PEACE REIGNS

After a fraught twelve hours, peace has been restored to the Burrow, and the off-scene hurling of stink bombs has ceased.

Anticant is ensconced in his favourite chair in the ingle nook, with a pile of books and itinerant marmalade cats.

Lavenderblue is making preliminary sketches for her forthcoming masterly depiction of the jaunty Ben Trovato.

Ben and the Beadle are busy sprucing up the Snug in anticipation of a weekend dropin by trousers and friends and an August State Visit from the Naked Kayaker.

Wooffie is dreaming of his alcoholic monastery mountain home and Dame Barbara's pearls.

A warm welcome for the weekend, everyone!

BOWING OUT

Due to an inadvertent lapse into bad taste which was not received with the customary lighthearted good humour usually evident in fellow-bloggers, Anticant and his various aliases will not be posting comments on others' blogs from now on.

The Burrow will continue to offer a warm welcome to visitors, though posts may be more intermittent, as there are better things to do with one's time than to get at cross-purposes with others who operate on the principle that what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander.

A PRUDENT HUSBAND

ben trovato writes:

A man and his ever-nagging wife went on holiday to Jerusalem.

While they were there, the wife passed away. The undertaker told the husband:

“You can have her shipped home for £55,000, or you can have her buried here in the Holy Land for just £5,000.”

The man thought for a moment and decided he would prefer to have her shipped home.

The undertaker asked: “Why would you spend £55,000 to ship your wife home when it would be wonderful to have her buried here in the Holy Land and cost you only £5,000?”

The man replied: “Long ago a man died here, was buried, and on the third day he rose from the dead. I am not prepared to take that chance.”

GLASS SLIPPER LAND

I’ve just finished reading Tina Brown’s riveting The Diana Chronicles. “Not that stale old fairy tale?” I hear you cry. But this retelling of it is unputdownable.

What comes through is not merely the self-delusion, but the sheer unrelenting nastiness, of all the cast – including the People’s Princess herself. Yes: she had wondrous charisma, and empathy with the suffering; she was a head-in-clouds Romantic [according to her step-grandmother, Dame Barbara Cartland, “the only books she ever read were mine and they weren’t awfully good for her”]; and - fatefully for her and for the Royal Family - she was a walking incarnation of the old saw “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Having refused to fit into the fossilized conventionality of the Windsors, and having been semi-ejected by them, she aspired to let some fresh air into the monarchy for its own good, and did not quail from behaviour which, from their perspective, resembled that of Samson and Delilah combined.

It is clear from the book that the Wales’s marriage broke down because of Charles’ unshakeable determination to stick like glue to Camilla Parker Bowles through thick and thin. It was this, and not Dame Barbara’s knicker-ripping verdict that it was Diana’s refusal to “do oral sex”, that broke the fairy-tale romance. For Diana, Camilla was the wicked witch who turned her glass coach into a pumpkin. She proceeded to wreak relentless revenge. Whether the marriage, without her ghastly end, could in time have been resurrected is one of those fascinating “might have beens” of history.

Tina Brown has trawled through all the published material with a fine-tooth comb, and has talked to many hitherto untapped sources, both on and off the record. It is this which gives her book its air of definitive behind-the-scenes knowingness, and embellishes it with some pricelessly funny vignettes illuminating the unequalled snobbishness, cluelessness, and on frequent occasions bitchiness, of our ruling claque.

Superb holiday reading!

WOOFFIE SPEAKS!

[As interpreted by ben trovato]:

"My attention has been drawn to a scurrilous allegation by Zola that I was 'pissed' on my return with the Beadle from our fruitless search for summer sunshine. The unwarranted implication was that as we could not find any actual sunshine, we regaled ourselves too freely with liquid sunshine.

While I cannot speak on behalf of the Beadle, I wish to testify that I am a sober, responsible, rescue-trained St. Bernard - not a drunken Lurcher - and that I have never been 'pissed' in my life. The slightly watery look in my eye was due to the unseasonably arctic winds, and NOT the result of liquid refreshment.

Admittedly, I have a weakness for pearls, but that is another matter entirely."

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I hereby set my pawmark: ++++++ WOOFFIE
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SUMMER IS STILL IN HIDING

ben trovato writes:

The Beadle and Wooffie have returned without summer, and without brandy. They claim that they had to give almost all of it away "to keep the natives friendly", but judging from the Beadle's somewhat lurching gait and the bleary look in Wooffie's eye, Judge Anticant considers the case merits further examination and is considering convening a Burrow court. Evidence from any witnesses of the intrepid pair's travels will be welcomed.

During a severe but brief thunderstorm yesterday, the Burrow suffered an incursion of water through a bedroom ceiling and it transpires that an ancient chimney is in need of repair. This will require the erection of scaffolding, which is both expensive and inelegant. However, we have so far escaped lightly in comparison with other storm damage throughout the country, and we sympathise with all the unfortunates whose homes and possessions have been ruined in the recent downpours.

BURROW UPDATE

Obediently jumping through the hoop held up by Zola, the whipcracking Nude Ringmaster, the present state of play in the Burrow is as follows:

anticant is just about coping with a backload of paperwork chores which have piled up and are a drain on his limited energy. He has also been feeling even limper than usual following a mammoth shopping expedition at the weekend to replenish stores which were depleted while he was without a car. The new car is lovely, but hasn't been far afield yet as the weather is not conducive to joyriding even if anticant felt inclined, which he doesn't at the moment.

anticant is, however, cheered up by the unexpected re-emergence of an old and dear friend who has been too ill to contact anyone for the past 18 months, but is now picking up the threads. So there's always hope.

ben is frantically searching the further reaches of the internet for new jokes, but there seems to be a dearth at the moment. Maybe because it's the "silly season".

The beadle and wooffie have been sent off with a copious supply of brandy in search of summer. So far, they have reported back negative results.

Serious and lighthearted posting will be resumed as and when anticant feels capable of translating his multitudinous fleeting thoughts onto the keyboard. Meanwhile, he keeps up comments on other's blogs and has left recent footprints in Lapland, USA and elsewhere.