Intermission - Smells

People are forever coming up to me when I'm having the corns cut off my feet and saying, 'evlkeith, you're a knowledgable kind of guy, what the worst smell in the world?' Easy peasy lemon squeezy as Zippy would quite rightly say.

There are many bad smells: the smell of a dog eating another dog's poop (somehow worse than a static dog poop), the strong whiff of ammonia that emanates from most musicals and not forgetting, the stench that poured forth from Randy Milliner's backside when I was stuck in a stuffy hot car with him (I've never opened a car window so fast in my life). But these are mere fledglings in the world of stench...

As a young evlkeith, I used to make artefacts out of toilet roll paper and a sugary syrup that I knocked up by boiling sugar and water - newspaper and glue were an extravagance in the early eighties. With these primitive materials I was able to fashion, amongst other things, a Freddie Krueger mask and a human heart, glazed with the same sugary substance to give it a fresh, wet look.

What has all this got to do with smells? Good question. I'll get there soon. 

I decided to venture into unknown paper mache territory and purchase some wallpaper paste. Oh, the joys of mixing up a batch of a proper craft material in an orange bucket. I can't remember what I actually made but the important point is that I had about half a bucket full of pastey papery loveliness left. So, in a typical teenager fashion, I forgot all about this precious bucket and left it hidden under a table in my bedroom. 


Weeks later, I decided to check on the state of the paper mache. Was it still wet? Still usable? After a bit of a stir I stuck my head into the bucket to have a good look... and nearly broke my neck from severe whiplash. The stench was incomparable to any known stinky smell. It made me want to physically retch until my bumhole popped out of my mouth. This brilliant creation needed a name. And so Fomponce was born.

Friends (and enemies) from miles around came to partake in a whiff of the fabled Fomponce. Due to the far too sharp head movement caused by the pong, all left with a stiff neck at best, and at worst... a trip to A&E to get an emergency neck brace fitted. Even the Devil gave an impressed nod of his little head when he got a nose full. The Fomponce was fed with more paper, more water, more earwax, bogies and everything that could possibly make it smellier. The Fomponce became the stuff of legend throughout the whole of South Yorkshire for its sheer extreme fetid power. Eventually the Fomponce gained sentience and is now happily married in a two-bed terrace in Hull.

If anyone is stupid enough to try to make a Fomponce clone, don't blame me if you get struck down by some dubious lung disease. Strangely, everyone who had a sniff of the Fomponce now has chronic lung failure. A case for Quincy to get his teeth into, I think.

Sorry. Wrong Quincy.

That's better.

evlkeith