Preparation

This post has been devised so that it may only be read by bloggers who make up the first wave of emigrants to Blogland . Remember we leave next Wednesday and you should report to the main information desk in your designated airport by midday in order to pick up your tickets. Don't forget your passport.

As well as packing your cases and buying summery shirts, shorts, flip flops, sun cream, bathing costumes and other personal stuff, you need to listen carefully to the following instruction.

It is important that you create a small bank of "typical" blogposts  with staggered publication dates so that while in transit to Blogland and indeed while settling in to your new life, the outer world is blind to what has taken place and imagines that our dull lives are just trucking along the same as ever. If we don't do this we may find that other less desirable people will follow us. Remember what happened with America? A small bunch of settlers went there on "The Mayflower" in  1620, others followed and now that country is like a huge colony of ants with 313 million inhabitants.. We don't want the same to happen in Blogland. So to repeat - create a bank of posts that will publish automatically as dated.

If blogstipated, here are a few suggestions for "ghost" posts:-

Jenny - The History of the Eisteddfod, Wrexham Football Club and Successful Dog Training.
Jan Blawat - How to make a pineapple cheesecake, Sacramento Mountain Lions and American gun laws.
Shooting Parrots - Car Maintenance, Was Bessie Braddock a Sex Symbol?... and Why Manchester people talk in nasal monotones
Rhymes With Plague -  My Swedish love child, Peach recipes from the Peach State, Looking after your organ.
Daphne - Swimming in The River Aire, The ancient roleplay game of "doctors and nurses", preparing tripe and onions for dinner guests.
Earl Gray - Nursing injured starlings and badgers, "If You Look Good You Feel Good" - the history of British tailoring, Why a brand of tea was named after me.
Arctic Fox - Cosmetics for men, Geocaching for beginners, Life without meat.
Libby - Obsessional Home Security, Libby's canned meats including Chicken Vienna Sausages, Alcoholism via red wine.
Katherine - My Secret Muffin Recipe, The History of Cricket in New Zealand, Ode to Edmund Hillary (A poem).
Brian - Dancing the Fandango with a Catalonian Senorita, The real reason why I was expelled from Britain, Famous Brians.
Helen - What I loved about Aussie schools, Cooking with koala meat, Tony's most irritating habits.

Have I missed anybody out? Honestly, I'm starting to feel like Captain Kirk assembling the first crew of the Starship Enterprise... "to boldly go where no man has gone before".

26

Walk 26 - Eyam, Bretton Clough and Eyam Moor - 9 miles. Well that was the plan but in the event I reduced it to around five miles because there was a lot of drifted snow all over the place and the going was sometimes rather tough. This British climate is quite incredible. A week ago I was walking in sunshine without a coat or jacket, beads of sweat on my brow and a cooling pint of shandy on the pub bench in front of me. Today, I was wearing my lined trousers, gloves and waterproof boots and at one point found myself scaling a six foot snowdrift on Sir William Hill Road. 

I parked by the church in the plague village of Eyam, nipped inside to take a photo and chatted to the old lady who was on guard duty there. Then I hiked over the fields, crossing Linen Dale to the pretty limestone village of Foolow, then up on to Hucklow Edge and along to the hamlet of Bretton. I was tempted to enter "The Barrel Inn" but pressed on to Sir William Hill. A farmer with a JCB digger was clearing the road. Soon afterwards, I cut across the fields back down to Eyam but before I could get there I did an impromptu impression of a sack of potatoes being chucked off a lorry. Whoop! Slam! I'm down on the snowy deck expecting an invisible audience to laugh themselves silly. The last time I fell I cracked a couple of ribs but today all was well and fortunately I had just zipped my new camera back in its case.

Statistically, I have worked out that I will probably have a significant fall every two hundred and fifty miles. Perhaps I should invest in one of those padded sumo suits to prevent serious injury.

Walk 26 Gallery:-

St Lawrence's Church in Eyam

Houses in Foolow

"The Barrel Inn", Bretton

Veteran cars parked at "The Barrel"

Snowdrift on Sir William Hill

Rissoles

Up in Yorkshire we love our puddings but we do eat other things too. Here's a recipe I have devised for mince (ground beef). I'm passing it on to you free of charge. Why not give it a go?

Take 500 grammes of lean steak mince. Place in a large bowl and break up with your fingers. Wash hands. Take a medium-sized onion and chop finely. Then fry in olive oil  with a dollop of butter till soft and golden. Season the mince with salt and pepper. Add a little sprinkling of mixed herbs or "Herbes de Provence" - not too much. Then break one and a half beef  "Oxo" cubes into the bowl. Next break an egg into the bowl. Pour in the fried onions and mix it all together with a wooden spoon.

Then put a handful of plain flour in a dish and spread some greaseproof or baking paper over a chopping board. Dust your hands with plain flour and dive into the mixing bowl. Bring out a small handful of the mince mixture and squeeze and shape into a patty. Put the patty on the paper and make four or five more just the same. Let them rest on the paper. These mince rissoles can be fried, grilled or baked in the oven but I prefer to fry them in the same pan that was used for the onions. Add a little more oil and butter and then fry on a medium heat, turning over two or three times till fully cooked.

Eat with whichever accompaniments you prefer - rice or fried potato chips and maybe some buttered green beans or salad. Mmmm...lovely.

