Sheepy Magna

2004-03-11T16:05:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-20T16:14:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-18T15:52:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-17T14:35:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-16T16:07:00.000Z

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’.

2004-02-11T15:52:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-10T16:41:00.000Z

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.

2004-02-09T13:15:00.000Z

Returning to Magna after any time away always brings surprises and in the week or so since I’ve been gone there has been a soap opera going on here. A death, a lottery win, a minor explosion and, for good measure, a UFO sighting.
Magna will be sad to say goodbye to old Nat Spaniel who has finally gone to that great butcher’s shop in the sky. Nat was a native of Magna who ran the meat emporium on the high street for over forty years. His parents proved they either had a wicked sense of humour or didn’t like their only son very much when they named him Nathaniel and it was only in later life that people got used to him as plain old Nat. Nat got his own back on his parents and eased his own burden by naming his own son Daniel. Grandfather Spaniel died when Dan was just a few months old when a pig fell on his head during a delivery. Nat took over the business and kept it going for over forty years until he decided to sell up. Nat is survived by his son Daniel, his daughter Catherine, and three grandchildren.

On a more cheery note, Sally Ann and Bob at P’s P of P had a little lottery win on Saturday night. They won’t say exactly how much is coming their way but have promised a new cappuccino machine and two extra tables will be installed very shortly. Bob has always wanted a Harley Davidson but Sally Ann had a bad experience on a motorcycle at the age of nineteen and has never ridden on one or worn a rara skirt since.

John Upjohn is now minus one shed after it exploded last week. It seems some of his survivalist ‘materials’ were being stored in there and mice had been nibbling at the various containers. The containers leaked, the ingredients mixed and John’s mouse problem was solved. Ironically he slept through the whole thing. This concerned him as after all his preparations he does not want to miss the end of the world. He is working on a solution to the problem.

Finally, a UFO was spotted out to the east of Magna on Friday night. Farmer Jones (who is not actually a farmer – it’s his name) says he spotted one coming down behind the copse at the back of his land. Alan Scott, as the resident Mulder (he’ll love being called that) was called in to investigate but alas found no evidence of a visitation. He sat watch the following night should they return but to no avail. He lives in hope.
Meanwhile Farmer Jones insists he was telling the truth but he was once convinced he had a malignant melanoma which turned out to be a dried cornflake.

2004-01-31T20:12:00.000Z

The old house at the end of the village has been sold. The sign went up yesterday but no one remembers anyone coming to view it. The place has been empty for nearly two years now. It used to belong to Dilly Menchen and her common law husband Tim but sadly they both passed away whilst holidaying on the Norfolk Broads. It seems their boat was holed by something as they slept and sank with all hands, which included Dilly’s aunt, who was deaf and slightly blind. Dilly and Tim were well loved in the village, and held magical fancy dress fondue parties once every six months. One year someone turned up as Elvis Presley but no one has ever been able to work out who it was.

2004-01-30T19:42:00.000Z

Lawson Civitter has bought a horse. He took delivery yesterday and has housed it at the stables on the other side of George’s field. The stables are run by Sandra Chan, ex-show jumper and one time paramour of Lawson himself. Their relationship lasted for almost a year until during a country walk Sandra jumped off a dry stone wall and landed on Lawson’s foot. That, it seems, was the straw that broke the camel’s metatarsal and their relationship went downhill from there. They remain friends and some nights when he’s had a few more than is sensible, Lawson can be seen staggering across the field towards Sandra’s place, at the bidding of a sexual homing beacon activated when his already dwindling wisdom is further dulled by the booze. Case in point – Lawson has never ridden a horse in his life.
Sandra, for her part, is an accommodating woman and still carries a torch for him. Although if the show jumping circuit is anything to go by, Sandra has always been an accommodating woman, with a reputation for never giving away four faults by refusing.

2004-01-29T12:57:00.000Z

Winter’s icy hand touched Magna yesterday. Snow drifted and covered the village. The roof of John Upjohn’s greenhouse gave way and he spent most of the day rescuing tomatoes (he preserves them and stores them for the approaching apocalypse); Sally Ann and Bob at P’s P of P had a buy-one-get-one-free deal going on all day but most villagers own kettles so the predicted rush didn’t happen.
Sally Ann and Bob met over twenty years ago in the queue to see Return of the Jedi. Afterwards they turned to each other, as people often do following a disaster.

2004-01-28T13:49:00.000Z

After yesterday’s animal hijinks, things seem to be back to abnormal here in Sheepy Mag. Except for Ken Ellington of course, who is now in mourning for his lost birds, which unfortunately included Pippin, his prize winning Danish Tumbler. Pippin was known in the village and will be missed.
As an addendum to yesterday’s goings on, our visiting pigeon eater Aslan managed to escape his captors some sixty miles from here and is at large once again. If he absorbed anything from his meal here he should be on his way back at this very moment.

