Evening Harold - The Free Lunch

by Ollie Perks

22.  Felching badger leaves bristle rash incident. (10)

  25. Pushing chipolata up Oxford St – call this a honeymoon?  (9)

  26. Thatcher undertaker in vajazzle apology.  (5)

  27. Knees up, Mother Brown! (7)

  28. Flange? (7)

  EDL clarify that “England for the English” includes their Asian mail-order brides

  An excited Gavin waits for the postman

  In an embarrassing climb down, the English Defence League announced that their “England for the English” policy will be modified to include members’ mail-order brides from Asia and Eastern Europe.

  “We will still seek to vigorously protect our airports and seaports from an influx of Asians and Eastern Europeans, but we will turn a blind eye to the post” said EDL spokesmen Bernard Grout.

  “I’m aware some people might think we have done a 360% turn and are therefore hypnotists” said Grout. “But our members have always been sex-starved loners first, and racists second.”

  EDL member Gavin Mitchell, a 56 year old unemployed lorry driver from Swindon, welcomed the change saying that his Thai fiancé Riki was probably very excited about joining the EDL, but he couldn’t be completely sure as she spoke no English.

  “Riki is a wonderful girl and is as English as they come despite not speaking English. She has taught me a little Thai though – apparently the Thai word for ‘Gavin’ is ‘Dumfuk’.”

  Other EDL members said the movements’ numbers could swell after the change.

  “I’ve had four Filipino wives who coincidently all stayed with me for exactly the three years required for permanent residency” said larger than life warehouseman Bob Clarke. “I know all four will re-join me in the fight to stop England being overrun by foreigners taking the mickey.”

  As well as their mail-order brides, the EDL clarified that “England for the English” also included Indian proprietors of reasonably priced curry houses, Chinese doctors specialising in hair loss, and anyone selling cheap Viagra.

  By Yikes

  Manchester United crisis deepens as glory supporters put in transfer request

  After a week he would rather forget, Manchester United boss, David Moyes, will be feeling more pressure this morning following rumours the club’s glory supporters have put in a transfer request.

  The fans, many of whom joined the club after the treble winning season in 1999 seem to have taken the same route as striker Robin Van Persie and are looking for a move away from Old Trafford at the first sign of mediocrity.

  “I’ve supported the team for every single year of my life, since ’99, and have been to Old Trafford on at least three separate occasions” glory supporter, Bill Treadwell told us.

  “If I had wanted to support a team that loses two home games in a row and is outside of the top four, then I wouldn’t have moved from Liverpool. I agree with the pundits, things haven’t been the same since we lost Sralex, whatever that was.

  “So I have been doing a bit of research and talking to my agent and drinking buddy, Gooner Gary, and will make the move to top-of-the-league Arsenal in January. I nearly joined them when they had their ‘invincible year’ so it would be a natural choice.”

  Like many other of Manchester United’s glory supporters, Bill also sees this as an opportunity to save a bit of money. Although the average ticket price is more expensive at the Emirates, the stadium being round the corner from where he lives will save him a fortune in train fare.

  The sudden drop of match-day commuters from south to north will force the government to rethink the viability of the London to Manchester HS2.

  The transfer request from United’s glory supporters is another blow to David Moyes who successfully made the move from Everton to United in the summer whilst regaining his mid-table position in the league.

  Speaking in front of the Sir Alex Ferguson stand, Moyes said: “I know it’s tough for them, but I promise one day, because of the job I will do at this club there will be a stand named after me.

  “And the fans will get to see it every time we play at Manchester City.”

  By OlliePerks

  Local regrets shedding light on boy raised by moths

  Moth-erless children

  A nocturnal boy discovered in the woods outside Harold may have been ‘raised by moths’.

  A group of naturalists had set out to record the night-time insects of Harold, but were shocked when their powerful lamps attracted a jittery youth with a face smeared in nectar.

  “We’d set up nets, motion-sensing cameras and switched the big light on”, explained Gerladine Forster, who heads the local wildlife trust.

  “There was a commotion behind us; snapping twigs, a rush of air, followed by what sounded eerily like a child muttering ‘flapflapflapflapflap’.

  “Before we knew what was going on, our light had crashed to the floor, broken and the culprit was nowhere to be seen. Whatever it was, it was big.”

  “And incredibly stupid, even by moth standards.”

  Footage from their cameras revealed a startling discovery. “We couldn’t be sure, but it looked  as though we’d attracted a small boy with eyes as wide as saucers”, revealed Forster. “His left hand was pressed tight to his forehead, using two fingers as makeshift antennae.”

  “We’d need to carry out more tests but I knew we were close to proving that someone with heightened moth instincts can smash bulbs with their face.”

  The team returned to the woods the next morning and found the boy pressed against a tree-trunk, in a vain attempt to avoid capture.

  “We were stood right next to him, prodding him with a net and still he acted like we didn’t know he was there. Eventually we offered him a blanket, and he sat down and nibbled some holes in it.”

  The team tried to house the boy in a nearby hostel with other children raised by insects. “They’ve had a lot of success rehabilitating Jasper, a boy who was brought up by wasps”, explained Forster.

