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26/December/2005 - 2/January/2006 There will be a fireworks display on New Year's Eve to mark the start of the new year and the end of Mizzenwood's unofficial year as the European Capital of Culture. Many locals have said they'll gladly celebrate the end of our status as Capital of Culture, but the Mayor insists that the year was a success. He couldn't say specifically what the town has gained from it, other than new wheelbarrows, but he pointed out that the benefits of culture aren't as tangible as something like a wheelbarrow. 'Turny' Brackheegan claims that we've also gained Moses from our year as the Capital of Culture. He's spent most of the past year following a man around the town, pointing at him and saying, "Look, it's Moses." The Mayor has dismissed this on the grounds that if Moses was as tangible as a wheelbarrow, you'd have to touch him. Some people have claimed that the Christmas decorations around the town have been dancing. A spokesman for the Town Council has put this down to a confusion with the story of a local man who was electrocuted by the lights in 1987 and has been dancing ever since. Turny Brackheegan has claimed that Moses is dancing too, but apparently he was just at a Christmas party. 19/December/2005 - 26/December/2005 There's a long tradition in Mizzenwood of people dressing up as bishops and hiding in pear trees on Christmas Eve, but they have to find a pear tree first. For many decades, people have been searching all over the countryside for one on Christmas Eve. No one has ever found a pear tree, so people don't bother dressing up as bishops anymore. The search starts and ends in a pub. It will begin as soon as the pubs open this Saturday. Also on Saturday, the local school will be staging the Nativity Play in the church. They promise to avoid a repeat of last year, when the narrator started talking about a butterfly who wore different beards. Ond of the shepherds did a little dance to represent a many-bearded buttefly. Many people will be disappointed with the promise to avoid a repeat of this. 12/December/2005 - 19/December/2005 The school are organising a cake sale in the town hall on Saturday afternoon. Santa himself will be making an appearance. He won't be fielding any technical questions about his job, but he says he'll be more than happy to answer any questions about installing attic stairs, or about what Brainey D'Fawn said to his sister at a Christmas party. The annual hedgehog race will take place on Sunday. It will start and end at the oak tree in the park. In the early years of the race, the hedgehogs didn't move at all because of the spectators nearby. So in 1988, the spectators went to a pub to let the hedgehogs race. But the hedgehogs would be long gone by the time they came out of the pub. Many people forgot all about the hedgehogs, and some didn't believe there was any such thing as a hedgehog race when they were told about it. Handbags were allowed in the race in the early nineties, but people just started throwing handbags at each other. For the past seven years, the hedgehog race has been a contest to see who can go the longest without touching a hedgehog. It's never lasted longer than twenty minutes. 5/December/2005 - 12/December/2005 On Thursday, 'Lynchie' Lynch will be attempting to break the world record for falling off a donkey. This is his first record breaking attempt since he was banned from an Indian restaurant last year. He says that all proceeds of his fall will go to charity. Work on the town's Christmas decorations has been held up because of some rare snails, but the mayor has insisted that the rest of the decorations will be put up this week. One of the workmen is said to be afraid of the snails after receiving threats from them. Some people have blamed the news rabbits for reading out the threats on behalf of the snails, but the radio station have denied this. 28/November/2005 - 5/December/2005 The annual fish poetry competition takes place in the Town Hall next Saturday afternoon. Contestants will read their poems to the fish in a tank, and the fish will decide the winner. A committee has been set up to determine which poem the fish show the most favourable reaction to. The committee have insisted that they will not be open to bribery and they're sure the fish will not take kindly to any poetry that contains threats towards them. These statements come as a result of last year's competition, which was won by a man who wrote a poem about geese eating fish. He brought a goose along with him, and he said its name was Adolf, but it was later revealed that the goose's real name was 'Springboard' because of his habit of diving for no apparent reason. The fish were said to be 'reassured' by this. At the time, many people pointed out that being reassured was nowhere near as positive a reaction as the delight they showed when they heard the poems about fish walking down the street with John F Kennedy, or 'Tracy stole my scissors, the bitch', a poem about the fish spending a day in a busy hair salon. A poker tournament in the Brainey D'Fawn's casino gets underway on Friday evening. The winner will be sent to Helsinki. 21/November/2005 - 28/November/2005 Mindloaf, Mizzenwood's most famous recording artist, will be performing in Standy Parson's Nightclub on Friday night. It will be his first gig in months, and most of this time was spent in what he describes as a drug-induced haze. He came to believe that he was living with Barbara Streisand's elbow, which kept accidentally hitting him in the face. This started to annoy him, and prompted his decision to quit drugs and return to music. The organisers of the Murder Mystery Weekend have asked us to point out that there were no dancing spiders, as some people have claimed. The news rabbits on the radio have apparently suggested that the spiders were performing a play about day-to-day life in a dry cleaners, but this has also been denied by the organisers. They have asked us to confirm that 'Happen' Hagan spent most of the weekend trying to teach a cat and a dog to respond to the names Bonnie and Clyde, but there was neither a cat nor a dog there. 14/November/2005 - 21/November/2005 On Friday evening, The Old Road Hotel will begin their annual Murder Mystery Weekend. Organisers have stated in advance that the murderer is not 'Happen' Hagan. Everyone thought he was the murderer last year because of the bloodstains on his clothes, but he wasn't one of the actors. They have also said that the woman who works in the video shop will be there, and she will be saying the words 'I despise you'. They have warned 'Happen' Hagan that he will be removed from the premises if he says the words 'Gripping a falcon like this. Like this'. Councillor D'Fawn's son, known by his nickname, Brainey, will be opening his casino this week. A report in the paper suggested that the casino was nothing more than different coloured milk crates. When Brainey showed us his new Bacarat table, which did look very much like milk crates, he said to us, "Everything will make sense when Captain Kirk arrives." His roulette table consists of black and red milk crates stacked on top of each other. Commenting on this, Brainey said, "I have two words for you. Captain Kirk." He then winked. This was also the explanation he used for the time he made a Nazi uniform for a sheep. He was prevented from using the uniform on a sheep. 