Or: How I Learned to Love a Small Pebble Named Philby.

Bradley C. Williams was created in the Kingdom of Mercia by the unholy union of a grizzled, old coal miner and a large lump of lard on one fateful, stormy night in the summer of 1976.

The scrawny infant that resulted from that terrible event nine months later was feared by many and loathed by all. Described as the spawn of Satan’s own butt crack, that ill-fated child quickly grew into a slightly older, ill-fated child.

Miraculously, the boy, if he could be called such, grew into a six year old child in the space of only six years. A fact that, to many, further illustrated his demonic heritage.

In early 1983, the boy’s father, (who had raised the child alone after the large lump of lard melted in the heatwave of ’77) finally tired of the child’s constant cries for attention and insistent demands for Mint Chocolate Chip Cornettos and enrolled the boy in a nearby Monastery, washing his hands of the little runt for good.

It was during Bradley’s time at St.Thistlethwaite’s and The Holy Lambasted Urn Containing a Small Rubber Gromit that he learned to love lobsters and the pleasure to be found in bashing yourself over the head with pieces of fruit.

During his attendance at the various scholastic lessons provided by the Monks of St. Thistlethwaite’s, he almost learned to read and write and could be regularly found in the Monastery’s extensive library through all hours of the day and night.

The Monks greatly encouraged academic improvement and gave the young boy every opportunity to broaden his mind and absorb information from the many ancient tomes and parchments in the library.

Young Bradley chose to ignore this and spent his time in the lower depths of the library drinking Holy Communion wine and smoking roll ups of a herbal nature.

After ten years at St. Thistlethwaite’s, reaching the ripe old age of 16 after only fifteen years and another one (witchcraft!), Bradley was literally kicked out of the Monastery, the only person to ever have been dismissed from a Monastery since Big Grunty Bob the Wanker in 1517. This is a fact which, to this day, he is intensely proud of.

If you should ever run into Bradley, do not ask him about this as he will drop his pants to show you the scar the Abbot’s boot made with zero hesitation and nobody should have to live through that horror.

The Monastery had, in its possession, the same boot that had contacted Big Grunty Bob’s buttocks in the 16^th century and it is an evil affair. Specially created to inflict as much pain as possible while propelling the kickee as high into the air as the technology of the time could allow.

It has many spiky bits on the toe end and a large receptacle on the heel which is packed with gunpowder and thereafter lit to propel the boot forward with such force that, after he had booted Bradley, the Abbot needed sixteen months in traction, lost a testicle and for the rest of his days could only turn left.

Even so, the Abbot maintains it was worth it.

Between the ages of 16 and 19, Bradley attempted to find his place in the world.

In 1987 Bradley joined a travelling circus as a performing elephant, which was doomed to failure from the beginning as his recent buttock injury meant he couldn’t balance on the ball as he was directed. The fact that he wasn’t an elephant may also have had something to do with his almost instant dismissal.

He then secured a spot on a swordfish boat named the Andrea Gail out of Gloucester, New England. He was unfortunate enough to be a deck hand on the Andrea Gail as it sailed out to the Flemish Cap, deep in the North Atlantic, during the so called ‘Perfect Storm’. Unfortunately, the sword boat sank with all hands and Bradley sadly drowned.

During his stint in hell, Bradley performed administrative duties for a Hunger Demon named Francis. He believed he had accomplished his duties with aplomb and diligence. That was until Francis reported him to Satan for incorrect filing and ignoring health and safety procedures and he was promptly expelled back to our plane of existence.

In 1988, at the height of the video game explosion, Bradley could often be found hanging around arcades trying to eat children. When questioned by the authorities about his actions, he could only repeat the phrase: ‘I thought they were power pills, waka waka waka.’

He was subsequently sent to ‘The Bolsover Home for the Dribbling Insane and Hat Stand Fanciers’ for rehabilitation and, as the judge in charge of the trial put it, ‘a swift metaphorical kick up the arse’.

The Bolsover Home for the Dribbling Insane and Hat Stand Fanciers, or simply ‘Dribblers’ as it was locally known, was a dark and foreboding place with a terrible history. It was the sort of place that mothers threatened their children with. Telling their offspring that Dribblers was where they would end up if they didn’t tidy their rooms, stop spilling custard on the carpet or fail to show some respect to Old Mrs. Posterior who lived near the cemetery. The local children had a habit of stealing fruit from the ancient lady’s apple trees, desecrating her front doorstep with bags of cat turds and generally treating her with disdain. But then, she was a massive, saggy arsehole.

Dribblers was only ever mentioned in hushed tones, even from those who refused to believe the tales of the supernatural and bizarre that were well known around the area.

