Ilfracombe Women’s Fight Club

Since the christening of dear Ruprecht, the aunts and Folly and I have returned to Devon to continue our holiday. The christening took a toll on us that only the musings of Pluto could cast a darker shadow upon. The ambience in our little holiday hedge is a fraction from becoming maudlin. The aunts are restless, and I wish Bench had brought the storm straps for Folly, her movements badly need to be restricted. But we decided to have a day out.

This descended into Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell when wandering around Ilfracombe, we finally found Aunt Bench (we’d lost her after the Limpet Festival) – she’d found a fisherman. We gently informed her that she need not be a fisherman’s friend. Especially not this one, he has a third eye, and I do not mean this in a spiritual sense. Vom put an end to it. So Bench is now moping about, still oblivious to Folly, who has found some deviants. But that is another matter.

The good news is that it’s Tuesday, and we go home tomorrow. I’m anticipating the arrival back to my hedge home and seeing the toads once again. But for tonight, we are on a ladies’ night, and there is an establishment in the harbour that is sensitive to ‘women of my ilk’. Apparently it is a pagan themed bar with much symbolic imagery. I shall offer my patronage with an open mind….I’m as good an earthy pagan as anyone but if it’s full of bloody fairies and glitter and shit, I’m off. Can’t stand fairies – they drop bits everywhere.

We walked into The Wizard’s Sleeve at half seven, it was like a coven meeting after the discovery of a new cheese. They had wonderful musicians playing, who called themselves ‘Matted Thatch’ – the music was heavy metal and it was loud. Coincidentally, I put two cubes of emmental (the only thing it’s good for) into my ears to cope with the volume, so I could stand at the front for what the youth call headbanging. I discouraged Vom from bodysurfing, as she tends to over-egg and use it as an excuse to start brawls. We ordered pints of something called Druid’s Fluid. It sounded dubious, but it was a lovely dark pint with tones of treacle and dried weasel. Vom was a hit with the locals, comparing broken noses (or flat bugles) and they had a contest to see who’s had been broken beyond repair. Vom won hands down. We then found ten pints of Neptune’s Arse on the bar and suddenly, women were squaring up and bets were being taken.

Vom is on the right – she was already in fighting mode as the rules were no beards (it encourages pulling and unbecoming conduct). The woman on the left is Blanda Stent-Coddler, a trapeze artist from Aylesbury. She is a tough nut, and used to live in Plumstead where she’d fight anything with a pulse in an alleyway. Her skills are spitting, biting, and the Quarter-Nelson – she has that much attitude she can’t be arsed with the full half. Vom’s skills are slick, deadly and brutal – the woman could kill someone with a jar of Marmite in the blink of an eye. I was just sipping a fresh pint of Flaccid Bishop when the whistle blew and the crowd whipped up into a frenzy. It was a vicious fight, lasting only 30 seconds. Vom beat her hands down – with the nostril fling and a kick up the jacksy. The prize was 10 guineas, and a trip up Lynton Clifftop Railway (we gave the ticket away).

All in all, a marvellous evening. As we exited the Wizard’s Sleeve, a stool shattered through a window, and a woman punched a random man coming out of the public toilets. I wrote a rude word on somebody’s motor car window, and Bench uncharateristically told a seagull to f**k off. We stopped at the harbour as it was nearing the hour of high tide, and a popular time for people to stand near wooshy bits and get caught out. We were thrilled as four thick people stood low down on the slipway and were surprised by the ferocity of the tide. We left for the Hunan Palace and ordered a giant spring roll each, which was extra crispy, then flopped into bed for a dreamless sleep. Apart from Bench. She woke up at four, screaming about giant ants. Vom chinned her, and we all slept soundly.

Christening And Other Joys

Well, the day went off without any arrests, no ambulance and dear Ruprecht Widdy St. Vitus was named. Aunt Vom and I were a little crestfallen, to tell you the truth, it was a rather stuffy affair with ridiculous bonnets and snakes-bum-in-a-sandstorm smiles. So, to water down my ascerbic tone, I’ll describe the christening in verse. And hopefully it will come out sounding as though I am ‘nice’.