7/November/2005 - 14/November/2005 On Friday evening in the Lingua Pingua theatre, there will be a performance by Shoodini, a man who hides in shoes. A spokesman for the theatre denied reports that the act is little more than just shoes. He said, "He also does a ventriloquism act with a stick of dynamite, which I think will surprise many people" The spokesman also denied claims that at a previous performance, Shoodini just stole people's shoes. This week, the Tidy Towns committee will be launching their initiative to clean up the town for next year's Tidy Towns competition. The committee are urging people with unhappy windows to emulate those with happy windows. They rely on one of the committee members, Sheen Snowgrey-Hara, to determine which windows are happy and which are unhappy. To the untrained eye it's difficult to tell the difference between the two, but Sheen has been identifying unhappy windows for over twenty years, ever since she painted the word 'It's a duck' on one of her neighbour's windows. The committee admit that the high number of orange buildings in the town is a source of concern for them, and they told us that the scare-mongering of the news rabbits hasn't helped. It's been reported that in the past few days the rabbits have said that the orange paint has commenced work on its memoirs, which will include a chapter on how it directed several Westerns. 31/October/2005 - 7/November/2005 Mizzenwood's jazz festival gets underway on Friday. This year's festival is sponsored by a paint company, so only paint will be on sale in the town over the weekend. Organisers reject the claim that this will result in a mass exodus to the open day at the whiskey distillery, which also takes place this weekend. Mizzenwood Athletic have finally accepted some responsibility for the re-painting of the town, after their recent fund-raising initiative which involved painting the town orange for a day. Last week, the news rabbits on the radio apparently reported that the orange paint was making noise. Some listeners heard the rabbits say that the paint was telling them to start fires with white spirits. This increased the pressure on the soccer club to help with the re-painting. The club chairman said they'd be 'beginning the initial phase' of their efforts sometime this week. The re-painting is unrelated to the jazz festival, despite the claims of Mizzenwood Athletic's manager, Pilly 'Laughing' Brady, who said they'd be doing their best to interfere with the jazz. Various events are taking place around the town to celebrate Halloween. Organisers refused to give details in advance, but one of them told us that only the deaf, blind and dead will miss what's going on, and they're doing their best to include the dead as well. 24/October/2005 - 31/October/2005 A golf tournament will get underway on Friday, and continue right through the bank-holiday weekend. Contestants will enter the woods after the eighth hole, and will re-emerge on the fourtheenth tee. The winner will be 'glued to the clubhouse'. The organisers insist that this is just a metaphor for the actual prize. Last year's winner finished with a final round of 71, a rabbit he killed with his bare hands, another contestant's watch, which he found in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and an arrow stuck in his arm. As the winner of the tournament, he was 'stapled to an oak tree'. The winner of the band contest is due to be announced this week, following a debate about the interpretation of the rules. One man entered the contest with a shoe. There was soime uncertainty as to whether this contstitutes a band. Some say it's a band if you're wearing the shoe or shoes. Others claim that he would have been a band if he'd been wearing both shoes, but the judges of the contest, Read Thru and Hatchet Lanky-Lanky, pointed out that this would seem to disqualify all duos from being a band. Read Thru and Hatchet Lanky-Lanky previously won the contest as a duo. 17/October/2005 - 24/October/2005 A band competition will take place in the park on Saturday afternoon. Keyboard players will be on the swings, while the drummers will smile on the merry-go-round. Guitarists will be on the slides and singers on the monkey bars. Bass players will just stand by and watch. To overcome the prejudices of the judges, no music is allowed in the competition. Past winners of this competition are local band Read Thru and Happy Trampoline, who are about to change their name to Read Thru and Hatchet Lanky-Lanky. This latest name change comes after a photo of a sad trampoline was featured on the front page of The Mizzenwood Times. A young boy in a sling was standing next to the trampoline. The band's management fear that this story will always be associated with the band as long as they're called Read Thru and Happy Trampoline. 10/October/2005 - 17/October/2005 On Saturday afternoon, 'No Messing' the pheasant will be fighting 'Messing' the pig in the park. The tension between the two started when Messing apparently claimed that No Messing eats flies and mud. It has been suggested that this tension has been artificially created by the promoters of the fight. No animals will be harmed, despite various claims attributed to Messing and No Messing. After the town was painted orange last week as part of a fund-raising effort by Mizzenwood Athletic, work on re-painting the buildings is expected to get underway this week. This work could take months, and some buildings could remain orange for years to come. Mizzenwood athletic refuse to help in the re-painting. They say the orange buildings will serve as a lesson to everyone on the importance of visibility, a lesson they wished they'd learnt before they lost their old dressing rooms. 3/October/2005 - 10/October/2005 'Who Are You?', the musical, has been revived by the Mizzenwood Amateur Dramatics Society, and the first performance will take place at the Lingua Pingu theatre on Friday evening. The musical started life eight years ago in Mizzenwood, and it was initially about Cher meeting Abraham Lincoln. A man who always wore a bowler hat got the part of Lincoln, but he refused to take off the hat during the performances. They threatened to make him play Cher if he didn't take it off, and as a compromise, he agreed to have a cylinder put on top of it to make it look like a stove pipe hat. But he still refused to take the hat off during a bedroom scene with his wife. The writer added a subplot about a woodpecker who lives in the hat. This subplot gradually took on more importance, until the whole musical was devoted to it. Neither Cher nor Abraham Lincoln make an appearance in this version, but the spider biker has been retained. On Tuesday, the town will be painted orange for a day as part of a fundraising initiative by Mizzenwood Athletic. All money raised will go towards new dressing rooms for the team, after the old ones were lost. 26/September/2005 - 3/October/2005 On Friday, Girly the hen will be returning to its home town of Mizzenwood for the first time in nearly two years. Girly first became famous in Mizzenwood five years ago. Its owner used to make wooden garden furniture, and Girly set a chair on fire. This story was featured in the local press, and as a result of this, Girly was asked to take part in a recreation of the 1916 rising. Unfortunately, the hen set the wrong building on fire, and the wrong music was played too, so Girly ended up burning down a pub to Grace Jones' version of 'La vie en rose'. However, this only ensured that Girly's fame would spread far beyond the town. Since then, the hen has appeared on a speedboat for a TV ad, and has played an aging gangster in a recent film. In its next film, Girly will be playing a jockey who overcomes the prejudices of the racing world to win the Grand National. 