Windermere Behemoth

A beast in the lake. The size of three cars. That's a quote. Skin like a seal and humps like black rainbows. Reclusive, the eighth sighting in sixty years. Lazy you might say. Dossing about underneath all the tourism. A customer this morning bought five copies of the local paper and told how she had seen the monster yonks ago with her ex-husband and she'd been telling the story for years and today's the day people are going to stop disbelieving her after they see the one blurry photo of something that could be anything. It was good to have not-the-weather to talk about. I asked a few people what they believed. Is it going to eat the village? Will there be hullabaloo and t-shirts? If we all got on its back could we ride it out of the recession? There was much discussion, but in the end what people wanted to know was how much their shopping cost and whether or not they could have a bag to put it in.

Jumbo

Do you have the variety of prawn that I want that isn't any of the three varieties of prawn on your shelves? I want the big ones full of nice bits. I've forgotten where they're from. They're not the Thai ones that you have. I can taste the air miles. No I've never been. I hear it's full of sin and disease. Are you sure there's none in the stock room? Maybe you have them in a sort of backup pond? Maybe they're being delivered as we speak? I can't start dinner without them, the wife's hell-bent. As am I. Well if you don't have them I'll have to take the inferior ones. It won't be the same. We'll end up arguing and I'll say something about settling for second best. We'll be tense for days. It'll put me off my heron-slaying.

Outsourcing

From now on the Sea Lion will take care of the small stuff. He lives behind barbed wire and his best days are ahead of him.

Polite Demands

Nous

The river's escaped. It's all over the road. It's going up the hills and getting in everyone's shoes. We called the sheriff and he rushed over in his canoe with the sirens on and shot sponges out of a big pipe.

Smashing Bloke

He had himself made into a chair?

Yeah he insisted. He wanted people at the funeral to sit on his lap and talk about how they knew him. He was smirking.