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SAUSAGE LIFE

Bird Guano

The column which is proud to be a vital ingredient in the casserole of confusion.

MYSELF:  I received one of those bafflingly modern text messages the other day, which contained no vowels. The worst thing is, it was from a Hawaiian friend of mine so some of the words don't even appear at all.
READER: OMG! LOL! Your like so old school. Vowels are so LST YR. Don’t you realise that ppl thse dys lead bsy lives?

MYSELF: I give up. What sort of person imagines this sort of nonsense actually saves time, when it takes the recipient of their ‘msg’ half an hour to figure out WTF they are talking about?

READER: Un42n8ly, as fr as grmmr n spllng is cnsrnd, its bcmng obvs tht mst ppl jst dn't hv the bay6.

MYSELF: GFYS!

UP THE ARTS

Edgy conceptualist artist Bandy Sponk has a new show at the Upper Dicker Polygon the new Mecca for the arts in the South East. His latest exhibition Back to Mono  explores all of Van Gogh’s post ear-amputation work via the medium of wallpaper paste. "In order to fully become fully immersed in the experience," he told me, "anyone attending the show will be asked to wear an industrial strength noise-cancelling plug in one of their ears."

THOUGHTICULTURE

Speaking of mediums, World of Pane the popular Psychic Healing & Window Cleaning company, would like their customers to know that from late autumn it will be branching out into paranormal landscape gardening, specialising in psycho-kinetic topiary.
"It all started when a friend asked me to prune his splendid box hedge (buxus sempervirens) in the style of Mount Rushmore," managing director Bob Tarot explained, "so when I decided to shape it, using spontaneous psycho-kinesis, into the heads of former British Prime Ministers, I immediately spotted a gap in the market."

World of Pane is yet to set a charging scale for the service. “The price will be determined by economic factors and the amount of mental effort involved in producing the work,” said Tarot. “Should you opt for the head of former British Prime Minister William Gladstone for example, we would have to charge a small premium. This is partly due to his enormous nose but also because his spiritual apparition is often accompanied by the overpowering scent of lilacs, which not only interferes with psychic vibrations but raises all sorts of public liability problems."

AR, THINGS WUZ DIFFERENT IN THEM DAYS

I was rummaging through a job lot of old cassette tapes I'd bought in Oxfam, when I came across this tiny fragment of an episode of The Archers recorded in the 1970s. My, how times change!

ARCHERS THEME FADES TO FARMYARD NOISES. A TRACTOR APPROACHES.  IT STOPS AND THE ENGINE IS TURNED OFF.

COW: Moo.
TOM:  Come on, there’s no-one about, let's get in the back seat and make love

GWEN: There ain’t no back seat in a tractor Tom.

COW: Moo.

TOM:  Oh bugger so there ain’t. Well let's do it in the plough then.

GWEN: But Tom we can’t....we're not married.

TOM:  I know that mum!
MUSIC: ARCHERS THEME FADES IN SLOWLY UNDER FARMYARD NOISES

COW:  Moo.

MUSIC: (full volume) Dander dander dander dan, dander dander dan-dan….

MORE NUTS

Your letters to wildlife correspondent Ellie Fünz

Lively discussion continues and opinions remain divided on what or whom is responsible for the dwindling population of our native red squirrels.

Dear Ellie
During the first world war, with many of our brave lads fighting at the front, there was a shortage of featherweight boxers, and red squirrels were often used instead. Owing to their short stature, they often perished during round one, either by being trodden on by the referee, or torn to pieces by the angry crowd, who had paid their 30 shillings (£7,000 in today's money), in the mistaken belief that they were about to witness slightly-built men kicking lumps out of each other. I believe this to be the true reason for the red squirrel's demise, and not, as some have suggested, alien abduction.

Paul "Battler" Hastings
Ward 34, Cranium House,

Lalaland

Dear Ms Fünz

I believe your recent correspondent Lawrence Smeck, who suggested that one solution to the red/grey squirrel imbalance would be to dye all the grey squirrels red, to be totally barking (up the wrong tree). The size of the UK's grey squirrel population alone would render this operation logistically untenable. A far better idea would be to dye the few remaining red ones grey.
The Rev Mortimer J Axlotl
The Holy Jesus Church of Religious Intolerence
Trickledown, Indiana

THE OWLING
Brilliant Hastings inventor Gordon Thinktank has come up with a radical solution to his home town's urban seagull crisis. He proposes that the entire population of aggressive herring gulls be replaced with owls.
"Owls are like vampires and will only come out at night" explained the professor as we sipped cocktails in his secret laboratory, "The public are rightly fed up with having their takeaway meals whipped away by voracious dive-bombing seabirds. Unless fast food outlets suddenly begin to offer mice or other small nocturnal rodents as convenient snacks, the act of replacing the gulls with owls will resolve the whole problem of airborne food-snaffling at a stroke."
When I asked the inventor to explain exactly how he intended to accomplish this mammoth sub-species swap, he smiled enigmatically, opened a drawer in his desk and with a twinkle in his eye proudly indicated the five delightfully cute golden Labrador puppies snuggling within. As I gazed at the adorable furry bundle, a tiny spontaneous tear of joy abseiled slowly down my face. When I eventually looked up, he was gone.

Sausage Life!