Meanwhile and not entirely unrelated, young Gary Gaylard has won the coveted role of Rum Tum Tugger in his high school production of Cats. His father Gordon is not pleased at the prospect of his only son running around in fur and tights (I’d venture that Cabaret is his musical of choice) and has made his feelings plain. He will not be at the performance, nor will he take Gary to rehearsals. Gary expected this but is resolved to play the part. A similar situation arose a few years ago when Jennifer wanted to play Maria in West Side Story. It seems the head of the family has an aversion to musical theatre. Gordon Gaylard is a curious man.

2004-01-27T14:58:00.000Z

Panic over. After hours of fruitless searching, the lion has been captured. Strangely, though, no one has yet reported a lion missing. The animal was brought down by four tranquilizer darts as it was bounding across George’s field to the west of Magna. It also narrowly missed being hit by the contents of Ken Ellington’s shotgun as it went. It seems Aslan had managed to help himself to a half dozen of Ken’s pigeons after managing to get inside the coop. Ken was so enraged that it seems one of the animal handlers eventually discharged his weapon into Ken’s backside to calm him. The lion is now on its way to a new home, Ken is giggling like an idiot in his pigeon coop, and the remaining pigeons are in a state of shock.

2004-01-27T10:54:00.000Z

Janet Madchen, Magna’s resident white witch, had a strange experience last night. Her cat Kevin woke her in the early hours mewing loudly and scratching at the window. This is normally unheard of as Kevin is the laziest familiar in the history of witchcraft, prone to sleeping standing up and eating while he’s asleep. Tonight though he was apoplectic, which is quite scary in a cat. Janet got up and tried to calm him but he was having none of it. So she peered out of the window to see what had freaked Kevin out. Had she not been a very calm and centred person she would very probably have freaked out herself, but instead she simply stared open mouthed at what was prowling around her garden. An Aslan-sized lion was there, weaving in between the rhododendrons. Kevin slapped the window with some force and the beast looked up. Now you may think that seeing a massive lion creeping around a middle-English garden in the dead of night was weird enough, but when the thing looked up at her Janet swears its eyes were glowing green. It growled, more at Kevin than Janet, and disappeared over the fence into Jacky Platt’s garden.
Animal experts have been combing the area for Aslan all morning but so far he’s nowhere to be seen. The village is deserted. Everyone is indoors. Janet the witch has spent the morning casting the runes. Kevin the witch’s cat is catching up on some sleep and dreaming of monsters. And Alan Scott keeps checking his wardrobe.

2004-01-26T12:49:00.000Z

The beginnings of a flu epidemic have been noticed in Magna over the last couple of days. Six o’clock mass last night was replete with sneezes between amens. Even Father Mather, who claims to have a constitution which fights off infection (the truth is probably something more related to his blood alcohol limit), has succumbed. He sneezed through the gospel and sniffed his way through communion. The turnout was low anyway but there’s a good chance he had infected the entire congregation by the time he bid them go in peace to love and serve the Lord. ‘And have plenty to drink and lots of bed rest’ should have been added to that particular platitude.
The turnout was also low in the Pug and Monkey last night, with Lawson Civitter the only customer for most of the evening. Lawson swears by large doses vitamin C and garlic so sometimes he’s the only customer for other reasons, but last night the regular drinkers stayed away to nurse their developing infections and Lawson had only Tommy Yomikov the landlord to talk to. Tommy is of Russian extraction and claims to have had all 227 rhinoviruses by the age of 16. He has only got one eye though.

2004-01-25T18:11:00.000Z

After over twenty four hours of isolation the phone lines in Magna finally came back up a couple of hours ago and reconnected us to the rest of the world.
Jennifer Gaylard was in the middle of an important email to yet another potential suitor when the internet went down and Mrs Randine will have to wait until Monday now to order that little surprise for her husband for Valentine’s (she was overheard asking Janet Madchen about the proper upkeep of leather clothing the other day but whether this is related is unknown).
Anyway, about 11am yesterday every phone line in the village went down. The blame was ultimately laid at the feet of a team of archaeologists attempting to unearth the lost town of Sheepy Down somewhere to the south. Legend has it that during the plague, Sheepy Down was razed to the ground by a religious mob who blamed the disease on a farmer who was trying to breed a new type of pig.
Sheepy Down was burned and buried and all trace of it vanished from the world.
Six hundred years later a team of would be Indiana Joneses turn up and as well as failing to find even a piece of broken pottery, manage to knock down a telegraph pole and write off a Ford Anglia.
Back in the village it felt like the millenium bug had finally struck. John Upjohn is expecting the apocalypse sometime in 2008 but has been prepared since 1997 so he went into survival mode as soon as his broadband link went down. It was late last night before anyone could get hold of him. He was holed up in his bomb shelter eating beans out of a can. He looked so disappointed when he emerged that everyone present consoled him with the fact there are only four years until the end of the world.
Plenty of time to breed a new kind of pig.

