London Calling.

Football is less and less of a spectator sport according to the manager of Chadlington United, Ted Gumdrip. “At the last home game there were more players than spectators; we outnumbered them eleven to one, not including the subs and Cyril of course.” A clearly bemused Gumtip continued, “A lady did watch for a minute or two, but then her dog made a pitch incursion and we can’t have that.” ‘Bims’ Jewson, Chadlington’s veteran defender blamed a lot of it on girlfriends and wives. “If it’s pissing down, they can’t be arsed to come out, my Mrs was sitting in the car in the car park, she had a right egg on her when I see her in the club house. They all think they’re Wags or whatever you call it, going down the hairdressers every Friday, and that. Drinking Breezers what costs an arm and leg. Can’t live with them can’t live without them.” He added philosophically. So what future for football? Ted Gumtrip is pessimistic, “If Cyril was took sick or something that would be about it, no one cheering for Chadlington, Cyril’s the most fanatical supporter we ever had. I don’t reckon we could carry on without him.” So the future looks bleak for football unless an unwilling public can be enticed back onto the terraces.

Part-time magician Nigel Hanley had to conjure himself out of a dilemma last night when he found himself locked out of his Bradfield home with only a white rabbit and a wand on him! He had left his keys at Rose Crescent Retirement Home where he had been performing for residents in the Sunny Saturday Variety Show. Mr Hanley claimed he repeatedly rang the doorbell to no avail. He then threw a pebble in desperation at his mother’s window, but he couldn’t wake her. Recently bereaved Margaret Hanley was fast asleep recovering from a particularly rainy episode of Jack Frost, starring David Jason. She told Bradfield local radio that she heard nothing during the night. Luckily for Mr Hanley his neighbour Rita Carter invited him to stay with her. She spotted him from her bedroom window, just as things were getting desperate for Mr Hanley, having run out of ammunition from the rose border. Nigel’s mother is reported to have said it was quite a surprise to see him walking out of Rita Carter’s house at eight in the morning, holding his wand and smiling. Mrs Hanley has now said that she wants to draw a line under the whole affair. A police spokesperson said they were delighted with the happy resolution to the incident but did warn the public against the advisability of throwing pebbles at windows. Nigel Hanley was given a hero’s welcome when he returned to work on Monday.

Trans-trans-sexuals were celebrating last night when it was announced they are to receive an E.U. grant. Jeff Muller, formally Jane Muller and before that Jerry Muller is to head the new organisation. “We aim to give a voice to people in the cross over, cross over again community. We’ll hold workshops on trans gender return and bridging the difference, as well as celebrating the more light hearted side of life, with line dancing, bingo and Socks and Tights Nights.” Ted Duncan, a recent member, has lost count of how many times he has changed sex, “My wife stands by me, but she is getting a bit sick of us swapping and changing every six months. If it wasn’t for the caravan I think we might have divorced by now.”

A jigsaw thief was bound over to keep the peace at Tedminster Magistartes Court today.

Serial killers are to be banned from all Tesco stores. The move is seen in industry circles as a somewhat cosmetic move in response to the bad press Tesco has been encountering recently in the liberal press. Experts say Tesco wishes to be seen as more socially responsible after its court battle with The Guardian Newspaper. “We need to take the lead in discouraging antisocial behaviour; we are not here just to make money but to serve the community.” Said a Tesco spokesperson. Consumer Groups last night however reacted cautiously, “We welcome the news, but question just how much good this move will do.” Defiant serial killers pledged to fight the ban and threatened to take Tesco all the way to the European Court Of Human Rights.

London Calling

Foxes met in Birmingham to discuss the increase in the human population, as the number of humans ‘culled’ in hunting accidents hit an all time low.

Messages in bottles are now a thing of the past a report claims. “Old sailors were amongst our best customers. They were always using bottles to send messages when they were castaways, and then of course when they retired they made model ships and, put them in bottles. We are an industry in crisis.” Concluded Kelvin Flowers, British Bottlers Association spokesman, he added, “New technology is to blame, mobile phones and package holidays to desert islands have hit us hardest.” One old castaway Tom Peel however welcomed the news, “I’d been waiting for an answer to my SOS messages in bottles for twenty years without luck. Meanwhile the whole island changed around me what with the development of condominiums and so on, until I was able to send a message from a cyber café. Now I’m back at home in Bristol, my ordeal is over! No thanks to bottles.”

