Continuing Story of Cressroads

AS IN ‘RICHARD’ Practice Manager Hanney of Station Road Surgery, Cressroads, where town hack Blogsbody is read to blast forth: ‘Here’s hoping this second email - after Blogsbody is put under doctor’s orders to return to dropping 20mg Teva-of-Eastbourne, film-coated, pink Simvastatin tabs inscribed with the digit ‘2′ followed by a digit ‘0′ and manufactured Who-Knows-Where on ‘el-but-cheapo’ Far Eastern subcontinent - finds its way into in the hands of your GP Stokes without delay.

For on this passing Eve of All Hallows, the town’s mid-septuagenarian town hack  -  treated for blood pressure, cholesterol and circulation, if he is to name but three of a half-a-dozen health issues preying on his mind  -  seeks to summon up sufficient remaining faith in Cressroads’ medical source to his wanting to survive to the full what remains of his remaining days on Mother Earth.

And so pray, beseech you Richard Practice Manager Hanney that, by the grace of the Almighty, Cressroads’ Mr Blogsbody will soon hear tell that his sometimes not so swift a doctor will find a moment or two to get up to speed with some of what troubles his patient Irving, Michael.

Oh, yes. And for your GP some-say-Beanstokes to be sure not to repeat his tardy response to the town hack’s email before-this-’un.

Given that as long as two weeks were to tick merrily by, afore so good an Alresford-on-Arle GP  -  known unwittingly to leave patients splitting their sides with uncontrollable imaginations of their doctor’s sudden transubstantiation into Funny Man Rowan ‘Bean’ Atkinson poking his head around the waiting-room door to holler one respective second name after the other to occupy his next 10-minute window for medical car  -  finally chooses to decide to act on being nudged by Blogsbody to want to concede that it may prove something of an oversight for him to have chosen to ignore the need for a victim of a minor stroke to be given an electrocardiogram (ECG), before finding himself on a slippery ’scrip to dropping scores upon scores more Simvastatins.

And, out of respect for one of the less harmful side effects of statins, continuing to obey his doctor’s orders to avoid drinking grapefruit.

Until, one old hack’s take at a time, more to follow, your practice is urged next to take time out to appraise the content of heart patient and former volunteer railway worker in suit and tie, not blue boiler suit, for the town’s steam locomotion Watercress Line, majestic Cressroadian  HRHarwood Tapper and his way with a troubled word, or two or three to the senior partner of his Thornhill Park GP’s Partnership in Greater Cressroads:-

Dear Sirs/Madam

In a report published in the Daily Telegraph of Friday, 15^th October 2010, I read that the use of cheap generic drugs is a threat to the health of patients and as a consequence their use is to be abandoned. The unreliability and inferior quality of these drugs places patients’ lives at risk.

Simvastatin, in particular, and which you have been specifying on my prescription requisition. It is highlighted as unsuitable and stated to be putting patients at increased risks of strokes and heart attacks. In my opinion, you were very likely aware of these risks to your patients, but made no effort to act in the patients’ interest.

In respect of my need of statins, please kindly ensure that in future my prescription requisition specifies Lipitor, referred to in the report as being the branded item a patient needs.

You are professionally charged to prescribe in a patient’s best interest; and not, I would add, in the interest of some accountant hidden away behind the scenes. Generic medicines are unsafe and unreliable. I do not expect to see them prescribed in future for my family or myself .

Yours, etc’  -  www.blogsbody.co.uk

“UNCLE RUPERT’S SUN-in-the-morning,” nudges attractive Eva Easton.

After Mason-Dave Clitheroe’s plot for a costumed Bernie’s Night at drop-dead gorgeous Karen’s million-pound boozer, eatery and modest sin bin of a wrongly-signed Chestnut Horse in an inflation-proof village outside of Greater Cressroads’ cathedral city of Winchester gallops into reality.

You’ll be first to hear all of the details - and, Nick-the-Newsdesk, please know Blogsbody keeps his lower as well as upper-case promises.

Not least when your 6^th-of-September Page 23 girl Jean Emblem, OAP - alias severe Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital pneumonia patient treated ‘worse than an animal’ is promised a paltry couple of hundred quid by your toothy health hack for the right to lay her Sun by-line above Jean’s Diary of Horror Hospital Stay.

You’ll recall we talked on Friday.