Are we not the happiest bunch,
All dressed in black and grey?
All clipped and preened and washed and plucked
For a happy, jolly day.

Aunt Bench conditioned her little beard,
And I ‘Ped-Egg-ed’ my chin.
Folly brought along a dead hedgehog,
Which Aunt Bench placed in the bin.

Aunt Mary Jaffa fainted at once,
Aunt Turgid read books to some dogs.
And Cousin Girda threw an absolute fit,
When Vom pelted the Bishop with clogs.

Aunt Claymore thought the whole affair seedy,
Aunt Gourd did not come at all.
‘It’s the work of the Devil’ she cried down the phone,
And folded her arms in her shawl.

I’d finally pilfed the christening robe,
Made of stuff of which I am vexed.
It’s all lace and silk and embroidery things,
I swear to god we’ll be hexed.

We walked to the barn with the phoney priest,
A one-man-band led the way –
Playing ‘Lip Up Fatty’ on harmonica,
And an excerpt of ‘Whip-Crack-Away’.

When the childs name was first read out,
A snigger came forth from Aunt Vom.
Then Aunt Blenny spun round glaring,
So she quickly sat up with aplomb.

Amazed I was at the Godmother –
Folly’s name was called out by the priest.
What possessed this lunatic pair?
Entrusting her with their young beast?

Uncle Truss was snivelling proudly,
Wiping his nose on his wife.
And worst of all, on their family side –
Scrofula is awfully rife.

Mrs Stiff Black Hat with her earrings,
Cried “Decorum!”, with one finger jabbing.
A knife then appeared from under Vom’s skirts,
What bash doesn’t end with a stabbing?

At the end of the day, the photo’s were done,
But we were not asked to join in.
The pious-clan gathered together in black,
Looking like they’d all sat on a pin.

Back to my hedge for some drinkies,
And their noses turned up at the door.
They didn’t approve of my hovel,
Or Vom’s friends lying drunk on the floor.

Stiff Black Hat hates cuckoo spit wine,
And ‘the hessian crackers weren’t nice’.
But the Old Earwig’s Reserve went down lovely,
And stopped their complaints about mice.

After six dreadful hours they all left,
Ruprecht was screaming away,
His beloved moustache was shaved off,
He’d pined for it most of the day.

My patience, I feared wouldn’t last,
Thank Heavens they chose not to linger.
As their car drove off down the lane –
Us girls held up one middle finger.

(For those unfamiliar with the product, a ‘Ped-Egg’ is the cheese gratery thing you use for extra hard skin on your feet. No affiliation.)

A Newborn In The Family – Ruprecht.

This is what happens when two people are attracted to one another from opposite sides of a crowded room…….
Last week, the yogurt pot telephone was ringing it’s string off, only to convey the cheery news (really?!) that there is a new addition to the St Vitus clan. This means I must walk into John Lewis again and nick another christening robe. After the problems I’ve had with the filth, I fear they have a bloody cheek asking.

Aunt Blenny and Uncle Truss (pictured), met two years ago at a Wasp Hiding Course in Hemel Hempstead. Apparently, their eyes met and, after his spastic colon pains subsided and Blen stopped singing, they got on like a house on fire. They married in a coal-hole three weeks later, overseen by fifty-six chimney sweeps (St. Vitus has the highest population of chimney sweeps per square foot, rivalled only by Frampton-on-Severn with seven every twenty yards). I was allowed to be bridesmaid with my bestest brown sack cut on the bias, and pretty wooden shoes. I even had some goose grass fashioned into a lovely Sticky Bob ball to hold, and a plantain in my hair. It was rather sickly affair, the bride and groom are both a bit wet to be blatantly truthful. And there is nothing manly about Truss.

They had a bloody baby. A boy. They’ve already got one boy, Dimity Ariel Simba St. Vitus – a child with far too much snot, in my opinion. And now we have Ruprecht Widdy St. Vitus. Aunt Vom nearly choked when they announced the name, then cacked herself laughing. Aunt Mary-Jaffa thinks it’s sweet. I don’t know what Aunt Turgid made of it all, she was faffing about with her lizards. Aunt Weevil reckons the baby will turn out to be a deviant….? I must ask her on her reasons behind that thinking. Aunt Gourd thinks it’s unnatural, as there was no presence of a bread van to deliver the baby – thus, she’s written the whole affair off as the work of the devil and shan’t be attending the christening.

