battle and we
need to be near him when he starts to get overconfident due to his
seemingly easy victory. You can always tell when these people are
getting over-confident....They start laughing maniacly and talking to
the white cat in their lap about how easy the whole operation was and
how the combined might of the British armed forces couldn't stop him
trying to hold the world to ransom for 6 billion pounds sterling before
he uses the death-ray he has in orbit above all the major cities on
Earth."

"You've read ahead, haven't you?"

Day Twenty-One

Five hours later (Well, we had to stop for lunch....) we pulled up our
pedallo near the great centre of British security and quietly slipped
in through a surprisingly unlocked side door. So much for
security....

I had changed out of my batsuit into something a little less "childish"
(according to Meghan). I was now wearing a smart, dark blue Savile Row
suit with a carnation in my button hole and a bowler hat on my head. I
had a rolled umbrella under one arm and a copy of The Times in my
briefcase - along with some highpowered and deadly weaponry. It's
amazing what you find under the seat of a pedallo.

We crept silently along a series of corridors and up several flights of
stairs until we found what we were looking for - the Members' Bar. I
bought Meghan a couple of pints of lager and then she insisted on
buying a round of drinks and then we relaxed and started chatting to
some of the goons who were having a short break from doing from their
boss's devilish work and then they bought us a drink and, well, before
you know it we were all telling each other that we were best mates and
to hell with taking over the world and then somebody said something
that someone else took exception to and a scuffle broke out and I think
someone hit me with a chair and then.....

...I woke up in another room completely, a room I had visited on many
occasions. We were in M's plush office with its wonderful view out over
the Thames, with Buckingham Palace in the background. But something was
wrong. I soon ascertained what it was; M was trussed and tied in an
untidy heap in the corner of the room while behind his desk was a very
different figure. The very different figure spoke....

"So, Sir Akira - or can I call you "A"? - you thought you could outwit
me, Dr Blohard, your arch nemesis! The man you have been trying to put
behind bars for over ten years now but always think you have killed at
the end of each of our climactic chases, only for me to return a year
later with another devilish scheme to rule the world."

"Um, yes. I did recognise you, doctor. But thanks for that quick cv
resume for anyone in the room who may not have. What dastardly plot
have you for us this time? And, no, you can't call me "A" "

I thought if I could keep Blohard talking about himself long enough I
might be able to find a way out of our predicament. Meghan, my
beautiful blonde assistant, and I were strapped to rather uncomfortable
office chairs while the evil doctor lounged behind the desk in a very
comfortable-looking leather high-backed recliner - damn him. His bald
head gleamed uglily, reflecting the sun that was shining in through the
window behind him straight into my eyes and throwing the rest of him
into an evil silhouette. Despite this I knew from memory (and the very
thick file we kept on him) that his face was disfigured by a dueling
scar he had picked up while attending Neasden College of Domestic
Sciences during a fight with a fellow student armed only with a
potentially lethal egg whisk.

"I'm glad you asked. I have a very cunning plan that cannot fail - this
time. Aren't you going to ask what it is?"

I feigned disinterest. "I'm not really interested," I said, trying to
rile him so that he might let slip something of his plans. This ploy
usually worked.

But would it this time?..........

Day Twenty-Two

"I believe you really do want to hear my cunning, infallible plan
really."

Apparently it would work.....

And this is what he told us:

You remember when we were colleagues and not enemies? ( Ah! I'll bet
you haven't told anyone that for a while!) Well, you once said
something to me that I never forgot. We were both in the showers at the
Neasden College swimming pool at the time. I recall I had just dropped
the soap and to distract you from anything you might have thinking at
that moment, I said, "Akira, have you ever thought about the
possibilities of world domination?" You thought a moment and replied
that it had often crossed your mind, but trying to live on ?40 a week
didn't leave much to fund such a scheme. You pointed out that a private
army would cost at least ?60,400 per week to run and a secret
headquarters wouldn't leave much change out of ?10,150,000.
I didn't realise how much thought you'd put into it.

I quickly changed the subject, not wanting you to know that I was well
on the way to a down-payment on a secret headquarters in the Himalayas
and a local building society had agreed terms on its mortgage. As soon
as I finished my three year course in Cordon Bleu Cookery and
Television Repair I intended to disappear underground and only reveal
myself when I had a fiendish, unbeatable plan ready.

Unfortunately, as we both discovered, it wasn't as unbeatable as I
hoped and after many adventures ending in our titanic climactic battle
in the waters of the Kennet and Avon Canal, I disappeared into the jaws
of my giant pet salmon, apparently meeting a grizzly end in the maw of
my genetically altered fish. You thought that was my demise but, as you
see, I survived! How I managed to is too complicated to go into here,
suffice it to say it involved a cheese plant, a specially adapted bird
bath and three Vin Diesel DVDs.

Now, about that something you let slip in the shower - no, not the
soap, you fool. After we discussed our separate plans for secret
headquarters, you mentioned that your girl-friend's father, Lord
Howling, was something big in peat. This set me thinking and I did a
bit of research into the wonderful world of peatbogs and peatbogging,
becoming something of a world expert along the way as it happens, and I
discovered some surprising properties inherant in the supposedly humble
fuel stuff. For example, did you know that if you compress two tons of
it into a cube the size of your average 5.1 sound system sub-woofer, it
contains enough potential explosive force to send a rocket to Mars and
bring it back again?

And I have, indeed already tried this out. My first expedition reached
the red planet at the beginning of December last year. So for all those
people who are wondering what happened to Beagle 2, the European Mars
Expedition's vehicle, well, let me just say that it didn't crash and
burn - my team found it first!

Now, the next part of my plan is going to be the interesting
bit.........

What is Blohard's fiendish plot? How can he possibly affect world
domination from the depths of space? Is this going to turn into a
poorman's version of Austin Powers? Do you care?

All these questions and more will be ignored in the next exciting
episode of....

"The Akira Diaries"!!!!