2004-01-23T11:00:00.000Z

Jennifer Gaylard is struggling with her sexuality. Alas the date on Wednesday night did not go well, and she will not be seeing that particular gentleman again. She refused to go into detail but implied either an odour problem, an excessive body hair problem, or both. If this heterosexual thing is going to work, she’s going to need a smooth skinned man who smells like a woman. Not sure there are any tick boxes on the internet dating sites for those criteria.
Meanwhile, the magna stray has been spotted again. On his way back from his Dungeons and Dragons evening, Alan Scott nearly crashed his moped when the beast darted in front of him. It then proceeded to chase Alan down Riverside Close. Alan’s fantasy engorged brain had it as some hound from hell ready to rip out his throat, but when a car passed in the other direction the monster changed tack and headed back in pursuit of that unlucky driver. Going by the time frame the chances are that motorist was Jennifer’s date, leaving Magna never to return. It seems the mutt went with him. Birds of a feather perhaps?

2004-01-22T15:30:00.000Z

Chinese New Year usually passes Magna by. English New Year is barely celebrated here so what chance does it have. Lawson Civitter celebrates the New Year on April 4th, a date he calculated during a high fever in 1992. This episode is well detailed in his autobiography, even now on its way to the publisher.
This year is different though because Gary Gaylard, youngest member of the Gaylard family, has acquired a Chinese penpal. She is fourteen and her name is Li Mei, which means beautiful plum blossom. No one has yet seen a photograph so it is not yet known if she is well named, but it’s themed food night at the Gaylard’s tonight in her honour, so gong xi fa chai from Sheepy Magna.

2004-01-22T11:06:00.000Z

Magna has a stray dog. It wandered into town late yesterday and proceeded to turn heads all down the main street. At Pritchard’s Pots of Pleasure, the local Tea Shoppe(two tables, six chairs), several customers(all of them) pressed their noses to the glass and watched the pooch pass in rapt silence, as if it was a celebrity or a black person.
A minute or so later, Ken Ellington entered P’s P of P and informed all present that the dog had urinated against the Give Way sign and disappeared into the churchyard.
‘It better not go near my pigeons,’ he crowed. Ken’s always been protective of his pigeons, but since they strayed across a pheasant shoot near Polesworth last year he’s been downright paranoid. It was a blood bath.

2004-01-21T09:12:00.000Z

Local eccentric and acquitted horse thief Lawson Civitter had a bad day yesterday. His memoirs, ‘What I did, when, where, and why’ were rejected by another publisher. Apparently they are the most libellous piece of writing that particular publisher has ever read. He’s only halfway down the list though, so he was back in the post office despatching it with all speed to the next one.
Sadly though, when he got home he found his pet monkey Chico dead at the foot of the stairs. It appears that it was simply old age that finally took him from us, and no foul play is suspected. Chico, you may remember, was prime suspect in a number of unsolved burglaries a few years ago.
Chin up Lawson.

2004-01-20T10:25:00.000Z

There was a power cut in Magna last night. Icy conditions caused a cattle transport to slew wildly across the B4116 and shed part of its load. In real terms a cow was ejected from the back of the lorry and smashed into a substation. The condition of the cow, and it's identity, are not yet known; but the substation was put out of commission.
So for most of the night and into this morning Magna was without power(except for John Upjohn's place which he adapted to run on animal waste three years ago).
Father Mather lit every candle in the church and stayed there with a bottle of unconsecrated wine, confessing to his housekeeper he is afraid of the dark. Apparently something happened to him in his teens involving a girl and an old air raid shelter.

2004-01-19T15:46:00.000Z

The phone box in the middle of Magna is still ringing. That makes three straight weeks. Four if you count the week before Mrs Randine from the Post Office went outside and answered it. She refuses to tell a soul what she heard on the other end but Mr Randine says he hasn't seen his wife so rattled since she came home and found a stranger cooking in her kitchen and a cat watching him through the window. Those pans were on the front lawn for over a week.

2004-01-19T10:57:00.000Z

Saw Jennifer Gaylard on her way to work this morning(she works in Parva, counting cars as they pass a particular road sign). When I asked how her date went on Saturday she looked at me like I'd strangled her puppy. She's seeing him again on Wednesday.
A couple minutes later I bumped into the head of the Gaylards, her father Gordon. There's something odd about that man, and I've heard the rumours but I wouldn't mention them here without proof, specifically photographs. But there's something strange about the way he pronounces the letter 'w'....

2004-01-18T10:14:00.000Z

At St Biddulph's multi-denominational, there are two masses, 11am an 6pm. Father Mather has been lobbying the bishops for months to reduce this to just one. He reckons there aren't enough parishioners to warrant a two mass sunday. The truth is the 6pm appointment cuts into his drinking time. And so to church...

2004-01-17T09:19:00.000Z

Jennifer Gaylard is struggling with her sexuality. She sees it as a wrestling match where the outcome is already fixed before hand but she has to go through each move as choreographed. Hence tonight she has a date with a fat man she met online. She knows she's weighting the odds here but if she can deal with a fat bloke she's never met before in a 'romantic' scenario, then the hetero engine might kick in.....