A Smuddled Message.
Another year, another round robin …
Sickeningly smug greetings from picturesque Smuddland where robins perch on spades outside the door and every day the winter sun rises above a blissfully happy and successful home. So, …
Let us Bray!
2010 has been so eventful and so packed with achievement it’s hard to know where to begin the list of personal triumphs, but I know you’re all so keen to know everything so I will try! I hope I don’t leave anything out! If I do, I’ll put it in next year’s Xmas card…
Remember last year I told you how Old Smuddy’s colostomy bag gave out during Smuddette’s kazoo solo in the Asbo-Leavers’ Music and Movement Christmas Special? Oh, how we laughed!!! Thankfully, he’s got to grips with his new one which finally arrived at the end of March and since then we have had almost no leakage at all. We’ve treated ourselves to some lovely new lino throughout the house and I’d never choose anything but ‘wipe-clean’ again! The rest of Old Smuddy’s back teeth finally fell out after all those toffees last Christmas but the front three seem to be hanging in there. Just one more to go, then his grin will be symmetrical at least.
Great news about my glass eye, though! After enduring 3 years of what experts describe as “a baffling inverted-swivel situation” I’ve now been fitted with a lovely new one which stares almost straight ahead and is only a few shades off a total match. They’ve even blood-shotted the white so it’s virtually impossible to tell which one is the “Columbo”! I can’t tell you what a boost it’s been to my confidence and I’ve started attending the village rug-tatting circle once more. It’s lovely to be back among other overweight and partially-sighted friends and a steady gaze has helped me cope with my otherwise relentless ill-health. I’ve been at the doctor’s almost constantly this year and finally I’ve been told that I have a very weak intellect and a vivid imagination. Apparently this is an unhappy affliction and nothing can be done but at least it’s nice to have a proper diagnosis.
Smuddette has had a lovely year, not least because the police finally lifted her curfew and she’s been able to spend a lot more time with her friends, both outside the Off-Licence and on-line. She’s started yet another school and so far it hasn’t burnt down and she hasn’t been asked to leave! She’s gained her Grade 1 on the ukulele (third time lucky!) and has also been put on ‘The Watch List’ by the headmaster! Result! She seems to have a natural talent for creative writing, judging by the heap of letters explaining her absence that I was called to the school to verify! Academia aside, having yet another infected ring through her lip doesn’t seem to have put her off and she’s applied to do her Work Experience in Ted’s Tattoo & Piercing Parlour. She’s designed some lovely skull-based tattoos and will be happy even if all they let her do is apply the TCP. She’s a lovely girl and doesn’t plan to be pregnant for at least a year.
Smudd Junior is still really interested in Law and we’re always amazed to hear how much he knows about it! He’s forever being invited to attend the Magistrate’s Court and just recently he’s been selected for something called Community Service which I think is a bit like College but without the lectures. He’s also making quite a name for himself in the field of art; Old Smuddy and I very rarely drive anywhere without seeing Junior’s ‘Tag’ on some underpass, bridge or shop front! He must be very good with those aerosols now because he’s forever in the garage giving a car a re-spray! I do wish he’d leave the door open when he’s doing that but he’s adamant that he has to work with the door firmly locked and is only in there between three and four in the morning (something to do with his creative flow he says!). I’ve never seen any of his ‘spray-jobs’ either because it seems that the cars’ owners can only collect them before 6.00am and of course I’m in the middle of my beauty-sleep by then! For the sake of his lungs if nothing else, I’m glad he’s persisting with his market-garden venture in a few of the Nissan huts on the disused airfield just down the road. He’s seen a gap in the ‘tall, five-pronged-leaf lettuce’ market and I’m with him all the way! “It’s Hydroponics, Mum”, he said to me only last week, “It’s Hydro-bloomin-ponics and it’s my ticket outta here.” His business must be going so well he’s started bringing some of his exotic, tall lettuce plants home and putting them in a specially-lit room. Ultra-violet light seems to be the key and hermetically-sealed doors are vital. He’s always been very good with science and biology and the like and now it seems he has a business head on his shoulders as well! Mustn’t ‘crow’, though, must I? Gets right up people’s noses, doesn’t it???!!!
