IT’S OFF TO THE MOON FOR THE GUINEA PIG GUINEA PIG

Durwood ‘Doc’ Pigeon, whose HydroVac 2000 vehicle desiccator is being trialled as we go to press, is hardly a man to rest on his laurels.

Work on his next – and easily most ambitious – project is already nearing completion.

“I’m going to send my pet guinea pig to the moon,” the jubilant inventor told the Observer yesterday.

“To the best of my knowledge, nobody’s ever attempted it before, so Lawrence will be a guinea pig in every sense of the word.

“The idea came to me after I successfully fired a Burmese cat across the Channel last year. It made a reasonably soft landing on a greenhouse roof and now lives with a family in Deauville.

“They write to me sometimes, but they tend to sound a bit resentful,” he added.

In preparation for the trip, Lawrence will be placed inside a Ziploc bag stuffed with vitamin-enriched hay. This will serve as both food and bedding during the voyage. Once he’s safely inside, the bag will be pumped full of oxygen and sealed.

With the bag secured, half a dozen cardboard tubes, each packed with a mix of gunpowder and barbecue briquettes, will be fitted into place around Lawrence’s body, using a large industrial elastic band.

“All six fuses will be lit simultaneously then, as they start fizzing, I’ll propel Lawrence into the air with the same catapult I used for the cat.

“As the force from the catapult is boosted by the ignition of the fuel, the whole thing should go critical and achieve escape velocity,” said Doc.

Once out in space, zero gravity conditions will cause the elastic band to slacken, allowing Lawrence to jettison the tubes by wriggling inside the bag. From then on, the 240,000-mile journey should take around two weeks.

“Lawrence has undergone rigorous mental and physical training to prepare for this,” said Doc, glancing affectionately at the impressively muscular rodent.

“Landing, in particular, will require him to exercise absolute discipline and split-second timing.”

By the time Lawrence begins his lunar descent, both oxygen and hay will be all but depleted, leaving little in reserve to absorb the impact. It is therefore crucial that he quickly creates a cushion of air around himself, to avoid a potentially fatal crash landing.

As the spacecraft enters the moon’s atmosphere, a small onboard cassette machine will click into play. The recorded instruction ‘Breathe! Breathe!’ will repeat at three-second intervals, prompting the cavy cosmonaut to massively increase his respiratory rate. His accelerated exhalations should fully inflate the bag and allow him to make a soft landing.

“I trained him inside a beach ball, connected to the hose of an old cylinder vacuum cleaner I’d found in the loft,” explained Doc. “As I shouted the command to breathe, I’d turn on the cleaner and suck the oxygen out of the ball.

“When I was satisfied that he was exhaling at maximum rate, I would throw the ball down onto a mattress, to simulate the bump of landing in the Sea of Tranquility.

“We’ve done everything we can and he’s 100% flight-ready. The only thing now is to wait until the beginning of the next lunar cycle, so the moon will be full when he arrives.

“That way, he should have the maximum surface area to aim for.”

When asked by the Observer how Lawrence would be getting back to Earth, Doc stopped speaking for a moment and looked pensive.

“Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.

“But Lawrence is a resourceful little chap – he's bound to come up with something.”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir, 

Two weeks ago, I found a pair of kidneys while visiting the Ladies’ in Everdene Road. They were lying on the floor in one of the cubicles. I imagine their owner must have had an unusually explosive evacuation and then forgotten to reinsert them before leaving.

Having no hormonal teenage sons to worry about, I took the kidneys home and put them in a jam jar. I have set a piece of steak beside them, as I understand the two go quite well together.

Concerned for their owner, I contacted Froghill police. They informed me that although they’d received reports of a pair of mislaid ears in a cornfield and a spleen in a vent at the Buried Treasures Funeral Directors, nobody had reported losing any kidneys.

If you mislaid your kidneys around the middle of last month, please contact me, as I'm sure life without them must be really quite ‘offal’. My email address is katy@frogmail.com.

Yours faithfully,

Kate N. Sydney-Pye,

Swansdike

NO IFS AND A BUTT - CORPORAL IN PEAK CONDITION

A Cheetingham man is to make a solo ascent of Everest for charity later this month.

Corporal Kevin Baldock, 27, of the Royal Tank Regiment, will attempt to scale the 29,000-foot peak on a pair of aluminium stilts. He will be raising money for The Woebegone Aspect Trust (TWAT), an organisation offering cosmetic surgery to bulldogs with self-esteem issues.

As regular readers will know, Cpl. Baldock is no stranger to feats of derring-do. Earlier this year, he successfully crossed the Sahara dressed as Donald Duck, in support of a charity promoting education at gunpoint. In May of last year, he swam the English Channel in a suit of armour, with all proceeds going to The Donkey Sanctuary.

Sponsorship will be provided by Wythering nursery Ladie Garden, which has presented Cpl. Baldock with a 210-litre plastic water butt, bearing the slogan: ‘Ladie Garden – come and see what we’ve got in our furrow’.

