Continuing Story of Cressroads

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

'Scrips! Photo by Matt Irving

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

“Going to sit right down and write himself an email,” determines Blogsbody.

After learning the wheelchair of Cressroads’ Ambassador for Disabled People Ross Smith goes walkabout at Gatwick Airport, and finds Menzies Aviation in urgent need of solving a developing problem for up to a million users wanting to entrust their sets of wheels to allegedly ’specialist trained and dedicated personnel’ responsible for providing assistance to passengers with reduced mobility (PMS) at UK airports.

‘The reason for our email will be self-evident as you become party to the sometimes difficult content of the following explanation from G4S Aviation’s Gatwick PMS manager Wayne Tomlinson - a division of the multinational security organization most wanting to live down its reputation for losing felons contracted into its custody - who we come to fear most seeks to sweep under a runway the distressing Case of Mr Smith’s Missing Wheelchair.

‘ … When the agent reached the gate, they discovered it was a WCHC passenger, and that the loaders had removed the wheelchair and taken it to the baggage hall, rather than leaving it at the aircraft as they should do, because it should be plainly obvious that a passenger will be needing it … rang Ops and ask that they directly return it to stand 38 so that the agents (a second having been sent) would be able to assist the PRMs … This is squarely at the fault of Menzies loaders who have repeatedly done this and ignored the fact that wheelchairs in the hold should be delivered to the jetty so that our agents can assist the passengers with them … I feel that any complaint should be directed to EasyJet and their handling agents.’

Within five hours, Craig Smyth, executive director of Menzies Aviation - its corporate roots in a chain of Scottish newsagents - is: ‘Sorry to hear about your poor experience on arrival at Gatwick,but thanks for bringing it to my attention. We do try very hard to make the service work for all passengers, all of the time, but sometimes things do go wrong. We always try to learn from such events. Tim Willett, who runs our operation, will look into and let us know what went wrong and also what we are doing to make sure we avoid in the future.’

Happy May Day, Craig!

When we copy but emphasize the G4S allegation that a wheelchair going walkabout is squarely the fault of Menzies’ loaders who, it is reported, time and again fail to deliver to the jetty a passenger’s vital set of wheels that was airborne in the hold of the aircraft.

As a consequence, harrowing as well as costly, a disabled person is marooned aboard an aircraft for accumulative hours on end in the essential care and company of the landed flight’s captain.

When may we hear back from your Tim Willett?

 To be continued!

Hail the Great Debate in Manchester last night as led by ITV newscaster and St. Augustine’s Abbey old boy Alastair Stewart, OBE.

Someone recognized in Greater Cressroads as the Bramdean Commoner opposed to supermarkets in Alresford and, four times over the legal limit, ex-ITV Police-Camera-Action man, who orders a Chinese takeaway, runs into a telegraph pole and cops his second conviction for drink driving.

Presenter Stewart, 57-year-old Rolling Stones fan, whose TV career began with Southern Television in Southampton, was cast in the role of even-handed sober interventionist to police political history in the making as he led the nation’s first ever live TV debate between the leaders of Britain’s three main political parties.

‘Foggy, Campo and Clegg in Start of the Summer Whine’, Winchester Furniture Emporium’s Jonathan Gretrix was fast to crack by blog.

Throwing in his Facebook take of last night’s televised kick-off to the 2010 General Erection that played out for 90 minutes - and, with no whistle, red or yellow cards to his name, charged Presenter Stewart to keep control, interrupt to ensure order and raise his voice when the likes of Campo saw fit to turn a deaf ‘un or worse.

Our Campo prepared, if occasion demands it, to nuke Iran or China.

China!

Loud and clear for all to hear, imagine to mishear - “Didn’t he mean to say North Korea?” - unless anyone was able to make sense of Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague’s subsequent attempt at explanation to want to keep the Chinese ambassador in London off his case.

Iran, we understood. But China?

And leaving Blogsbody to wonder if Campo’s secret plan to avoid repaying our financial Chinese overlords for wanting to keep up the nation’s interest on shopping baskets brimful with made-in-China merchandise is leaked?

While Foggy remained too busy as well as conscious of practising his smile to pick up on Campo making so careless and inane a case for Britain retaining a nuclear deterrent.

And Clegg?

Repeatedly disassociating himself from each of the two ‘old’ parties, no-one quite trusting his way with the arithmetic of economics but looking to be voted best of a bad bunch, Clegg similarly missed a golden opportunity to score at Campo’s expense.

Head and shoulders above such diplomatic and political gaffes was Winchester’s Sharon Watson.

Another fan of Facebook who networks ITV, sees herself as a future resident of a home for old punks and was to be found watching the debate on a high-definition TV screen for it to appear to her that both Foggy and Campo major in dandruff issues.

“Only Clegg’s shoulders still look flake-free.”

Next, Sharon’s eye for political incorrectness cried out: “Not keen on all the grey suits and colour-coded ties. I’d like to see a leisurewear-clad debate. Or, even better, compulsory fancy dress of the combatants’ choice.”

Blogsbody seconds that.

Going demented - or Blogsbody fearing he may just flip - after Jo Swinhoe, director of fundraising for London’s Alzheimer’s Society, enters the mailbox of Cressroads’ Lower House of Windsor warning one in three people over-65 will die with dementia, and hoping he will not forget it.

‘I hope you like the personal address labels attached for you, with a beautiful picture of forget-me-nots,’ enthused Jo. ‘There’s a very good reason we’ve sent them to you - and for you to use them.

‘You see, we’re using the forget-me-not, with its delicate pale blue petals and yellow centres to raise awareness of dementia and the work of Alzheimer’s Society,” she continues .