Ah well, I must away and finish hand-making all my crystallised cherries for my sugar-crafted festive cake!
Wishing you all an envious Christmas and a thoroughly-trumped New Year,
Your friends (although we haven’t actually seen each other for the last 27 years) and competitors,
Gloria, Old Smuddy, Junior and Smuddette
January 1, 2011 at 16:48
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Stopped visiting the site when Anna announced that she was obliged to cease
her responsible raccoontage. Delighted to see the signs of life here – will
keep checking back during 2011, for which I send all contributors and visitors
my bestest regards!
Leo
- December 29, 2010 at 18:05
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Lettuce Bray! Is that the famous dish much loved by the vicar thereof? Or
not?
You must give us the recipe!
- December 25, 2010 at 19:13
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Caloo callay! Frabjous joy! The glorious Gloria is back with us again.
- December 25,
2010 at 18:23
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Great post…enjoyed it.
Merry Christmas Anna and a prosperous New
Year.
- December 24, 2010 at 22:51
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Merry Christmas to ALL!
I’m so happy to have found you again.
Don’t
every, ever leave, please …
- December
24, 2010 at 21:42
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Always a pleasure to hear from you, Gloria; merry Christmas to you and
la famille Smudd.
-
December 24, 2010 at 21:36
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Merry Christmas wishes to Gloria, Anna and all your family and friends.
Happy 2011 too.
- December
24, 2010 at 21:07
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A happy Christmas to you all!
If you are feeling sad enough to be playing on your PC for the next too
days, I have scheduled a couple of musical entertainments. I’m not expecting
great readership stats as I expect most people will be either too pissed or
asleep after all that turkey…
- December 24, 2010 at 19:00
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I am sorry to inform you that contrary to EU rules your picture fails to
display the EU flag next to the UK flag and this blog will therefore be
subject to a fine, to be determined. In addition there are two young persons
playing unsupervised adjacent to the unfenced railway, their parent or
guardian will be reported to social services at our earliest
convenience.
Furthermore it is quite clear from the quantity of smoke that
neither the locomotive nor the station house are using approved low carbon
non-polluting fuels, the polution inspectorate will be sent to investigate.
Meanwhile HSE will be looking at the Christmas tree, which appears to be
unfenced and untethered, thus creating a potential risk should it fall on a
bystander.
The police will be wanting to talk to the group leaving the
train, who appear to be potentially innebriated and holding each other up.
Pictures that encourage binge drinking in this way are to be
regretted.
Otherwise have a good Christmas, I loved the round robin, spot
on!
- December 24, 2010 at 17:49
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Gloria, my day is complete!
Merry Christwintervalmas to you, your undeserving spouse and all the
Smudd-kinder. And particularly to your glass eye – is that the one with the
milk of human kindness in it?
Yrs aye,
C
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December 24, 2010 at 17:36
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Lovely, lovely,lovely.
I have a present for Smudette – this groovy Top
Shop electronic tag. They are sooo 2011, I’m told!
And a Merry Christmas to
Anna, contributors and visitors from all here at the Abbey, my special friend
Sister Eva Longoria, and Randy Hack.
Merry Christmas everyone.
G
- December 24, 2010 at 12:34
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Oh what a close-knit family you have Mrs Smudd. However, you shouldn’t have
let-on about the inheritance!
Word on the street is that your kids have acquired an iPod for either
yourself or your other half.
[For the one who has had the pacemaker fitted.]
Apparently the last time Smudd Junior was remanded into custody, he shared
a cell with a geeky-type who’d written an iPod App that can apparently
interrupt a pacemaker. Be aware.
- December 24, 2010 at 10:19
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Great to see you blogging again Gloria!!
Sounds like you have had an eventful year — me too. The family bought me a
radio-controlled wooden leg, since when I don’t know whether I’m coming or
going.
Congratulations on the glass-eye, though it sounds as if you might have
Gordon Brown’s old one. Have you begun speaking in an unintelligible Scots
brogue?
And of course you have a weak intellect — otherwise, why would you be
blogging here?
Anyway, Happy Christmas to you and all the Smudds! May things improve in
2011
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