19/September/2005 - 26/September/2005 A puppy-farm-language training course will begin in the town hall on Tuesday evening. Puppy farm workers talk in their own dialect, a variation of hip hop. There will be a strong self-defence element to the course, especially self-defence on a puppy farm, but anyone looking for a good grounding in self-defence is invited to attend. On Saturday afternoon, there will be an auction of slates with pictures drawn by crows, mostly depicting crows fighting off alien invasions. 'Sprain' Twomey has been collecting these slates for years, and he insists he's actually seen the crows drawing the pictures. Sprain came to porminence in the town once before when he said that aliens tried to abduct him, but he beat them off with a toaster. 12/September/2005 - 19/September/2005 Local band 'Read Thru and Wake Hippopotamus' have had to undergo yet another name change following the negative response to the re-release of their album. One critic said he played the album to a sleeping hippopotamus and the hippo didn't wake. Some have suggested that the hippo was dead. Animal rights groups have again expressed their concern, given Read Thru and Wake Hippopotamus's record on the treatment of animals during their brief stint as Read Thru and Drug Hedgehog. They'll be playing for the first time as Read Thru and Happy Trampoline in Standy Parsons nightclub on Saturday night. Liar the Bear will be making an appearance in the Lingua Pingu theatre on Thursday evening. At his last show he injured fourteen people who called him a liar, eight people who called him slow, and a man who threw an apple at him. 5/September/2005 - 12/September/2005 Makey Monk has become a TV celebrity recently for his DIY show in which he makes things in complete silence, in accordance with the rules of his religious order. Makey is a native of Mizzenwood, and he'll be making an appearance in the town on Friday evening when he'll demonstrate the construction of a coffee table in the town hall. 'Hilly' O' Brien will also be appearing at this event, and he'll be wearing Jackie Chan's shoes. Hilly recently bought the shoes on Ebay for an emu. The next highest bid was 27,000 lemons. He's said to be delighted with his purchase because he says he bought his emu for the cost of 17,500 lemons, although the price of lemons has varied since then. 29/August/2005 - 5/September/2005 Mizzenwood's most famous popstar, Mindloaf, will be shooting a video in the town during the week. The video is for his next single, 'Put your hand in the bucket'. The director has denied reports that chickens will be sacrificed in the video. Mindloaf has also denied ever sacrificing chickens on stage, and he said, "If any chickens will be sacrificed in the town this week, it'll be on the soccer pitch when Mizzenwood Athletic play." Mizzenwood Athletic insist that their chicken sacrificing days are behind them, but Councillor Derry D’Fawn has questioned the timing of the video, suggesting it's no coincidence that it comes when Mizzenwood Athletic are playing their first game in months. He said, "It'd be like putting someone who loves fires in charge of a fireworks display. We all remember the consequences of that." 22/August/2005 - 29/August/2005 The annual sheep formation contest gets underway on Tuesday, and will finish in the park on Sunday afternoon. Last year's winner, 'Brain' Twomey, is said to be confident of victory again this year. He says he's been training his sheep for months and he's come up with something even more spectacular than the sundial his sheep formed last year. After last year's contest, the organisers have added a new rule stating that if you're going to use your sheep to represent people, you have to represent clothes as well. One of the competitors told us that this rule is completely unnecessary, and that all the problems of last year arose because a fellow competitor sheared his sheep just before the contest. He also said, "The only rule they needed to add was that the sheep should have a bit of wool on them, which is just common sense for a sheep formation contest anyway." On Saturday afternoon there will be a charity swim to 'test the waters' in the town's new harbour. This is really intended to test Buddy Lair's claim that there is actually a harbour in the town. Most people who've seen it say it's just a wall. The swimmers are said to be looking forward to it, but slightly nervous too. 15/August/2005 - 22/August/2005 The local theatre group will be continuing their contribution to Mizzenwood's unofficial year as the European Capital of Culture this week. After the success of their version of Ibsen's 'Ghosts' in the Lingua Pingu theatre, they'll be embarking on an outdoor performance of 'Herbie Goes Bananas'. The performance will take place at various locations all through the week. One of the actors told us, "We'll be going wherever the car takes us. It seems to have a mind of its own. A bit like in the film." Some people have questioned the motives of the theatre group after last year's outdoor performance of 'Bonnie and Clyde'. The actors involved used the opportunity to steal a case of Bushmills from the off-licence a week later. The owner of the off-licence only realised that it wasn't in the film on the following day. The 'Find the Harbour' contest continues this week. Buddy Lair claims to have found it, and competition organisers are giving him until Friday to reveal its location. 8/August/2005 - 15/August/2005 Read Thru and Drug Hedgehog, Mizzenwood's most famous pop duo, have had to undergo yet another change of name. This comes just a few days after their debut performance as Read Thru and Drug Hedgehog. This latest change is a result of the objections from animal rights' groups to the name 'Drug Hedgehog'. A local man called John Drug-Hedgehog has also voiced his objections. A spokesman for the band has said that they have never advocated the administration of potentially harmful substances to any animals, and they never intentionally stole the name from John Drug-Hedgehog. The artist formerly known as Drug Hedgehog said, "I might have heard the name after a night out when I was worse for wear." Animals rights' groups have taken this to mean 'when I was drugging hedgehogs'. These groups say they don't have a problem with John Drug-Hedgehog, even though he says he once let a donkey eat an old radio. Read Thru and Drug Hedgehog will be perfroming for the first time as Read Thru and Wake Hippopotamus in the Alcehole Bar on Saturday night. Support will come from a new local band called Popsolete. 1/August/2005 - 8/August/2005 On Tuesday afternoon, Fog-Haven Street will be filled with balloons in the hope of starting a festival of some sort. Organisers say they have no idea what sort of a festival it will become because they can't remember what happened last year, and they can't remember if they even had a festival on the year before that. Local duo Read Thru and Bore Melodica (formerly Read Thru and Johnny Plantation, Read Thru and Pollen Count, initially Read Thru and Knee Jerk) will be performing under their new name, Read Thru and Drug Hedgehog, in Standy Parsons Nightclub on Friday night. This follows the lukewarm critical response to the re-release of their album, 'There's something stuck in my head and I think it's my brain'. 