HORNE: So you're the Ballet Bona now?

JULIAN: Yes, I'm Julinski and this is my friend, Sandeyev.

SANDY: Well how nice to vada your eek again, Mr. Horne. What brings you trolling in here?

HORNE: I heard you were presenting a new ballet. Could you tell me something about it?

JULIAN: Yes - it's called L'Aprés-midi d'un Goose.

SANDY: That is your actual French, with the exception of goose, and we don t know the French for that. It means your goose's afternoon. That is the actual translation, isn t it, Jules?

JULIAN: Yes. That is your actual.

SANDY: Translation

JULIAN: Yes. You see, we’re bilingual. We've been suivezing la piste on the telly every Friday. Does wonders for your bon mots.

HORNE: Why goose?

SANDY: Why not?

HORNE: Well, surely it should be L'Aprés -midi d'un Faun.

SANDY: Well, you see, we went up the costumiers but they didn't have no fauns' costumes left. All they had was a goose left over from panto, It's actually got a trapdoor in it for dropping your golden egg out of, but we're not using that. It lacks poetry - among other things.

JULIAN: 'Course, the big drawback is that it's a second-hand goose, you see. I mean, you don't know who's been in there. Still, you have to suffer for your art, don't you ?

HORNE: Well, what actually is the story of the ballet?

SANDY: Well, you see, Jules here is the Goose King and I'm a hunter - Prince Roderick the Mighty. And I'm trolling through the forest one day and I come across this lovely creature -

JULIAN: That's me.

SANDY: He looks better in the skin. So anyway, I vada this goose cruising about on this magic pool. So what happens? I'll tell you what happens - all me hunting instincts rise, and I whip out me crossbow, do a pas de chat all around the stage, very butch-like, then I take aim and fire - and transfix him with me magic barb. Then he does the Dance of the Dying Goose.

HORNE: I'd like to see him. Do you think he'd do it for me now?

SANDY: Ask him, ducky.

HORNE: Would you die for me?

JULIAN: Gladly.

SANDY: There he goes. He's dying now. Look at him flapping away. Flap, flap, flap, go on, gel! Oh, it's very pathetic, isn't it?

HORNE: You took the word right out of my mouth.

JULIAN: (grunts and groans as he prances about)

SANDY: There he goes - he's going now - it's ebbing away. No, wait a minute, it's coming back. No, he's going again look, look - the way he's all curled up in a little ball - ah, bless him.

JULIAN: (bellows with pain)

SANDY: What's up?

JULIAN: I've got me beak caught up me trapdoor. Hang on a minute. Right. Now, with a final flutter of my broken wings, I stagger back to the magic pool and plunge in.

SANDY: Filled with remorse, I leap into the pool after him and after a breathtaking pas de deux, we expire together. The whole dénouement smacks more than a little of the definitely fantabulosa.

JULIAN: Course, we know that we're a little far out. We're only on the fringe, as it were.

HORNE: Of the festival?

JULIAN: Oh, yes. And of the festival. But if we get the critical acclaim we deserve it'll mean a world tour Monte Carlo, the Lincoln Centre, the Bolshoi, Covent Garden -

HORNE: And if it doesn't succeed?

SANDY: Well, I s'pose it's back to washing up at the Corner House.

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JULIAN:: I had to give up the ballet. That goose skin gave me claustrophobia - among other things - and for a time, Sand and me was hard put to it to know what to do next. Then we thought, "Why not all-in wrestling?" I missed the music at first but otherwise the transition was easy, as ballet and wrestling are not dissimilar. At least not in the way Sand and me approached the noble art of the grapple. So anyway, we were practising our cross-buttocks in Wally Goatsbreath's gym one day when Mr.Horne popped in.

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