Great Uncle Colobus will be pleased as he often said marital couplings should involve BOTH parties.. He thought Truss wouldn’t produce a child, as he always did it on his own so that Blen wouldn’t have to down tools (pardon the pun) and cease cleaning.

The family are coming over from Crackton-on-Butt in the next hour, I’ve got 62 baps to butter and a vat of Old Earwigs Reserve. It will simply have to do. Aunt Bench is feeling broody apparently, and spent a lot of time at the docks in hope of something called “jiggy-jiggy”. My palms are slick with dread at the thought. Just as I asked if she could cope with another one, Folly managed to blow her feet off in the garden after playing with some cotton reels and some old gelignite. I rest my case. The only time Bench ‘rode the hobby horse’ with anyone, she became infatuated, wrote him six love letters a day for three months, and followed him everywhere until the rozzers told her off. And that was thirty-two years ago.

But I couldn’t let you go without seeing Ruprecht. The little darling. We will be welcoming him to the town, by marching in a line behind a one-man-band. Then when we get to the barn, the backstreet bishop will perform the service. He’s not a real bishop, but he’s good at fishing, and Uncle Colobus slipped him a bit of bunce for his troubles. Ruprecht takes after his mother, with a fine moustache already in place.
Born at three years old, he can already tie his shoes (which he came out wearing), and is a marvel with quadratic equations. In anticipation of being asked to babysit, I’ve filled my spare hedge-room with wood and purchased a hemlock plant for the front garden.

Lynton Limpet Festival

Good evening, my little coddled eggs. I am writing to you from a very plush holiday hedge in Devon, which is most satisfactory. Within the windswept twisted twigs, I have a USB socket and WiFi, a luxury bed and a buggered toaster. I’m staying with Aunt Vom, Aunt Bench and Folly for the grand event of the Limpet Festival in Lynton, North Devon. It’s been a mite fractious getting here, as Aunt Vom borrowed (later found out nicked) a motor car and drove us here at speeds that have lifted my eyebrows a whole inch. The upside is I look 15 years younger, but resemble an owl on crack.

Lynton is a curious place, and should be famous for tortoises, as the pace is so crawly. I began to feel very, very old simply by looking at other people. There was, sympathetically, a Cobweb Shop, for the young at heart, encouraging people to slow down and mix with the general ambience. For those who have a fair walking pace and avoid dawdling in the middle of roads or stopping dead in the middle of paved areas, or for those who can decide what they would like for lunch within forty minutes, it’s possible to buy cobwebs to place over oneself in order to blend in. I gather it is also possible to buy a pill that has the power to make one appear on the brink of death within fifteen minutes.

The festival commenced this morning with a marvellous opening speech from a local Limpet name Gabriel. Apparently he is marvellously clever, and his vocabulary is unrivalled even by Stephen Fry. He spoke passionately at length about the life of limpets in the area, their plight in facing the building of tidal defences and the imminent eviction of rock families. He also touched on issues concerning the rise of flat-earth theory followers and the demise of good manners. This was all highly commendable, and apparently other limpets clapped loudly, but regrettably and suddenly, I noticed Aunt Vom clenching her teeth. It was about to kick off.

Local disgruntled limpets, they want justice not cream teas

The fraccas started when Vom began talking under her breath, someone had come over and Shshshh’d her. Her top lip blanched beneath her beard (this is one clue that she’s really pissed), and she reached into her portmanteau for a Chinese throwing star (this is the other clue). Vom launched into a diatribe about how we’d all paid good money to travel to see this spectacle of wonder, only to find that it’s a speech by a Gastropod and nobody has a clue what he’s saying. The organiser tried mansplaining that although you can’t hear the Limpet speaking, his words speak directly to the subconscious, so you walk away with an invisible gift to the soul. I quite liked this and tuned in perfectly. Vom didn’t.