25/July/2005 - 1/August/2005 A snooker tournament is due to take place in one of the mayor's 'hobbit' houses this week. It has been suggested that this is another story fabricated by the rabbits who read the news on the radio, but we've checked it out and we can confirm that the tournament will get underway on Thursday evening. The games will be played on a full-size snooker table in one of the 'hobbit' houses. Some competitors have already practised on the table, and they say there's plenty room if you want to hide under it, but the organisers insist that it's not another 'hiding under a table' contest. A 'find the harbour' contest will get underway on Tuesday, and it's expected to continue for some time. This follows the unveiling of a painting of the town by Timpani Frugal-Fox, which is currently on show in the Young Ledwing-Glass Memorial Gallery. The painting depicts a town with a harbour, but there's no record of a harbour ever existing in Mizzenwood. A spokesman for the mayor has suggested that it might not be Mizzenwood, and that it looks more like a town with a harbour, somewhere on the coast, but Ms. Frugal-Fox insists that it's Mizzenwood. Organisers of the contest promise two-hundred feet of hedging to the first person to locate the harbour in the town. 18/July/2005 - 25/July/2005 The local Star Trek Society will be dropping a bucket from the bus shelter on Tuesday. They're advising people to get there early, and with regard to the possibility of the bucket falling on someone's head, they say they are accepting requests. They've been on the bus shelter for three weeks now. They say this is part of their annual conference and has nothing to do with being intimidated by the girl guides waiting at the bus stop below. Alan Westward-Maybe will be continuing to play the accordian in his garden as part of his marathon concert for charity. Some reports suggest that he's fallen over, but he denies this. He'll be continuing to perform, lying on his side with his head in a rose bed. Alan denies that he's lying on his side. 11/July/2005 - 18/July/2005 The table quiz in Standy Parson's nightclub continues this week, but most of the action is now taking place near the lake. The final question is: Who invented the penguin? Reports suggest that the team who claim the answer is Robert Louis Stevenson are winning. Some claim that the questions are deliberately designed to incite violence. For a slightly more cultured form of entertainment, a performance of Beathoven's Piano Sonata will take place outside the Lingua Pingu Theatre on Thursday evening. Beathoven has been living in a caravan just outside the town for over twenty years now, and some of his critics have suggested that his works are also just an excuse for violence, pointing to the low musical and high pool cue content of his pieces. Beathoven has accused his critics of snobbery, saying that his works can be appreciated by anyone, and they certainly have attracted huge audiences in the past, but there are some concerns that if the table quiz is still going on, many potential contributors to the Piano Sonata won't be able to attend. 4/July/2005 - 11/July/2005 The local radio station have started using rabbits to read the news recently. They say it looks good when you see the rabbits in front of the microphones, but they haven't found a way of making it work on radio yet. Many people have claimed that in a news bulletin on Friday, the rabbits announced a 'falling over in fields' competition for next Friday, with the winner receiving a 'box of whiskey'. No one in the town was aware of this event before the rabbits announced it, and some people have suggested that the rabbits made up the competition themselves, but one of the potential competitors has said, "Well it'll definitely happen now. It's a gread idea." Some people have suggested that the rabbits were just being sarcastic when they came up with this idea, whereas others have said that the rabbits have also come up with suggestions for a drainage scheme in the fields by the lake. A spokesman for the radio station has denied suggestions that the rabbits read out details of this competition. They say that the rabbits were reading a story about the Middle East from their script. They also deny reports that one of the rabbits killed a mouse live on air. 27/June/2005 - 4/July/2005 A new evening class gets underway in the town hall on Wednesday. The title of the class is 'Teaching a swan how to pick a lock', but the teacher, Davy 'The Spoon' Dickens, insists that he'll be dealing with the fundamentals of wood sculpture, and that the title is entirely metaphorical. Some people have questioned this after his last class, which was entitled 'Hiding in hedges'. Davy was supposed to be teaching pottery in this class, but no pottery was produced by any of his students. A member of the Town Council has said that they'll be keeping a very close eye on Davy in this latest class, and they'll be watching the swans at the lake too. The tennis tournament enters its second week. Very few of the remaining competitors had entered The Mizzenwood Times crossword, and many of the losers have complained about this because the tournament was supposed to decide the winner of the crossword. Most of the remaining competitors are members of the rugby team who broke into a warehouse at their last match. 20/June/2005 - 27/June/2005 A tennis tournament sponsored by The Mizzenwood Times gets underway this Monday. The winner will receive gift voucher worth two hundred euro. This was originally the prize in a crossword competition run by the paper, but they were unable to identify a clear winner. Some entrants seemed to confuse it with a 'spot the ball' competition, and the editor of the Times decided to give the prize to someone from this group. The group of people who wrote words into the crossword objected to this decision. No one managed to complete the crossword (some just wrote obscenities, and one entry was just a note saying 'F-off') but they claimed that they should get the prize for knowing what a crossword is. To settle this dispute, the Times have organised a tennis tournament. The group of entrants who knew what a crossword was have also objected to this because they say it favours the people who wrote obscenities, but the organisers say they'll be trying to emulate Wimbledon's lack of violence. The people who confused the crossword with a 'spot the ball' competition are said to be quietly confident, although most other contestants are hoping to be drawn against one of the 'spot the ball' people. 13/June/2005 - 20/June/2005 The first summer events get underway this week. At the lake on Friday people will be throwing things at each other to see if they float. A lifeguard will be there to prevent a repeat of an incident last year when Tommy 'The Hedge' Hogan didn't float. The homecoming of Giddy Hammer will take place sometime this week, after his victory on The Golly Brains Show. The coffee table he used during the show is also expected to receive a warm welcome. The whereabouts of Giddy, the coffee table and most of the audience are unknown, so a date hasn't been fixed for the official homecoming reception, but as the Mayor said, "After his performance on the show, it'd be a huge surprise if Giddy and the coffee table missed the event at the lake on Friday." 6/June/2005 - 13/June/2005 On Friday evening, a local man called Giddy Hammer will be appearing on The Golly Brains Show. This quiz show will be filmed live and a bus will be leaving Mizzenwood at three o' clock on Friday afternoon to take local people to the TV studio. Giddy was chosen to represent the town after a table quiz in the Alcehole Bar last month. It's still unclear who won this quiz, but everyone agrees that Giddy intimidated the most amount of people with an ironing board. Giddy failed to answer a single question, including 'where did you get that ironing board?', and the committee who chose him to represent the town have come in for criticism because of this, but they insist that if they sent the most intelligent person in the town to The Golly Brains Show, they wouldn't get past the first round. They said they had to think outside the box in making their decision, and that's why they chose to consider how intimidating a person could be with an ironing board. Some people are said to be upset with the decision to choose someone to represent Mizzenwood who's best known around the town for chaining things to immovable objects. Some seats are still available on the bus. Organisers say they will not be preventing any of Giddy's friends from attending the show, but they are strongly discouraging anyone from bringing chains, unless they have a very good reason. 