Sheepy Magna

It’s a strange world we live in, and to live in a strange village in a strange world means strangeness runs in the veins and hangs on you like a mist. It also tethers you here as if the place is alive, an active participant, influencing the course of your life. Hence, after almost three weeks away, when I thought I was gone from there, when the daily doings of the folk and their odd little lives were literally hundreds of miles away, and the affection I felt for them was wearing off, as it does to all who come and go, the tether went taut and yanked me back here, and now I have to start the long and arduous effort to get to a point where I can make a run for it again.
Still, it’s good to be back.

Young Gary Gaylard had his first rehearsal for Cats yesterday. By all accounts everything went well although Janet O'Hare who is playing Grisabella the glamour cat has decided she is the star of the show because she gets to sing Memory and has been strutting around like, well, like a cat. Miss Crank the drama teacher had to take her aside and explain the meaning of the word ensemble but the message didn't truly get through until Louise Bytheway, who had also been up for the role of Grisabella, warned Janet that she was in danger of being spayed if she kept showboating. Janet, suitably chastened, remained subdued for the rest of rehearsal. Cycling home Gary passed Janet, all alone in the moonlight, sitting at the bus stop crying. He stopped and spoke to her and they ended up walking home together. It turns out she is actually a very pleasant young lady who puts on an act to seem tougher than she is. Gary knows a little about this as he has watched his father at parents evenings and yet also heard him whimpering in the night.

Caught up in the spirit (no pun intended) of recent events on the red planet, Alan Scott has resurrected his ambitions to be a science fiction writer by digging his aborted novel from under his bed. His tome, tentatively titled Invaders On Mars, already weighs in at an immense nine hundred pages and he was only halfway through when he stopped to start revising for his A-Levels. The story details man’s arrival on Mars and what happens when he comes face to face with the planet’s original inhabitants, awoken by the intrusion. An interesting premise but unfortunately spoiled by Alan’s stubborn refusal to change the Martians into something less ridiculous than four foot tall rats.
Alan’s interest in all things science fiction stems from his childhood. At the age of four his father was killed when a falling chunk of Skylab decapitated him while he was mowing the lawn. That piece of Skylab now holds a sacred place in his ‘study’, sitting neatly between his signed Doctor Who script and the framed photograph of Alan with a Patrick Stewart look-alike.
Alan’s father John was a test pilot in the sixties and still holds the dubious honour of crashing more military aircraft than any other pilot in history. Alan gets nosebleeds at altitude and once had a girlfriend who turned out to be a man.

The new owner of Dilly and Tim’s old house made his first appearance in Magna yesterday, having bought the place in cash, sight unseen.
At about three o’clock two large lorries passed through the village followed an hour or so later by a large black Mercedes with darkened windows. With enough curiosity to wipe out the cat population the gathered patrons of P’s P of P dispatched young Dicky Hunter to cycle up the road and then come back with the news.
He came back thirty minutes later wide eyed and a little rattled. Apparently he had stood and watched as first a long-legged woman unfolded from the passenger seat of the Mercedes, and then the wiry and impeccably dressed driver oozed out of the opposite door. He looked up at the house and then turned or rather from the way Dicky explained it he revolved, stared Dicky full in eyes and beckoned him over. Exactly what he said to Dicky he couldn’t remember, only that his name was Denton McVitie and he was pleased to be living here in Sheepy Magna. I understand Dicky didn’t go to school today because he wasn’t well.
“Denton McVitie? What kind of stupid name is that?!” asked Lawson Civitter.

Mr and Mrs Randine’s prodigal son has returned. As far as they were concerned Randall had been living on a beach in the South Seas monitoring turtles, his HND in Biology put to good use. Every now and then they would receive a postcard or a phone call detailing his latest adventure with a local witch doctor or native chief and a request for money (these scientific charities don’t pay too well…). He’d been gone three years until his return yesterday and it seems the turtles had not been keeping him busy enough because in tow were two south sea females and a child. Instead of breaking the news gently over a series of postcards, Randall took the decision to present both his ‘wives’ and his baby son all in one go on the doorstep on a Sunday morning. This may not have been a wise move on his part as Mrs Randine had an attack of the vapours almost immediately and has been wailing quietly from her room for the last twenty four hours. Mr Randine on the other hand is rather taken with his new daughters in law and grandson Endidi Fasawi Alili, which roughly translated means ‘will inherit the post office’.

Jennifer Gaylard is struggling with her sexuality. Her inbox is full of emails from prospective partners (male) but on Saturday night after telling Gordon and Mrs Gaylard that she was going to an astronomy seminar she paid a clandestine visit to Munch, a lesbian nightclub in Birmingham. Apparently she met a number of interesting women and even danced with a couple of them but somehow managed to end up with a date with the barman. She is as confused as ever.
Gordon Gaylard’s attitude to same sex relationships may have something to do with it as he purports to be totally against them but Mrs G, who is very rarely seen these days, once got jelly legs at one of Dilly and Tim’s fondue parties and let slip to Dilly that Gordon sometimes liked her to dress in one of his suits and draw on a small moustache.

Lawson Civitter took a little trip to the hospital yesterday. Late on Sunday he managed to trip over a doorstop in the shape of an African elephant he once shot and took a tumble. His arm was still aching Monday morning so he popped into casualty up in Tamworth. After sitting surrounded by coughs and splutters, blood and incontinence for two hours he was finally taken for an x-ray. The radiographer there, Mary Neary, was quite rude to both Lawson and the pretty blonde student observer who was present, so Lawson tore a strip off her. He must have hit a nerve when he mentioned the thickness of her forearms because she stormed out and was replaced a few minutes later by a second radiographer who was much more accommodating and agreed that Ms Neary’s arms are a little Navratilovan. The pretty blonde eventually informed Lawson that he had bruised a bone in his wrist; it was strapped up and he went on his merry way. On the way out he got a glowering look from Mary Neary, who was now wearing a cardigan. He also tried to get the blonde’s number but she was taken. There’s some lucky bloke out there according to Lawson, who had a bit of luck himself when he found a pound in the car park on the way out.
No wonder Sandra Chan had a smile on her face in the post office this morning.