phew - a near death experience

Well, here I am, back at the outcrop - and I couldn't be more relieved. There was I, breathing my last, the strength draining out of my exhausted limbs, when Geoffrey appeared as I knew he would - sculling along in the coracle. I was alarmed to see that Tuppence was with him - as readers will know, Tuppence went right off the rails after his ghastly prog rock phase. But I needn't have worried.

"Grab an oar uncle Tuppy," he piped, and in a trice I was hauled on board and a flask of brandy was at my lips - but it was too late for brandy - I fell into a deep swoon - the last words I heard were,"Oh-oh - we're losing him - fetch the medical case, Geoffrey," as Tuppence snapped into his "officer in charge" mode.

I awoke to find Tuppence's concerned eyes peering anxiously into mine. "I think the adrenalin's working, Geoffrey. You can stop pumping now. Fetch the sal volatile, will you?"

Pumping? Indeed, I could feel the steady rhythm of Geoffrey's webbed feet beating out a one-two-one-two directly over my heart. Next, he snapped open a vial of sal volatile and waved it under my nose. I felt like my old self in no time at all, after that.

Later on, we sat by a roaring driftwood fire at the Outcrop, slippers on, enjoying a glass or two of madeira, a pipeful of Black Bogey and a bowl of savoury bacon flavour snax, and I was so glad to be home once more and among friends. Tuppence apologised for his past - quite frankly vile - behaviour, and I agreed to let bygones be bygones - for now anyway...

Word had also arrived, while I was "away", from Mr Spockfingers - he sent a photo of himself enjoying life on his health farm.

tossing about in the swell

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!! double aaaaaaaaargh!!!! You'll never guess where I ended up!! I was washed south, flushed down with another mouthful of mackerel, through the orca's gullet and into the stomach, where I sloshed about for ages, waist deep in a stew of god knows what - old bones, fish guts, and general debris (see photo for example) A few mackerel survived and I had a bit of conversation with them about this and that. "What do you make of this?" I asked. "Well, we don't think much of THAT" they replied. Fans of Chic Murray will know that this is a very badly told version of one of his excellent jokes - and it turns out that the orca is also a fan of Chic Murray, because he was so nauseated by our despicable rendition that he roared a terrible, terrible roar and promptly threw us all up.

I'm now tossing about in the swell, somewhere between Hereabouts and ...Overthere. I'm not a good swimmer, the water's awfully cold and my wool is getting terribly heavy...where oh where is Geoffrey??

STILL in the belly of the beast

Hello..lo...lo..Is anybody there...there...there...? Yah-HOO!!! OOH!!!!OOOOHHHH!!!!!!!!!
(there's one heck of an echo in here.)
Good grief, I'm bored. I'm completely alone, as Geoffrey flew out yesterday when the orca burped after a good lunch (viz. a large shoal of mackerel, washed down with copious amounts of seawater; we had to hide behind the molars and cling on for dear life as they flooded past) I've kept myself entertained by picking all the orca's teeth, scraping his tongue, and now I'm bo..........aaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

return of B.O.

You won't believe the week I've had. Or where I am. I'm back in the belly of the frigging beast! What happened is this. In my last post I described how Nippy Grimshaw floated off the cliff edge and over the sea, due to his sandwich boards being caught by a gust of wind.
We thought little of it until Geoffrey pointed out that there was an orca in the bay - none other than B.O. - Baby Orca - readers will recall - see previous posts if not - that B.O. arrived here some months back seeking revenge for the death of his mother, which he blamed on ME. Wrongly! (okay, I lit the match, but, as readers may also recall, it was really none other than mr spockfingers who caused the explosion inside the orca's cavernous belly - in which I was incarcerated - ergo, spockfingers is the true culprit.)
Anyway, I tried to press the point with B.O. - Spockfingers is presently in a clinic, recovering from the stresses of performing in BGT, and is not due back till tomorrow, so I didn't feel in the least bad about putting all the blame on him - via a megaphone, but with no effect - if anything he become more enraged and began breaching and snapping his massive jaws and blowing spouts of water up in the air in a most aggressive and alarming fashion.
Meanwhile poor Nippy was slowly heading downwards, the sandwich boards having lost their "lift". Geoffrey decided that we had to help him. Naturally I was horrified, but he said that he'd never speak to me again unless I helped too. So, I'd no choice but to get the old coracle out of the attic and drag it down to the shore, and sail off, taking the Tupfinder's brace of pistols with us, to fend off the orca.
Need I say more? We were swallowed up in a trice, and here we frigging are, sitting on his back molars and bored out of our skulls. Do we have a plan? of course! it is this: next time the orca opens his gob - which shouldn't be long - Geoffrey will fly out and get help. I trust Geoffrey implicitly - I know he won't let me down...