Many patients disappeared under mysterious circumstances and the Chief Psychiatrist was generally under investigation for some kind of malpractice, yet always managed to remain at his post. Some say it was because he had in his possession a grizzled, old badger paw that gave him the ability to control the minds of others. Others said it was because he was having it off with the Magistrate’s wife. Yet others said it was just because he was a lucky bastard and that the local police spent most of their time pissed as newts.

In Bradley’s time at Dribblers he became chair of the polo club and learned to play the ukulele.

Released a mere six months later on the grounds of being untreatable, Bradley then wandered up and down the M1 in Derbyshire for three months, befriending squashed hedgehogs and eating krill. It was here, on a lonely stretch of road just outside Ault Hucknall, that the permanently confused teenager met a small, sentient pebble named Philby.

Bradley and Philby formed an instant bond that few could understand and fewer accepted as normal. But that bond was to see the inseparable pair through the many hardships and experiences to come.

They communicated in their own language which, to the outside world, looked a lot like some geezer muttering to a pebble in a Yorkshire accent.

Historians and academics have, in the past, tried to decode this language in the hope that they would find some deep, hidden meaning in it. They never did. But it seemed to work for Bradley as he never tried to eat a child again.

It consisted of simply five phrases, almost randomly uttered;

“Ey up our lad, wats wrong wit quadraphone?’

“Eee, tha knows, it’s all f’shits n giggles til some bloke loses is nose”

“Gonna look up t’drainpipe, thiz all gunge int’bottom.”

“Well, I’ll gu to our Bill’s Mam’s n crank ovver t’furnace flue.”

“Eee, I remember when all these fields were nowt but fields.”

The various parts and sections of each phrase appear to be interchangeable and seem to convey a dizzying array of subtle meanings. Or, as one scholar posits; ‘It’s just some twat talking bollocks to a stone.”

There is no record of Philby the pebble ever saying anything with the exception of a hotly disputed account in the ‘Derbyshire Twat Gatherer’ about a man who swears he once heard Philby say, in a deep, rich baritone;

“I say Sir, you appear to have a furry humbug in the pocket of your pantaloons, kindly be a sport and discard of said sweetie before returning me thusly, there’s a good chap.”

But that same source also claims to be able to hear a horse fart from fourteen miles away so his account is generally dismissed as pure fiction and the work of potato peel vodka.

At age 19, Bradley and Philby travelled back in time to 1969 and joined the Apollo Space Program in Houston, Texas. They were both passengers on Apollo 11 and Bradley was actually the first human to set foot on the moon.

Philby was the first pebble to set pebble on the moon.

Bradley has been recorded in interviews stating that Philby enjoyed this experience as he had distant relatives there, some of whom joined them on the return to Earth and have lived here ever since. He has also been recorded as stating that Philby’s space suit was troublesome as Philby’s pebble butt was an odd shape and the helmet kept falling off.

Not that it made any difference. He’s a pebble.

The U.S. Government hid the results of this from the general public and wiped all mention of Bradley and Philby from the history books as it was deemed unsuitable for the respected NASA program to be associated with the events that took place on the lunar surface.

Later, NASA re-staged the moon landing in a small warehouse outside Tucson that was, ironically, previously used to store old 45’s of ‘Moon Landings’ by Whistling Joe Bidermeister.

Bradley C. Williams was, in his own words, the first human to accomplish many things on the Moon. These include, but are not limited to;

The first human to:

• Drop a deuce on the Moon.
• Poke another astronaut in the eye on the Moon.
• Moon on the Moon.
• Shout ‘Ralph’ down the big white telephone on the Moon.
• Fall into a crater and shit himself as he thought he was being attacked by a ‘wibbly green thing’ on the Moon.
• Use the phrase “Bloody ‘ell, there’s an ‘orrible wibbly green thing” on the Moon.
• Slap a sentient pebble dressed in a ‘wibbly green thing’ costume on the Moon.
• Swear profusely on the Moon.
• Take photographs in an interesting and amusing way by pretending the distant Earth was a testicle on the Moon.
• Drink too much tequila and fall over suffering from ‘Tequila Knees’ on the Moon.
• Indecently assault a lobster on the Moon.
• Purposefully damage Government Property in defiance of ‘The Man’ on the Moon.
• Make a terrible joke about how he used to be a werewolf but he’s alright nowoooooooooo on the moon.
• Get punched in the face by another astronaut for attempting to poke him in the eye on the Moon.

Fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin was bribed with a lifetime supply of McDonald’s cheeseburgers and Dr. Pepper to keep his silence. He was also required to punch anybody who ever questioned the official story of the moon landings.

