blimey - near tragedy on the cliffs!

Blimey! what a day yesterday. Nippy Grimshaw marched up and down along the cliff tops wearing sandwich boards emblazoned with the words DOWN, DOWN, DOWN with EVERYTHING, and shouting the same at the top of his lungs! We tried to engage him in conversation, and offered him some refreshment in the form of a korn bif and wotsit sandwich, but he burst into tears - we felt terribly sorry for him but there was little we could do. We tried asking him to be a bit more specific - down with everything is a bit broad - but unfortunately before we got to the bottom of the mystery, a gust of wind caught the sandwich boards and lifted him off the ground and over the cliff edge. Nippy is now drifting on a thermal, slowly across the open sea...perhaps he'll return when the wind changes...

duck island

"Duck freakin' island? Duck FREAKIN' island???!!!" I'm afraid Geoffrey and I were awakened VERY rudely by Apsley and Cherry Fulmar's less than dulcet tones. What happened is this.

Apsley and Cherry are very nice in their own way - BUT - they are prone to petty jealousies. Hereabouts, we don't "keep up with the Jones's", we keep up with the Fulmars. Or would, if we gave a toss about keeping up with anybody - as readers will know only too well, we don't.

The Fulmars discovered that "someone" has built a floating island for ducks, half way between Hereabouts and ...Over there. It's not ideally situated, actually, as the sea gets terribly rough and there's a whirlpool and everything, (please see previous posts re. my travels to see the oracle in my coracle) so my guess is it won't last long. Nevertheless, the Fulmars are black affronted as they can see the freakin' thing from their patio. They're determined to either demolish it or build their own.

nippy grimshaw

Razor Bill told me this morning that a new person has moved in - someone called Nippy Grimshaw, and he's living in the flat above the Puff Inn. (no, Stormy doesn't live there - he lives in the old broch). A lot of people seem to be coming and going at the moment. The Narks are still at the North Pole, and obviously we're hoping they decide to stay there.
Spockfingers has gone to London for the finals of Britain's Got Talent. The Swallows are around, but we don't see them much as they're very busy due to impending arrival of youngsters. The Tupfinder general is recovering from a touch of swine flu, so has obviously been staying in. The only person we've seen this week is Razor Bill when he delivers the post.
I suppose we did have quite a weekend of it though, so can't complain.
Wilson's still working on a "cure" for swine flu, and as the dead pig behind our oven had rotted sufficiently to allow it to be unwedged, we managed to heave it over the cliffs, where it landed just above the tide line, and Wilson is presently performing a dissection.
We hope to make Nippy's acquaintance later at the Puff Inn.

spockfingers goes for bgt

What a weekend we've had. We all made a bit of a night of it on Friday, down at the Puff Inn. Stormy had a lock in, broke open some doritos and made up a vat of Purple Peril in honour of the return of Chic and Phemie Swallow - all courtesy of their second home allowance of course. The revelry continued until well into Saturday, when we all went round to Apsley and Cherry Fulmar's to watch the Eurovision Song Contest on their 62 inch LCD telly. As readers will know, and despite what Dave and Valerie Nark might think, the Fulmars are the only folks Hereabouts who have leccy and a telly - however, Chic and Phemie are now planning to claim for an £8000 home cinema system, again courtesy of their seemingly very elastic second home expenses. They plan to generate the leccy for it by paying (or threatening) the rats to get on their bikes again and power it up - as they did for Tuppence when he went through his prog rock phase (see previous posts) and performed a gig with his moog at the Puff Inn.
Anyway - I conked out soon after the start of Eurovision (thankful for small mercies) but woke up for the voting. Geoffrey was glued throughout - his fave was Ukraine (something to do with the outfits, I gather), followed by Malta. Manners prevented him from commenting on the UK entry, or the winner, so I'm none the wiser.
More news - mr spockfingers has entered Britain's Got Talent, but is unsure which talent to display to the public. Readers will know he's got two. His singing voice is certainly unmistakeable, but a little voice in my head and a flutter of apprehension in my bowels tends to make me think that he will lean towards the appalling anal emissions department - he watched the chap who was on last week giving a very feeble account of himself and declared that he could do MUCH better - as if we didn't already know that. Oh dear - it's all terribly vulgar - mind you, if he makes it to the final, Geoffrey and I will be loyally feeding him cabbage and cheering him on, and if the Swallows get the home cinema system installed in time, I will personally offer to get on a bike and cycle like "Billy-be-jiggered" in order to power it up. (er...maybe not that last part...)

summer approaches

Chic and Phemie Swallow are well and truly back and ensconced in their "second home", designated as such for tax purposes and expenses claims. Some are whispering that it's their "primary residence", given that they raise at least one family here every summer and travel to warmer climes merely to escape the weather, but who knows. No-one else bothers paying tax Hereabouts anyway - we don't hold with such draconian goings on. Incomers have made attempts to drag us into that horrible system, but so far we've always managed to see them off.

