A little blanket  In Memoriam for all my dearly departed of the last couple of years. (Howard, Gore, Ash and Iain). Gone but not forgotten, indeed. Your music lingers. AbsentFriends.S

UpTheLevitatordate 13/06/15 The HoverBugs have been quarrelling for the second time this season. Most unusual, as their squabbles are customarily a highly formalized bogus ritual. So the LoveWorms have sent for the Chunky Peace Envoy and asked her to soothe the choppy waters with her levitating metchik. She’s doing all right, as we can see. She’s half way there already. The other micro-organism will soon calm down, go into a trance and wake up refreshed and with no memory whatsoever of what the goddamned argy-bargy was all about. I’d like to point out here that the CPE has an over-the-average success rate (97.7% in fact) in this kind of manoeuvrings, and her fees are exceedingly modest (travel expenses, board & lodgings and a fiver a day, which she invariably donates to the local Merriment For All Creatures charity). Which is why she was never given the job for the Middle East instead of that ghastly dangerous clown wot used to be our prime minister. Pah!

SolsticeRevels.SUpdate 20/06/15 The stardust-spawned Small Fry have summoned the Chubby Ancestor and its entourage to the yearly Festival of the Crossing of the Fire & Brimstone Bird. They also invite you all to join in the revels, si le cÅ“ur vous en dit, and share in the blatantly defiant delight of greeting the onset of darkness.We wish them .“and any of you who may choose to attend- well. Likewise great joy, endless grooviness and a speedy recovery from the hangover that will ensue. (The Ancestor has brought a few kegs of the high-grade Leng Moonshine Candy, AOC, 120% proof. Novices beware.) Now I’m off to build my own bonfire and to weave a few miniature wicker baskets for to burn in effigy a few grandees of Cancerous Crapitalism. Happy solstice!

Foundling.SUpdate 24/06/15  St John’s Day in Spain. Bonfire night was last night, for them. Salut!. Now, for something totally unrelated… A couple of Vermicimorphic Farfalloide anchorites have found a strange being asleep in the woods and are much intrigued by it. They think the creature might be an apostrophe. The otherworldly but highly imaginative hermits have no idea what an apostrophe is, but still they think the little entity might be one such thing. No, I don’t know either. Ask BoomBoom; he might know. (For Robert Sheckley, also gone but not forgotten).

YoungWitch&Friends.S.2Update 26/06/15 Agravación Delaney, the young Irish witch, congratulates her Zapper Wolves on completion of a highly successful Special Op. The beasties themselves are rather chuffed with the outcome, too. See their smug little smiles? These wolves were, originally, a gift from the Morrigan, who as well as a substantial pack of black dogs, has a nice side line in highly versatile (or Heisenbergian) wolves. Pedantic Footnote. Delaney: Irish surname. From Dubhshláine. Dubh: dark, black + slán: defiance (or Sláine, Gaelic for the river Slaney; possibly Right but less Romantic). Agravación: An avant-garde Spanish name. Her mum was called Irritación, and her granny Visitación del Dios

FindersKeepers.SUpdate 03/07/15 I though that that find in the forest would have a tail…  It has had. To wit: Lost & Found. Part II: Possession Is 9/10s of the Law. Following a very nebulous tip from the HoverBugs the Bearoid Monster and his missus, distraught parents of the lost (and arbitrarily renamed) “apostrophe”, have finally managed to locate their missing offspring and so an unfortunate fortuitous meeting has occurred in the National Gallery (after hours; relative time). The ensuing argument has quickly moved from initial manifestations of joy, relief, and incipient gratitude (“Erwin, my baby, Bumba be praised! Oh, you kindly folks, thankyouthankyouthankyou!”), to the first inklings that all is not as it seems (“What do you mean, “your” child? It’s ours. We found it in the woods.”, “Are you crazy? This is our eldest, Erwin Oriol!”), and well beyond acrimonious assertions of ownership v duty of care (“You lost it, we found it. It’s ours.” “Piffle! Return it at once!” “No.”). It has now reached the stage of mild insults and discrete threats exchange. I’m off to find the Peace Envoy before things get beyond mending.