30/May/2005 - 6/June/2005 On Friday evening, people will be throwing stones at a tree and digging a hole. This activity has been organised by the youth club while repair work is continuing at their regular tree. The Mizzenwood Wine Appreciation Society have donated a packet of balloons with images of Santa on them, and hired local security guards to distribute the balloons. Friday evening also sees the annual wine-tasting event, organised by the Mizzenwood Wine Appreciation Society. A spokesman for the society said they were confident the event would not be marred by the drunkenness that came to characterise previous wine-tasting events. "We've come a long way since last year," he said. "We've been engaged in educational activities recently, and we believe that the people of Mizzenwood now accept that drinking wine has nothing to do with getting drunk." 23/May/2005 - 30/May/2005 Mizzenwood Athletic have announced that they'll be organising a box to raise funds for a trip to Spain. The box will begin on Friday afternoon and continue throughout the weekend. Some people have suggested that the box is a substitute for this year's league season, which was shortened due to unfortunate events surrounding the sacrificing of chickens, and it has also been suggested that watching the box will be more exciting than any of Mizzenwood Athletic's games. The club's manager, Pilly 'Laughing' Brady, has said he'd react with anger to anyone disparaging the box like that. People have pointed out that these remarks were intended as a criticism of his team rather than the box, but he responded by saying that there must be something wrong with anyone who'd criticise a poor defenceless box. Local duo Read Thru and Johnny Plantation (formerly Read Thru and Pollen Count, initially Read Thru and Knee Jerk) have announced another name change. Critics have been unsure about the political undercurrents in their album 'There's something stuck in my head and I think it's my brain'. No one had noticed any political undercurrents before Pollen Count became Johnny Plantation. No one could pinpoint any political content in their songs after this either, but one critic said his grandfather died in a big house and he was personally offended by the song 'A Little Rabbit on the Lawn'. The band will be performing their first gig as Read Thru and Bore Melodica in Standy Parsons Nightclub on Saturday night. 16/May/2005 - 23/May/2005 The town's conservation committee have selected green as the colour for the following week, and there are many theories as to what this actually means. This committee are famous for their enigmatic statements, such as their condemnation of people who throw popcorn at rabbits. Many people have claimed that their announcement about the colour green has something to do with the folk festival, or the lack of a folk festival. Some say it confirms their view that there never has been an annual folk festival in Mizzenwood, and this whole 'green' thing is a stunt to distract attention from the lack of live music. Others have interpreted it as a call to throw popcorn at rabbits. 9/May/2005 - 16/May/2005 On Saturday afternoon, the local Historical Society will be recreating the famous 'Skirmish the mushroom' battle on the street outside the town hall to mark its 75th anniversary. The battle took place in 1930 when the Historical Society were planning the re-creation of another battle. They had made a model of the landscape around Mizzenwood, and this model is still on public display in the town hall. An argument arose over the exact location of a fight where two blacksmiths took on sixteen musicians and a penguin (some historians claim it was a stuffed penguin, while others insist it was a turnip). One side in the dispute believed that this fight took place on the banks of the river, whereas the other side said it was confined to a field on a hill. When the debate became heated, a local farmer put a mushroom on the model of the landscape and said, "It took place here. And if anyone disagrees with that, they can outline their objections to my steel-capped boot." The mushroom was placed in a lake and almost everyone disagreed with that. Violence broke out, and it spread to the street outside the town hall. The mushroom survived the fight, despite attempts to place it up someone's nose. It became known as 'Skirmish the mushroom', and it's been on display in the town hall, along with the model of the landscape, ever since that famous battle in 1930. The Historical Society will be recreating the battle over Skirmish the mushroom, but another dispute has arisen over where the mushroom should be placed on the model. There are three different lakes, and each one has its own supporters. One member of the society is quoted as saying, "It doesn't matter where we put it at the start if it's going to be up someone's nose at the end." This tension has only added to the interest in this event. Organisers say they hope the re-creation won't cross the fine line between pretending to fight and actually fighting, but many of the spectators will be hoping otherwise. 2/May/2005 - 9/May/2005 The annual Mizzenwood folk festival gets underway at the weekend, and according to its organisers, this year's festival will be the biggest ever due to the town's unofficial status as the European Capital of Culture. The organisers have also stressed their wish to avoid a repeat of the sheep at last year's festival. Some critics have complained about their strong anti-sheep policy, but members of the organising committe have claimed that there's nothing anti-sheep about their stance. They have also pointed out that some of the people who are backing the sheep now were very much anti-donkey in the debate around the 'Snail good, donkey bad' photography exhibition, but those people have said that there's nothing contradictory about being pro-sheep, anti-donkey and you can take whatever position you want on snails. Other critics have claimed that the folk festival is not an annual event at all. They say that there was no festival last year - it was just sheep. A member of the organising committee has said, "Well it won't be just sheep this year. There won't be any sheep at all." Contrasty the kitten has been used to settle this argument. Contrasty is often brought into situations to bring a contrast to the tension and mud-slinging. However, the presence of Contrasty only brought to the fore the organising committee's position on kittens, and their statements suggest a strong anti-kitten stance. One of them is quoted as saying, "Ye can forget about sheep, and ye can forget about kittens too. We're having a folk festival and that's that." 25/April/2005 - 2/May/2005 Local duo, Read Thru and Pollen Count, formerly Read Thru and Knee Jerk, have announced that they're changing their name again. Their debut performance as Read Thru and Johnny Plantation will take place in the Lingua Pingu theatre on Saturday night. Their album, 'There's something stuck in my head and I think it's my brain', received some very positive reviews when Knee Jerk changed his name to Pollen Count, but most music journalists agreed that it was a very summery record, and the record company thought it was the wrong time of year to be promoting a summer record. The past few months have been hugely successful for Mindloaf, and he'll be making his debut performance on Top of the Pops this Friday with his new single, 'I killed a bat'. Some of his old friends in Mizzenwood claim that he never actually killed a bat, but he did put a tiny hat on the head of a bat when the bat clearly wished to remain without a hat. Some claim that it was a cowboy hat, while others insist it was a bowler hat. The issue appears to have been resolved after they went to search for the bat in the woods. Some returned and said it was definitely a cowboy hat while others are yet to return. 