Knocker Benbow and the Knights of the Multi-Storey Car Park
Which Craft?
Country crafts and old stories with Morwenna Smith.

The ghost of Knocker Benbow often spent the night out on Fickle Fields or Dot Common howling at the top of his unearthly voice to unsettle them foreigners who would otherwise invade the tiny town and buy all the property for themselves to live in at the weekends. He issued such a fearsome an' wounded howl he would sometimes scare the Ravens from their nests and put the fear of Kevin into every living thing. Nobody ever came near to buying a second home - not because of Knocker, mind - but 'e took all the credit anyways.

One night, walking the shallow marshy vale of the Tigris, Knocker howled so ugly, a 1960s proper-job four storey concrete car park grew from the ground all torn open by his unpleasant tone.

Upon the top-storey of the monstrosity sat twelve knights with magical powers who were honour bound to protect their new castle from invaders. Over the course of the night they replaced those parts of their castle they deemed insecure. Out went the automatic barriers, in went the moat, drawbridge and remotely operated spikes that could skewer a BMW 7 series and its driver. Over the side went the Pay and Display ticket machine and in came the Impale and Display system that made an example of any marauding motorist who would dare to challenge the Knights in search of affordable offstreet parking.

Many years later, nobody uses the Fickle Fields Multi-Storey on account of all the exit and entry roads being removed after a fleet of Vauxhall Astras took the Knights by surprise. The Knights are victorious and Knocker has learnt a valuable lesson: Strangers won't come at all if there isn't enough cheap car parking available.
posted by Morwenna at 9:51 AM

Ring of Intrigue surrounds Ringfield Superstore.
A special report by Clare Terrace.

Poltescoes Ringfield Superstore, the controversial project built on land once occupied by the Town's so-called Area 23 is now open. According to the press release, "three floors respectively devoted to Food, Non-Food and Sacred Hardware and comprising over 12 Cubic Parsec/Moments of Floortime volume, our Ringfield Hyperstore is the largest, if now the only, retail operation ever seen in the village". But that's the story they want you to hear. Here's the one they don't.

The new store occupies the former site of Trepanning's shadowy Department of Fresh Flowers (DoFF) - the secretive body rumoured to be a cover for an enigmatic organisation in overall control of another, un-named branch of the Village Government at the centre of Trepanning's growing problem of nuisance visitors from outer space. DoFFicials refused to be drawn last night on rumours that Poltescoes was merely a facade of 24 hour opening and cheap groceries behind which lurked a sinister and powerful organisation. But I'm Clare Terrace, and that's not good enough, writes Clare Terrace. I had to see for myself. Is Poltescoes the outer layer of the Russian Doll of deceit, lies and intrigue? I had to act.

As my wirecutters snipped the last chain link and I gained clandestine access to the site, a distant hound, unrelated to my enquiry except in an atmospheric sense, howled its lonely howl under a blood-red full moon. On my visit, the night before the official opening, I saw Poltescoes boss, the so-called Howard Poltescoe onsite communicating with the Dark Paymasters who pull the shadowy strings of his puppet grocery store. Clearly visible in the moonlight, the Overlords of the Quasi crypto-fascist regime laughed like that dog I mentioned earlier. I cannot tell you their names. It was dark.

Nothing could prepare me for the next morning: a mysterious white van pulled up outside my house and then drove away in an enigmatic fashion. My cat's purr was different, more contented somehow. I was followed to work by an obsidian black crow. Something was going on, and I had to find out what...
posted by Clare at 4:07 PM

Country Views.
With Enid Crumble.


This charming courtyard is the location of the Trepanning Beer Well, as found at the rear of the Hole in the Head public house. The picture was taken by our dear friend Mrs Arturo Polruan, who managed this quick snap before she was escorted from the premises on account of her over-zealous position on temperance and teetotalism.

The Well was previously thought to have been dug out by two generations of mediaeval monks using spoons as pennance for a minor incursion. However, Trepanning Diggers - archeologists who recently inspected the well - used the latest advances in scientific dating to declare that it has been here "for absolute yonks and then some".

The workings of the Beer Well are still something of a mystery. Last year, village Customs officials attempted to seize the well and send scuba divers in to locate what they believe is the source of the beer - a secret underground brewery manned by an army of spriggans and piskies. The Customs' secret brewery theory is widely believed to be the result of a tip-off from an habitual Hole in the Head regular as most drinkers at the pub routinely see piskies and hobgoblins all the time.