Lady Sophia Stucky, the heiress, has been disowned publicly by her father Lord Stucky for allowing a tradesman to take her mantelpiece. “It has long been tradition that the Stucky daughters are married with their mantelpieces intact, this has brought unspeakable disgrace upon the family.” He said. Lady Sophia claimed that most girls lost their mantelpieces at age sixteen these days, and no one was scandalised.

Life will never be the same again for Kevin Bowen, a resident of Deane Street in Michael Haven after his experience last Saturday night. On leaving his local pub at around one in the morning, he claims to have looked up and seen what could possibly be millions of stars and the mind boggling idea of infinity struck him so hard that he almost fell over. Workmates welcomed him back on Monday to his Canvas Comforts factory in Dripton-on-the-Dale as a hero and were keen to ask him questions about his revelations. The BBC is set to make a drama documentary about Mr Bowen. But killjoy scientists and astronomers claimed last night to have known about these phenomena for years.

Atheists could be hard hit this Christmas, with new banning orders coming into force which could see them barred from midnight Carol services and Christmas dinner. Stockings are also likely to be confiscated until they learn to believe. It could be a hard holiday for leading God basher Dr Richard Dawkings who is said to look forward to his season of good cheer. Interviewed outside Hamleys where he had been with his parents to give them ideas for this year's jumbo gift fest. “I can’t believe this! God has got it so so wrong yet again! As if we needed more proof. And, hello! I’m the one to suffer. It’s just so not fair!” He said and then had a tantrum.

Born again Christian Rita Ryder of North Yorkshire who believes that God created the world only six thousand years ago has been banned from using petrol and other fossil fuels. “It has left me high and dry.” She told reporters, “How am I going to do the school run? How am I going to heat the house?” But authorities who see this as a test case are unlikely to compromise. “How can she possibly take advantage of these precious resources which according to her cannot exist?” Commented Doug Strange the Enforcement officer responsible for the case.

London Calling

Illegal bungee jumper given three month suspended sentence.

God blames rebranding problems and heavy workload for two thousand year absence, but he will be back promises Fraud PR agency.

Disappointment might not be all it has been made up to be, say psychologists at Reading University’s department of cognitive science.

A man was fighting for his life yesterday, after getting his head caught in a pair of retro nylon pants, after a stag do went horribly wrong in Leicester city centre. Police say it is the fourth near fatal incident involving underwear in Leicester this month alone.

Criminals met in Blackpool this weekend to discuss the crisis which has seen a forty percent drop in productivity. Government intervention, which most rejected roundly last year, is now being seen as the only way to save swathes of bank robbers. “I got there and there wasn’t nothing in the safe, that’s after months of meticulous planning, and I still got to pay my team.” said Ray Bentley of Bentley Event Security Ltd.

Meanwhile other speakers at the conference demanded nationalisation of protection rackets. Foreign gangsters, especially from Poland and Russia are coming in with cheaper prices, complained Les O’Riordan of O’Riordan Event Security Ltd, and millions of pounds invested over the years in the police has failed to stop the rot he added.

People with faces like a wet weekend are being asked to volunteer some of their time in drought affected countries.

London Calling

Senior angels where today caught up in yet more controversy when it was revealed that some have been working for Allah, God and Jehovah. This is not the first time embarrassment has been caused by angels holding multi-directorships. Gabriel today claimed that there was no conflict of interest and was determined to continue working as usual.

A ferret that spent five weeks being used as a sound boom on TV’S I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here has been squashed.

A man who failed to pick his wife out of an identity parade has been found not guilty of adultery at Guildford Magistrates Court.

Children In Greed. Kids from one parent families are being offered an amazing opportunity to take up top jobs in British banks. If you eat chocolates until you are sick and refuse to share your toys with other children, and do as your carer tells you, then ring this number and help your country.

What kind of dirty bastard makes TVs out of plasma? Asks outspoken Radio Rental retiree Reg Wossop.

No Smoking bans in pubs could inhibit the growth of wet snails publicans claim.

Short selling bankers should stay away from my stall, warns Bill Mungo of Leather lane Market.