18/April/2005 - 25/April/2005 The Mayor has announced a public meeting for Thursday evening to discuss his plans for a heritage centre. He had hoped to locate the centre in a derelict building, but the building is owned by a dove called Mr. Picky, and Mr. Picky hadn't been seen since his trip to the Moscow Olympics. The Youth Club were due to knock down the building next door last week - the Mayor suggested this activity because he thought it would be something they'd enjoy. There seems to have been some confusion over which building they were supposed to knock down. They started demolishing the building owned by Mr. Picky, but they'd only just begun when Mr. Picky himself arrived and stopped their work. It was the first time Mr. Picky had been in the town in twenty-five years, and he says the place has changed a lot in that time. He returned with his Russian wife and they were hoping to set up home in this building that he won in a game of cards in the late seventies. The previous owner of the building was Mr. Picky's owner, Billy Bredgehog. Mr. Picky told us how he beat his owner in a game of poker after Billy drank something from a bottle marked 'May result in throwing shoes at a stork'. Billy didn't throw his shoes at a stork, but he did bet the deeds of the house on the poker game. The Mayor is considering other possible locations for the heritage centre, and he welcomes suggestions from the public. The youth club are currently helping Mr. Picky in the renovation of his house. 11/April/2005 - 18/April/2005 The Mayor recently announced plans to build a heritage centre on the site of a derelict building, but his plans have been put on hold because of difficulties in locating the owner of the building. It was believed that Billy Bredgehog was the owner, but he says the deeds are in the name of Mr. Picky and that Mr. Picky is a dove who went to the 1980 Moscow Olympics and hasn't been seen since. He said he found it very difficult to get information on the whereabouts of a dove from a communist state, and after the collapse of communism it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack because Mr. Picky could be just as annoying as a needle - that's why Billy put so little effort into the search. "Picky was really a bit of a misnomer," Billy told us. "Idiot would have been a more appropriate name. I wasn't really too surprised when he didn't come back from the Moscow Olympics. His stupidity, combined with the fact that he's a dove, meant that going on a trip to a communist state wasn't the best idea." Billy refused to tell us how the building came to be in Mr. Picky's name, but he said there's nothing he can do with it until Mr. Picky gets in contact with him. On Tuesday evening, the building next door will be knocked down, just to give the youth club something to do. Local trumpeter, Azzer 'Boy' Jazz, will be performing in The Alcehole Bar on Friday night. Azzer rejects the attempts of some critics to pigeonhole him in the new wave of 'owl' musicians. He says he's creating some of the most anti-owl music of his career and still he gets the 'owl' tag thrown at him. He'll be playing tunes from his new album, 'Raison d'etre Bo Peep'. He said to us, "No one has ever used the word 'sheep' to describe my music, and I'd be mightily angry if they did, but it's much better than calling it owl." 4/April/2005 - 11/April/2005 A local man known as 'Understandlebars' will be making his latest public appearance on Tuesday evening. His nickname comes from the handle-bars moustache he's had since he was fourteen. Every time he doesn't understand something, the left side of the moustache goes down and the right side goes up. Every time he lies, the left side goes up and the right side goes down. People ask him if he understands something and he always lies and says he does, so his moustache remains completely still. Thousands of people have come to Mizzenwood just to ask him if he understands something and see this reaction of his moustache. Professor Stephen Hawking will be giving a talk in the town hall on Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, Professor Hawking doesn't have the time to take questions after his talk, but Understandlebars will be standing in for him. He'll be taking questions on physics, cosmology and DIY but he won't be answering any questions on what happened to the badger who ate the milk, who left the milk in a place where the badger could eat it or how the milk was in a state where it could only be eaten. The badger shakes his head a lot now. The first phase of the Mayor's affordable 'hobbit' housing scheme will be completed this week, in time for the official opening on Saturday. Local press reports have suggested that the building work has been delayed by a goose who was said to be laughing at the workers. One of the workers was quoted as saying that the goose was pointing and laughing at them. The problem seemed to be solved when a dance group was hired to distract the goose. The idea was to allow the goose point and laugh at the dance group's performance while the builders got on with their work, but the dancers claimed that the goose came to appreciate their dancing. They said he looked very thoughtful and never laughed or pointed at all. The builders refused to accept this. They insisted that the goose was laughing and pointing at the dancers, and they refused to go on with their work until the dance group accepted this. A compromise was reached when more builders were hired to build a wall nearby. The dancers accepted that the goose was laughing and pointing at them, on the condition that they were allowed shout abuse at the builders working the wall, and they've been doing this for the past week while work on the houses was being completed. The wall will be knocked down before the official ceremony. 28/March/2005 - 4/April/2005 On Saturday, the local primary school are organising a day out in the park for the school kids at the end of their mid-term break. Selfish the Clown has been hired to entertain the kids, but he's never appeared at any event he's been booked for before, and his un-appearances have received critical acclaim, with some journalists claiming that he's the most prescient commentator on our culture around, whereas other journalists have responded by pointing out to the journalists who laud him that they're supposed to be cultural commentators themselves, and if they feel less equiped to do the job than a clown who's never appeared as a clown anywhere, then maybe they should give up the day job, and some of them have given up their jobs as journalists to become clowns who don't appear because they believe this to be a more appropriate medium for cultural commentary in our times. The word 'un-appearance' has spread beyond clowning to many other disciplines, such as photography, art, dance and journalism. The latest photography exhibition at the Young Ledwing-Glass Memorial gallery will be shown in an attic in a house twenty miles away, and the organisers of the exhibition refuse to reveal the location of the house. They say the photographs deal with all aspects of un-appearance, and there's also one of a bat looking very sleepy, which, they say, has some fascinating implications for un-appearance. These photos replace the 'Snail good, donkey bad' exhibition in the gallery. The end of this exhibition also marks the end of the controversy surrounding the Mayor's plans to twin the town with a donkey. The donkey was unhappy about the negative portrayal of his species in these photos, but now that the exhibition has been brought to a premature end, he's said to be happy to go ahead with the twinning. The ceremony will take place outside the town hall on Wednesday evening. The phototgrapher behind the 'Snail good, donkey bad' exhibition, Whippet Sir Pinglet, is said to be shocked but not in the least surprised by the town's planned twinning with a donkey. He says it reflects the collapse of morals in society today. It remains to be seen if the donkey fully understands what the twinning process involves, and how he'll react when he doesn't find another donkey there. 