When you learned Blogsbody - read blogs October 09 through today at www.blogsbody.co.uk - owes much of his love of a turn of phrase to your late Sun’s managing editor K Donlan, when Ken was Northern Daily Mail news editor.

 

Palace of Westminster

Matt as in alias His Nibs.

Joint pen-pusher of a  gold Sheaffer from W H Smith for his part in the famed His and Her Nibs’ marathon - 1,500 letters within as many of their primary schooldays - and for Matt and his sister Keogh-Judith to be acclaimed as the world’s most prolific junior letter-writers.

But, sad to admit, failing in their mission statement to ’save the dying art of letter-writing.’

No tears, however, when their 42 lever-arch files of personal letters to and from international notables is insured for them by the kindness of Lloyds of London, given a papal blessing in Rome and approved by the late Queen Mother.

Explaining why media mogul for an adoptged Uncle Rupert Murdoch hangs his signed portrait in Matt and Keogh’s Welsh as well as Hampshire halls of their handwritten, 450,000-word letter-writing fame.

“Surely a few hundred squid isn’t going to trouble our adopted Uncle Rupert,” Keogh tells her AuntyJean. “More likely our his four  fifty pound notes have found their way into some reporter’s loose change in an ongoing media expenses scandal that, by any taxpayer’s standards, dwarf the ongoing, money-grubbing antics of the Palace of Westminster.

“Best, then, you put the arm on our Ol’ Blogsbody for him to want to exercise all of his remaining, geriatric determination to top-up your News International contributions fee to a crispier £500.”

 

Winked

Her banking Nibs recommends: “Demand it is paid - not into your current bank account - but by a Sun courier bearing both a truly outstanding, personal letter of heartfelt apology gratefully thanking Aunty Jean for teaching our Uncle Rupert’s Tooth Fairy Kate  her lesson of a hack’s lifetime as well as a cheque - or two.

“Another to afford the illustrated barebones of our old dad’s draft of an eighth decade for a full-page follow-up in our Uncle Rupert’s multi-million-pounds, best-selling UK-red-top - and who knows?

Perhaps by-lining Greater Cressroads’ Mr Blogsbody as Sun correspondent Mike Irving.   

“Serving, Aunty Jean, to settle in full your outstanding account with the nation’s most popular daily tabloid twixt lambasting, its mildly upper-rust, lispy Kate-not-Wight’on, when she visited you all of those weeks ago.

“Looking to handbag another tale of horror for her shock, horror health beat,” adds seven-month-old Welsh-born Daisy Mae’s young mum, who managed Blogsbody HQ - alias Arms-of-Tichborne - before her chance of a career switch to human resources for one of the UK’s Big Five banks with corporate highrise overlooking the Principality’s world-renowned Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff Bay.   

“Yes, Jean?”

“You leave it to me,” winked the matron who was once the Yorkshire Ripper’s psychiatric nurse.

 

 Cathedral City

So, Nick?

What do you reckon?

Say, headlined ‘Your Sun’s HappyFamilies: OLD MATRON JEAN GIVES SUN TASTE OF ITS OWN DAILY MEDICINE.

And, before we agree additional fees for Blogsbody’s just as imaginative selection of upcoming images with wrinkly Jean, illustrated by His Nibs, this 70-year-old town hack suggests you taste his submission side-by-side with www.blogsbody.co.uk  21 october 10 travelogue:  HAVE SON, WILL TRAVEL: GREATER CRESSROADS’ CATHEDRAL CITY created around graduating Thirsty Kirsty May.

So that Nikon-packing Matt Dylan and his state-pensioned Poppa Blogsbody can feed Sun would-be as well as seasoned holidaymakers a chuckle or more to encourage them to visit their local travel agent’s office and book up for the real thing.

 

 

Movie Moments

Expenses and day-duty fees only, Nick 

Until there is sufficient positive feedback from the High Street as well as Sun readers to evaluate and agree the developing value of an additional or change of travel page as and when advertising supports its inclusion in that day or weekend’s issue of the nation’s No.1 red-top. 

Meanwhile, of course, we continue to seek to agree the foregoing humorous, once-in-a-blue-moon Sun apology to Jean; five-hundred nicker in Jean’s fair hand; and an equally generous contribution to the day-to-day expense coffers of the Continuing Story of Cressroads, self-styled watercress capital of the world, where the town crop measures up to just that.

