Thursday, March the 1st, 2007

back to: title, date or indexes

Wrecks

There is huge excitement at Bodger's Spinney as we look forward to this weekend's annual Spinney Wreck Competition. Rival teams have been preparing for months, in utmost secrecy, their re-enactments of The Wreck Of The Deutschland and The Wreck Of The Hesperus. As ever when the Jesuits meet the Hiawathas, there is a sense of age-old blood feud, and volunteer ambulance-based medicos wearing special armbands will be on the alert from before daybreak.

Old Farmer Frack's cows will be mooching in a nearby field to add an air of bucolic charm, and Mrs Gubbins will again be wearing the referee's chapeau. In an exclusive pre-contest interview she told our reporter, “I am hoping things pass off with due decorum, but I have made sure we have enough tourniquets on site this year. No one wants to see a repeat of the time we had to send urchins scampering off across the hills to Old Ma Bagshaw's Bandage Shop.”

Mrs Gubbins was made referee-in-perpetuity after she single-handedly sent packing a gang of rogue Opium-Eaters who tried to sabotage the contest with a wholly inappropriate, because shipless, re-enactment of The Household Wreck.

The latest odds are available from the illegal gambling den behind the illegal butcher's shop on the plaza.