Mystery of Missing Barber Baffles Police

last sunday i was dragged out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6 am (after finally getting to sleep at 3 am after a close at Maccy Ds) and shoved into the back of a car.

about 6 hours of unadulterated boredom later i found myself in Silsden (oop nort' somewhere. near Bradford). Me, my mum, dad and grandma, got out the car and onto a narrow boat called Dans Drum where my sister and her boyfriend Paul already were after driving up from Bangor.

while we were waiting to be told we could do a runner with the boat some sort of parade went through Silsden including a Noahs Ark float (with Hilarious Cardboard Giraffes[TM]) and a Doctor Who float (with Tom-Baker-A-Like, very good Tardis, slightly dodgy Dalek, and a Cyberman smoking a fag). we fed some ducks, then we pushed off down the Leeds and Liverpool Canal (heading away from Leeds).

after that it was pretty much boredom all the way, with the occasional period of knackeredness brought on by an overdose of locks.

there were some good bits though. leaving at the same time as us were The Old Codgers (named by us) who we managed to leave behind and finally escape from on day three. one of them had a Vincent Price type mostache and kept looking at me with i slightly scary grin.

between us, me and Paul drafted a plot for a film called the Narrowboat Pirates, which includes boarding other boaters to pinch a tea-bag a high speed chase at a wopping 4 miles an hour and involves having to stop to go through a lock.

i started the script for Vamp Movie. only did about 6 pages though, so i'll need to get that finished this week.

what else?

oh, yes. some of you may know about Chavs and how they are scum and how it should be legal to hunt them. me and Paul also spent a lot of time discussing ways to kill them. Pauls favorite idea was to put a tiny, virus filled needle in the brim of every burberry cap so that when a chav put it on they would get a prick from it and get aids. my favorite is just the simple option of a samurai sword and a big crowd of chavs.

Canals seem to be a popular place for chav scum to hang out, and we had to go through Wiggan, which is Chav Central. while we were doing the 23 locks that run through wiggan we encountered a gang of them who we decided must be known as Ince Crew, according to all the graffitti (if only i'd had a marker pen to ad 'st'...). they didnt give us any trouble (not sure why. may have been the big metal lock keys we were carrying, it may have been the security bloke driving up and down in his van, or it may have been the two policemen on scrambler bikes. i guess we'll never know...) but a couple of the chavettes were looking at me with grins not to different to the Vincent Price Old Codger. understandably i had a scalding hot shower with a wire brush at the first opportunity. i still feel dirty...

i cant remember where it was, it might have been called Cherry Tree, but we stopped somewhere along the canal and needed a shop. we eventually found one that was in someones front room where you tell the person what you want and they get it off the shelf for you. i swear that when we went through that shop door we whent through a portal to Royston Vasey.

the two people who ran the shop....well...one of them looked like the fairy from Willo the Wisp, was a bit dim and gave the impression that her parents may have been in the same family before the wedding, and the other was about 3 foot tall and at least 100 years old. the biscuits they sold us were out of date too.

Hogie and her texts were a big help in getting me through the week. for a lot of the week she was with 6 of her friends because it was her birthday on monday. apparently they all decided they loved me. im not entirely sure why, but that was the single scariest phone call i've ever had in my life...

now you probably know that Hogie was an active member of the Green Wing Community, but when her parents found out that she'd made friends with a group of people on t'internet they automatically assumed we were paedos out to get her and disconnected their internet. we've still stayed in touch thanks to the marvel of mobile phones, but on friday her parents discovered that she had called me from her home phone. they werent happy, and Hogie sent a text which basically said "parents know i called you. not happy. should probably stop texting you. goodbye."

this made me feel guilty cos i'd played a big part in this rift between Hogie and her parents, and the guilt joined with missing her made me depressed. this depression made me feel lonely, and tis loneliness made me tell Deppy something quite personal. never mind. the next day i cheered up when we went to a pub and were served by Brian Topp (from Spaced)'s long lost brother, and while we were there Hogie started texting me again so everythings peachy and [sings in a Kaiser Chiefs sty-lée] OOOO-ooooh! and ma Hogie loves me! OOOO-ooooh! and all her friends love me! [/sings in a Kaiser Chiefs sty-lée] thats enough of that....

you know those electronic signs over motorways where they turn on various lights to spell out messages to inform you of any accidents or bad traffic ahead? most of the ones we saw on the way home said "make time for a break", so i kept myself entertained by thinking up other messages they could put up. i cant remember most of them but here goes: "make the world a better place: run over a chav", "you there, in the silver Picaso, stop picking your nose", "I see dead people", "Fall asleep at the wheel. Dares ya." and finally, the best of the lot: "do no allow your badger to steer"
wise words there, i think you'll agree...

i invented some fantastic games involving ducks over the week. the rules are below:

Ducky Races - for when you have minimal ducks
each player picks a duck.
you throw a lump of bread.
the player whos duck reaches the bread first is the winner.

Duck Split
throw two bits of bread in opposite directions.
see what happens.

Duck Bounce
throw bread at ducks.
try to bounce it off their heads.

and finally, my personal favorite:
Hungry Hungry Ducky - for when you have a huge crowd of ducks
Select a duck.
take as many slices of bread as you have and break them up into pieces.
use these pieces of bread to feed ONLY your chosen duck.

this game is surprisingly difficult.
especially if your duck is as useless as mine was.

i think thats everything...oh, yeah when i got home i found two tickets to The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You! had been delivered so yay! the only problem is its at Pompey Guildhall on tuesday the 6th December and i might be up at Stafford Uni...

i also had a message on the answer phone from Donna, this is the Donna from McDonalds who i told i wouldnt be able to work on the sunday because i'd got the dates wrong for my holiday, asking why i wasnt at work.

i've been writing for about an hour so i should probably stop. see ya!

oh, yeah. the title of this entry is the headline from the local newspaper in Silsden which i saw when we got back at the end of the holiday. it ammused me. im not entirely sure why.