The Frumplingtons

“We ought to get a metal detector. It could be fun. You never know what you might find.”

Yes, it was another one of Shana’s great ideas. No, I’m not kidding; it really was a great idea. It worked on so many different levels: it could have led to all sorts of exciting discoveries, but even if it hadn’t, it would still have been an excellent way of getting me to dig over our garden’s small but neglected borders. Make chores fun. It always works. And I probably wouldn’t have guessed until I’d shifted at least ten barrowloads of muck.

But we decided against it, at least for the time being.

Maybe if we had bought a metal detector we would have found our missing fork a lot sooner. As things were, it fell to me to discover the wayward utensil during my most recent monthly vacuuming session. No sooner had I removed the sofa cushions than I spotted the fork just lying there, waiting for some unsuspecting but tocks to land on its vicious tines.

It was on my side of the sofa too!

I remember my exact words at the moment of discovery and I shall now quote them verbatim and unexpurgated:

“Bloody hell, there’s a fork under the cushion!”

The fork was not the only thing we found this week. Earlier today, after finally tiring of my complaining about the space bar on our computer keyboard sticking in the down position, Shana decided it needed cleaning.

Shana is pretty good with computers and knew exactly what to do. She tipped the keyboard upside down and shook it vigorously.

You should have seen the crumbs.

There was biscuit, cake, cake, biscuit, biscuit with bits of cake on it, and cake with bits of biscuit on it. If we’d been locked in the room with no food we could have lived on those crumbs for at least a week.

Still, at least the keyboard’s working a lot better now. You’ve no idea how much of a nuisance it is not to beabletousethespacebarwhenyou’rewritingasentence. Infactitreallypissesyouoffafterawhile.

Very soon now it will be time for our afternoon bout of Scrabble. This regular feast of linguistic gladiatorialisticness…icity (hey, I’m just practising) will be accompanied by a refreshing (not to say brain boosting) cup of tea and the last two squares of Co-op tiffin. And if you’ve never tried the Co-op’s tiffin, it’s about time you did, ‘cos you really are missing out on a treat. The phrase ‘taste sensation’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Mmm…tiffin…slobberslobber…

Scratching my head last week (heedless, as usual, of the risk of getting splinters) and wearing a frown of concentration, I suddenly said, “Y’know, this game of Scrabble is bloomin’ tricky, isn’t it?”

Not that I got much sympathy from Shana. All she could do was put on her best Winston Churchill accent (and, honestly, it wasn’t half bad either) and reply:

“We don’t play Scrabble because it’s easy. We play Scrabble because it’s hard.”

I couldn’t help laughing. But after a moment I resumed my head scratching, a small patch of sawdust soon covering the treble-word-score squares at my edge of the board. Something was troubling me.

“Was that really one of Churchill’s sayings that you just paraphrased?” I said.

“‘Fraid not. It was John F. Kennedy. The original quote was something about not going to the Moon because it’s easy but…”

“…because it’s hard,” I said. “A bit like this game. I wonder what happened to Kennedy though. Don’t hear much from him these days, do you?”

Remember those rubber dog lips from about a year ago? Well, they were just meant as a joke. Whereas this is serious. Get one for your pooch now.

I wonder if they’re available in tartan…

Remember how the film, The Italian Job ends? Well, it’s actually happened, not in Italy but in the delightfully named Crook O’Lune in Lancashire. OK, now nobody panic. Just stay calm. And no sudden movements!

We saw lots of seagulls flying around the Frumpy House yesterday. A sure sign of bad weather out at sea — or at least, that’s what we used to think. But think about it a bit more and you’ll realise how absurd the idea is. It’s like seeing ducks waddling down the street and assuming they’ve come onto dry land because the river’s a bit too wet for them. No, seagulls are, as their name suggests, creatures of the sea. Our coast is their natural environment.

Our seagulls, however, have probably never even seen the sea. Wouldn’t recognize a fish if you threw it at them. Our seagulls are, most likely, related to the gulls that hang around the river near Lincoln’s Waterside shopping centre. Our seagulls live on discarded chips. They follow, not international trawlers but city dustcarts, hoping to scavenge tasty morsels that the trucks leave behind. (There is, apparently, a bloke who walks round Boston market place on Sunday afternoons doing more or less the same kind of thing, but that’s another story. They’re all a bit odd in Boston, y’know.)

Keen birdwatchers might like to know that we were not content just to call these birds seagulls. A quick check in our Hamlyn’s guide revealed that they were Common gulls. Not herring gulls, as we might have assumed. There is a difference: the bill of the adult herring gull is yellow; whereas the bill of the adult common gull is red, i.e., the same colour as the ones we saw yesterday.

But why have all these gulls turned up now, if it has nothing to do with coastal weather? Well, we reckon they’ve been forced out of the town centre by the aggressive tactics of Lincoln’s pigeons.

There could be another explanation though. Maybe there’s a new chippy opening on the High Street.

Cod ‘n’ chips twice please…

BBC kid’s show, ‘In the Night Garden…‘, might be popular with its target audience, the 1-4 age group, but I wonder how many of them have, like us, detected a darker side to the garden and all its friendly characters?

The Hahoos

The Hahoos, for example, are brightly coloured and have benign facial expressions, but their sheer size is intimidating. And when they jump up and down, the effect is like a mini-earthquake. This may explain why Garden characters never venture beyond the Hahoo boundary. Only once have viewers been allowed a glimpse of what lies beyond: when the Night Garden’s in-house airship, the Pinky Ponk, rose high above the trees in a bid to escape the Hahoos’ immense gravitational pull and 24/7 surveillance. Up there in the Garden’s forest canopy lives a beautiful flower that would, I suspect, have been prized by Victorian-era specimen hunters.

