In case you were wondering: a short informal bulletin as to our whereabouts.

We would never like it to be bandied around the place that here at Crinklybee we are running one on these disreputable, fly-by-night operations you may have heard about which are apt to flit in and out of business ad-hoc and willynilly, with flagrand disregard for decorum or the finer points of etiquette. Not to say netiquette.

In this connection we would like to make it clear (albeit a bit late but there you are) that there is a very good reason for the current radio silence emanating from these parts: we are on holiday. Somewhere on the North-East Coast of England, with our bucket and spade, subsisting on a diet of scampi (those curious, tiny, batter-covered fish that live, apparently in baskets, on the bottom of the sea) and Yorkshire bitter. And enjoying ourselves very much indeed, ohyes and thankyouforasking.

We will be back next week, always assuming this here precariously-located fishing village has not by then been washed wholesale into the sea by the perpetual, furious motion of the crashing waves (there are those in the local pubs who will swear this grisly fate is overdue, not that they are going to let anything so trifling as imminent death at the hands of the North Sea get in the way of another pint of Tetleys and a game of dominoes, you understand).

So: back next week, folks, when highlights may include:

Travel Special- Why Self-Catering knocks Bed-and-Breakfast into a cocked hat!

Holiday fayre- Whatever happened to Scampi in a Basket? And is a haddock really a different creature from a cod, or have these crafty fish-and-chip Johnnies been having us on all this time?

Faulty Towers- Our Cliffside Guesthouse tumbled 300 feet into the North Sea (as a result of the long-term sandstone-eroding effects of the angry waves accelerated in some way I don't quite understand by global-warming)- and we lived to tell the tale!

All this, and much. much more, in your Super Soaraway Crinklybee- and still at the same Giveaway price. See you all next week!

Comments

[Abby]

I am still awaiting your revelatory piece on the cod/haddock fallacy.

When I was a teenager we used to call up the Prince of Wales pub and ask for a fictional person called Phil Flish and instruct the barmaid on duty to tell him that his dad had had a haddock and that he had to come home at once. Once she came back to the phone we would say "Oh, actually, I was just codding!" And then we would laugh our arses off for about an hour.

I think you might be onto something.