Monday 7 March 2016

Harry Potter and the curse of the Mechanical Flying Beast





Young Biggles Potter was a rubbish wizard and could do no real spells of any worth. In particular he was entirely unable to get his broomstick to fly and it gathered dust in the corner of his room. This was highly amusing to almost all the other young wizards, particularly because he was called Biggles as well as being a member of the now famous Potter family. However Biggles or to give him his full title Master Biggles Isambard Kingdom Potter was a top class mechanical engineer and so he decided that he would use his own skills to achieve flight.

Well young Biggles worked away busily for ages making his mechanical flying beast. He produced a large willow nest shaped basket for himself and added rather wondrous flapping wings and used the very latest cleverly designed lightweight engine to drive a propeller. The design was a stroke (no pun intended) of genius and it finally meant that young Biggles could take to the air, something he felt he was destined for. And we can safely say he was a very happy young wizard (OK something of a rubbish wizard).

News of young Biggles and his flying device soon spread across the land and finally a large file arrived on the desk of a Mr Harry Potter in his palatial office deep within a large austere government building. Well Mr Potter was not entirely happy and nor were the powers that be that ran the great bureaucratic machine of government. So Mr Harry Potter was dispatched to talk to young Biggles Potter and persuade him of the error of his ways in building such a foolish and entirely un-magical flying machine.



When Mr Harry Potter finally caught up with young Biggles He was giving his fellow students trips around the Countryside in his mechanical flying beast.  Biggles was surprised, shocked and excited to see his distant and very famous relative Mr Harry Potter, but Harry himself did not look happy.  You see he explained to young Biggles that once everyone started using mechanics and science to do things like fly then it was the thin edge of the wedge; it would destroy the entire credibility of magic, and wizards would be left doing futile things such as sawing ladies in half, making rabbits appear out of hats or lions vanish from cages. Biggles told Harry that he was not the only person to have made a mechanical flying beast and that the Wright brothers had made one too. Of course Harry did explain that the Wright brothers had in fact breed a huge half Cat half Eagle (called Kitty Hawk) which was acceptable in the world of wizards and magic. 

But Harry knew that the young wizard’s mechanical flying beast was in fact the start of the end, the great curse that had been expected for some time now, and so it proved to be. Before you could shout . . . Look out JK Rowling is behind you . . . . everyone wanted one of the new-fangled mechanical flying machines


No one wanted to fly about on uncomfortable broomsticks getting cold and wet in the wind and rain any more when they could enjoy the comfort of a mechanical flying beast with its inflight entertainment. And so as time passed magic slowly vanished as the rational world of mechanics and science took over and today no one except the occasion mad old witch with a black cat is seen flying on a broomstick and as for flying carpets they have not taken to the air in centuries. And if you buy a small child a magic set today it will burst into tears and demand an iPhone; you see what chance has magic got in this modern age of science and rational thought.       

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