23/08/15. I’m going to experiment with a new posting policy. One, two pics max. per post. If I don’t like it I will amalgamate posts and bundle them into 6-8-packs, as per usual. So here’s the first of the solo posts.

Roll up! Roll up! Come see a most wonderful Fly-By-Night Circus!
BigNose McGurk and His Children. A Sob Story with a Happy Ending. For the Silver Bunny and Rose Macaulay.
This is the story of Leo(pold) “BigNose” McGurk, a serial single father.
Soft of heart and chronically naive, he got himself mixed up, time and again, with a string of heedlessly unscrupulous misses who soon after giving birth to a strapping lassie or lad, left him literally holding the baby.
By the time he had collected a dozen of such semi-orphans finances were getting strained and things were getting a trifle out of hand and Leo acknowledged that drastic action was needed to provide for such an extensive family. Unwilling to betray his proclivity for unsuitable females or sell the babies into slavery, he decided to set up a nomadic entertainment troupe. And because all his children are very pretty, indecently healthy, bright as lights and possessed of a keen sense of fun, Leo’s Poly-Dimensional Flying Circus prospered rapidly and acquired great renown all over the Badlands, from the marshes of !Ting to the underground canals of Crapston Parva.

Such was its fame that it soon reached the ever-vigilant ears of the Shoggoths, who punctually despatched Rosie to lend a hand with the after-hours babysitting and the running of the finances. The delightful Imogen, Lapsed Larva once of the Final Void, offered her services as acting part-time* usherette and ice-cream & maracas girl.
The travelling jamboree has since been renamed The BigNose & Rosie Itinerant Flying Circus, in recognition of Rosie’s invaluable contribution to the concern and to underplay the poli-dimensional element of the spectacle so as to preserve the mystery and the element of surprise. Leo may well be non-female-savvy and a hopeless administrator but he has three priceless talents: a gift for parenthood, an unerring aesthetic flair and a past-master’s technique in the matter/energy/dimensions manipulation department.
See him here, making some of his niños appear out of nowhere in particular and cascade through the Loopy Singing Hoops. Behold! even Roderick, one of the defecting Lloigor (full-time blasé creatures as they are), is impressed and utterly charmed.
The circus has so thrived that the two eldest children are now at the University of Upper Leng doing PhDs in classic quantum mechanics and funky biochemistry respectively. Three of the deserting mothers have made pacific overtures with a view to obtaining access to their forsaken offspring. Rosie is dealing with their appeals.
Alien anthropology -word to the wise. The females of Leo’s species (Probuscicus Levitans) are universally notorious, as much for their beauty, glamour and social graces as for their mindboggling fickleness. You’ve been warned.
*Imogen has not given up her post as Chairlarva of the Spartacist League 2.0

Please note there are two versions. I dearly love the blue one (I would, wouldn’t I?) but it displays kind of too dark on certain browsers (looks spot on on the tablet, where it was made). Again, feel free to vote if you can be arsed.