Literary London is a buzz with the news that God is planning a follow up to his first book for two thousand years.

Archaeology

“Just down to a metre, don’t dig no further, you’ll find it there.” But we do not find it there, nowhere near it but we do find a pipe. Jerry, so self assured, is proved wrong. And if he ever has a woman looking after him she will have to be strong, patient and forbearing, God help her. Just down there and the two of us covered in dust, and all the time Mr Brenner bringing us mugs of tea, asking have we found the problem? Of course it could be that Jerry, the irreproachable has got his bearings wrong. But that wouldn’t be at all possible now would it? “No Mr Brenner we’re not quite at the crux of the problem.” “The crutch of it you say?”

Mr Brenner sits at the kitchen table worrying over the leaky pipe in his cellar that he hasn’t seen but is damaging the foundations of the house next door. His neighbours aren’t speaking English, that’s how Mr Brenner puts it. “Them, they aren’t speaking English.” Not that they can’t, they aren’t. He states it as a fact, nods at them in greeting, smiles, and occasionally gives the little girl sweets when he remembers.

We come up for a break, we’re crouched terribly low down there and my back’s not good, the lumbago stirs at the very sight of a sack of cement. Jerry follows me up, mumbling. Jerry takes the chair and I have the box to sit on. I share my sandwiches with Mr Brenner; he doesn’t have much in, some tins of spaghetti, sad sort of stuff like that. Doesn’t do you any good at all you tell him, and he says “Look at me seventy three and never a day off sick in my life.” We try not to look and wonder if he hasn’t missed his right arm ever. Or his left ear for that matter, if we’re discussing lost property. Jerry pointed out he might have been born without them, made on the Friday afternoon shift as they say. Which seems careless. We ask him how he lost his arm and he laughs and says at cards. We don’t go any further.

Mr Brenner claims to have been a mercenary in the Belgium Congo. But that is just so much of that says Jerry waving his hand in front of his face as if he’s after smelling something bad. Of course Mr Brenner forgets and denies being in the Congo. We think he’s had a bang on the head, a thrombosis or something because he’s forever making up stories. “So you didn’t lose it in the Congo?”

“I did not,” he says outraged “I lost it down the Jackdaw Lane to a Missy whose name I forget, Jesus I felt like Jonah in the whale, I went right up inside her. Thought I’d never get out.”

“I thought I’d seen you somewhere before.” Says Jerry they both laugh at that one, I find it in bad taste.

Mr Brenner prefers my sandwiches, so I bring extra rations. I don’t let him prod them too much in the lunch box. I try and get them out there on the table double quick, it’s the more hygienic thing to do. He can give them a poke then if he wants. He’s not too fond of the sight of Jerry’s teeth, he tells me in confidence, it puts him off eating. He has a point, Mr Brenner, because I don’t savour sitting opposite Jerry at tea time if he happens to have a blocked nose, the potatoes going round and round his mouth, the self same mouth he says he uses for kissing. I can’t see it myself. Not him, he looks like an unemployed Jesus, and what’s the good of that? Or a Marxist. Mr Brenner has never said anything about it. His hair is short back and sides, he does it himself, I don’t quite know how, but he does.

We get back down there and dig another bit of the hole. Jerry bends down and pulls up a fragment of something, but that’s not a piece of pottery, I can tell that. Mr Brenner is behind us now slowing things up. He has a picture torn from a book it looks like, or a magazine. He wants to show us. We stop to have a look at it, a woman, not bad, dressed up as an Indian. “That’s me old girl friend Cloud Dancer. A genuine Puma Indian she was. Came over here thirty five years ago. Ran The Fox she did. She gave me a name. On account of the fact that I was from here, I was called Cloudy With Sunny Intervals.” Now that was a good one, and we both put our tools down for a laugh. Mr Brenner could have been on the stage. He peers down into the hole, he can’t see any water. There’s no burst pipe. “Makes you think doesn’t it?” He says, and we ask him about what? He sighs and tells us we have all got to go sometime. Mr Brenner has the blues now, so we all stop at that signal for a brew.

