In Pantoland, which is the carnival of the unacknowledged and the fiesta of the repressed, everything is excessive and gender is variable.

The mid-winter carnival in Old Burgundy, known as the Feast of Fools, was reigned over in style by a man dressed as a woman whom they used to call Mère Folle, Crazy Mother.

She turns and curtsies. And what do you know, she/he has shoved a truncheon down her trousers, hasnt she?

Crazy Mother turns round and curtsies. She pulls the truncheon out of her bloomers. All shriek in terrified delight and turn away their eyes. But when the punters dare to look again, they encounter only his/her seraphic smile and, lo and behold! the truncheon has turned into a magic wand.

Big wigs and round spots of rouge on either cheek and eyelashes longer than those of Daisy the Cow; crinolines that dip and sway and support a mass of crispy petticoats out of which comes running Chuckles the Dog dragging behind him a string of sausages plucked, evidently, from the Dames fundament.

"I"m bored with television," announced Widow Twankey from her easy chair in the Empyrean, switching off The Late Show and adjusting his/her falsies inside her outrageous red bustier. "I will descend again to Pantoland!"

Well, lets not exaggerate -- grandish. Not like what it used to be but, then, what is. Even so, all still brightly coloured -- garish, in fact, all your primaries, red99lｉb•net, yellow, blue. And all excessive, so that your castle has more turrets than a regular castle, your forest is considerably more impenetrable than the average forest and, not infrequently, your cow has more than its natural share of teats and udders. Were talking multiple projections, here, spikes, sprouts, boobs, bums. Its a bristling world, in Pantoland, either phallic or else demonically, aggressively female and theres something archaic behind it all, archaic in the worst sense. Something positively filthy.

And sometimes therell be a dog, often one of those sandy-coloured, short-haired terriers. On the programmes, it will say: "Chuckles, played by himself," just above where it says: "Cigarettes by Abdullah." (Whatever happened to Abdullah?) Chuckles does everything they taught him at dog-school -- fetches, carries, jumps through a flaming hoop -- but now and then he forgets his script, forgets he lives in Pantoland, remembers he is a real dog precipitated into a wondrous world of draughts and pungency and rustlings. He will run down to the footlights, he will look out over the daisy field of upturned, expectant faces and, after a moments puzzlement, give a little questioning bark.

Double-sexed and self-sufficient, the Dame, the sacred transvestite of Pantoland, manifests him/herself in a number of guises. For example he/she might introduce him/herself thus:

One99lib•net pair of bloomers is made out of the Union Jack, for the sake of patriotism.

Once upon a distant time,

The Dame bends over, whips up her crinolines; she has three pairs of knee-length bloomers, which she wears according to mood.

The third and vastest pair of bloomers is scarlet, with a target on the seat, centred on the arsehole, and this pair is wholly dedicated to obscenity.

Illusion and transformation, kitchen into palace with the aid of gauze etc. etc. etc. You know the kind of thing. It all costs money. And, sometimes, as if it were the greatest illusion of all, there might be an incursion of the real. Real horses, perhaps, trotting, neighing and whinnying, large as life. Yet "large as life" isnt the right phrase, at all, at all. "Large as life" they might be, in the context of the auditorium, but when the proscenium arch gapes as wide as the mouth of the ogre in Jack and the Beanstalk, those forty white horses pulling the glass coach of the princess look as little and inconsequential as white mice. They are real, all right, but insignificant, and only raise a laugh or round of applause if one of them inadvertently drops dung.

The second pair of bloomers is quartered red and black, in memory of Utopia.

Of course, the real problem here is that it is Baron Hardup of Hardup Hall, father of Cinderella, stepfather of the Ugly Sisters, who, these barren days, all too often occupies the post of Minister of Finance in Pantoland. Occasionally, even now, the free-spenders such as Princess Badroulbador take things into their own hands and then you get some wonderful effects, such as a three-masted galleon in full sail breasting through tumultuous storms with thunder booming and lightning breaking about the spars as the gallant ship takes Dick Whittington and his cat either away from or else back to London amidst a nostalgic series of tableaux vivants of British naval heroes such as Raleigh, Drake, Captain Cook and Nelson, discovering things or keeping the Channel safe for English shipping, while Dick gives out a full-throated contralto rendition of "If I had a hammer" with a chorus of rats in masks and tights, courtesy of the Italia Conti school.

It was not like this when Toto dropped down into Oz; it is more like it was when Toto landed back, alas, in Kansas. Chuckles does not like it. Chuckles feels let down.

Then Robin Hood or Prince Charming or whoever it is has the titular -- and "tits" is the operative word with this one -- ownership of Chuckles in Pantoland, scoops him up against her bosom and he has been saved. He has returned to Pantoland. In Pantoland, he can live for ever.

They talked in Pantoland in rhyme. . .

In Pantoland,

Roars. Screams. Hoots.

but now they talk in double entendre, which is a language all of its own and is accented, nothttp://www.99lib.net with the acute or grave, but with the eyebrows. Double entendre. That is, everyday discourse which has been dipped in the infinite riches of a dirty mind.

A Brief Look at the Citizens of Pantoland

In Burgundy, in the Middle Ages, they held a Feast of Fools that lasted all through the dead days, that vacant lapse of time during which, according to the hairy-legged mythology of the Norsemen, the sky wolf ate up the sun. By the time the sky wolf puked it up again, a person or persons unknown had fucked the New Year back into being during the days when all the boys wore sprigs of mistletoe in their hats. Filthy work, but somebody had to do it. By the fourteenth century, the far-from-hairy-legged Burgundians had forgotten all about the sky wolf, of course; but had they also forgotten the orgiastic non-time of the Solstice, which, once upon a time, was also the time of the Saturnalia, the topsy-turvy time, "the Liberties of December", when master swapped places with slave and anything could happen?

He/she bestrides the stage. His/her enormous footsteps resonate with the antique past. She brings with him the sacred terror inherent in those of his/her avatars such as Lisa Maron, the androgynous god-goddess of the Abomey pantheon; the great god Shango, thunder deity of the Yorubas, who can be either male or female; the sacrificial priest who, in the Congo, dressed like a woman and was called "Gra

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ndma".

THE DAME

"Better out than in."

Everything is grand.

When Widow Twankey/the Queen of Hearts/Mother Goose taps Daisy the Cow with her wand, Daisy the Cow gives out with a chorus of "Down by the Old Bull and Bush".

She/he stars as Mother Goose. In Cinderella, you get two for the price of one with the Ugly Sisters. If they throw in Cinders stepmother, thats a bonanza, thats three. Then there is Jacks Mum in Jack and the Beanstalk where the presence of cow and stem in close proximity rams home the "phallic mother" aspect of the Dame. The Queen of Hearts (who stole some tarts). Granny in Red Riding Hood, where the wolf -- "Ooooer!" -- gobbles her up. He/she pops up everywhere in Pantoland, tittering and squealing: "Look out, girls! Theres a man!!!" wherever the Principal Boy (q.v.) appears.

But all also two-dimensional, so that Maid Marians house, in Pantolands fictive Nottingham, is flat as a pancake. The front door may well open when she goes in, but it makes a hollow sound behind her when she slams it shut and the entire fa?ade gets the shivers. Robin serenades her from below; she opens her window to riposte and what you see behind her of her bedroom is only a painted bedhead on a painted wall.

"My name is Widow Twankey." Then sternly adjure the audience: "Smile when you say that!"

Because Twankey rhymes with -- pardon me, vicar; and,