When Melissa disappeared so suddenly, Peter-Bowman found himself at a loss. He couldn't quite believe that his wife had been taken from just as mysteriously as she had been presented to him. It all seemed very odd. Positively suspicious in fact. Peter-Bowman spent a lot of time gazing suspiciously at his Garfields. He didn't know how they had managed it, but he thought they must have something to do with it because, although they had certainly been witnesses to the event, they weren't talking. This left Peter-Bowman rather lonely as he had never before been in his phone box with nobody to talk to. He suspected the Garfields were sulking because as yet he did not have any children for them. He decided that the only thing to do was to leave his phone box and make an expedition of discovery. He was a little unclear on what it was he should discover, but he had become sick and tired of waiting for it in a phone box and had decided to take matters into his own hands.
To begin with, he built himself a fine sailing ship. One thing any expedition worthy the name had to have was a sailing ship, he had discovered in his pre-expeditionary research. Otherwise it was liable to only qualify as a trip to the shops to buy milk and bread. Peter-Bowman didn't very much like milk, and he already had plenty of bread. His research had lead him to believe that all proper expeditions should have lots of provisions, so had bought fifty loaves on the way back to the phone box from the library. That amount of bread was certain to be of expeditionary standards. The ship he built was not built according to any particular design. Peter-Bowman felt that a ship should be built as an organic process, and as such just kept nailing pieces of wood together until they stopped sinking when he sat on them. It was lucky that he had very many pairs of trousers, as he had to keep changing them as he got very wet when he employed this method of ship building. As a finishing touch, he nailed his two pieces of canvas to a stick to use as a sail. She was a fine ship indeed, and Peter-Bowman named her Melissa. Later that day, Peter-Bowman set sail.
He decided to sail north. Not for any particular reason. He just thought that the ocean looked a bit nicer in that direction than any other. He had decided earlier that with no Garfields to guide him any longer he might as well just go by the aesthetic of the thing. It was indeed a beautiful sight, the green blue glass of the ocean rippling like a lizards fore leg. Peter-Bowman sat back in the cockpit and gazed around him. He was munching on some bread at the time. It was really such a very enjoyable experience.
The bread was good. Freshly baked that morning, he'd bought a loaf as he made his way down to the sea just before dawn to catch the tide. The nutty aroma of the bread wafted up to him as he gently tore chunks off and stuffed them in his mouth. His teeth were having a lovely time discovering little bits of grain to nibble on, and his tongue was gloriously pushing the whole lot around his mouth getting it well mixed together with saliva and releasing all the lovely sugars.
The wind gently rustled through Peter-Bowman's hair and he thought of Melissa. She had often done exactly the same thing late at night while they sat in front of the fire talking. He smiled at the memory, and closed his eyes against the sun and for a moment just floated in a bubble of happiness.
As the sun began to make a more serious attempt at starting the day properly, Peter-Bowman looked behind him and saw dolphins following his ship. He tossed them some bread and they applauded. Peter-Bowman took a bow. He was in fact very good at bowing. It was not that he had been named for it, but rather that he seemed to grow into his name. There was also the matter of the turnip concerts which had seen him getting in a lot of bowing practice. The dolphins were so impressed at the quality of Peter-Bowman's bow that they applauded again, and who knows where it would have ended if Peter-Bowman had not suddenly seen an island up ahead and decided it was time to begin the land based part of the expedition. He had brought along a camel for the purpose. This is most likely going to prove an error on Peter-Bowman's part. Though perhaps it was a mistake that they camel made in agreeing to come. It's difficult to be sure sometimes with camels.
The appreciative dolphins gave a bow of their own in farewell as Peter-Bowman pulled on the tiller and headed for the island. As he landed his ship by the simple expedient of ramming the beach at speed, Peter-Bowman let out a shout of joy. Here he was on the very same island as before. With a bit of luck he could get in some more coconut investigations. This time he did not have to worry about being rescued by the navy, as he had his own ship to save him. And a camel.