21/March/2005 - 28/March/2005 A controversy has arisen over the Mayor's plan to twin the town with the donkey, and at this stage it's uncertain whether the twinning ceremony will go ahead next Saturday. News of the 'Snail good, donkey bad' photography exhibition currently showing at the Young Ledwing-Glass Memorial gallery has reached the donkey, and he's said to be very unhappy with the undeniably negative portrayal of donkeys in the exhibition. The Mayor insisted that the photographs represented the views of just one man, and did not reflect the esteem in which donkeys are held in town. He pointed out that for years donkeys in Mizzenwood have been legally allowed to own a Shetland pony, or used as fake trees and reindeer at Christmas. The photographer, Whippet Sir Pinglet, refused to apologise for the anti-donkey message in his exhibition. He insisted that his photographs were merely reflecting an underlying truth of our existence, and he criticised the press for focussing on the negative donkey message rather than the positive snail message. It remains to be seen if the donkey will agree to the twinning, assuming he fully understands what the process involves. The Mayor has laughed off suggestions that the town be twinned with a snail instead, pointing out that for many years, snails in Mizzenwood have had no legal entitlements whatsoever, and they've been used as fake bullets at Christmas. Police say they can't put an exact date on the end of the Saint Patrick's Day parade because of its dispersal over such a wide area. The soccer team alone are said to be scattered over a twelve mile radius, while the girl guides are supposed to be throwing sticks at a tree. The whereabouts of the parade committee is uncertain, but some have suggested that they're hiding in a tree due to their decision to place the girl guides behind the library in the parade. 'Happen' Hagan's role in the parade will come to an end as soon as he gets his head out of the wall. 14/March/2005 - 21/March/2005 Mizzenwood has already been twinned with a town in France and one in Poland, and on Wednesday evening, the Mayor will be announcing details of his plan to twin the town with a donkey. It has been claimed that the donkey would rather be twinned with another donkey, but its owner said that she still hasn't told him what twinning actually means. She's waiting for the right time. A local man who goes under the name Mindloaf has been receiving a lot of attention from the music press as of late, and you'll get a chance to see him perform in an intimate venue on Friday night, when he and his band will be playing in the Lingua Pingu theatre. He's been credited with inventing a new type of music, which he calls Undecidabilly. Some have suggested that his hit single 'Do the Do' sounds very similar to 'Do the Forget' by local duo Read Thru and Pollen Count, formerly Read Thru and Knee Jerk. But Mindloaf dismisses these claims as 'emanating from people who have glued watering cans to their knees'. We contacted everyone in Mizzenwood who has a watering can glued to their knees, and they all denied Mindloaf's accusation. Some even said that they'd never heard of Mindloaf before. When we put this point to him, he said he was speaking metaphorically. Of the 127 people in Mizzenwood who have metaphorically glued watering cans to their knees, 26 refused to comment on the issue. The Saint Patrick's Day parade will start at noon on Thursday. Those wishing to take part are asked to contact the Mizzenwood Tourist Board and are warned that the parade will be going past 'Happen' Hagan, whose had his foot released from a first floor window especially for the day. 7/March/2005 - 14/March/2005 Local man, Buddy Lair, will be the guest of honour at a special reception in the town hall on Friday afternoon. Buddy has recently beaten the world chess champion, who's currently recovering in hospital. Mr. Lair will be signing autographs and talking about his experiences of recent weeks. Concerns over the safety of the crowd have been dismissed by the police. A spokesman said, "No one's going to be calling Buddy 'Biddy' or comparing his mental capacity to that of a shoe." People are advised not to stand too close to Buddy while he's talking, especially if they're planning on making any comments on his mental capacity or his shoes. On Saturday night, Local duo, Read Thru and Knee Jerk, will be performing for the first time under their new name, Read Thru and Pollen Count. The name change follows the press reaction to their debut album. 95% of all articles written about them used the word 'jerk' out of context in the headline. Their friends, Promising Young Band, received a much more favourable press reaction, even though most journalists agreed that their album wasn't as good as Read Thru and Knee Jerk's 'There's something stuck in my head and I think it's my brain'. "They live up to their name," 163 journalists said of Promising Young Band. 107 of these expanded on this by saying, "They're young, promising and a band." 19 of them added, "And they're full of promise." Technically, only 18 of them said this, but one of the journalists wrote about the band twice. He'd completely forgotten his earlier article, but the two pieces were almost identical, something which he's said to be very, very scared of. He's currently hiding in a box with a mouse. He's said to be very, very suspicious of the mouse. 28/February/2005 - 7/March/2005 Mizzenwood Athletic will be organising a protest outside their ground on Wednesday evening as part of their campaign to have their first and final league game of the season replayed. After every other team in the league had withdrawn, Mizzenwood Athletic were playing themselves in the only game of the season last Saturday, but the match was abandoned after 0.78 seconds, which some believe to be a record, due to what the referee described as 'an unacceptable level of intimidation with brushes'. Mizzenwood's manager, Pilly 'Laughing' Brady, claimed that it was impossible to intimidate anyone by poking them in the face with a brush. "You can taunt someone by poking them in the face with a brush," he said, "but you can't intimidate them. And that's all we were doing. We were taunting his dog." As a result of this decision, all teams in the league finished on zero points, so all are joint champions, but every team in the league have also been relegated. Next season, this division will consist of the three teams promoted from the lower division. They'll be playing each other twenty times over the course of the season. A photography exhibition will be opening in the Young Ledwing-Glass Memorial gallery tomorrow as part of Mizzenwood's unofficial year as the European Capital of Culture. The title of the exhibition is 'Snail good, donkey bad'. The exhibition consists of just two photographs - one of a snail saving a drowning dog, and the other of a donkey standing on an elf. Some critics have claimed that the photographs have been doctored but the photographer, Whippet Sir Pinglet, insists that he's just a social commentator. He said, "I photograph what I see around me in the world and the photo never lies. If people see a pro-snail, anti-donkey undercurrent to the exhibition, then they're seeing the illumination of a truth suppressed until now, possibly by donkeys." 