Hello

Good evening Ugg the Younger.

H**  T***  ******* M*

I’m sorry Ugg the Younger, you’re breaking up, could you try pointing your conch shell at the Sun God in the sky.

Is that better, can you hear me now?

Loud and clear.

I just got this new shell, still working out how to use it.

Ok, let’s crack on then shall we?  Do you mind if I call you Ugg, we like to drop the formalities here at Microrock.

No, that’s fine by me.

I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Urrrg the Officious and I’m the Head of Microrock’s Homo-erectus Recruitment team, or HR as we like to call it.  As you know, this conch shell interview is the first step in a protracted interview process, designed to cause as much unnecessary stress and overall loss of confidence as possible. We do hope you understand that this lengthy selection procedure is necessary due to the volume of applications we receive for our highly prized placements. Population is at an all time high, approaching 250 Neanderthals in this region alone, so you’ll appreciate that getting a foot in at the cave door is becoming practically impossible. I’ll be asking you a few questions, just to get a feel for who you are and what you can offer us here at Microrock. Firstly, could you tell me a little about your course.

Yes certainly, I’m studying Moon Watching.

Interesting, could you elaborate?

Well, the tribe noticed a while back that the Moon doesn’t always appear in the night sky or that sometimes it looks very small indeed. This caused a widespread moaning and groaning and general pulling out of hair; the considered opinion of the tribal elder being that if the Moon ever goes out, then basically we’re stuffed. How are you going to safely take a leak at midnight for instance, without getting eaten by something with massive teeth and massive claws?  The elder said we needed a Moon Watcher so I signed up.

Could you tell me a bit more about why you chose to study the Moon and what the course entails.

The big attraction for me was that I get to sleep all day, which is great ‘cos I don’t have to join the daily saber-toothed tiger hunt; possibly getting a few important limbs bitten off. My job is to raise the alarm if the Moon ever goes out; the consensus being that if this calamity ever occurs then we vote to either do a Moon dance, to bring the Moon back, or sacrifice a member of the tribe. Glugg the Weird is looking like a good choice. This is my second year Moon Watching and I’ve got to be honest, boring doesn’t begin to describe it. For example I spent 7 hours one night last week rubbing a couple of sticks together just to stave off the mind-numbing boredom.  The bonus was that I suddenly invented fire. Wow, I thought, forget about the Moon, this stuff means we won’t have to wander blindly around in the dark anymore or freeze our ******** off.  Anyway, I woke everyone up to come look at the fire but by the time we got there it’d gone out. I’ve been rubbing sticks together every night since and NOTHING.  Nobody believes in the fire anyway.  Glugg the Weird said I’d been eating too many leaves from the Wakko bush – I think that’s his problem, if you ask me.

Here at Microrock we like to think we’re at the forefront of technology. We recently produced our latest hand held device – the Microrock Flint, perhaps you own one? We’re always on the look out for highly skilled cavemen.  Do you feel Moon Watching has given you any particular skills?

Well, I’m a pretty good rock thrower.  There are some weird critters running around here at night and I give myself a Wakko leaf if I manage to bonk any of them on the head.  It’s amazing how addictive sitting on your backside for hours trying to kill random things is actually, I think it could really catch on.  And then there’s stick whittling and stone polishing.  Recently I was playing around in the sand with the pointy end of a whittled stick and I’m pretty sure I invented writing.

We’re interested in people’s social skills here at Microrock. The ability to get on with all kinds of Neanderthals in the workplace is an important attribute.

Well, I sleep most of the day so I don’t really talk to the tribe that often.  Mind you, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much.  Before the stone tablets, checking your neighbour’s hair for fleas was about as good as it got around here, in terms of sparkling social interaction, Oh and the occasional night, club-fight, when everyone’s had too many Wakko leaves.

Do you have any hobbies?

Yes I do actually.  I recently invented cave painting.  It kind of followed on from the writing thing.  Before I went off Moon Watching, one night last week, I doodled this thing on my cave wall of old Glugg the Weird about to give his wife a good thwack on the head with a club.  It wasn’t very good, no colour, form or perspective but Gluck the Tall wandered in and sat down in front of this painting and just stared at it, then he went off, coming back with the rest of the tribe.  They sat there until the Sun God slept,  just staring at the wall, then one of them asked if Glugg the Weird had actually hit his wife. So the next night I painted three more images, Glugg tripping over a rock, his wife catching the falling club, then giving old Glugg a thwack on the head with it. Well the tribe fell about, grimacing all over the place, making a very peculiar ‘arf, arf, arf,’ sound, which led me to believe that I’d also invented Larfter.  They all came back to the cave the next night wanting to see more.  Mum said she wasn’t having a cave full of Neanderthals every night, so I painted the next image on portable stone tablets.  Now everyone spends all day looking at these tablets instead of going out on the hunt.  It’s causing a few other problems too. Wanda the Big Mouth and Wenda the Small started pulling each other’s hair out, ‘cos Wanda said people liked my painting of her more than the one of Wenda.  And Grunda the Grandma keeps asking me to paint pictures of her ugly grand kids so she can show them round.

Some interesting ideas there Ugg.  I really shouldn’t say anything but ever since Eve set up Apple when she left the garden of Eden, they’ve been itching for a takeover. The Apple arrowhead is outselling the Microrock flint, which is why we’re on this recruitment drive looking for young people who show ingenuity and initiative.  There are a few other candidates I need to interview, then we’ll get back to you in the near future.  Thanks for your time.

Ok, thanks for calling.  I’ll be getting back to the Moon Watching now.  The Moon is completely round at the moment, it looks beautiful. I’ve been chipping away at this large rock trying to make it Moon shaped. Think I’ll give up though, keeps rolling away from me – that’s not much use to anybody is it?  Bye.

*****

Ugg later received a call informing him that he had been unsuccessful at the conch shell stage.  Urrrg explained that Ugg had failed to show evidence of sufficient interest in his studies, or in the work carried out at Microrock.  Whilst certainly interesting, Urrrg felt that Ugg’s inventions just wouldn’t work in the ‘real world’ would they?  – and perhaps erred on the side of ‘wild fancy’ rather than workable ideas.

Undeterred Ugg brought together all the skills he had acquired during his time as Moon Watcher and later set up the company Guggle.  Guggle disseminated information of all kinds far and wide via the use of writing and images on stone tablets, transported by means of the wheel, once Ugg realised he was responsible for mankind’s greatest invention.  Ugg never did get the hang of fire, but Glugg the Weird did, when the Wakko bush was one day hit by lightening and the smoke from the burning leaves made him feel very good indeed.

In 9,990 BC Guggle amalgamated with Microrock and Apple in a daring takeover bid and the first thing Ugg the Younger did was abolish HR and employ Urrrg the Officious as his Stone Age runner.