Enough of the mushrooms, its time for conkers, but only pick up, collect and put in a pile on the floor. Under no circumstances must you thread a string through the middle of them, bake them in the oven or soak them in vinegar. That game is medieval in its style and not for the likes of the kids today. They need to be sat inside on their xbox stations, that sort of brain sapping fun is what the kids of today need. The chance of a small bit of conker splintering off, into an eye through the pupil and embedding itself in the centre of the brain is to high a risk for us to take. Contrary to the film in which Raquel Welch is shrunk to minuscule size and put into a spaceship to cruise the veins and capillaries of a human are not yet with us; that was pure fantasy. So conker brain shut down is a recognised illness and so everything must be done to stamp it out.

Bring on the Fun Police.

Today the dustmen came, well i say today, but it was actually yesterday, thursday, but we had a power cut from 3pm to 3am pretty much so I couldn’t write my blog. All the tiny percentage left on my phone was spent listening to the Mercury Music Prize as it sat in the only downstairs corner of the cottage where we had candles. Four candles! If you’ve never seen this, where have you been?

Anyway the dustmen came and would you believe they carry dog biscuits. Thats all I have to say on the matter, makes a change from Hattie eating animal vomit, nicely positioned on the stile during the night by a badger or fox, ready for the freed dogs from the ministry to sniff it out and gobble it up, Hattie got most of it before all of us ran shouting towards her, frightening the life out of her and starting the walk on an unusually chaotic note. It took a few minutes to compose ourselves after that. Vomit; just revolting.

So a day into evening and into night in pitch blackness listening to the wireless is a wonderful way to spend your time, we went out for a sit down curry, on a school night, came back lit the fire and poured ourselves a slightly too large gin each and basked in the dulcet tones of Tom Ravenscroft (John Peel’s son in case you wondered) on BBC6 music as the Mercury Prize was announced; Wolf Alice, who would have thunk eh? Not a bad result for me, but completely unexpected, I had Nadine Shah’s name all over it. Thats why its such a great award, its deliberated that evening by 12 judges who have listened to the top 300 records of the year during the course of the year, narrowed the choice down to 12 and then chosen from those dozen on the night, anything can happen. Remember when M People won? Exactly!

It seems drones are being blamed on the recently high levels of thieving bastards in and around our village at the moment. They fly up above the houses, checking them all out, looking for escape routes, looking for things to steal and then the steal them. My friend has a drone and his wife told me he shrinks himself to a suitable size for him to fit inside the flying machine, so maybe the age of travelling down veins and capillaries is not so far off after all.

Dull but Irritating Fact of the Day (DBIFOTD): Bottles of malt vinegar are sold in the same volume as British pints of beer are sold in and did you know that imperial pints are 500ml, if you received an “Imperial pint” in my local you would be firmly within your rights to throw it back at the publican and I urge everyone to do so if this should occur anytime from this day forward. Shocking!

The ministry, being sole custodians of entertainment and art installations within Shrawley Woods reserves the right to exhibit and do what the hell we like regards public exhibiting. So today, in the spirit of Autumnal sharing, we have added a conker to the long standing monolithic monument we created forged from materials from the ground, apart from the Lego man, but he is the only watchman we can afford to keep an eye on things 24/7. The conker comes just weeks after the black acorn was added, it’s practically rush hour on the fence post, blink and you’ll miss the activity folks. I think it rather pleasing to the eye, and looking at the feather I am very pleased with its survival thus far.

Hands off devils. Or i’ll, i’ll well I don’t know what i’ll do but C will see if you can plaaaaah. Its tough when you pispronounciate your worms. 

This is one for all you fans of dead things, this caterpillar was clinging to a post, paralysed and stone cold dead. Odd for him/her to be there just on the post which we tend to lean on waiting for the school bus. Autumn is a time of death and decay juxtaposed against the beautiful colours living things turn when in the final moments of their fleeting lives.