She chinned him. The organiser began shouting about abuse in the workplace and fished out a clipboard. That was the last straw. Clipboards are like a red rag to a bull where Vom is concerned, at which she swiftly flung her stool at him and the whole crowd whipped up into a brawl. There’s still a folding chair on the roof of the Rising Sun pub, and someone’s cockerel weather vane is well buggered.

Notwithstanding, we did have a very pleasant afternoon. We got Vom out of the nick by fibbing dreadfully about menopause and the effects on the female temperament. The fact that it was recently International Women’s Day helped, I feel, at the very mention of menopause, the rozzers just opened the cell door and stood back, stunned.

Later, we decided we’d take the Cliff Top Railway which was like a bone-shaking water-powered lift providing the traveller with issues of altitude sickness and alarming perspective. I managed to keep things jolly while Vom orated that the whole system is designed to dupe the visitor. She claimed it’s solely for thick people to stand at the bottom, squint up with mouths open like dead fish, pay thruppence, then stand at the top only to squint down with mouths open like dead fish, then be conned out of sixpence for tea and a bun without the pleasure of ‘feeding dangerous gulls’. We almost avoided a fight in the carriage, when Vom stated nobody who lives in the Midlands should be allowed to travel outside the Midlands. Mr and Mrs Ivor Merkin of Edgebaston were restrained while she rambled, and their sudden fall over the side will thankfully remain a mystery. All in all, it was a lovely view and all was going well. Then, an hour later, we had to take Folly to the Poison Unit. She’d eaten something in someone’s clifftop garden and began hallucinating and frothing. To be blattidly honest, I didn’t notice for twenty minutes.

Clattery thing that attracks people who say ‘Ooh look Stan!’

I am baffled as to three questions, however, which I feel need answering. With regards to North Devon, why are there fudge shops every ten paces? And why do people walking in front suddenly stop without warning to take a picture of something totally irrelevant, like their own feet? And why in the name of Saturn’s Arse do couples decide to walk like a one-man-band with heavy weather clothing, crampons and walking poles when they’re only moving 30 feet from the car park?

Oh, and one more. We were a party of four. Where in the name of Zeus’s Nutsack is Aunt Bench?

Tortoise-Sitting Goes Deeply Wrong

I must confess, I made the gravest mistake today. Folly is jollying off on a Hiding Weekend with the ‘Nervous Branch of the Girl Scouts’. Bench became dreadfully fractious on the yoghurt pot phone and threw a total hissy, and in my efforts to calm her, I was duly conned into aggreeing to look after Wesley.
Wesley is a tortoise.
Despite the name of my writings, I don’t fare at all well with these creatures. This particular shelled joy looks like Douglas Hurd when he’s pondering something very carefully.
It’s so frustrating, he doesn’t ‘do’ anything. Well, actually, that’s a slight untruth, he did at first. His head came out, he moved his mouth like an elderly man demanding sustenance, then retreated when he saw me. Now, he is dreadfully quiet.
Aunt Bench should have kept him, especially as he belongs to her daughter. Unfortunately Bench is at the spa this week with Aunt Claymore and Cousin Girda. Aunt Claymore is being waxed (head to toe), Cousin Girda is being waned, and Bench is having some splendiferous conditioning jollop carded into her beard by a Tibetan throat singer.
So I’m lumbered with a sedentary tortoise. He doesn’t appear to enjoy entertainment.
I decided to ditch the ‘flinging’ idea at two o’clock due to his look of total disdain, I don’t think he knows about the Arguineguin Tortoise Flingers. So, I put on La Tapatia radio from Mexico, in the hope he may welcome some light music. But he didn’t move. I performed shadow puppets, I made a batman mask by turning my hands inside out over my eyes. Nothing. I did the classic – here is the church, here is the steeple – but the ungrateful little boggart gave me nothing to work with.
So I thought – food.
I had flageolet beans with goat’s rue and tree bark for dinner. Then I decided to throw in my neighbours’ buggered chicken, Len, he’s on his last legs anyway. Then I threw in a bhuna sauce.
And thought he might like some……………………..

WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL THEM!?!?!?
My shrieking classes start in a week, and I’ll be done for Torticide. I’ll be imprisioned for taking the life of a small dry thing (by mistake), and sentenced to a ten stretch, or worse – it could be community service. This is a horror, for several reasons.

