Blogsbody had no idea, Sophy,
Feverish, taken to his bed and neither hearing nor seeing workmen pass his first-floor bedroom window armed with scaffolding. Waking on fire. And, in his delirium, imagining he is incarcerated in Kingston Penitentiary overlooking Tichborne, Ontario, a break-out away from Canada’s famed Land of the Lakes.
Later yesterday, unaware of your academic pedigree, HSC Blogsbody, opens his e-mail to read:
My dear new friend,
Charlie’s chickens are paying a high price. For not a few hours ago, I watched them play Dead Soldier to appease him. Charlie thinks he is hypnotizing them. They, too, feel his fear. So, you see, we must act now. If nothing else, for his chickens’ sake.
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All the safer for the fitting of an emergency petrol cap, Blogsbody motored back from Halfords through the Worthys - Abbots, Kings and Martyr - in time for Sunday hours and marinated roast lamb fresh from Chef Stewpot’s kitchen at the Arms in Cressroads.
“Ah, Moses! And, by Jesus, looking a holy picture of yourself in your light grey Sunday-best,” hailed the town hack at his sight of inflation-proof Ovington’s newly-appointed churchwarden Trevor-the-Wid, sat down in the lounge bar to his preferred serving of roast beef, Yorkshire pud and fresh veg.
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BLOOMIN’ SPRING!/cont. from 07/04/09
Between all else in his dysfunctional daily life - keeping the lights on at his city-built Lower House of Windsor, seeing the lights go out on his second-hand Nexus washing machine, out-of-warranty Russell Hobbs kettle and 17-year-old blue racer of a Ford Escort - Blogsbody was not the happiest old buck in the watercress capital of the world.
But out of sight, out of his mind, and Blogsbody was soon back to his bushy-tailed self for the filming of the beginning to his Continuing Story of Cressroads, starring Gary-the-Garden pushing his mower through so upmarket a town that its Help the Aged store all but trades as Harrods of Broad Street.
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By George, Freddie,
Not a whooper of a stiff-necked migrating Cygnus cygnus swan is sighted in Cressroads. But that could change, if one of the Icelandic super swans gets downwind of Reykjavik pinstripes investing in farming the town’s crop for UK supermarkets.
Atop of suffering the credit crunch, their having to continue to accept the voracious appetites of scores of native Mute swans necking and munching their way through £250,000-worth of locally grown watercress year on year.
Luxury food themselves, but becoming less so - swans, not invading, well-heeled Icelanders - if it were not for the Crown’s ancient claim to the nation’s swans.
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Happy St George’s Day,
When, George, if this were this day two decades ago, Blogsbody would have thrown your notable Hollingbery name into the hat for his two eldest sprogs by his third set of nuptials – His & Her Nibs, Matt and Keogh – to want to consider you as a victim for their ‘20p pocket money affixed for the cost of reply-postage’ letter-writing marathon.
One that ended with a grand total of 1,500 letters, written within as many days. And for the pair of them to become the world’s most prolific junior letter-writers, before the end of their primary schooldays.
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NEWSFLASH from Dogsbloggy-to-Blogsbody – A Filipino chef, two Filipino sisters and their three Filipino children are quizzed by immigration officers - so, too, a London-born, 70-year-old former War Office employee at the wheel of a model-year black German limo claiming them as his extending family - after the seven crossed the county line into Hampshire, and were stopped at a road block manned by disgruntled UK Border Agency officials, returned from an unsuccessful swoop on Winchester’s Nepalese Gurkha Kitchen and out on the prowl for alternative illegals.
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HAVE HENRY, WILL TRAVEL/cont. from 15/04/09
As it’s oft said, HRH,
You’re all heart. But watch your step picnicking in the Land of Purbeck Stone. Close by the Tilly Whim caves and within sight of the curious sea cliff known as Dancing Ledge.
So it is good to hear Yolly, Charlotte, her two young cousins and your-caring-self all arrived home safe and sound, after yesterday’s travels to Dorset’s quiet resort of Swanage.
Sheltered by Ballard Down, sandy beaches for the kids, but Uncle Tapper needing to resist his urge to go dancing on sea-cliffs.
Accidents do happen.
And you now have great family responsibility, while Yolly keeps a spotless house.
“A very lovely, hard working, devoted mother and spouse,’ you email. ‘Never am I criticized, never does she complain, never does she ask for anything.
‘She gives 100% of herself.’
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HAVE HENRY, WILL TRAVEL/cont. from 01/04/09
You’re not forgotten, HRH,
Henry Tapper, as you are best remembered at the Arms, where Blogsbody is able to announce: “Yolly good, and a daddy to boot.”
Your pet name for your Filipino fiancée Yoland, who worked a 13-hour-day as a Manila investment analyst earning the equivalent of £50-a-week.
Until you go to work securing visas and air tickets for herself and her hole-in-the-heart daughter requiring surgery.
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Hush, hush, sweet Moira!
Cressroads’ most mature model sits in the rain smoking as many as six of her Marlboro Lights in quick succession before – camera; lights (or lack of); action on the tabled sidewalk outside Caracoli’s, Broad Street - a great-grandmother packing out four-score-years-and-then-some poses for Gail Nichols’ digital camera to add the gamp of gamps to the website for the coffee house and increasingly successful brand of family business.
“My dear, they are my first cigarettes in two days,” mitigates enigmatic Moira.
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No can do?
Used as a drop by the Portland spy ring in the days of the Cold War, Cressroads’ historic public loo opposite its police station, beside Alresford Surgery and a hop, skip and jump away from the town’s ever popular Watercress Line attracting tens of thousands of visitors is under threat of closure.
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