21/February/2005 - 28/February/2005 Next Saturday sees the start and end of the soccer league, a shortened season due to the withdrawal of all but one of the teams. All but all of the withdrawing teams expressed reservations about Mizzenwood Athletic's tactics of sacrificing chickens. Some sources say that the real cause of the objections is the unremitting violence. Mizzenwood Athletic's manager, Pilly 'Laughing' Brady, is reported as saying, "At the end of the day, it's a contact sport, and secondly, the rules of the game have changed since my day. As I was saying there, her name was June. She had a hat, as far as I know. But at the end of the day, someone else will say she didn't have a hat at all, and as I was saying, they're perfectly entitled to their opinions too, but we have to get on with our job too." Mizzenwood Athletic will be playing themselves in their opening league game at three o' clock on Saturday. Local duo, Read Thru and Knee Jerk, will be signing copies of their new album, 'There's something stuck in my head and I think it's my brain' in Drumpanzee's record store on Friday afternoon. The band have high hopes for this album after the success of their latest single 'Do the Forget'. Another local act, Mindloaf, will be performing his new single 'Do the Do' in Standy Parson's nightclub on Friday evening. Some have claimed that this sounds very similar to 'Do the Forget', and that he's just trying to cash in on the success of Read Thru and Knee Jerk. 14/February/2005 - 21/February/2005 Local band Popsichord will be playing their first gig in O' Sullivan's pub on Friday night. The band consists of three school friends from Mizzenwood plus a fourth member who was hired after placing an ad in the paper that said: 'Have worms, can't travel because of the worms.' The band's lead singer told us that he was intrigued by the ad, and they hired their fourth member almost straightaway. They've been practicing in a garage for the past six months, and they're looking forward to their first gig, but they won't be playing outside of Mizzenwood in the foreseeable future. The Mayor insists that work on his affordable 'hobbit' housing scheme will recommence this week, despite continuing criticism of the plan. When someone pointed out to the Mayor that hobbits don't exist, he said, "Then who are those people living near the old quarry?" When the Mayor was told that they're badgers he said that his housing scheme would have all the features of a modern house apart from space, but the lack of space is something that many people are prepared to live with because of the low cost of these houses. 7/February/2005 - 14/February/2005 Building work on the affordable 'hobbit' housing scheme is expected to recommence this week. Work stalled because the future inhabitants were uncomfortable with the fact that the builder is the local gravedigger. They also complained that he was only building tiny rectangular houses. On Tuesday evening, the Mayor will be officially launching the Mizzenwood Tourist Board's new website at a reception in the Town Hall. A spokesman from the Mayor's office has insisted that the Mayor is now fully aware that the internet has nothing to do with chickens or dancing chickens. The spokesman went on the say that the Mayor does not condone the indiscriminate shooting of dancing chickens and that recent activities on his brother's farm were not a result of an inability to distinguish between the internet and dancing chickens, as some of his critics have claimed. 31/January/2005 - 7/February/2005 On Wednesday, the Mayor will be turning the sod on the latest affordable housing scheme. He says he got the idea from the hobbit houses in The Lord of the Rings, but it wasn't just the cost consideration that appealed to the Mayor. When he announced the scheme he said, "As our society becomes more multi-cultural it's inevitable that foreign forms of housing will become fashionable here." It was pointed out to him that humans are taller than hobbits, but he said, "If you want a higher ceiling, you did a bigger hole - I can't make it any clearer than that." An opposition spokesman made an incomprehensible comment on the scheme, but one of his colleagues clarifed it later with an almost indecipherable statement. The words 'digging a hole for himself' appeared in the statement. There's a gig in Tracey's nightclub at the weekend by local duo Read Thru and Knee Jerk, where they'll be launching their new single 'Do the Forget'. The duo's management have informed us that the gig will take place on Friday night. The date and venue were ommitted from posters advertising the event, and according to the management, they just forgot. An image of a badger playing the flute appeared on the posters. They can't remember why this was included, but in a statement they have said that the badger is clearly enjoying himself. 24/January/2005 - 31/January/2005 This week sees the continuation of the fireworks display in the opening ceremony of Mizzenwood's unofficial stint as the European Capital of Culture. The fire service hope to have brought the opening ceremony to a close by Tuesday or Wednesday. The police are hoping to have located all of the participants in the parade by the weekend at the latest. The local soccer team and residents in the old folk's home are still missing, but the police deny reports of a hostage situation. They say it's not a repeat of the old folk's fund raising initiative when they raised the money for a trip to Rio. The youth club were found staring at a blinking light with a swan and a squirrel. The swan was staring at the blinking light too. The squirrel was a companion of the swan. 17/January/2005 - 24/January/2005 Friday sees the opening ceremony for Mizzenwood's year as the European Capital of Culture. It's an unofficial title, but the Mayor insists it's well-deserved. Announcing details for the opening ceremony he said, "Mizzenwood is the European Capital of Culture in every year, not just in 2005. It'll be the Capital of Culture in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and so on, just like it was in 1997." 1997 was the year in which Raquel Welch mentioned the town and its inexplicably high pig mortality rate in a newspaper interview during a brief stay in Ireland. (The success of this event was soured by subsequent negative comments from Ms. Welch concerning the high pig mortality rate). It's not known yet what part the youth club will play in the opening ceremony. One of its members was due to kick a burning football into the river to symbolise football and burning things, a symbolic representation of youth life in Mizzenwood. However, this has been dropped from the ceremony due to an accident during the rehearsals. The ball was set on fire at the GAA grounds, but they felt it would be unsafe to kick a burning ball, so they just let it burn. Some have accused the youth club of deliberately setting the ball on fire in the doorway of the clubhouse, and then just watching the ball and the clubhouse burn, a more literal representation of youth life in the town. It has been suggested that their role in the proceedings be confined to just smoking. One of the organisers is quoted as saying, "It's the one thing we can be sure they'll do." The smoking would symbolise smoking, burning things and their poor performance on the football field. |