  “He’s gone on to live a fairly normal life, although he’s still a bloody nuisance at picnics.”

  Cecil seemed comfortable and would happily spend days curled up in his sleeping bag, before bursting out and looking to see if he’d grown wings. But his time at the facility was cut tragically short when he fell from a window overlooking a street light.

  “His funeral was a sombre affair”, sighed Forster, “but I think it was what he would have wanted. The others thought he’d be drawn to cremation like a moth to a flame, but instead I’ve mounted him on some card with a big pin.”

  By Waylandsmithy

  Small Ads 2

  BMW Driver? Need Indicators?

  Hard working sales rep? Desperate to get to the golf course to meet your boss for a good hard round of sycophancy? Struggling to find some way to let other road users know which direction you intend to cut them up at junctions and roundabouts?

  Here at Harold Autos we specialise in retro fitting indicators to all models of BMW, Audi, Porche and Mercedes because the manufacturers of top end performance executive cars clearly don’t think they’re a necessary standard feature.

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  Go on, treat youself to a new gadget, and the rest of us to a dose of common decency.

  Other courses available include:

  The Pensioners’ guide to driving over 40 MPH*

  Basic road sense for cyclists.

  An introduction to the motorway inside lane for 4×4 owners.

  And our ever popular

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sp; A guide to the correct use of disabled parking bays for lazy bastards who can’t be bothered to walk the extra 30 yards to the supermarket.

  *Includes complementary straw hat for your rear parcel shelf.

  School defends decision to have sixth form trip to Skyrim

  Skyrim: everything you need for a school trip plus dragons.

  Clive Morris, headteacher of Harold Shining Future Academy and IT Achievement Haven (formerly Harold comprehensive), has defended the school’s decision to replace the annual sixth form residential trip with a week playing Skyrim the phenomenally popular PC and console game.

  “School trips have changed beyond recognition over the last ten years,” he said. “In my day you were abandoned to a random family in a crappy French town no more than an hour from the nearest ferryport where you spent the whole week hating the food and fancying a hairy French lass then returned home with a bag full of Hollywood chewing gun and a flick knife. This will no longer do and besides which HSFAIAH has been banned from all international ports in the UK for some years now.”

  “Skyrim offers a huge range of experiences that’ll let students to get involved in a broad curriculum of activities. Culturally there’s the Burning of King Olaf festival and we are planning a nature excursion across The Reach as well as taking the opportunity to sit in on the council at High Hrorthgar and witness first-hand how politics is conducted at the very highest level.”

  Some parents have raised concerns over their children sitting around the sixth form common room playing a video game for a week. Clive Morris says that they don’t need to be worried.

  “There are many lessons to learn in Skyrim from the patience of grinding for perks and the economics of pillage and barter to the reaction of Skyrim’s horses to physics.”

  “Best of all it costs a fraction of an ordinary school trip and when the little sods fight, drink, steal and have dubious encounters no one’ll get arrested and no one’ll call the press. Which will be a first.”

  If the visit Skyrim is a success then the school intends on visiting  Azeroth and New Eden in the near future.

  “I think we are, for once, ahead of the curve.” said Mr Morris. “Soon all school trips will be virtual now the cost and risk-factor of taking students off the school premises is becoming increasingly prohibitive. In some ways it’s a shame because kids are experiencing less and less of the real world. I used to be an adventurer myself but then I took an arrow in the knee and went into teaching.”

  By SHITSUTONKA2

  Gardener creates winning Royal Show topiary from wife’s pubic hair

  The only bush to be shaped with wax strips

  There were blushes at the annual Harold Flower Show yesterday, when it was realised that the winning entry for the bush topiary section had been created from the pubic hair of the successful gardener’s wife.

  Jane Fondant, leader of the local Women’s Institute and sponsor of the prize, admitted that the entry was within competition rules. “There was nothing to say that the entry had to be fashioned from the green foliage of a bush; but naturally we were thinking of a shrub rather than Mrs Kennedy’s nether regions. Things have changed a lot in the WI since Calendar Girls, and we are keen to embrace, as it were, anything that distances us from the old jam and Jerusalem image.”

  Winning gardener Eric Kennedy, 65, was delighted with his prize. “I’ve tried to win this for several years, but have always been defeated by pests or poor growth damaging my box bushes,” he said in a broad Haroldian accent. “Then one evening, as we were getting ready for bed, I suddenly looked across at my Fanny and the rest is, well, history.”

  Fanny Kennedy was modest about her part in her husband’s triumph. “All the credit goes to Eric,’ she said. ‘After all, he was the one who came up with the idea and it was his skill with the shears that created a model of Harold Castle in my thatch.”

  Mrs Kennedy admitted that the prize giving ceremony was a little nerve racking. “It’s not every day you get to meet the Prince of Wales and when it does finally happen, you don’t expect to be starkers from the waist down. But Prince Charles is a wonderful person and put me at ease straight away by chatting about his plans for Camilla’s front garden.”

  After shaking hands with Mr Kennedy, Prince Charles attached the winner’s rosette to the topiary’s battlements and kissed Fanny on both cheeks.