Even today, Buzz continues to slowly transform into a gherkin.

No one knows what Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, the remainder of the Apollo 11 crew, received in return for their silence. Although history reveals that Michael Collins once went on an all-expenses paid, two week holiday in Majorca with the Queen of England and Neil Armstrong played ‘Agent Smith’ in the director’s cut of ‘The Matrix’.

Who knows if these events are related?

Upon returning to their own time, Bradley and Philby temporarily parted ways and Bradley started a small business travelling around the midlands going door to door selling doors. It took him quite a while to understand the ridiculousness of his idea and the reason behind its failure; the doors were very difficult to carry around on foot.

Legend has it that during this period, Philby the pebble was involved in a love triangle with a moon rock, which was apparently his own great, great, great, great niece, and an irregularly shaped piece of basalt from Massachusetts. There are no further details of those events save sightings of a bizarre piece of grey basalt that only felt one sixth of the Earth’s gravity.

In 1991, Bradley was briefly involved in the ‘Grunge’ scene in Seattle, Washington, until he realised that it wasn’t actually called the ‘Gunge’ scene and that sadly, his own particular talents were not required.

However, he did contribute indirectly to the lyrics of the song ‘There’s Some Green Sticky Stuff on My Amp’s Overdrive Button’ which was a minor success for an early incarnation of the band ‘Nirvana’ who went on to be pioneers in the movement.

Reuniting once again with Philby the pebble, who was on the run from the irregular piece of basalt’s father after getting her pregnant, the intrepid pair headed north to Canada where they both lived in a tree for ten years.

Bradley has often been pressed on why he decided to live in a tree for a decade and what events transpired during that time. His only revelation on the subject was;

“It’s a bit parky in t’winter and I did once shit a whole pine cone.”

2002 saw the daring duo once more on the shores of that sceptered isle known as Britain. That green and pleasant land. That muse for poets, wordsmiths and philosophers. Where Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge partook in serious quantities of mind altering pharmaceuticals and wrote many celebrated, treasured, but bloody weird, pieces of poetry and prose.

Where Wordsworth ‘wandered lonely as a cloud’ because he had no idea who he was, where he was or how he got there in the first place.

Where Percy Bysshe Shelley stumbled into a lake wearing naught but an inflatable tea cosy and declared himself ‘Lord of the Ducks’ before vomiting and floating downstream unconscious. He finally staggered ashore, three days later in Henningly, into Mrs. Moluda’s Thames-side herb garden.

(The world of English literature owes a lot to that tea cosy, without it, Shelley would almost certainly have drowned!)

Where Sam Coleridge sat in small dark room ranting about his hate for the common albatross.

Britain: that home of Special Brew powered tramps and casual violence. A bastion of freedom in a dark world, but only if you have the money for the membership fees.

The pair eventually settled in Scotland as it provided the sort of scenery that inspired the likes of Burns, Scott, Stevenson and Dunbar to pen their great works. That, and it offered the kind of wind that can burn your face off which Bradley quite liked.

Often proud of his Scandinavian heritage, which may or may not be a lie, Bradley has a nose specifically designed as a wind break so he is perfectly at home in 70mph gales. He finds the peace and tranquillity brought on by high winds keeping other people indoors very tranquil and peacy.

The well-known Scots hospitality and friendliness was a hugely attractive attraction to Bradley and Philby after spending so much time alone up a tree passing pine cones.

Scotland is also the only place in the world to boast the inclusion of the rare Buckfast powered tramp, ‘The Jakey’, which often fascinated the pair from a pure research perspective.

At this point Bradley was already quite mad and spent many years dodging the authorities and bothering fish. His favourite pastimes during this period were pointing at dogs and asking strangers for directions to Macclesfield.

After a rash of dogs being admitted for emergency psychiatric therapy in Glasgow, on account of feeling a bit paranoid and self-conscious after being pointed at one too many times, Bradley was tracked down to a skip on Argyle Street and promptly arrested.

During the ensuing investigation it was established that Bradley and Philby had actually fabricated their decade long stint in the branches of a pine tree in Chawaka Falls, Canada, as a cover for a long and distinguished career as secret agents and freedom fighters in Central America.

The pair had been responsible for the fall of the tyrannical government of Nicanacaparanam and the assassination of the evil dictator known only as ‘El Salsicha’.

They are still celebrated as national heroes in Nicanacaparanam today and statues dedicated to their exploits stand in many towns and population centres.

During the long battle for freedom against the evil El Salsicha, Bradley lost both his legs in a particular brutal mango fight and Philby had a small chip knocked off his undercarriage.