He’s already got the kettle boiling so his fit of melancholy is well timed. He wonders when we might be finished with our work? Jerry says for a while yet, we’ve not located the pipe that’s causing all the havoc next door. “How do you know if they aren’t speaking English that they’re having any trouble at all?” He asks. “You know I never see them myself? What are they?” We don’t know, we haven’t spoken to them, they don’t have water in their cellar. We are in truth excavating for a 3rd Century Roman Villa in the foundations of Mr Brenner’s house. We’re after Roman artefacts, not fixing burst pipes.

Mr Brenner doesn’t believe in the Stone, Bronze or Iron Age, anything that comes before Adam and Eve is nothing but an invention he tells us. Dinosaurs? “Are you after seeing them, great monsters they want us to believe in?” No Mr Brenner is having none of that. And you might think then that Mr Brenner is a religious man, a God fearing man, not at a bit of it, he just can’t stand bullshit. If an Evangelist knocks on his door and tells Mr Brenner the good news, God is coming soon, well says Mr Brenner if he is arriving soon he can come round himself the next time. Mr Brenner gets the biscuits out, they are soft and stale but if you dip them in your tea they are passable. I don’t think much of our chances of finding the villa. More chance of finding an old coal mine.

I don’t know what we would do with that if we found it. Mr Brenner might not be too happy to have a long line of miners queuing for the use of his toilet every minute of the day, not that he would notice the coal dust in the basin. It would be a tight squeeze for the tea break in the kitchen, they’d be wanting a social club as well, God knows where we’d put that, but then it would be handy for a cheap pint.

We’re back down there for the final haul. It’s Friday so we’ll be off for a drink later. Get back to the room and have a wash, then out, hope is the anchor of the spirit – and that is where we will be headed. I’m sorry we have found nothing, not so much as a coin. This dig is not going so well. We hoped to have something to sell by now. Mr Brenner asks where we go for a drink. We tell him no where special.

Well Monday comes around again and we get back around there to Mr Brenner’s house, we start there good and early. Jerry is a little frustrated by the lack of progress and he is hacking at it down there. I’m trying to find the sugar and Mr Brenner has a woman at the door telling him she’s from the social services and Mr Brenner tells her he’s sorry but he thinks he’s too old for that carry on. The woman says; “I don’t think you understand.” She is interrupted by Jerry who has run up from the cellar cursing. He pulls me back down with him. Water is filling the hole! Jesus! Water! We crouch down and peer in, bubbling up it is. He’s only gone and hit a bloody pipe. Mr Brenner comes down next, and he’s happy, he says, “You’ve found it.”

Then as suddenly the flow stops. It’s a bad smell, very bad. Jerry says; “That should fix it.” I inspect the hole through the stink, the pipe is not damaged, we’ve no idea where the water came from. I’ve had enough now, we could flood the whole place and then where would we be? Two weeks we have been down here, sweating away, for what? For nothing. Mr Brenner’s got no Roman remains down here.

We go upstairs. “Is that the end of it then lads?” Mr Brenner asks. Jerry says it could well be, although he mentions that we could always check for Roman remains while we are down there with the hole open.

“Will you do that?” Asks Mr Brenner. Why not we tell him, it won’t cost extra. He’s happy about that. Jerry is very pleased with himself now. “At least we fixed his leak for him.” We made it in the first place and it stopped if its own accord. We have permission to dig, that’s piece of good news.

“Do you think we might get in the paper?” Asks Mr Brenner. Jerry says it’s by no means certain, but there’s always a chance. Mr Brenner says he better put his blazer on, we say there’s no hurry, if we discover something he’ll be the first to know. Plenty of time for putting on the best suit, as it were. All three of us feel buoyed up by this happy conclusion to the day.

We sit outside, on the wall, and watch the people pass down the street going to the shop with no cheese. Mr Brenner doesn’t go there, they’ve no cheese he says. He shows us a photograph, of a Chinese woman, a page torn from a magazine “She ate no cheese. They don’t you know?” He says putting the picture back in his pocket. “She liked that shop. No milk in her tea neither, didn’t like cream. Wouldn’t touch it, nothing from a dairy.” We are amazed by this, “What happened to her?” Mr Brenner shakes his head lost in private reminiscences of his lost love. “Was she before or after the Puma Indian?” Asks Jerry, the fool. Mr Brenner is shocked, “I’ve never been with an Indian in me life, whose been saying that?”