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A 'Drop the Dead Donkey' week
Sep 27, 2007
By Barney Liar
Permit me to tell you a trade secret. Sometimes in journalism, as in other professions, you get slow weeks. Sometimes the editor and all his staff sit there and think “Is nothing going to happen at all this week?” Mind you, there are other weeks when there isn’t enough space to cram it all in. There are also weeks when one single, massive story just wipes out everything else. These 'Drop the Dead Donkey' weeks are quite rare, but boy, are they exciting.
Last week was a bit like that. No, I'm not referring to the run on the Toft Hill Bank, worrying though that was, when worried investors queued to withdraw the breathtaking sum of three pounds eight shillings and eight pence from their deposit accounts. Police were called when the branch in Little Newsham reported having two customers in one morning and civil disorder threatened but no, it wasn’t that. It was a much more earth-shattering story altogether. As reported here and in our rival rag, a man went to work and, wait for it, brace yourselves, found that a pigeon HAD FLOWN INTO HIS WINDOW!!!!!
I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but do your best to set aside your scepticism. It really happened. What’s more, THE PIGEON DIED!!!!!! Time for a stiff drink to help take in the sheer enormity of it all. The bird had, for the fist time in recorded history, LEFT AN IMPRESSION OF ITSELF ON THE WINDOW!!!!! I shall never be quite the same again. A colleague at the Mercury’s 16-storey skyscraper HQ tells that the place of the bird's death has become a place of pilgrimage and that the bird's image has already begun to shed real tears at six every evening. Two rival factions have sprung up, each claiming to have loved the deceased pigeon more than the other. Armed incidents are already commonplace. All this is happening in Barnard Castle, where the deceptive veil of discreet gentility has been ripped aside to demonstrate raw emotion pulsing in the blood of this latter-day Babylon.
Of course, the enormity of this story meant that many other news items, normally destined for the front page and the upper segments of inner pages had to be demoted or, sadly, not reported at all. This should not be, so I have undertaken to let you know some five other shocking events in the dale last week. I know there will be complaints; people will ring and say that their stomachs are not strong enough for this, but you are adult; you have the right to know what depravity passes for civilisation in our towns and villages. Read quickly, then the pain will pass.
SCOOP!!! Last Wednesday morning Mrs. Ethel Knee, 82, of Gasholder Crescent, Evenwood, did not get up UNTIL A QUARTER TO EIGHT IN THE MORNING!!!! When questioned by the Women's Institute disciplinary committee, she said that she just didn't know what had come over her, but thought that Noel Edmonds should take the blame.
GASP!!! Real Glaxo FC's star striker Clark Beetroot DID NOT SCORE in last Saturday's home fixture against Gainford Scouts at the Stadium of Magnificence. Clark told the post-match news conference that he believed his failure to score could be laid at the feet of Ron Mangle, 72, Real's team manager, who had not selected him to play.
SHOCK!!!! Rain which fell yesterday in Forest-in Teesdale for 11 minutes after lunchtime was officially designated by Parish Councillor the late Harold String (1904-2006) as 'MUCH LIKE THE RAIN LAST WEEK' !!!!
HORROR!!!! Other stallholders at Barnard Castle Farmers' Market are sending Benny Sharpener, 33, of Doomsday Farm, High West Cockfield, to Coventry because he has announced his intention to sell sausages which contain no herbs, fruit, nuts, funny bits, exotic animals, berries or gravel, preferring simply to MAKE THEM FROM PORK!!
DISASTER!!! On leaving the televised debate about the future of public lavatories in Barnard Castle, Councillor Newton Wood told the press corps really he wasn't 'BOTHERED EITHER WAY WHAT HAPPENED,TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH' !!!
If you ask me, we're not even safe in our own homes. We never locked our doors when I was a bairn etc., etc.
First published in the Mercury September 19, 2007