1. It means being present in the community.

2. I’ll have to sort jigsaws for a jumble sale (most have a missing piece and I just want to hurl a stool at the donator).

3. I’ll have to make pleasantries (speaks for itself). This means my impersonation of a whelk will hold no quarter with anybody.

I can’t use the ‘hibernation’ excuse, as I did that with the last one. I can’t say he ran away, as Bench had him fitted with a tracker built by NASA. I can’t say he’s dead because Bench will get Aunt Vom to get a Triad to kill me.
So I need options.
I have killed tortoise with either flageolet beans, or goat’s rue or tree bark, or buggered chicken, or bhuna.
Or all three.

So I’ve blown out all the candles, I’m sitting in my hedge with an emergency torch
and the Radio Times and some Bovril, because I’m in hiding until I know what to do. I’ve also got my hands placed over my eyes so no-one can see me. If any of you dear people have any suggestions, please share them with me – I’ve still got time on my side. Bench isn’t back for three days, and Folly’s weekend hiding thankfully only ends when someone finds her.

Yours in fearful imancipation,
MAB

p.s. If anyone could post some Twiglets I’d be well chuffed (address it please, to: Mad Aunt B, The Hedge, Trebollocks). Also, if you possess the newflangled contraption of a yoghurt pot phone and you are a solicitor offering free advice, my number is St Vitus 201.

Woodchuck Calculations – For The Mathematical Reader Who Can Do Hard Sums

I was pondering aloud a question which has touched the very depths of my brain for years. Just how much wood can a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? One of my two readers, Heather, commented on the fact that I should not ask questions about woodchucks and their work ratio with out the backup of advanced mathematics.

Pah!

Well, I’ve have the measure of this woman with her fancy ways. So, I am not thwarted by hard sums. I wore my twig spectacles and brought out an abacus and a sextant, which means I am very clever. This is the result –

I have calculated that 612 over 35-7 for the thing, needs to be timesed by a 4% drop in activity on a 16min tea break. Then times by a 124 degree bend for beak ratio over a wide angle of 631.444 doobreys, divide by Widdy, and add the number of wankel rotary engines in a seven mile radius over a log pile of 619.

The result is: A woodchuck can clear 6 logs, 4 twigs, and clear 2 piles of leaf litter when he’s almost finished.

(And yes, Heather, I have shown my workings)

Mr Buff Orpington-Brown

I will explain a few things about ‘Buff’,
He is known to many in town.
Trebollocks would be blander without him,
Mr Scrimpton Buff-Orpington-Brown.
His eyebrows sweep rubbish from streets,
He’s erratic and changes directions.
He is a master woodworker, but strangely,
No soul wants to see his erections.
The smell of his clothing is odd,
Like cats pee mingled with cloves.
He likes to break wind in the library –
And send out the public in droves.
Every thing is labelled with Dymo,
Even the Dymo labeller itself.
It’s kept in a box marked with Dymo,
On a clearly marked ricketty shelf.
He knows when the freezer was defrosted,
By a Dymo label, he’s told.
But he doesn’t know the fridge-life of cheddar,
As the date is obscured by grey mould.
The man has pamphlets on everything –
From scrofula to chronic amnesia.
And he’s been up to Slimbridge a million times more
Than a Canada Goose with a Visa.
Real poetry must rhyme to be good,
Or he’s just unblattidly appalled.
Pam Ayres is an Artist, Larkin is cack,
and Spike Milligan had no talent at all.
To build his collection of objects,
He fishes strange things from a skip.
He keeps them ten years for good measure,
Then takes them off down to the tip.
Famous is Buff, and a legend in town –
Unbeaten in oddness by far.
And he’ll offer you a lift, when it’s raining,
If he remembers where he parked his car….

Grand Tortuga Flinging Festival

Hola! Mantequilla! Zapatos! Orificio Nasal!
‘Tortuga’ is Spanish for tortoise, I hear, so it’s my new word. I’m back home after a whirlwind surprise holiday in sunny Gran Canaria. I won a prize after entering a competition on a box of Aunt Bench’s fly papers and answered the following question correctly….’When is it considered acceptable to electrocute a sleeping relative?’. And would you believe…. Jolly Dee! I won! (Aunt Weevil is fuming as my victory was gained only by copying her answer and burning her entry. No doubt she’ll get me back…my Wart Insurance has lapsed and I fear this is an omen..)