More stories
Psychic Power stepped up to 240v AC.

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Theme park creates new universe.

Cornish village found on Mars.

Mediums hold Beyond the Veil Sale
posted by Trepanning Town Council at 11:55 AM

Parish Noticeboard: Changes.
Latest news.

Please note that the Parish Noticeboard will be updated twice a week - Mondays and Thursdays from now on. The little man who looks after the drawing pins is busy with other Wednesday committments, until further notice.
posted by Trepanning Town Council at 2:18 PM

Parking arrangements: Trepanning Town Centre.
Pedestrianisation plans for The Shambles.

In keeping with the Town Council's 1972 Manifesto committment, Trepanning Town Centre has now been included in an Enviromental Improvement Area. Part of the work of improving the environment, the Pedestrianisation Phase, will involve removing all traffic from the streets around The Shambles and will start next week. The next phase of Environmental Improvement, to be completed by early next year, is the final de-pedestrianisation of the same area which will involve the final removal of all people from the streets.

Pedestrian access and entry to the area will be banned, but teleports at The Hole in the Head Inn and the East end of the Shambles will be provided for travel across the affected area. Passage takes approximately 22 minutes for the 200 metre journey. We are working on faster, "overclocked" models but these are less accurate and pose additional risk. Tomorrow's funeral of a junior lab assistant is in no way connected to this fact.

The new traffic measures are based on the findings of Hardy Polphetamine's groundbreaking 1970 doctoral thesis in the field of fuzzy values. The paper, The Mind of God and Town Centre Management. influenced both nuclear and unclear theory and led to the new science of Atomic Fuzzy Field Generation which supporters claim is so far ahead of its time, most of it hasn't been thought of yet. These new measures, however, are built upon tried and tested techniques we have learnt from our previous schemes.

Early incarnations of the theory were at the heart of several traffic flow schemes in the 1980s, when the conceptual framework had still to be fully worked out. As a result, many mistakes were made. A convoy of three beige Ford Fiestas were trapped in Eastern Close for 17 years while scientists struggled with the neutrino flow diagram from a collapsing White Dwarf. The White Dwarf was eventually proven to be in no way intrinsically or extrinsically linked to Eastern Close when the thoroughfare spontaneously became a supernova and the White Dwarf didn't.

In another scheme gone wrong, it is believed that there are still drivers trapped in Trepanning's Desperate Estate by a combination of No Waiting, No Stopping, One Way and No Through Road regulations. Food, fuel and mechanics are ferried regularly to the estate, where anti-matter traffic wardens patrol, threatening to implode the perpetrator of any Highway Code violation.

posted by Trepanning Town Council at 3:21 PM

Teapots meet at the Off Centre Centre.
Tonight at 8 pm

Trepanning Energy Alternative Potential (Teapots) hold their AGM tonight at what the group describe as "a time of terrible glumness in energy issues". Organisers are hoping that the AGM will rally support for direct action against the new Tofu-powered Timebow at Folk Rock, commissioned in 1997 to celebrate the King's Balsa Jubilee in 2007. The new feature, created by Professor Ted Settee came on stream a month ago - four years ahead of schedule.

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The Off Centre Centre now has the capability of supplying its own psychic power.

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Speaking from his home, Teapots Head Organiser Andy Cabbage said, "The discovery of Tofu-power this year has been a disaster. I won't rest until Ted Settee and the rest of the team behind the discovery of Heavy Tofurium have 'Enemy of Planet Earth' tatooed across their foreheads. I'm willing to go to jail for my beliefs and have already instructed my solicitors to launch a night-time rocket attack on the Folk Rock Tofurium Compound if I am killed or detained by the quasi-crypto-fascist-backlash regime. I've taped them some New Model Army albums and they're pretty angry now and ready to carry out my wishes to the letter."

The Teapots' call to action comes shortly after the Off Centre Centre - the venue of tonight's meeting - announced its renewable energy program had made a breakthrough. "We have tapped enough Psychic Power to light up half of the town," said a Centre Spokeseer. "Unfortunately, it's mostly bad vibes right now because we generated it by driving a twelve metre cathode stake into an old Piskie burial ground and they're not happy at all. We've hooked it up to our Bad Vibes Unit and the BVU is discharging the negative energy as a Narrowband Bipolar Beam Emission and anyone who gets in the way of that can expect some tough shit to go down. We understood it hit a solicitors' office today, but there's no harm done."
posted by Trepanning Town Council at 10:07 AM