Speaking of which, the Narks seem to have abandoned their yurt, hopefully for good, but people say they have gone on an eco-holiday to some boiling hot godforsaken hellhole, so we sense they may return and Bonkers McGee is standing by just in case.

Oh - Razor Bill has just delivered the mail, and he tells me the Narks have not gone to a boiling hot godforsaken hellhole, they've gone to the Arctic Circle and are planning to swim to the North Pole.

We can only hope that they will be suitably refreshed by their holiday and that afterwards they will have the strength to target their eco-rage on some of the massive multinationals who are belching out immeasurable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere instead of ranting on to us miserable individuals about our lack of cavity wall insulation.

tupfinder general livid - calls in bonkers mcgee to save the day

Well, we tried to tunnel out as best we could but we only made it as far as the deadfall (which we had prepared a few days ago in case Tuppence arrived to collect the dead pig from behind our oven. The pig's still there by the way, but we've kind of got used to the smell - strange to say, it seems almost pleasant now... that can't be normal, can it?) Geoffrey managed to fly out of course, being a gull, and he managed to drop a length of rope down for me to shin up. I got out eventually sans dignity but it was far from easy - never mind - at least it was a tad less traumatic than being blasted out of the belly of the beast by one of Spockfingers' anal emissions (see previous posts, if you're curious).
We spent the evening at the Tupfinders' - Mrs T-G had made some cucumber sandwiches - NOT my favourite, as regular readers will know, but managed to polish them off anyway - with the aim of hatching a plan to get rid of the Narks. But the Tupfinder already had it all in hand! he was absolutely livid.
"We can't have this kind of carry on round here. Leaflets thrust through letterboxes willy nilly. Quarantined without a by your leave. Cavity wall insulations if you please. Pipe lagging experts springing up like a bad rash. Ghastly lectures about living without cars and LCD tellys - we don't HAVE cars and tellys Hereabouts...never mind cavity walls...most of us don't even have leccy...but they don't care about that..."
The Tupfinder was in full flow. "It simply won't do. I've contacted the Heavy Mob."
"Not Bonkers McGee?" Geoffrey and I were aghast.
"We've no option. Serious times need serious people. And there's no-one more serious than Bonkers McGee."
"But..who's going to control him?"
"Who said anything about controlling him? I intend to let him rip...as far as I'm concerned he can do his worst."
Bonkers arrives on Monday, and is sure to be tooled up. We've all battened down our hatches. Bonkers' worst is sure to wreak absolute havoc Hereabouts...

a pig flu

I'm afraid Dave and Valerie refused our invite to a BBQ at the Fulmars, and furthermore didn't like our "general attitude", which they found slack and degenerate! apparently, we are completely lacking in knowledge of our local ecology never mind that of the "planet" and we need to be "re-brained".
Clearly this won't do - and we aren't taking this lying down, or even "feet up on the sofa" - but more of that later. As regular readers would expect, we are having a top level meeting with the Tupfinder to discuss a riddance plan over a glass or two of madeira. But there is a bit of a problem at the moment - we can't actually get out! Dave and Valerie have decreed that as we are not humanoid like them, we are a massive pig flu threat and we have therefore been quarantined, at the outcrop. (It might also have something to do with the powerful reek of rotting pork emanating from the back of our oven...)Dave's using a surveillance camera to ensure we stay put, and if we don't we're going to be hit with a tranquilliser dart and shipped over to the hulks, and we know what ghastliness happens there, having rescued all these sheep from the jaws of death just last year (see gazetteer for "hulks" and previous posts for the rescue drama)!
The likes of Dave Nark isn't going to get the better of us. He's clearly raving. We're resourceful characters and will be out of here in a trice. Fortunately, we have spades and have started a tunnel - we hope it will link up eventually with one of the many others in the tunnel system in the cliffs (see gazetteer), and we'll be able to escape via the landmark on the cliffs known locally as the "sow's purse" (well it is now, and it will be added to the gazetteer forthwith).
Of course, before we hit on the idea of digging our way out, we were feeling quite "boared" and so we had a game of "backGAMMON" until we got "pig sick" of it. I'm sure Wilson will be working on a "cure" for pig flu but he's bound to make a "pig's ear" of it. It's high time he got the "chop". I've heard the symptoms of pig flu include crackling in the ears. Instructions for taking remedies involve "swilling" down some medicine with a bucket of water....