Advise www.blogsbody.co.uk on 01962-735043 before today’s close of news and reckon that the Sun in the morning has cost the septuagenarian narrator-in-chief of his hometown’s never-ending saga dear, dear, dear.

Not least a day’s filming this passing weekend to create the upcoming sequel to Freddie Rostard’s initial four minutes’ worth of the ongoing Hogshire saga for the Beeb. And hoping you will come to agree futher, well worth a moment or two of your valuable, highly-paid time, enjoying a quick but telling:  

BBC - South Today - Freddie’s - Cressroads

 

Cressroads  is a splendidly written and often incomprehensible blog about the goings on of life, loves and malarkeys in the watercress fiefdom of Alresford, rates the Beeb in Greater Cressroads neck of the telly woods. 

Where, Nick, we eagerly await your Monday-early-afternoon call.

Before or after you are made aware that, be it features or news, Blogsbody has got the numbers of each of your relevant Sun cheque-writers - Brother Joel and Sister Sarah - and Cressroads’ town hack most wants to discover that one, other or both of them are anxiously pushing their quills for payments brother Matthew and sister Keogh are sure their adopted Uncle Rupert can’t wait to endorse again and again.

Wanting to keep it a family affair, but tempted to blow the whistle on Kate-the-Tooth’s allegedly wonky cellular phone that, for days on end, has refused to cough - along with £-much else - and nudge Kate to remember she is urgently required to return several calls from Blogsbody as well as his consulting psychiatric nurse.

Sadly treated both by hospital and … shock … horror … a media mogul’s lucrative, top-selling, family red-top.  

 And, so what’s most wanted, Mr Francis, is for a Sun courier to pack out on his red Harley-D from London Town with a full, personal and signed letter of apology addressed to ex-matron Jean Emblem from your daily’s seriously at fault NHS correspondent.

 

 

Kindest Regards

No way, Jose, your Sun-red helmet either forgets or misappropiates the cheques or untraceable cash signed off by your news as well as features desks.

For said monies to wing their respective as well as collective way - together with Jean’s outstanding letter-of-apology - direct to Cressroads’ Lower House of Windsor, SO24 9HU in time for Jean, Matt Dylan, Eva Easton and Blogsbody to drink to the health and continued success of Britain’s top-circulation daily newspaper, and its endless, forever memorable 72pt splash headlines outselling Britain’s daily media. 

And until it is kindest regards from all of your Greater Cressroads’ readers, who own up to an untapped fund of exclusive tales yet to report to the Sun’s news  as well as feature  desks.

For openers with appropriate, computer-generated images, the yarn-and-a-half of  Cressroads’ very own 72-pints-a-week, Firkin Henry Primmer, straight-up fixer, mostly miraculously sober rustic ex-stockman, who remains ever proud of his surviving Tichborne-bred, four-legged, page-three girls.

If not already, see above by clicking on Beeb’s Cressroads’ movie.

Call me, mate!

Mike,

(alias Cressroads’ Mr Blogsbody)

p.s. Just the one pic-Nick for 35 paras (and then for something-of-a-different Sun travelogue) a feature-length 1,334-word draft for your serious consideration. -  www.blogsbody.co.uk

Hey you!

Especially you, Sy-1ne. 

Please to join Bloggie and his 31-year-old son Matt Dylan, photo-journalist and book production editor visiting Cressroads’ Lower House of Windsor with his front-line Nikon, as they set out out on their whirlwind 18-mile, 90-minute return hop, park and a university graduation at Winchester Cathedral early on a mid-October afternoon attracting 10,000 and more additional visitors hell-bent on nosing their way through the ancient city’s remains for Roman walls in search of a parking bay within easy walking distance of the once upon an Anglo-Saxon time capital of England.

Praise the Lord!

After the town hack knew to beseech successfully Christopher of Lycea -  martyr, died, gone to heaven and annointed patron saint of travellers - to hunt down, free up and guide camera-by-Moleskine reporter’s notebook Blogsbody’s eldest son by his third set of nuptials and his ever philandering self to the last available £1.20-an-hour Winchester City Council (WCC) parking meter.

Satisfying the pair’s need to lose their corroding 20-year-old, RAF-blue Ford Escort and leg it in a remaining nick of time to the grounds and nave of retiring 96th Bishop of Winchester Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt’s second largest medieval House of God in Europe.

