Misleading newsbreak kills off Cressroads' town hack

Breaking news that looks and sounds to Facebook followers of the Continuing Story of Cressroads that the town hack of their self-styled watercress capital of the world is as dead as Quink.

But no!

And no call yet for retired Tichborne stockman ‘Firkin’ Henry, famed for his 72-pint-a-week-thirst for Palmers of Bridport Copper ale – to shoulder his shovel and dig out a plot for the woodland burial he has promised to the town hack.

"Please … please! All in everyone’s good time," heeds widowed Nurse Alex at Doc Beanstoke's practice in town.

"We look to see Bloggie again in 48 hours, and maintain a watchful eye on the sluff gathering under the skin of his left shin.

Blogsbody’s weeping composite of puss-and-water first spotted by Cressroads’ caring Jean Emblem – once the Yorkshire Ripper’s psychiatric nurse – in the tedious course of her recent appointment to the dysfunctional Lower House of Windsor.

A two-up, three-down, city-built terrace given a new roof; gardened year-round by Gary, who, as the seasons demand it, wheels his lawnmower through Alresford-on-Arle’s streets East, West and Broad; and listed on Jean’s rounds for as long as the past decade.

“No ifs or buts, young man,” commands the matronly daughter of Cressroads’ late chimneysweep “Make a doctor’s appointment to have that leg and each of your swollen ankles looked at, and then you may explain to me your latest acquisition at the romantic Arms of Tichborne.”

But put on hold for Blogsbody to answer the ring of his wind-up of a front door bell and witness the young and elderly of Winnall’s Kingdom Hall canvassing for Jehovah – elderly Alresford Joyce stopped in mid-stream as her Leicester–born nose ranneth over in the chill of a sudden goodbye to a three-day Indian summer – and affording the town hack opportunity to insist his years of worship began and ended in a Roman Catholic seminary.

“... until losing my vocation. Switching from the imagined sublime at the unforgiveable cost of a place in heaven secured for my much loved Welsh-born mum, and to engage black heart and lost soul in the ridiculous antics of London’s famed street of disillusion.

“Hack, hack, hacking to entertain millions enjoying their Sunday lie-in between toast crumbs and crumpled accounts of every next week’s News of the Screws.”

Moving along!

And now you see it, now you don’t, bumper-car-by-bagpipe-lesson another Wall Family Fair Night twixt stately Georgian piles of millionaire families in residence along Cressroads’ otherwise most fashionable Broad Street was here last night and gone this early morning by 24-hour decree of an ancient royal charter.

With no room at the packed Doom & Gloom, where Blogsbody had earlier reminded bartender Tom how it was upcoming 110 years to this passing kerbside eve that the Jeffreys – a young farm worker and his imminently expectant wife – safely delivered their newborn Baby Percival.

Then, on a Fair Night yet to dawn in 1900, three Black Marias would be sent from Winchester to kidnap and empty the pub of revellers unaware every Man-on-Arle-Jack of them were in line to be lucky to escape with their young lives, after police caught whispers of an impending attack to revenge a sexual assault of two daughters of the fair.

“Took our lads to Southampton Common, they did,” recalls the chimneysweep’s daughter.

“Then released them with no choice but a five-hour walk home that gave ample time for the fair’s convoy of caravans to be escorted out of town in the opposite direction ...

" ... away with you, Bloggy ...a spinach picker ... who plays classical percussion and strings ... finds herself in Tichborne with its Mr O.T.T ... over-the-top Poet Ottley ...and ... well I never,” Jean with a bus pass fast to her pension book hears tell how the rural backbone of Cressroads suddenly fears for the loss of one of its love-struck own. - www.blogsbody.co.uk

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