I flew out from St Swivel’s airfield on a sort of pedaloe with wings, and sat next to the gunner. It was a pleasant flight, with insects hitting my goggles and a flagrantly crap view of the sea. I landed in Bahia Feliz in the early hours of Sunday 14th. The temperature was very warm, and I found a new level of stench in my sack attire. Nice.
My company was fabulous, a collection of ten of us who thoroughly enjoyed annoying other tourists, eating everything in sight, and drinking almost anything that was labelled (and some things that weren’t). We haggled in markets with looky-looky men selling dreadful sunglasses, swam in crystal blue pools (a far cry from the ditch I live near), and poked fun at people changing awkwardly under small beach towels.

Well, the bonanza was fabulous. Juan de la Vega (above) was there with his matador act. He is my hero. I obtained his autograph, and he shook my hand. I shall not wash it again, although he washed his very quickly after. He was mildly impaled by one tortoise, but it was only a flesh wound. We were hoping for something more, as the Arguineguin Tortoise Flingers were late to arrive, and the act was getting a little stale.

The Arguineguin Tortoise Flingers finally appeared, and broke not only a Canarian record, but a World Flinging record of 320.8ft. The longest fling in history since Edward II had a go, and a man in ballooned trousers wrote it down before it became known he’d fibbed about the measurment.
After the tortoises are launched off the cliff, they gather at the bottom to come back up and take their places for the next flinger. The picture above is a birds-eye view of the lift coming back up after the first round. The tortoises pictured are multi-lingual, and are all sponsored by Speedo and San Miguel.

This was the picture I took of Juan de la Vega’s tortoise, after it went on the rampage. It is a Midlothian Thurible Tortoise, a particularly aggressive species and broke free of its moorings several times. It ate an old lady called Renata. The x-ray I saw clearly shows her in the beasts stomach, still knitting away. Bless.
The story was that it had been fed peanut kit-kat in addition to breakfast, and that is not a good idea.

Then we had music. First were the Fataga Reptile Orchestra accompanied by a small singing gecko from Sioux City. Next up was a variation on ‘Lip Up Fatty’ from the Maspalomas Naked Singing Troupe….nuff said – a little twee for my tastes. Then we were charmed by these two delightful children, Maria and Miguel Vileda, they played the tortoise for us. Maria is pictured tuning the tortoise, while Miguel is on standby to hold the legs and begin playing.
Although this picture seems full of jollity, I was suspicious that it was a case of the children fulfilling the dream of the parents. Maria confided to me that all she wanted in life was ‘a bloody Nintendo DS’.
Miguel didn’t comment. His face says it all.

So, I finally flew back in to good old Blighty on Sunday, and they didn’t even bother to land. Just pushed me out over the airfield, with only my double chin as a parachute. Charming. Passport control below became very crabby when I ‘didn’t look like my photograph’, and it appears that my unshaven appearance had fooled them. I usually keep a smooth chin (despite the odd habits of my sisters), and a three inch of growth like pampas grass meant I was immediately whisked off to an office for interrogation as to the whereabouts of thirty pounds of semtex. At that point, I remembered last month that I couldn’t find my passport. At the same time, Aunt Vom had been on a ‘weapons run’ to somewhere, and I just feckin’ knew she’d stitched me up like a kipper. I found some luck after a bribe with some Honey Rum laced with cuckoo spit, and a naked picture of Jeremy Irons in sepia – the Customs Bugger let me in.

I hope to be back in good old G.C. soon, and take my perfected shrieking act to the Spanish masses. You never know, if you’re familiar with the island, you may well see a haggard, warty, stinking old bat shrieking professionally one day from the top of Roque Nublo. Pip pip and glad to be back with you all! Missed you like buggery….well, not quite like that.

Bench Of The Week

Today is Friday, and it’s time to celebrate ‘Bench Of The Week’, so, for those among you who may have missed earlier stories – here is Aunt Bench.