Perhaps the Hahoos are only there to protect this rare flower. But why?

Does this magical flower yield interesting alkaline compounds that would, like certain exotic mushrooms, lead one to ecstatic realms even more surreal than the Night Garden?

Or does it simply make a reet tasty infusion when its petals are steeped in boiling water?

One day we might find out. It could be that the scary Hahoo bouncers are all that stand between us and the advance of scientific knowledge.

The Tittifers

The Tittifers also have their sinister side. You only have to hear the brooding bass notes that always herald the arrival of the toucan, for the image of his razor sharp black bill and piercing eyes to come flooding into your mind. If our experience is anything to go by, you won’t be able to sleep properly for days afterwards.

The Ball

This has to be the scariest of all. Not only does The Ball seem to have a life of its own; it also causes havoc whenever it appears. Most recently it knocked over all of Makka Pakka’s tidy stones. And then it came back and knocked over Makka Pakka himself. The big question though, is whether the Night Garden ball is related to the Ball in Patrick McGoohan’s cult series, ‘The Prisoner’? And if so, does this mean Igglepiggle is Number Six? After all, he is always seen trying to run away at the end of every episode. And he is invariably caught and brought back the next day.

Incidentally, if Igglepiggle is Number Six, does this mean Derek Jacobi is Number One?

And was that mucky patch Igglepiggle fell into in the first series a Number Two? (Yep, that’s what we thought.)

Be seeing you…

MOVIE NEWS: Hollywood beckons for Makka Pakka

Makka Pakka would be the perfect choice to take Harvey Keitel’s part as the Cleaner if there’s ever a remake of Pulp Fiction. He’s got all the kit — soap, sponge, compact drier and, most important of all, a getaway vehicle; even if the springs do sound a bit dodgy.

FOR SALE: Two dozen Tittifer eggs.

Excellent boiled or poached. Best before end Sept 2007. Leave comment to purchase. Buyer collects.

From BBC News [my bold type]:

Five boys have been sentenced to two years’ detention for killing a father who collapsed with a heart attack after being pelted with stones and rocks.

Following the sentence, Det Insp Clive Hayes said he hoped the “tough sentence” will “act as a deterrent” to other youths tempted to get involved in anti-social behaviour.

‘Scuse me while I go to look up the meaning of ‘tough’ in my dictionary…

Shana had a cheese and onion roll for lunch. After three bites, however, she declared it ‘horrible’. After that, she ate a dictionary instead. Yes, I know it sounds unlikely, but how else do you explain Shana’s later performance in our afternoon Scrabble game? I managed a couple of bingoes (UNRUSHeD at the start of the game, and HERRIES at the end), but Shana chalked up an impressive three seven-letter words: AcTIONED, InFORMAL and SlEEVING.

For stats addicts, Shana’s final score was 443, and mine was 369. Despite my having all four of the ‘big’ letters (Q, Z, J and X) I found myself held back by too many consonants or too many occurrences of the dratted U on the rack at once.

I blame the ‘Scrabble fairies’. They shuffle the letters at night when no-one is looking, you know.

[The Fantasy Night Garden theme continues…]

CBeebies kids’ show In the Night Garden… is not only a hit with younger viewers: it also has a cult following among a large percentage of Britain’s adults.

We are currently compiling a dossier on ITNG regular, Igglepiggle. When it’s finished, we intend to present it to the Director of Public Prosecutions. You see, we are convinced that Igglepiggle is a delinquent. We reckon he has committed a catalogue of petty crimes, including the following:

• Criminal damage: in a recent episode, Igglepiggle knocked over two piles of stones, not long after Makka Pakka had cleaned and tidied them.
• Causing an obstruction on the public highway by dropping his red blanket in the middle of Makka Pakka’s driveway.
• Trespass (note: this offence is usually dealt with in the civil courts but we feel it worthy of mention here) by going to sleep in Upsy Daisy’s bed without permission.
• Littering, by dropping his large red blanket on the Pontipines’ tiny house. The Pontipine family might also wish to claim compensation due to the stress caused by this incident.
• Fare dodging: Igglepiggle has never been seen buying a ticket before boarding the Ninky Nonk local train. If the fare dodging charge doesn’t stick, the operators of the Ninky Nonk might instead wish to pursue a claim for the costs of cleaning their train’s upholstery after one episode where Igglepiggle fell in a patch of mud (or possibly a cowpat?) and not only got covered in mud himself but also got it all over Upsy Daisy’s clothes and also on the Ninky Nonk’s seats.

As you can see, when we’re done with our Night Garden incident log, Igglepiggle is gonna have a rap sheet as long as your arm. (Unless, that is, you happen to be pudgy little Makka Pakka, who only has short arms.)

We think Igglepiggle knows we’re onto him though, as he has not been seen for a while. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to issue a photofit picture of Igglepiggle. If you see him, do not approach him. Instead, just phone your local police station.

Details of suspect:

Name - Igglepiggle.
Age - Juvenile.
Height - Approx 2′2″
Distinguishing features - Blue fur, red blanket, cheeky grin

It is important to note, however, that since going on the run, Igglepiggle might have changed his appearance. Here is an artist’s impression of how he might look now.

It’s still only Igglepiggle though, so don’t have nightmares.