Looking again at the coconut trees, Peter-Bowman thought he could see a shortcut. Perhaps it was not in fact necessary to bury himself in the sand to climb to the top of the tree. It would be far simpler to stand on the back of his camel. It was an exceptionally tall camel.
Unfortunately, Peter-Bowman had never been taught the best technique of gauging how bad tempered and evil minded any given camel is. It's actually quite a simple trick. You just have to measure them. It is a quirk of nature that the taller a camel, the more likely it is to spit in your eye. Nobody knows why this is so. In the case of every other animal on this planet, it is the short ones that are liable to spit in your eye. (Being short they usually hit you in the chest or lower, of course). Some biologists have theorised that it is simply because on the whole all camels are bloody minded and got together at some time in the distant past to decide how best to be really annoying. One of them suggested that they simply do the exact opposite of the regulations that had been laid out at the first council of the animals. Camels are very good at this sort of thing. They're famous for it.
It's a very bad idea to try standing on the back of a very tall, and hence evil, camel. Peter-Bowman, like everybody who has ever taken part in this experiment, is about to discover that this is the case. He does this of course for the purpose of your own edification. In other words, once you have seen what happens to people who attempt to climb into a coconut tree from the back of an extremely bad tempered camel you won't be tempted to try it at home. This is a very dangerous stunt indeed, and if you did try it at home it could lead to this book being blamed for it which would be a pity, don't you think? In other words, if the other other words didn't zip your bingbong, you have been warned.
Ignorance is bliss. Peter-Bowman happily clambered aboard his kneeling camel and made the sound that camel handlers make when they want camels to stand up. In spite of all evidence that this never works the first go unless a stick is involved, the camel stood up. It is a rather old camel in fact, and has done this experiment before. It knows that more fun can be had by being obedient at this stage then being stubborn. It makes the end result far more amusing. If you are a camel. It is not known to what extent the amusement vectors of a camel and a human overlap. It is possible that you will not laugh when the camel does.
Standing on the back of the camel, Peter-Bowman reached upwards and found that he could just touch the lowest coconut. He carefully edged his way higher up the camel's hump until he had a firm grip on the nut. Peter-Bowman felt he was well on the way to making it to the top of the tree, he just had to move a little bit further up the hump of the camel. At this point, the camel pretended to see something interesting around the corner. Peter-Bowman leant forward. The camel did the little dance that all camels do when they see something interesting around the corner. And began to slowly walk forward. Peter-Bowman thought, 'My what a helpful camel I have,' as the topmost part of the camel's hump drew level with the lowest coconut on he tree and Peter-Bowman got his arms all the way around it.
'Oh dear,' thought Peter-Bowman to himself as the camel continued trudging slowly forward leaving him dangling from the tree like a distressed watermelon. Not for long of course as gravity decided to weigh in on the side of camel amusement. Peter-Bowman found that he could not disagree with gravity, as the coconut he was holding parted company with its parent and went in search of adventures of its own. This left Peter-Bowman holding a coconut that was no longer attached to a coconut tree but was eager to get down into the world and start looking around, rent an apartment, get a job. The sort of things that young coconuts do when they first start out.
Peter-Bowman fell. He was of course knocked unconscious. When he awoke he found that he was back sitting opposite the old man on the bus, apparently having just had rather a good nap despite the lumpiness of the bus seat. Bus seats are in fact specifically designed to prevent people spending long amounts of time sleeping in them. This is due to the bus drivers union, who many years ago went out on strike in favour of increasing the lumpiness of bus seats in order to prevent people falling asleep. It was a matter of personal respect for the bus drivers. They could not help feeling that when lots of people feel asleep on their bus, they had somehow been driving the bus in an uncool and boring way. Why else would people fall asleep on them. So, it was decreed that all bus seats should be henceforth constructed as uncomfortably as possible as a means of preventing lonely bus drivers attempting to be more exciting to their passengers by performing stunts such as driving on two wheels. Just the front two. It was quickly rushed into legislation when it become known that some bus drivers were now only driving on one wheel. Curiously enough, similar reasoning lies behind the design of seating in university lecture halls.