Meeting of the Rubble Club 24th October 2008

Come on in, Rubble Clubbers, welcome once again to my parlour here in the Stone Quarry of Undergrowby. I am the famous Madge Dumpling, your chairman and pet rock expert and over there is the fabulous Friday buffet of rock cakes and gravel tea, freshly prepared especially for you. My parlour is sparklingly clean, thanks to my husband, Malcolm, and the pet rocks are scrubbed shiny and nicely arranged in teams of five with the biggest in the middle. Five is the correct magical grouping number for pet rocks, but only during the changing of the seasons. In the next season (the season of the white mist, or late autumn), they will be in sevens and when winter arrives, the magic grouping number is One, a solitary number hated by pet rocks almost as much as they hate the rain. They would not thrive alone, so in winter I group them in one great big group, as close together as possible, so they are sort of One, but all together. I haven't got the heart to separate them. Even the naughty pet rocks I group closely together as One,...one big naughty gang,(except for the one in the bottom of the fish tank, waiting for Tom Moffat) so they can scowl wickedly at each other all through the winter.
Next item, Announcements.
I am pleased to announce that my wonderful head prefect, Linedancer, is on the mend, but as a result of her illness, has started to talk in a strange tongue. Doc Leaf is confused and intrigued, because he has never come across this as a side effect of a torn ankle ligament ever before. She has been on a coach trip to foreign parts, looking for a venue for the next Rubble Club outing, and so he fears perhaps she has picked up a rare foreign brain disease. It's sad, but we'll stand by her, won't we, Rubblers? In the words of the aforementioned Doc Leaf, "Gnature cures while-u-wait", so, according to that it will be just a matter of time before she recovers completely. Personally I like to speed up the healing process with a little self-help. In this case I recommend my own tried and tested favourite remedies...a nice crispy rock cake and a cup of my fabulous speciality tea. My world-famous recipes are not only delicious, they are also cure-alls. Feeble, limping patients have thrown away their crutches and run off back to work at the mere sight of them. Doc Leaf denies it, (he's jealous) but I suspect they might have a spooky little healing aura, visible only to the sick, which is of course why he is determined to be blind to it.
Now, this week I have been experimenting with something. While visiting the local back yards and popping in through the handy gnome flaps provided by the Blackpool Rubble Club members, I often see some interesting sights which give me new ideas. A few days ago, for instance, I witnessed a baby being strapped into a harness and hung from a door-frame by a giant elastic band while its mother got on with the housework. I was just about to shout out a few stern words to that cruel mother and banish her from the Rubble Club for ever when a strange thing happened. The baby did not cry out in objection as I expected, but just bounced up and down, up and down and chuckled away merrily, as if it were enjoying itself.
You can guess what I was thinking, can't you, Rubble Clubbers? If only pet rocks had little feet to push themselves up in the air with, they could have such fun in a miniature version of the baby-bouncing rubber band. Undaunted, I have come up with an enabling solution.
I went rooting through the bins at the cafe up the road, where I gather many of my key ingredients for my recipes, and found some orange netting bags wrapped around some mouldy oranges. I discarded the oranges and shredded the netting bags into scraps just big enough to envelop a pet rock with an inch to spare on all sides. I took my most obedient pet rock and Rubble Club fashion model, Little Pearly Pebble, and wrapped her in the orange mesh. She looked very cute in orange(but she looks cute in anything, which is why she is my fashion model) and peeped seductively at the other pet rocks through the holes in the netting. I gathered the netting together above her head and tied it with one of Granny Gray's rubber bands. I looped another rubber band through the first rubber band to act as a hanging thread to complete my pet rock bouncer. I dangled the bouncer in the air and Pearly Pebble started to bounce around just like the aforementioned baby in the house. She loved it and one by one, the other rockies took their turns and they all agreed it was a sensational device.
The only problem is, pet rocks have no feet and so they will always have to depend on us to supply the bouncing movement. but never fear, Rubble Clubbers, I have a solution up my sleeve. It comes in the form of a safety pin (or your prefect's badge, you prefects), pinned into your clothing so wherever you go you can be hands-free and still activate your pet rock bouncers, and your pet rocks, while bouncing, will be able to see everything that is going on around you and remember facts and figures for their vast, ever-hungry memory banks( remembering things is their favourite hobby, as you should already know). I myself have, dutifully as ever, taken up the yoke of service to pet rocks and as I speak, I am decked out in hundreds of gaudy little orange bags pinned to my yellow outfit. I am now on the look-out for netting bags in different colours to blend more quietly with my wardrobe, and have set the gossip-mongering local pigeons(who always seem to have too much time on their hands anyway) the task of overhead surveillance, seek and rescue for this important mission. I had to pretend it was a game, a sort of treasure hunt. The prize for the winner(the fetcher of scraps of netting in every colour of the rainbow) will be the crumbs from my buffet table. I should have plenty of material in no time at all. Trust me. Those pigeons love my delicious grit-enriched crumbs.
Let this be an inspiration to you, Rubble Clubbers. I will no doubt be seeing hundreds of you walking along Blackpool Promenade on your way to the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road, wearing your pet rock bouncers like a badge of honour. The first one to appear in the shop wearing (at least) one will be given a special prize. Until then, or until next Friday, whichever comes first, I remain your faithful friend and ever hopeful chairman, Madge Dumpling.