But Blogsbody can’t agree the colour printing of her hundreds of thousands of 2010 Appeal leaflets do justice to the flower as he counts his total of 14 self-adhesive labels, and knows from passing  performance he is most unlikely to write, otherwise address, stamp, and mail out as many letters over as many years to come.

So think greetings cards. Or rather he hasn’t since becoming a state-pensioned, semi-computer-literate-silver-surfer exchanging the cost of postage for the benefits of AOL’s free email.

And, in any event, the charity’s sprat to catch a gift of ‘£25, £50 or as much as you can afford to go towards work to support, research and campaign on behalf of people with dementia’ omits any mention whatsoever of his first name or initials, and prints an indelibly failed attempt to spell his surname.

“For every eight research proposals we receive, we have to turn seven down. We simply don’t have the money to support them along with all the other work we must fund.  So today, as well as using the labels and postcards I’ve enclosed for you, will you send a donation?” hopes Alzheimer’s Jo Swinhoe.

Blogsbody promises to do no more than splash out on the price of a brace of postage stamps and find some future use for each of two postcards: ‘Leading the fight against dementia’.

This in the wake of his one phone call to Reading and two to London to find and explain to Alzheimer Society’s Debbie Overseer-of-Mailings:  “Gone all but demented tracking you down to Devon House HQ, and the bad news is my state pension makes it an act of certifiable madness for me to commit to any cause but my dysfunctional family and myself.

“That said, Debbie, I’m hoping the good news is that, by me alerting you to the possibility of significant numbers of failed attempts to create and give away sets of usable address labels , you will spark changes further to improve the success of mailing out your future appeals.”

“Thank you for your perseverance,” begins Debbie.

” … but given the terrifying odds of becoming another one in three hoping to stop the disease from advancing, it’s me who is most grateful for you trying your utmost to aid and support sufferers,”  Blogsbody rings off to answer an afternoon knock at his front door from the neighbourhood ’s part-time postman all but finishing his especially late walk of the day in step with what was once the time of a day’s second, not only delivery.

“Hiring part-timers - now Royal Mail policy, because it’s cheaper than employing full-time staff - means it is our availability that determines when you’ll receive your post,” explains a uniformed, grey-bearded redundant manager of a stately home doing the town’s final round of the day.

“No mail, but this,” Steve presents a card advising Alresford’s sorting office - and not, as once was, his Mr Postie - holds an item of Blogbody’s family mailbag.

In this instance, shy of an outstanding £1.08 postage-payable. And awaiting personal collection, or return to sender within a week.

For what remains of Blogsbody’s mind to want to reckon the impending closure of Alresford’s sorting office at the rear of its closed Post Office in favour of a centralized postal operation for Greater Cressroads will come to mean any future curiosity as to the Who, What and Why of such failed attempts at savings on postage will demand a 16-mile return journey to Winnall - or forget it.

Postscript:  ’As so eloquently put, I’m a mere minion in the cast of thousands but touched by your mention. What an amazing story you tell and obviously you have travelled far and wide through to growing old disgracefully in Hogshire’s Alresford-on-Arle. So Hogshire’s hack was not always Hampshire driven. Given you were married to a French-Canadian fashion writer, and appearing to become a new member of your cast. Do tell us more. Such intrigue! Best wishes,’ MB signs off for a third time.

Stop the blog. Or pause to take stock, determines the town hack.

After a follower of his blog is moved to comment how 12 months of reading the Continuing Story of Cressroads leaves him with images of a ‘lost and troubled man’ behind the telling of episodes that remain shy of any conclusion.

Alresford’s Mr Blogsbody!

An ex-redtop Fleet Street reporter with a barrister for an only son by his first set of nuptials; remarried for seven months to a French-Canadian fashion writer; and then wedding his third wife who, 18 years ago, left him to raise their three young children.

Until Blogsbody grows old disgracefully in Hogshire’s Alresford-on-Arle, and reports on a dysfunctional outcome in respect of two sons as well as catch-up news of their sister quitting the pub game to work out of Flint, North Wales, as a call girl.

Blogsbody’s 29-year-old daughter Keogh interrupts: “For smut’s sake! When it’s only hours since you were blogging how Winchester’s prospective parliamentary LibDem candidate Martin Tod was to be found parked up in a police vehicle shining its headlights on Cressroads’ infamous dogging rendezvous.

“As true, I’m sure, as me finding employment at a North Wales call centre for a major food chain - after managing the Arms at Tichborne - but, if Winchester police has time to show a prospective MP the sights in Greater Cressroads, does anyone really care?

“Unless, perhaps, the constituency’s Blue Brigade finds itself inundated with demands for equal time from all of the candidates on its patch?

 ”Oh, silly me!” Keogh knows better than to answer herself thinking aloud.

“So, hey! Here we go again. And for Poppa Blogsbody to be found fanning more tittle-tattle in Greater Cressroads, if not creating it, then looking to blog what happens next.”

As it happened, the very moment in time Mike Bell - an otherwise unknown but  self-confessed follower of the town hack’s blog for many months - appeared out of the anonymity of its hits to complain of assorted loose ends troubling his tidy reader’s mind.

‘What an interesting web you weave with the help of all of your offspring,’ he notes. ‘But, last year, you introduce one member of your family, whose mention is not concluded - and, now, we come to hear of your Welsh granddaughter Daisy-Mae.

‘Blogsbody, you seem a lost and troubled man?” questions the saga’s longstanding fan.

“Don’t know any Mike Bell - so show yourself,” challenges the town hack. But determined to begin to attend to loose ends in his developing cast of hundreds, and plot how best to keep alive, put on a back-burner or wipe clean any potential excess of characters.

‘So looking forward  to hearing more of events surrounding those tales that await a deserved measure of conclusion in your Continuing Story of Cressroads,’ persists Mr Ding-a-Ling’s latest post from cyberspace.