Warning

It was a quiet road. We had just driven across New Zealand's South Island and were within two miles of our accommodation, just south of Greymouth. After the roundabout at Kumara Junction, we found ourselves behind a battered old pick up truck as we headed along the Taramaku Highway. The driver slowed down to little more than twenty miles an hour and waved me on but I stayed put until the next corner. I looked down the long gentle hill to the bridge at the bottom and saw that there was nothing in sight on the three lane road so I decided to overtake - which manoeuvre was completed safely within the flash of a kiwi's eye. Oh - the one fact I forgot to mention is there were double yellow lines on the edge of our downhill lane. 

Next thing I know, zooming out of his roadside hiding place, comes a New Zealand traffic cop with his blue lights flashing. After Taramaku Bridge, I pull into a gravel driveway and the little fellow writes me an infringement notice. Apparently, I am going to be fined $NZ150 - around £75. It had been a long drive and I was tired and even though the pick up truck was travelling slowly and even though its driver had slowed down to encourage me to overtake and even though the road ahead was clear, I knew I was in the wrong.

However, we Yorkshire folk are even meaner than the Scots so to try to reduce my fine I wrote to the New Zealand Police in Wellington, apologising and explaining the circumstances. Hearing nothing and with the deadline date looming I decided to pay the fine anyway - avoiding any further repercussions. However, a few days later I received this letter - via Brunei for some odd reason:-

Click to enlarge

And now in our online bank account I notice that they have refunded the whole fine. I have never been a big fan of police forces anywhere but may I say a big public thank you to the New Zealand Police. I accept their formal warning and should I ever be lucky enough to visit that faraway land again I will be even more respectful of their basic road rules.

Subliminality

The British government intend to monitor everything that happens over the internet. Consequently, I have this message for the boffins at GCHQ, Cheltenham. It contains a highly sensitive subliminal message which will be useful to fanatics everywhere so it is vital that you unravel it. The Western World is depending on you! :- 

Natooraltissimississippimentay! Linkwa, pink dama, arf armoneea. Moozheek. Rintintintinnabulation! Epp Unamunda arf da melodeea looniversahl! Porky alla da peepholes enda voooold – alla de peepholes enda looniverse cargo a shlong enda hartz.

Now work that one out chaps! Chocks away!

It is an enormous relief to think that soon a handful of bloggers - myself included - will be beginning a new society remote from all such nonsense - like a modern day Swiss Family Robinson - "far, far away from the mad rushing crowd."

Sponsorship

Bloggers who signed up to become the first residents of Blogland will be pleased to learn that The Development Committee have managed to secure almost US$2.2m in sponsorship. This will help us to launch our new society and ensure that there is a seamless transition from our old lives to the new lives we shall commence very shortly. Most of the sponsorship has come from two anonymous donors, one based in Wales and the other in Nebraska USA. I have contacted them personally on your behalf to thank them for their astounding generosity.

Anyway, the upshot is that one way travel to the island will now be entirely free for all emigrants! We shall all depart for Phuket in Thailand on the same day. Then a fleet of cruisers will whisk us across the Andaman Sea to our final destination - a veritable paradise on Earth - Blogland. Ah! I can hear those turquoise waves beating on those silver shores even now. All accommodation is finished, a team of servants and other ancillary workers (e.g. Thuza)  has been recruited and everything seems to be in place ready for our arrival. The Burmese workers are learning the national anthem - "Island of Dreams" though their pronunciation needs improvement and a large Blogland flag is already fluttering from the mast adjacent to our luxurious social club.

Thuza - recently appointed
as my personal  assistant

Emigrants should report to the main information desk at their nearest international airport by midday on Wednesday April 11th. There your business class tickets will be available for you to pick up. Please remember your current passport:- 

From Britain - Jenny (& Keith), Libby, Earl Gray, Daphne, Shooting Parrots report to Manchester Airport

From USA - Mr & Mrs Brague report to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta

From USA(2) - Jan Blawat (and Bob?) report to San Francisco International Airport

From Australia - Helen and Tony report to Brisbane International

From NZ - Katherine (and friend?) report to Auckland Airport

From Catalonia - Brian (with Senora Brian) report to Madrid International (Sorry Brian! Barcelona all booked up)

Have I missed anybody out? Please let me know as soon as possible via the Comments facility and your onward travel tickets will also be arranged.

Blogland

Bloggers who missed the sign-up deadline for emigration will be pleased to know that an extra four villas are available, set back slightly from one of the main beaches in a tropical clearing, less than a hundred metres from the social club. Thatched in palm, each villa has a bamboo verandah and through the spindly coconut palm trunks of the native forest you will catch glimpses of the Andaman Sea sparkling under a silvery moon. I doubt that there is anywhere on this planet more beautiful. All you have to do is to indicate your interest in the "Comments" section.

To repeat...The travel date is Wednesday April 11th. Your tickets will be waiting for you. Remember your passport!

Magic

This is a page from Shirley's 1964 Rupert annual. He's on Pleasure Island with a gang of happy "coons" who all look the same. What a contrast with Rupert and his chums - all individual and from a range of species. Still the "coons" seem happy in their self-imposed exile. The strange colouration is because this section of the annual was for "Magic Painting". My then five year old wife must have got a pot of water and a paintbrush then carefully washed over the picture. Please note I did not marry said wife when she was five as that would have been an arrestable offence! 

Page 65 Rupert annual 1964 - please click to enlarge.