There to seek to record in photos and words the celebration opened by the Upper House of Windsor’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hogshire Dame Mary Fagan, and bear witness to the  foundation degree in Education Studies conferred on Arms of Tichborne barmaid Thirsty Kirsty Guy by University of Winchester Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Elizabeth Stuart .

And with Blogsbody & Son blessed by their heavenly gift of an hour-long parking space framing substantial Abbey House - official residence of the 811^thMayor of Winchester Cllr Richard Izard, alias Cold ‘n Common-with-Twyford representative on his WCC, in the rear view mirror of the 70-year-old town hack’s 100-mph banger.

Left locked and facing off to the favourite pub door of an ex-Irish jockey - diminutive Denis O’Friggin - last saddled as a Globe-on-the-Lake dish dog and known out and about Old and New Alresford for his hatred of Friday’s  pot wash after the pub’s gourmet plates of fresh fish and chips - “I hate friggin’ fish” - doing his Wednesday Winchester crawl, and someone to be seriously avoided as he tripped in and out of the Broadway’s popular Crown & Anchor.

As you do in boozy Winchester. Be it Irish-born O’Friggin favouring his well-compensated gammy left leg overshadowed, ‘whelmed and minituarised by the city’s giant statue of its legendary King Arthur of the Round table, but never and a chaser Cressroads’ Thirsty Kirsty Guy.

” … on our way, Kirsty.”

And soon to be continued at www.blogsbody.co.uk

 

 

WITH THREE DECADES remaining in the run-up to Blogsbody scoring his century, no telegram was to be expected from the Anglo-Greek House of Windsor for delivery to Cressroads’ town hack in the watercress capital of the world on the occasion of the former Fleet Street investigative reporter opening his septuagenarian account at Patrick and Nicky Roper’s thatched, medieval Tichborne Arms on one of the realm’s most notorious estates during the hours of noon to midnight yesterday.

And there to be found his chosen dirty dozen in the cast for the hacking of the Continuing Story of Cressroads - Neath-born journo Tim-the-Glove, Bishop Sutton’s non-reliant Robin Aide-de-Camp, Winchester’s J &P Lawless, Priory Goliath, Firkin Henry Dogsbloggy, defrocked Rev Graham Fairoak, spinach-pickin’ concert pianist Joanna Ro, Big Dave Clitheroe, Matt-the-Book, Lady A J Pineapple and Nurse Groper - with each come to share in the reading of Blogsbody’s 70th birthday greetings from Westminster.

‘ … hope all is well at your Lower House of Windsor in Cressroads. Given that the Lower House of Parliament is keen to keep me awake rather longer than I’m accustomed to, I’ve installed a sofa in my office for essential post-prandial naps. Yours, etc.,’ emailed the ‘ornary member for close to home, who wilfully omits any unexpurgated mention of his assorted noble, ignoble and never-likely-to-be-noble Palace of Westminster lunches and dinners for fear of re-awakening an expenses scandal that left the 2010 General Erection bereft of any integrity.

In the wake of all of this and more besides, daredevil Arms’ Chef Stu gives all of the credit for baking a chocolate birthday cake to barmaid Kirsty Thirsty - 24 hours shy of graduating in her rented mortar board and gown at the University of Winchester’s 2010 Awards Celebration - that, ablaze with candles, was presented by Arms’ landlady and fledgling Tichborne Parish Cllr Nicky Roper, alias flirty Nurse Groper, and uniformed in pillar-box red, if only to salute the sale across the lane from the pub of the late, late, late Mrs Pink’s long defunct village post office.

Going, going, gone for all but one million squid, and a glossy, full-colour Savills of Winchester brochure held to account for a much-doubted real estate bargain of any year by a buyer yet to come out from under his cheque book and - “Hello, quintessentially Hampshire neighbours,” - reveal himself to a village of a hundred odd and distinctly different 21stcentury rustic souls.

And, thinks Bloggie,a gift of fodder to accompany his pub card addressed: ‘Top hack! With lots of love on your birthday from all at the Arms’ that affords him half-a-dozen lipstick-red ballpoint kisses from pub barmaids Thirsty Kirsty; ghost-busting  Paranormal Sonic; and dare-not-to-forget Sammy Manic Martin, whose wood-chopping Grandpa Wilf, abroad in the never-ending all but incestuous way of a village affair everywhere-and-Tichborne, is remarried to Blogsbody’s runaway ex-’child’ bride Ark Emma.