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....

new neighbours are utter swine

We've got new neighbours. Two eco-style warriors have set up home in a yurt in the tourist car park. They're called Dave and Valerie Nark, and they want all of us to get our roofs and pipes lagged, and cavity walls insulated, or they'll do something terrible. They announced through a loudhailer that we're destroying our environment, and if we don't do as they say, they will spray the area with the deadly pig plague virus. That way, the environment will be free from our contamination and abuse.
Obviously this is a bit worrying, but we think if worst comes to worst, we can ask the dreaded Wilson to manufacture "vaccine" from the dead pig behind oven - yes, it's still there - we can't move it, it weighs a ton. We'll just have to leave it till it rots away completely.
We can't possibly get our walls etc. insulated - the Outcrop is "traditional-build" i.e. draughty and full of holes - it would be a case of rebuilding the entire place, and that is utterly unthinkable.
We're going to try and get Dave and Valerie along to a BBQ at the Fulmars, this weekend weather permitting - although they do have supercharged patio heaters, so weather doesn't really matter - to see if we can get them to mellow out a bit.

dead flying pig source of horrible pong

We found the source of the horrible pong - there was a dead pig behind the oven. Geoffrey says that his cousin Ranald (Ranald Wand'ring Albatrosse) has seen pigs flying about willy nilly all over the shop, and we can only think that one of them passed away and plummeted to earth, via our holey roof, and landed behind our oven, whilst we were in Weatherfield visiting our friends in Coronation Street. When I say "passed away", there is a bullet hole in the pig's skull. The only guns Hereabouts belong to the Tupfinder general - and of course Tuppence stole the Tupfinder's old service revolver from the vitrine some while back ( see previous posts)
The Tupfinder still has a brace of pistols, but I can't really see him firing them at pigs. We can only hope that Tuppence does not come looking for his "bag". Well, if he does, he will get more than he bargained for (I say bravely). We've dug a deadfall outside the front door, just in case.
He won't be expecting that! neither will anyone else, of course - which could be a problem...

spring cleaning

Due to extreme nature of pong, we decided we had to do some spring cleaning, so Geoff and I put on our pinnies and Marigolds and got down to it.
We ended up having to use a blow torch for some of it - burnt on grease etc. - losing the general "patina" in the process - I'm not sure if the place looks better or worse.
We've got rid of the smell at any rate - when we pulled out the oven, you'll never guess what we found...

smell a rat

Geoff and I have been sleeping off the effects of a "lock in" at the Puff Inn - Stormy decided to push the boat out in honour of my and Geoffrey's return last evening, and he fetched an extra couple of barrels of madeira from the cellar - not to mention a few rounds of Purple Peril. I don't remember much after 8pm (we'd been there since lunch) - I know we staggered home eventually around dawn, as I can just recall the dawn chorus being in full cry just as I was dropping off.
I'm not sure if this really happened or if I dreamt it - but I think Granny Sooker made a rare appearance, carrying a basket of plants for sale - absinthe - which she's been growing in her "garden" or rather, outside laboratory. Geoff and me must have purchased a few stems - anyway there's something green, fibrous and slimy soaking in an old zinc bath at the back door - we'll leave it to macerate for a while longer, then distill it down once we've got all the goodness out of it. Might be nice at Christmas - if we can wait that long!
We awoke this morning to an increasingly terrible "pong". At first we attributed it to our own breath, both of our mouths not being in tip top shape after last night's bacchanalia - but after cleaning our teeth and checking our extremities I'm afraid to say the smell was still very much in evidence. We realise we're going to have to track it down - okay, we can often open windows at this time of year, but the weather isn't always this clement - this will undoubtedly mean doing some pulling out of furniture, lifting of lids etc.
Can't face it today - but will have to see if we can find the strength tomorrow. Goodness knows what we will find.