An Unedited Abortive Story Idea
“Tesco” Biggins, the greatest explorer of our generation (although that given everything has been more or less discovered, that doesn’t mean as much as it used to) had a terrible secret. It’s the type of secret that was well-known to anyone even remotely familiar with him personally. A part of his brain was missing. Doctors said that it was such a rare condition that if only he had a cooler-sounding name, it would have been named after him. The problem was this: Sir Lionel “Tesco” Biggins, the Fourteenth Earl of Basingstoke, the man who discovered Boronia, the same man who single-handedly invented a second species of polar bear, had no sense of direction whatsoever.
His greatest achievement, the discovery of an entire central African country that no one had noticed before, was the result of his wife foolishly sending him to Tesco for a carton of milk. He returned on an aeroplane accompanied the whole way by his brother, Richard. When the Royal Geographical Society called to his house some weeks later to discuss the matter, it transpired that he had got lost in his own bedroom. He was found in the wardrobe, studying a map of France.
A month later, his body was found washed up on a beach in Sweden. The last time he had been seen was at the annual Royal Geographical Society awards dinner. His last known words were: “I have to visit the restroom.”