Meanwhile, it’s love and lust that inspires pages of Facebook to quiz its many thousands of gossip-hungry social networkers to want to solve an enigma of a conundrum troubling and keeping awake nights more than the one romantically inquiring mind.

Ready for it?

What is the best-kept open secret doing the thatched whispers in the highly desirable Hogshire village of Tichborne, near Alresford-on-Arle in Greater Cressroads?

Give me your answers, do.

On postcards to Mr Blogsbody, Lower House of Windsor, Cressroads, Winchester, Hogshire SO24 9HU. 

p.s. ‘Go on, Bloggie, do your stuff and see you soon,’ Dawn-in-the-Dumps, distant but confirmed fan of the town hack’s Continuing Story of Cressroads, messages her need of a blind date to escape from an unhappy home life close by Hampshire’s county line with Royal Berkshire, open up to Blogsbody and mark his snout for scandal.  -  www.blogsbody.co.uk

‘ … BLOGSBEE TALES are as twisted as The Great Blogsbee, after he’s tied on a couple of jars of Bridport Copper at his favourite, medieval Tichborne Arms in Make-Believe Cressroads … oh … and happy birthday,” the town hack of the self-styled watercress capital of the world wakes to an all-knowing overnight message from his niece Alexandra in Asheville, North Carolina.

Daughter of his late, younger brother Andy -  ‘Monkey Man’ of Lyons, second largest metropolitan area of France, after that of Paris; American carver of totem poles through his cooking gumbo for workers aboard oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico; and, finally - whose dying wish, but shy of any official by-your-leave, was to ask Alex, his only daughter by his second marriage, to torch her father’ mortal remains and despatch him to his Maker’s Kingdom Come aboard a blazing workboat.

‘Happy birthday … hope it’s a good ‘un,’ early bird Lady Annette Filipov of Bredbury Hall, ex-wife of a Tunisian waiter, is next to email the once cherubic altar boy grown 70-years-old, who was well-known to her grandmother.

Nette, niece of a Canadian priest, is granddaughter of the late good wife of a railway worker, who heard Sunday Mass sat beside Blogsbody’s mother of four - Welsh-born Nesta-nee-Morris - as Cheadle Hulme’s Kings Hall, near Stockport, changed its use to transform from Saturday night village dance venue to make-do Sunday Catholic chapel accommodating a small congregation of the faithful kneeling before ex-airborne chaplain Fr Fenlon’s battle-weary World War II collapsible wooden altar.

‘You total and utter nutter,’ announces the first of the town hack’s birthday cards.

For Blogsbody to tear open the envelope of his www.peachykeencard.com and read aloud to himself a handwritten greeting Quinked by the eldest son of his third set of nuptials over the tumultuous course of one-third of his past life.

Seven years for starters and his baby Stephen Michael grown up to become a London barrister; next his seven short, not-so-sweet months of a second marriage to the former Lady Sharp, a French-Canadian fashion writer; and, finally, his 14 years of a third marriage producing three primary school youngsters, who his ‘child’ bride saw fit to leave Bloggie to single-parent from the end of the last century into the 21st

‘If you had reached your septuagenarian eighth decade without going mental, then I would be worried,’ Matt Dylan signed off his father’s card atop his gifts of a black www.moleskine.com reporter’s notebook and brace of XL James Pringle Easy Care, Soft Handle, woollen dress shirts.

Until it comes time for Blogsbody-Unattached-in-Cressroads to try on one of his shirts for a perfect fit and to slip more confidently into celebrating the beginnings of his eighth decade on Mother Earth - www.blogsbody.co.uk

SEVENTY-YEARS-YOUNG, Blogsbody lay awake within a blink of St John-the-Baptist’s gold-on-black hands moving into position for its dozen disturbing dongs to resound through the town from Bishop de Lucy’s 12^thcentury Alresford-on-Arle bell tower through until another minute past midnight.

Sobering the town hack to know St John’s Little Big Ben was likely to continue to ring out the arrival of each ensuing hour in the sleepy watercress capital of the world as he meditated gratefully on the unexpected dawn of his septuagenarian times.

No change, however, at Scorch-the-Dragonlady’s Cressroads Motel - her Swan Bar by overflowing churchyard to the dongs of St John’s - and the lovely Angie’s best rate for a single-bedded room standing at £45-a-night.