Nursery proprietor Sadie Ladie told the Observer: “I read about Kevin’s last exploit in your pages and was very impressed by his sense of originality.

“We're more than proud to sponsor him. He’s promised to plant one of our seedlings when he reaches the summit, to commemorate the event.” 

Asked how he saw himself coping with the sub-zero conditions on Everest’s slopes, the courageous corporal answered: “The stilts I’m using are over four metres long and should elevate me above the surface of the snow so, hopefully, frostbite won’t be a problem.

“Obviously, wearing the water butt is going to hamper my movements a bit. But, on the plus side, I hit upon the idea of packing it with the thermal cladding from my Mum’s immersion heater.

“So that ought to keep me warm when the going gets chilly.”

WANTED: A LITTLE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS

Froghill resident Tilly Banstead got less than she bargained for as she sat down to her morning breakfast cereal yesterday. For the semi-skimmed milk, which she had bought while out shopping the previous day, refused to emerge from the container.   

“It was really odd,” she said, from her Chestnut Rise home, “I had the open carton tilted over my cornflakes but nothing came out. Instead, I could hear faint cries of ‘No! I’m frightened!’ coming from inside.”

Ms. Banstead, it turns out, is one of a growing number of people who have recently made a purchase of nervous milk. Most, if not all, of the produce from Wednesday evening’s milking at Rayling’s Farm appears to be affected.

Contacted by the Observer, farm owner Joshua Rayling said: “The herd got a scare on Wednesday afternoon when a dog exploded on the footpath that runs through their field.”

The sudden shock seems to have seriously upset the cows, resulting in the shelves of Froghill’s shops and supermarkets becoming stocked with timorous milk products.

“In the end, I did manage to get the milk to come out of the carton, it was just a question of speaking nicely to it,” said Ms. Banstead, as she sipped her morning latte.

She recommends patience and kindness to anyone who might find themselves with some nervous milk or yogurt in the fridge.

“You have to coax it, as if you’re talking to a puppy who’s unsure about going into the sea for the first time.”

Have you had an amusing or unusual experience with dairy products? Then why not share your story with our readers? Email your stories to http://www.froghillobserver.co.uk/scarydairy or call our Mental Milkline on 0372 55055. Calls cost £372 per minute, standard rate.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir,

I am writing to complain about the inadequate standards of food hygiene in this country. Only the other day, I was chewing a mouthful of Cheezy Bytz when my teeth cracked against something hard. I removed the offending item and, upon examination, discovered that I was looking at a very large piece of bone.

Being something of a paleontology buff, I consulted my Bumper Book of Fascinating Dinosaur Facts just as soon as I got home, only to have my worst suspicions confirmed. It was nothing less than the jaw bone of a Diplodocus.

Now this creature became extinct something like 150 million years ago. Am I, therefore, to assume that my snack was manufactured at the same time? Even if not, how did a sauropod bone find its way into the packet?

This is not the first time I have had an unfortunate experience with packaged food. Last Christmas, I bought a Festive Yule Log from a well-known high street store. Imagine my dismay when I found a live AK47 round inside the icing. Worse still, when my teeth made contact, the bullet detonated. It passed through the roof of my mouth, exited from the top of my skull and lodged in the ceiling. Facial reconstruction surgery and replastering have cost me upwards of £65,000 so far and the damage to my self-confidence is irreparable.

That such sloppy practice should be commonplace in an industry which serves our most basic need is quite simply indefensible.

I therefore urge the readers of your paper to follow my example and stop buying food in all its forms.

Yours indignantly,

Duncan Disawdley

Traubert’s Heath

THE HIGH FLYING PIGEONS OF FROGHILL

Local inventor Durwood ‘Doc’ Pigeon may be no stranger to these pages (Observer, May 3), but few now remember his once-celebrated great-grandfather Hieronymous.

Born in 1857 to George, a purblind bone setter, and his wife Cora, Hieronymous Pigeon was the fourth of five children. A weak and sickly boy, his parents took the decision to educate him at home rather than send him to boarding school. He grew into an intelligent and inquisitive child, devising gadgets as varied as the cantilevered tea caddy, the self-winching corset and the oscillating blackhead extractor by the time he was nine years old.

Hieronymous won a scholarship to study structural engineering at Keble College, Oxford, but was sent down in April 1876, following a scandal involving a local barmaid, an anvil, a quantity of damson jam and two dozen live whelks.

Back in the parental home, the disgraced former student became a virtual recluse, emerging from his room only to eat or to perform experiments on the family goldfish. However, it was during this period that Hieronymous was to build the invention that made – and ultimately, ruined – him.

Had you peered through the window of Abercrombie and Sons of Froghill in early December 1876, you would have beheld a Christmas cake, the like of which had never been seen before. Flawlessly decorated, it boasted a log cabin, a spruce tree, two children riding a sled and the words ‘Yuletide Blessings’, piped across the top in flowing pink script. The cake inside was ordinary enough – it was the finely crafted iced decoration that made it the toast of the season. 