  By Stan Laurel

  Korean Grand Prix: “Good in parts”

  Some pit crews are reluctant to handle latest tyres

  F1’s Bernie Ecclestone sounded cautiously optimistic after introducing a ‘random explosives’ feature at the Korean GP.

  “Unfortunately, by mistake, the BBC had showed a short extract of MOTO GP on their F1 preview show. It was on for less than one complete lap but by then it was too late and our core audience had already seen more action than they expect in a whole season of F1.

  The sponsors were naturally a little concerned and so, as an emergency ‘fix’, we agreed to deploy a number of small, secret incendiary devices on various cars to spice things up. All things considered it went quite well and we’ll definitely do it again.”

  Nico Rosberg was the first ‘hit’ when his front wing disappeared in a spectacular shower of sparks. Sergio Perez then had a rather spectacular exploding tyre which, as an unexpected bonus damaged several other cars. This was closely followed by a fire in the mechanical gubbins of Mark Webber’s Red Bull.

  Force India initially thought that they too had been selected for a ‘Bernie Surprise Package’ but it turned out that the cause of the persistent whine from Paul Di Resta’s car was in fact Paul Di Resta.

  “Sadly” said Ecclestone “some drivers took advantage of the situation and indulged in four or five laps of what I can only describe as ‘overtaking’ in the latter part of the race” an action with has been described by seasoned F1 watchers as ‘mindless folly’. ”It’s not big and it’s not clever” said a clearly upset Ecclestone.”

  Although their race cars failed to make the podium, there was at least some good news for Mercedes when their Safety Car driver entered into the spirit of the occasion and managed to beat both Caterhams in a last lap dash for the line.

  By Dvo4Fun

  Agony Aunt Brenda: Overhanging branches cast shadow over friendship with neighbour

  Dear Brenda,

  I’ve been living next door to relatively new neighbours for about 3 years, and we get on well enough. Since they moved in, though, they’ve let the garden go a bit and branches from their cherry tree have grown over the fence and are over-hanging our garden. Apart from the loss of sunlight, there are the wasps and the leaves that have to be raked up, and now the branches overhang our washing line. I’m worried that birds attracted by the fruit may soil my laundry.

  I’ve tried raising the issue with the neighbours, but they laugh it off, and say I can have any cherries I can reach from my side. I’m at my wit’s end. What can I do?

  Gloomy, Harold

  .

  Dear Gloomy,

  Under common law it is acceptable for you to prune back tree branches to your boundary if your neighbour refuses to dealwith the problem.

  This does not mean that overhanging branches are your responsibility. The branches are still the responsibility of the owner of the property on which the tree originates. This means, therefore, that branches overhanging from a tree owner’s land are expected to be dealt with by the tree owner so that occupants of that neighbouring land are not put at risk or expense.

  To really get to the “root” of the problem, you have to be able to have an open discussion with your neighbours. Polite interaction is no substitute to really getting to know each other.

  When I first moved to Harold, the first thing I did was pop round to my neighbours with a bottle of wine to introduce myself. Before we knew it, we’d finished the wine and were laughing and talking like old friends. The husband uncorked another bottle, and soon we were getting quite tipsy. I complimented them o
n their wonderful home and what a lovely, happy couple they were. They seemed to exchange a little wink and the wife said it was all down to an active love life.

  Well the wine was flowing and my curiosity got the better of me, so I asked them what they meant. That’s when the wife said that it would be easier to show me than tell me, and she moved toward me, cupping my firm breasts in her expert hands. “They’re a lovely couple too, you know,” she joked, and I could feel my nipples hardening under my thin cotton blouse.

  Well one thing led to another, and soon we were a writhing knot of oiled limbs on their king-size bed, our busy fingers and tongues exploring every nook of each other’s bodies.

  Since then, I’ve never had any problem raising anything with them, and we continue our little get togethers every week.

  Anyway, Sue, if you’d like me to pop round to give you a few pointers, or even go round to the neighbours with you to get things started, let me know.

  Brenda

  Terence Stamp returns for Bank Holiday Hide-and-Seek

  Coming. Ready or not.

  Harold Village Council are pleased to welcome back Terence Stamp as the celebrity hider in the annual Bank Holiday hide-and-seek game, marking the fifth time that the star of Superman II has graced the bushes, alleys and gaps under cars of Harold.

  This year, Stamp, who played General Zod in the first two ‘Man of Steel’ franchise films, has agreed to donate his three-figure appearance fee to the village hall fund supporting victims of the stomach-churning events of 29/9.

  “When I heard that the phone booth where I hid for part of the 2010 hide-and-seek game had been destroyed in the 29/9 attrocities, I knew that this year I had to do something special.”

  But Stamp remained coy on whether he would be using the new phone box, only recently reopened by Evening Harold columnist Brenda Ferguson, as one of his hide-outs during this year’s game.

  “I don’t want to give too much away. In Superman II, everyone knew I was imprisoned in the Phantom Zone, but the beauty of Harold hide-and-seek is that nobody knows where I’ll be – sometimes even I’m not sure where I am!”