The Nicanacaparanamians produced the finest physicians and surgeons to aid the pair and Bradley soon had prosthetic legs made from guava husks and donkey droppings attached to his thigh stumps while Philby’s chip was filled with a bit of strawberry hubba bubba.

Bradley’s new legs functioned far better than his originals, enabling him to achieve almost superhuman feats such as walking slowly, jumping discarded corned beef cans in a single bound and warding off travelling bible salesmen.

Philby gained no such superpowers. He’s a pebble.

Due to their heroic actions in Nicanacaparanam and the last minute intervention of the Cats Protection League, who successfully argued that the dogs deserved it, the pair were saved from the guillotine. Their sentences were to perform community service to repay their debt to society. The harshness of this sentence horrified the general public and Bradley himself petitioned the court to let him be beheaded instead. The court refused.

For the next three years, Bradley and Philby were ordered to pick up litter on Blackpool beach. Those with knowledge of Blackpool beach will quickly realise why Bradley would rather have his noggin knocked off. The long stretch of bloodstained sand was the haunt of many flatulent donkeys and a regular holiday destination for every chav around the country. The chavs, or scum to be more accurate, were drawn to Blackpool’s many illicit charms such as ‘pound a pint’ in its many bars and pubs, a staggering number of drug dealers, the world’s greasiest chips served in old copies of tabloid newspapers and a worrying number of one legged, one eyed, toothless prostitutes.

It is often said that the best way to view the seaside town is from the top of Blackpool Tower, and this is completely true, but not for the reasons you would expect. It’s the only place in the town where you don’t get your nostrils melted by the overpowering stench.

The beach is littered with the sort of detritus you find on the street of Ibiza town at 4am on a Saturday night, but multiplied tenfold.

Broken bottles, discarded Burberry underpants, hypodermic syringes, cigarette butts, used condoms and a terrifying amount of body parts; usually legs, eyes and teeth.

The town’s three piers are in a permanent state of near collapse due to the sheer weight of condoms washed up against the supports by the brown, shit rich surf.

For three years Bradley and Philby had to wade through this filth, fighting a losing battle against the refuse of the intellectually challenged. It changed them, jaded them, hardened them to life and chased love, beauty and empathy from their souls like a dog chasing a postman wearing bacon underpants.

Well, it changed Bradley. It didn’t change Philby. He’s just a pebble.

After their sentence was finished, the pair went into isolation, living up a tree in Sherwood Forest. They were, however, soon chased off by the constabulary who really didn’t like them at all. Many lumps were imparted with the use of many truncheons.

2004 saw Bradley realise that none of these dates made sense so he skipped a year to make this biography chronologically accurate once more.

In 2005, Bradley became head bell ringer in a tiny church in the even tinier town of Imber on Salisbury Plain. Records do not show where he had been for the previous twelve months, he just turned up in Imber out of the blue and carried on from there.

Initially a very successful campanologist, Bradley’s career was cut short after he had convinced the Rector to allow him to adjust the swing of the main bell. The Rector, trusting Bradley against his better judgement, allowed the adjustment.

17 people and 4 sheep lost their lives in the ensuing explosion.

The church was destroyed. The Rector was a broken man and moved to Sicily to study the use of cat’s arses as towel holders. The Mayor was disgraced and a full investigation was held by the local police.

Bradley successfully argued that he was an idiot and that no man in his right mind should have allowed him near those bells. The Judge agreed and sentenced the whole town, or what remained of it, to take a good look at itself in a mirror.

Bradley walked away a free man with his reputation intact.

2006 saw Bradley begin to realise that this biography was going on for far too long, so he decided to spend the next fourteen years sitting quietly on a log near a stream pretending to be a frog.

In 2020, after spending too much time sitting on a log with a mouth full of fly juice, he left the peaceful confines of the stream and wandered back out into the world.

Unbeknownst to him, a simple case of the common cold mutated in his underpants, creating the novel Coronavirus known as Covid 19.

Immediately repulsed by the smell, Covid 19 quickly escaped and began to spread around the world bringing countries to their knees and giving a billion companies a reason to increase their prices while simultaneously cutting services.

Bradley, depressed and near suicidal, plagued by the thought of being the bringer of doom for so many, attempted to end his life by throwing himself off the uppermost deck of Tower Bridge.

He failed miserably, as he had at anything else he had attempted in life. Furthermore, he had landed on the Queen’s favourite guillemot; Donald.

The Queen had Bradley arrested and charged with being a twat. He was incarcerated in Madame McDermott’s Home for the Delirious and Dazed where he still resides today with his three pet bricks and a gold plated turnip.

No one knows what happened to Philby but then, he is just a pebble.