Her earmuffs an added extra, but no diving for cover under her four-posters.

 

Rollicks disgracefully

‘Hold the front page,’ underwater BBC cameraman Mac-the-John catches up with Blogsbody returned from the Arms at Tichborne to the late night Word Factory at Cressroads’ Lower House of Windsor.

‘Septuagenarian Irving, alias Mr Blogsbody, rollicks disgracefully into another decade of reckless abandon.

‘May you blog mischievously for many a decade to come,’ the former physics teacher at Alton’s Amery Hill School in Greater Cressroads is first to wish him a happy 70^th.

Pursued in turn of phrase by Phil Tesky-Pesky, who cautions the town hack: ‘Be careful extinguishing all those ruddy candles.

‘Spreading rash-like across our fair isle, septuagenarianism is an ever increasing ailment, and so live on Bloggie to remember no good can ever come from a bashful, demure, wallflowerish take on life.

‘Happy birthday, and when surely now is as good a time as any for you to start really letting loose.’

More to come - www.blogsbody.co.uk

BLOGSBODY’S SLUFFED IT. Breaking news that looks and sounds to Facebook followers of the Continuing Story of Cressroads that the town hack of their self-styled watercress capital of the world is as dead as Quink.

But no!

And so no call yet for retired Tichborne stockman ‘Firkin’ Henry - famed for his 72-pint-a-week-thirst for Palmers of Bridport Copper ale - to shoulder his shovel and dig out the plot for a woodland burial he has promised to the town hack.

“Please… please! All in everyone’s good time,” heeds widowed Nurse Alex at Doc Beanstoke’s practice in town. “We see Bloggie again in 48 hours, and will maintain a watchful eye on sluff gathering under the skin of his left shin.

A weeping composite of puss-and-water first spotted by visiting Jean Emblem - once the Yorkshire Ripper’s psychiatric nurse - in the tedious course of her recent Cressroadian appointment to the dysfunctional Lower House of Windsor.

Some-say-Mister Blogsbody’s two-down, three-up, city-built terrace sporting a new roof and valued at £215,000 tops is gardened year-round by Gary, who, as seasons demand it, wheels his lawnmower through Alresford-on-Arle’s streets East, West and Broad.

 

Sunday’s lie-in between toast crumbs and News of the Screws

“No ifs or buts, young man,” commands the matronly daughter of Cressroads’ late chimneysweep. “Make a doctor’s appointment to have that leg and each of your swollen ankles looked at - and only then may you look to explain your latest acquisition at the romantic Arms of Tichborne.”

“Firkin Henry’s, not mine,” corrects Blogsbody. But all further explanation put on hold as he answers an unexpected ring of his wind up of a front door bell.

Next to witness a mini-procession of young and one elderly from Winnall’s Kingdom-come canvassing the estate for converts to their way of Jehovah; and elderly Joyce of Alresford stopped in mid-stream as her Leicester-born nose ranneth over in the chill of a sudden goodbye to the passing of a three-day Indian summer.

Cressroads’ town hack seized his opportunity to insist his years of worship began and ended decades ago in a Roman Catholic seminary: “… then losing my vocation … switching from the imagined sublime and unforgiveable loss of a place in heaven secured for my much loved Welsh-born mum …  engaging a blackening heart and lost soul in the ridiculous antics of London’s famed street of disillusion.

“Hack, hack, hacking to entertain millions enjoying their Sunday lie-in between toast crumbs and crumpled accounts of every next week’s News of the Screws.”

 

Cressroads’ fears for loss of one its love-struck own

Moving right along until now you see it, now you don’t.

Dodgem-by-bagpipe to another Wall Family Fair Night overwhelmingly staged on pavement twixt stately Georgian piles of millionaire families residing on Cressroads’ most fashionable Broad Street. Here last night. Gone this early morning. All by decree of ancient royal charter.

No room at the packed Doom & Gloom, where Blogsbody earlier reminded bartender Tom that it was upcoming 110 years to the kerbside outside, where the Jeffreys  - a young farm worker and his imminently expectant wife - safely delivered their newborn Baby Percival on an inebriated Fair Night.

Then, on a Fair Night that was yet to come in 1900, three Black Marias were sent from Winchester to kidnap and empty the self same inn at the junction with East and West streets of revellers unaware that every Man-Alresford-on-Arle-Jack of them were on a gypsy hit list to want to be lucky to escape with their young lives, after police caught the whispers of an impending attack to revenge the sexual assault of two daughters of the fair.