Aunt Bench is one of my elder sisters, and lives in East Bung, with her only daughter, Folly. Bench has never quite recovered from a vexatious birth experience, as Folly was delivered by tractor pulling. Even this day, the trauma has left Bench with an overwhelming addiction to licking fly papers, and we frequently find her slumped by the pantry cupboards, with several sheets adorning her thin body, in a state of delirium.

Folly is now thirty years of age, but I fear Bench will always be duty bound to leave her under the beady eye of Mrs Coddy (who in my opinion is the SS branch of neighbourhood watch). Bench enjoys several hobbies, including staring at people in public, beard shows, barking classes, quilling and looking at the letter ‘o’. It’s quite a marvel when she combines them all in a single hour.

As a young child, she was a skilled competitor in our local dance competitions, and would frequently astonish judges with her own interpretation of the St Vitus Dance, a regional favourite and an invention of an ancestor of ours. Her fears and phobias include brown windsor soup, question marks, woad, and Folly, her daughter. She has favoured the more delicate beard, in contrast to our other bearded relatives, Aunt Vom and Aunt Turgid, who do not like thinning scissors. Bench favours the feminine look, which also compels her to wear sleeves as she does not care to display her Navy tattoos in public.

As a member of the RSPB, she fosters abandoned wrens, which she allows to nest freely in her hair. The bun allows them warmth, shelter, and some morsel of security. When on a bus into town, or in the vet to get her jabs, you could be forgiven for thinking she’s innocently adjusting a hairpin, when actually she is often posting in a mealworm that she’s stealthily taken from her handbag to feed her adopted brood. Bench is also a member of The Human and Crow Vocal Collective, she has made wonderful efforts to learn their language. She is frequently observed on neighbouring television aerials ‘kaaarking’ her head off, stealing chip papers from bins and rampaging across car parks to rip off windscreen seals with her ‘pretend’ beak.

A fascinating, odd, troubled soul. Many a time I could cheerfully take a plank of wood to her, but that’s family. Well, it’s mine, at any rate. But although, like Bagpuss, she is a baggy, and bit loose at the seams, we love Bench.

An Unexpected Diary Entry

I do not usually approve of such things as diary entries (in case one reads anything highly alarming or dubious), but I thought I should include one today. My father never approved of diaries, thinking them crass and obscene articles to be banished along with the egg whisk. This week has been a horror! My computing machine is on the blink, the hedgenet socket at the base of my tree has blown a piffle-fuse, I’ve had raging Piddock Flu, and it seems my sister, Bench (above), has forgotten to come and collect her daughter who arrived for a weeks stay – over a month ago. I have written her a letter, and this is the response I got this morning.

Dearest Bernard,
I am so glad you wrote, dear! Poor poor Folly! I’d had this nagging feeling that I had mislaid something. It was only when I read your letter that I realised it wasn’t the pinking shears, but my own darling child. Do send her back, dear, and I am so sorry to have been such an imposition.
You know it’s been a trial for me since she was born, and I honestly thought that now she’d turned thirty, things would be easier. Tell me, has she grown much?
I eagerly await her return,
Warmest love and deepest apologies,

Bench (P.S. Any chance of borrowing fifty quid, old girl? I’ve got a soiree on the east side of the docks at midnight next tuesday. x

Well, I became a little exasperated with her at this point. Bench is a terribly selfish creature, she’s so absorbed in the Weasel Stretching Foundation that she doesn’t give a second thought to others – and that’s without mentioning her chosen line of late night work. But I’m not entirely unsympathetic. Folly (pictured) is a treasure, but she’s dreadfully thick for a girl her age, and playing with traps and poisonous plants in the garden is asking for disaster. Only yesterday, she set fire to her own shoes then pushed them into a letterbox (a public one – so you can imagine I was wondering if my letter to Bench had been collected at all). Thus, I can’t do much more about it this evening, so we’ll have a pleasant dinner before I take the spiders out for a last wee. I’ve got an adder or two left in the freezer and some chicory that needs polishing off so I’ll create something Michel Roux would be in awe of. Perhaps.