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When we opened at the Northland Shopping Centre we had a huge space to turn into a restaurant... with towering, 15 metre high walls to overcome. We achieved this with huge blow-ups of our favourite characters and a monkey piloting a propeller driven dirigible.
The sign relating to the airship reads:
"The Monkey Airship".
Lovely!Tone News inert gas photographic airship for the correct and exact recording (by means of the action of light on suitably prepared silver-nitrate film) the annual "Great Colonial Heavier-Than-Air Pancake Tossing Race For Ladies", held in conjunction with Shrove Tuesday, an international Pancake Celebration Day.
The clockwork-powered airship is piloted by an elderly, semi-retired Chimpanzee trained in the art of aerial photographic reconnaisance, having spent some fruitful years in the employ of the late colonial balloonist and photographer Townsend Durreaux, celebrated for his panoramic views of the battlefields of The First World War.
The airship is the last remaining example of a type once common and has been extensively remodelled from original plans. The jet-assisted take-off device, obvious under the pod of the main basket, is a relatively recent addition made necessary after a near-fatal attack by a rhinocerous whilst the airship (and it's occupant) were on duty in Tanganyika.
A point of mild historic interest is the large woven-cane basket which passes for a cockpit... some have speculated that it is no more than a common laundry basket... which in fact it is, except that it was especially woven by a coven of blind nuns involved in the relief of Paris during the Great Seige of 1886.
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