Treacherous Predator Stalks Ridge!

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A strange phoneomennommmenon has hit the Ridge......

Our video recorder went bust shortly before Christmas, so Tony went to the shops to get a cleaning thing, braving the madding crowds of urgent shoppers with their noisy kids. If there is such a thing as hell, this is what it will be like. The garnish on this mass of smelly people, for it was very hot outside, was the dreadful noise coming out of the ceiling. Not the usual hideous cacophony, such as that Australian screamer, who doesn't live in Australia, the one who is desperately trying to stay in her teens by prancing about in her knickers and making her dangly bits wobble by jumping up and down like someone demented. We all know who we mean - Kylie Thing, the one with somebody else's teeth. No, it wasn't her or her ilk, but Bing Crosby, who was old when Tony was young, singing 'White Christmas'. He was doing his best to remind us all of snow, which is particularly non-existent in December in this country. Tony struggled out of this Dante's inferno, to our home on the hill, and cleaned the heads of the video, after which nothing would work at all. So he gave up in disgust. Several hours later, God intervened and the machine got better all by itself, just in time for us to tape the millionth showing of 'White Christmas'.

and furthermore....

One day in December our neighbour, Brian, came round to see us, and after we had admired his absurd broad brimmed Mexican gardening hat, he invited us to afternoon tea to celebrate his wife Susan's birthday. We won't prattle on about Susan's age, although she wouldn't mind, except to say that she is getting there, wherever 'there' might be. Tony thinks he got 'there' several years ago, and frequently stops people in the street to tell them about it. Anyway we went around to our neighbour's house and drank white wine and ate chocolate cake and pretended to be amused when Susan, who is no 'dainty', shrieked at the sight of real and imagined spiders.

Later in the afternoon Brian's parents arrived with a birthday present for Susan, and an invitation to an enforced family Christmas dinner at their house, but Susan did not want to go to the obligatory yuletide celebrations. Her justification for not attending the tired old ritual of eating a poor murdered turkey, slurping fattening plum pudding, listening to unamusing stories from boring old men and tripping over multitudinous children, was that she is Jewish, didn't they know that? And anyway she had to work on the saviour's birthday, who wasn't her saviour anyway. But the matriarch of Brian's family would accept no such lame excuses as that, and Suan was condemned to attend the Christmas party, as she is every year, and every year she looks forward to it like taking a header into a bucket of indescribable matter.

The little birthday tea continued merrily, with Tony and Brian's father telling hoary old stories at which the people around the table politely laughed, except for Linda, who refuses to laugh at boring old farts whatever the relationship or the seriousness of the situation.

Flurry of Activity sends Ridgers to Bed for a Nap
Life is very hectic at the Ridge. A recent Monday morning necessitated an immediate emergency run to Gumtree Gully. We needed some blood and bone for the garden, some postage stamps to send off Linda's ever increasing cross stitch post to the United States, and a visit to the library, to collect a book that we urgently needed, and which had been reserved for us, but which we had forgotten the name of. Oh, and yes, we also urgently had to see the Library Manager, who is leaving and going to the eastern states to get married.

Finona, for that is her name, is to give away her life's work amongst the stacks of twelve books and is getting wed, for she is 'truly in love' . She will fly away to the east and live in matrimonial bliss forever in a small timber framed house that will cost a quarter of a million dollars and force her to look for a job. We're not sure why we needed to see Finona that day except that she loves to tell us all about her wedding dress and the reception, to which we're not invited.

Overseas Trip Leaves Lasting Impression
Several months after arriving home from our whirlwind trip to Canada and the US, Tony has finally recovered from being accosted by a big black lady who happened to be the Manager of Qantas, Los Angeles, and didn't want to let us get on her airplane. She towered over Tony (although she can hardly be blamed for that, being 7 feet tall), was very rude to him, and severely unsettled him. Naturally enough, a slanging match developed, which nobody knows who won. Tony still cringes when he sees Venus Williams on TV, but has finally stopped having nightmares of large black women trying to accost him and make him stay in Los Angeles forever.

Breaking News........

The Tin Fish Trio will no longer be playing at the Coffee Shop, as the sax player has taken offence at an offhand comment from the guitar player, which he has since forgotten. 'It's this kind of thing', he commented bitterly, 'that makes the life of an obscure, rather ordinary sax player intolerable.' Investigations continue.

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Jordan Flutter of Rat Place, Rodent Estate, has a boil on his neck that needs lancing.

