Bags

On the surface of the Clangers' planet is a gladstone bag. Tiny Clanger walks around it looking at it. She goes to a hole and calls Small Clanger and two froglets. The froglets are interested in the bag. They dance around it and call to it. The bag opens and produces a sound of greeting which is not only heard but appears in the form of phonetic letters over it. The letters slowly vanish as the sound dies away. The Clangers and the froglets have a conversation with the bag. Then the froglets jump into the bag and vanish. Small Clanger climbs into the bag which shuts with a click. Tiny Clanger shouts at the bag to let them out. The bag moves weirdly away, mixing from one place to another. Tiny Clanger sits sadly. The bag opens and as the sound it makes in the air vanishes it reveals Small Clanger who falls with a bump. The voices of the froglets become froglets and Tiny Clanger catches them in her net. Tiny Clanger plays music with the music trees and the bag sings and forms baroque arabesque and curlicues in the air to the music. The soup-dragon appears insists on singing too. The bag imitates her and Tiny Clanger catches quantities of black lumpy voice.

Small and Tiny are standing on top of a heap of noises when Mother Clanger calls them in. At once the lot vanishes. The bag closes. Small and Tiny go indoors. The bag stays outside but mixes itself away and appears indoors beside the Clangers. It plays a snake-charming tune and the Clangers' tea, blue-string pudding, is charmed into it. Major Clanger asks it to return the food. It offers him noises like cake and ice-cream but he wants blue-string pudding. It delivers a great sloppy lump of blue-string pudding in mid-air. It falls on Major Clanger. He orders the bag out. The bag mixes itself away outside. Tiny Clanger comes out to speak kindly to it. The froglets throw up their top-hat so that Tiny Clanger an do a conjuring trick. She covers the top-hat with the magic cloth and it turns into a feminine jewelly bag. The two bags make hearts and flowers together to music from the music trees and before we have time to speculate on bag-biology sail away into the blue together followed by the sardonic laughter of the froglets.

Major Clanger, Mother Clanger, Small Clanger, The Soup Dragon, Tiny Clanger, The Iron Chicken

The Clangers voices were played on swannee whistles by Oliver Postgate and Stephen Sylvester.