The festive delicacy was purchased by industrialist Josiah Catchpenny, who would go on to take a keen interest in its reclusive young creator.

Under Catchpenny’s watchful eye, Hieronymous took his first steps into the manufacturing business. Success followed success and, before the decade was out, his Patented Steam-Powered Cake Icer was not only selling faster than hot cakes, it was decorating them too. No self-respecting Victorian home was complete without one and orders flooded in from all corners of the Empire. From Calcutta to Kirkcaldy, from Lagos to Leicester, if it was an icer, it had to be a Pigeon.

By 1892, Hieronymous had become an eminent and wealthy man in his own right. He married local debutante Effie Stringfellow and the couple had two sons, Alonzo and Orville. Unanimously elected Executive Director of the Froghill Chamber of Commerce, he was awarded the OBE in that year’s birthday honours and granted the freedom of the City of London soon after. 

Yet just when it seemed that Hieronymous Pigeon had ascended to the very pinnacle of success, Fate was to step in and deal him a cruel blow.

In February, 1893, a trainee pastrycook in Harrogate lost an eye, both ears, five teeth and her reputation after a cake icer malfunctioned. The national press got wind of the story and whipped up a perfect storm of outrage. Cake icers were denounced from every pulpit and Heironymous hanged in effigy on street corners up and down the country.

Orders dwindled to nothing and his licence to manufacture was revoked. He was dismissed from the Chamber of Commerce and stripped of his OBE. With his income drying up and his name dragged through the mud, Hieronymous was left with no option but to file for bankruptcy.

In the spring of 1894, his beloved Effie left him, taking both their sons with her.

Shunned and alone, Hieronymous fled Froghill, eventually taking a room on the top floor of a boarding house in St. Leonards-on-Sea. It was here, on the 26th of October, 1894, that he was found dead by his landlady. By the side of a rubber tube leading from the body to the gas tap was a lavishly decorated cake. In shaky but legible curlicue across the top, the iced inscription read:

I took on Fate and tried to beat it

But ambition became my death knell

I strove to have my cake and to eat it

But the icing was not enticing – so farewell

LAST ORDERS - FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

For the past couple of weeks, drinkers at Cheetingham’s Peek-A-Boo Inn have been nonexistent, following an evening of supernatural goings-on which cleared the old pub in under half an hour (Observer, June 7).

Since then, things have settled down somewhat, though life is hardly normal for proprietors Jim and Dolly Bladder. Unexplained cold spots in the public bar, a cider tap which either cannot be turned on or cannot be turned off and the pervasive odour of pork pie have all had the couple at their wits’ end.

“We’ve only been here for about a year and we’ve spent a lot of money on the place,” Jim told the Observer from the deserted Lounge Bar, “so we decided we’d better do something quick before we went bankrupt.

“Only thing we could think of was to go online and hire a medium.”

Madame Mirella duly arrived yesterday evening and wasted no time in identifying the best spot to conduct a séance.

“She set up near the window, next to that seat that gets hot for no reason,” said Dolly.

“She told us that was the place where the portal was widest open. Said we should sit with her and join hands. Then she closed her eyes and dozed off to sleep.

“Her mouth dropped open, ever so undignified, and I was afraid she was going to dribble all over her blouse.

“Then she starts moaning and, next thing I know, there’s this voice coming out of her. Man’s voice it was, same one that talked about pork pies that awful evening.”

Madame Mirella, it appears, had made contact with Alf Lamplighter, who passed away three months ago after an interview with this paper on the occasion of his 110th birthday (Observer, March 11).

“When the voice came through, it sounded like Alf alright,” continued Dolly, “he said he’d come back because he didn’t like one or two things about the way we were running the pub.”

The ‘hot seat’, he informed the trio, was his customary place in the bar, one which he had occupied for over 50 years.

“Alf said he didn’t want no-one occupying that seat,” said Jim, “said as how we should keep it vacant in his memory. Also, he didn’t reckon this new cider we’ve had put on. Wanted us to go back to Ramsden’s Old Scroat, the one they used to serve in his day. And he asked us to put his Chumping certificates back on the wall behind the bar, where they used to be.

“Said if we did all that, he’d keep quiet and wouldn’t bother us anymore.”

Asked whether there had been any further communications from the other side, Dolly replied in the affirmative.

“Alf said he was sorry about the horseshoe hitting poor Ron Spike on the head and knocking him out. Said he’d only intended to move it about a bit, just to put the wind up folks, never intended for it to drop.

“Oh, and he also thanked your journalist for putting his dentures back in, after they fell out when he passed on.”

* Madame Mirella is a City and Guilds Level 2-qualified clairvoyant who is available for séances, exorcisms, weddings, baptisms, conferences, birthday parties, stag and hen nights, coach trips, Star Trek conventions and balloon sculpture events. She can be contacted on 0774 993 1871, until such time as the deportation order takes effect.