'Tonight', they decreed, 'tonight's gonna be a good night'. Not many people know that the story of Black Eyed Peas' biggest hit was centred around a vending machine.
But this story is not about Fergie and co. It is about the mysterious vending machine that fell from the sky. Actually it had fallen off the back of a flatbed truck bound for Peterborough, but the people of Little Munchingham had never seen its like before.
It was carnage! I mean, it had instructions and all that malarkey, but they were nigh on impossible to follow. The villagers battled on resolutely, but they were horrified to find that what they had actually built from the assorted pieces was a large wicker man. And what's more, they had accidentally loaded it with sheep and pigs, as well as Mr Rimbaud from number 43, who bore a passing resemblance to Edward Woodward.
"Are you sure this is what the Sky Gods want us to do?" Protested Professor Waffle, who ran the University. The University was only a pile of cardboard boxes on the Village Green, but the Professor could say the Alphabet all the way up to "R", which made him terribly clever.
'You lost. Get over it', repeated the villagers in a kind of mantra at Professor Waffle, adding 'Burn it MEANS burn it' into the equation. What NOBODY expected however, was for one of the trapped pigs to wander calmly out of the effigy and start tap dancing, wearing a top hat and black tuxedo. What WAS going ON?
"Witchcraft!" Cried the Professor, and then, having suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be a man of science, took a sudden interest in the state of his cuticles. Baron Poppet, self appointed head of the village, stepped forward to challenge the beast, waving aloft his chicken of office.
"If it isn't Almin Fotchley", said the pig, and stretched out his front hoof. The chicken took a curious glance for a couple of moments and said "Charlie Goherd! I haven't seen you since...since..."
"Since graduation," replied Charlie. The villagers, getting more irate by the minute, sat and listened to this painfully dull conversation for the next 36 days, before turning their attention back to the burning effigy, although to be fair they didn't have anything to light it with, so they had to attempt to heat it with a travel radiator that one of Mr Rimbaud's neighbours had picked up from the pound shop.
At this point, the Wise Woman stepped forward to make one of her pithy pronouncements. "Woe, thrice woe be to the tides of March!" She said. Even she didn't know what she meant, but everyone knew she was wise because three years previously she'd swapped the Baron's chicken of office for a plimsoll and it had taken him a month to notice.
But the pig was wiser, as he had been talking at length to the plimsoll under the premise that they thought it was a chicken, even having gone to such lengths as ventriloquising said footwear as an extra precaution. He grabbed the plimsoll, slapped the wise woman cleanly along the top of her (it must be said remarkably high*) forehead and set about climbing the effigy up to where Mr Rimbaud had been imprisoned.
"Stop him! He's attempting a rescue!" cried the Professor, before suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be against the burning. He slunk off to bed early. Before long the pig reached the top of the effigy and, in an unexpected turn, was garlanded with a wreath of fresh roses and whisked off to start a new, prosperous life in Guatemala by unnamed benefactors. As he looked back at the baying crowd, he saw Mr Rimbaud laughing very slowly, giving the pig a knowing nod and a wink. It was blatantly obvious what had happened here after all.
It had all been another of Rimbaud's pranks. He and the pig had engineered the whole thing by covering the sign warning of speed bumps just as the flatbed left the duel carriageway.
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