Editorial
Summer Nights! Tra-la-la-la...! And what summer nights they were, as young people hereabouts took to the streets in gay abandon, to the ongoing delight of local residents. Ah yes, the merry tinkle of broken glass, the joyous chorus of four-letter words, the cheery clatter of discarded lager-cans! Engaged as they were in such innocent pursuits of youth, they were suddenly and most unaccountably set-upon by a thuggish horde of parents! Yes, two of them, who demanded to know who they were, and when our young people, quite reasonably in the circumstances, could not remember, meanly summoned all their nasty parent-pals who of course could remember (well, they did look vaguely familiar, from the breakfast table!) And so it was on the following Monday morning, a strange sight befell the eyes of High Street spectators: such a barrowing, brushing, sweeping, clearing-up, fixing and mending, and all by young people! Well, there was one parent, but they certainly werenÕt lifting a finger to help. Standing there with their arms crossed, in fact! Ah well...
Meanwhile, it could have been very smelly indeed round here were it not for Henry Brown, who noticed the reed-bed that normally sanitises our sewerage (bet you didn't know that! All done by reeds!) was extremely dead. Public spiritedly, Mr Brown informed the Water Board, only to find that the Water Board's Complaints Department, although on a far grander scale, is otherwise much like the Crier's! "Dear Mr Brown, Thank-you for your complaint. Please accept our explanatory leaflet, entitled Don't Even Think About It: We Know Where You Live detailing our complaints procedure. Yours etc. Water Board". But Mr Brown persevered (see Letters) and despite denials to the effect that there wasn't anything amiss in the first place, and anyway, we were just about to fix it, and anyway we already did, and what's more, Keep Off Our Land, now all is once again coming up roses! Or reeds, as the case may be!
If you missed the Last-Night-of-the-Festival "Swaffham Wailers" with Boy George (oh alright, Ian de M) as the totally hilarious effete Choir Master accompanied by straight-man Roy Tricker and a motley band of musickers, then it was your own fault, because WE TOLD YOU! And, it's unrepeatable, by which we mean unscripted of course, so you won't see it again! Um...we did hear of a straighter-laced type who rather wished they hadn't seen it in the first place(!), but the Eds fell about of course, as indeed did everyone-else, including, we're very glad to say, our new Vicar and wife - we hope they're enjoying life here, we think they are! Brilliant performance, brilliant festival, many thanks and congrats all round, especially to our indefatigable master-of-ceremonies: Kate Child!
WARNING! Very nasty burglars about, who pretend to be from the Electricity Board and tell you on the door-step that a serious Electrical Fault in your house has messed up the whole neighbourhood, and then... well, you guessed (but you might not have done) YOU let them in, THEY ransack the house etc. etc.
The crossword is back, but it's first-out-the-hat not through the letter box as stated - entries by the 20th, please. And this one's not about Swaffham Prior, in any shape or form - just plain cryptic, so get entering!
And LASTLY: Hippo Birdie Two Ewes! That is, HAPPY BIRTHDAY Bob Smith, 93 on October 5th, about to make a home in Histon, and FAREWELL too to Walter Bradley, off to Yorkshire. God Bless!