Thursday, December the 16th, 2004

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The Cardboard Club

The Cardboard Club was an odd little society which met in the vicinity of Bodger's Spinney during the last century. Some say that it still does so, although the evidence for this is slight. Throughout its existence it was difficult to pin it down, to attest with any certainty who its members were and what they did, so those who claim its continuance into the new millennium may indeed be correct. I have just noticed a hornets' nest in my rafters.

We do know that the members of the Cardboard Club were fond of regalia. Several crates and trunks packed with badges, emblems, tassels, embroidery, pennants, flags and suchlike were discovered during excavation works on the Blister Lane Bypass a couple of years ago. Catalogued with care by that prematurely white-haired, mute and pallid man at the museum, the collection provides some clues as to the activities of the Cardboard Club.

For example, it seems reasonably clear that the chief purpose of the club was to collect samples of cardboard. Collect, note, not disperse. What is not yet understood is why this was blanketed in secrecy. After all, cardboard is no longer illegal in my country, nor are there any punitive taxes levied upon the possession of it. The mystery deepens when we consider that no cardboard whatsoever was found with the crates of regalia. One can only assume that the club's cardboard collection was squirrelled away.

The most intriguing item to be found was a toy plasticine model of Beaky, from the sixties beat group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. A safety pin attached to his plasticine spinal column suggests that it was worn as a signal of honour, perhaps by the Plenipotentiary Grand Vizier of the Cardboard Club. Alternatively, it may have found its way into the crate by accident, and have nothing to do with the club at all. This line of inquiry is well worth pursuing, but not now, because the frantic buzzing of those hornets is driving me crackers, and I am going to have to climb up on the roof and pick them off, one by one, with my deadly anti-hornet pellet rifle.