“Took our lads to Southampton Common, they did,” recalls the chimneysweep’s daughter .

“Then released them with no choice but a five-hour walk home, while the fair’s convoy of caravans were escorted out of town in the opposite direction … you say, she’s an itinerant spinach picker … who plays classical percussion and strings … finds herself in Tichborne with Oh-tee-tee … over-the-top Poet Ottley …and … well I never,” Jean with a bus pass fast to her pension book hears learns the rural backbone of Cressroads suddenly fears for the loss of one of its love-struck own. - www.blogsbody.co.uk

TEN DAWNS REMAIN before Bamps-the-Blog wakes to his 70^th birthday gift of an all but free prescription for exercising at Evolution - Perins’ community campus health and fitness suite - as authorised by Doctor Beanstoke’s general practice beside the Victorian station for steam locomotion, and opposite the flickering blue light of the county constabulary’s part-time watch in the self-styled watercress capital of the world.    

Evolution’s team promises the septuagenarian grandfather18 pieces of cardio-vascular equipment, six resistance machines, free weights and a sprung-floor studio for fitness classes and dance to set him on his determined way to better health and well-being.

Leaving him to want to put all of his faith in pretty community campus Carolyn’s written pledge to pensioners: ‘We are on hand to give help and advice with your one-to-one induction course, personal fitness program and regular assessments, while priding ourselves on a relaxed and friendly atmosphere that creates a great place for you to meet new friends.’

” … but don’t you be believing a word of it,” cautions Cressroads’ gossipy Mrs Rees.

Someone who chats to mostly everyone out and about the East, West and Broad Streets of her all but inflation-proof Georgian town patrolled by brown trout, and where her back-slapping son Paul - self-acclaimed professional tap dancer and pogo stick trainer - presents as ‘bitch’ and ‘leading light’ of Alresford-on-Arle’s rugby football club.

His Welsh-born ma believes: “They humiliate the elderly, they do. Youngsters laugh at them using the gym’s equipment, machines and weights. But more and more you hear tell of one doctor after another at Alresford Surgery handing out prescriptions for our senior citizens to want to exercise at their town’s swank but understaffed health and fitness suite - and now you.’   

Squiggled doctor’s note

It is all of two years since the town hack caught up with tales of Cressroads’ alternative Doc Greenfingers  finding time to moonlight as a private physiotherapist to billionaire Russian aluminium oligarch Roman Abramovich’s £140m Premier League Chelsea Football Club.

Who better, then - or a steal at the expense of Britain’s National Health Service - for a diagnosis of the cause of Blogsbody’s developing aches, groans and pains.

“Well, doctor?”

“Too many birthdays,” smiled Doc Green.

“A great line to plagiarise … making an appointment worthwhile … but?”

“But try Glucosamine and Chondroitin. Fifteen hundred milligrams daily. But not available to you on the NHS and reckon on three months for it to begin to work on your ,” Cressroads’ suddenly all but celebrity GP handed Blogsbody a squiggled signature on a note to the Wessex pharmacist for the first of hundreds of tiny tabs costing the town hack upwards of £9 every 40 days, through until his sight of a recent report in the British Medical Journal.

An article recounting the findings of a Swiss study that rubbishes any imagined value of the line of health tabs manufactured in India. Heavily promoted and recommended to millions of ageing, seriously aching bodies, but revealed as an utter waste of an old age pension. And losing Ol’ Blogsbody to thoughts of making alternative medicine out of getting his wayward leg over the crossbar of a second-hand mountain bike.

But first to exercise his stubbornly creaking bodily parts into pedalling his well-oiled Raleigh - going-going-gone and snapped up by the town hack for £35 at last Thursday’s market on fashionable Broad Street - over the alternative course of as many as 42 workouts over six weeks for a token fee of £1-a-session,  before looking to cycle from his dysfunctional Lower House of Windsor into the ever welcoming Arms of Tichborne less than three miles distant.

Health Warning - Forever and a pint of Palmers Bridport Copper ale sees Blogsbody change up a geriatric gear or two towards improving his health and fitness as Britain’s snooty watercress capital of the world continues to look to curse its town hack for his many a yarn yet to come. - www.blogsbody.co.uk