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LOCAL NEWS

Teenager Bores Reporter
Craven D'eath, aged thirteen of Rodent Crescent, Bucolic Estate, has just started smoking, and she can't wait for her nicotine craving to kick in. 'I'm smoking twenty-five a day and they make me cough, but not much. I did throw up four times yesterday, though', she related proudly to investigative reporter Cynthia Bodice. 'But I want to experience the craving for a constant fix like everybody else. I still don't really feel cool like the other guys. I want to sneak into the toilets at school for a quick drag and a feel like me mates, and throw the butts on the pavements, and get thrown out of cinemas. Isn't that what life's all about?'

Idle Duo May Split
Beryl Broadbeam and Pretain Grady have been partners for seven years and live on the dole in a subsidised Council flat at Bacillus Manor by Blown Creek. Both have decided never to seek employment, as they don' t see much point in work, just for the money. They do, however, enjoy vigorous sex together. But last week, after a few seconds of intense discussion while watching TV, they decided to split up, citing no particular reason. They will remain friends and continue bonking one another, until one or the other starts having sex on as regular basis with someone else. Pretain hopes that he will be the first one to find another partner.

Precocious Girl stuns Family
Six year old Slavander Slonderwell astonished her parents and siblings at dinner recenlty by professing that she will not attend High School, if and when she eventually finishes Primary School, and that she had no intention of ever getting a job, as she could see what work had done to her father. And she was looking forward, when she was seven, to living in a commune in the hills of Gumtree Gully with her friends, six year old Dagon Fricton and seven year old Lampton Ben Achmed, and having eight children without the benefit of wedlock. Her parents were too stunned to comment in detail, but her mother, Plankton, a former lap dancer who has twelve assorted children of varying sexes, from thirteen fathers, did murmur something about 'Where did we go wrong, it was different in my day.'

Eggs off the Forbidden List
Ms Agathapa Costellanpopulas, the Dietician at Gumtree Gully Hospital, is informing her patients that eggs are good for you and will improve the heart's efficiency, blood pressure and cholesterol levels in patients of all ages and sexual persuasions. She recommends that two eggs a day minimum are to be consumed. But she urged patients to start right away, as eggs may become unhealthy again by a soon as July.

Coffee Bean Dilemma puts Baggy Housewife in Turmoil
Chestina Speak-Wokley is a rather large and florid lady, with hair of an indeterminate purple colour and baggy legs, who describes herself as an 'adventurous homemaker'. Chestina lives in suburb of 'Listen to the Birds Squawking', a rather tacky new estate built by Brick Venereal Homes that is blossoming outside Gumtree Gully. She said at the Canasta Club for Gentle Folk last week that she is definitely not having any children until she is at least forty-two. Most members of the club are of the opinion that that was at least ten years ago, but hardly dared to mention it. Chestina anxiously expressed her fears at the club that there is a new brand of coffee on the market, which is trendier than the brand she currently buys. 'I buy 'Pagadonian Day Dreams', which costs $55 for a very small bag, but I do worry that there is a coffee bean out there that is more expensive. And after all,' she said passionately, 'my husband is the CEO of a rain forest and we do have a standard to keep up.'

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COUNCIL NEWS

Poverty Cured in Council Area
Gumtree Gully Council has achieved the impossible, bringing down rural poverty by six percent, and in the process, saving two thousand people in the area from penury. The Councillors took many costly trips abroad to see how poverty was tackled in other countries. They also had many long luncheons and dinners in their endeavour to help the underprivileged. During intense discussions over drinks at weekend seminars in a very nice hotel on the Gold Coast, which they flew to first class, they solved the problem. They redefined the word 'poverty' and immediately moved two thousand people into a new socio-economic bracket, thereby instantly helping people on the bread line to lead more fulfilling lives.

Mayor Overwrought over Underdevelopment Blunder
Gumtree Gully Council had an Extraordinary General Emergency Meeting last week. It had been reported to the Council's committee for 'Special Responsibilities for Building on All Available Land' , by the Chief Rural City Inspector, that there are still several blocks of land outside the city that have not been built on by enterprising housing developers. And what was even more damning was that there are still spaces inside the town itself that have not been purchased by big department stores or converted into large concrete car parks. 'What can we do to rectify this endemic problem?' the Mayor protested vigorously. 'I'll tell you what, it has long been a policy of this council to convert the Rural City of Gumtree Gully into wall to wall concrete with lots of traffic snarls, and someone is obviously not doing their job!' Investigations continue.