Ragtag Giggagon

When Hazel Caldwell came out to her car to start the commute to work last Friday morning, very little seemed amiss. She was dismissive of the seagull feather sticking out of her locked car door. "I had heard all about seagulls robbing laptops and phones out of cars. But you hear about these seagull robberies and you think 'It'll never happen to me!' It really didn't occur to me that you would get that kind of crime in my neighbourhood! We're in a lovely leafy area, with a beautiful beach just a few minutes' drive away!" When Hazel opened her car door - as her nostrils were met with the unmistakeably pungent smell of mackerel - she saw that her vehicle had been carefully stripped of its car stereo. "The seagull knew exactly what he was doing," Hazel insists. "He and his accomplices could have just torn the radio out and re-wired it later, but they actually detached and unplugged everything very carefully, so that they could find a buyer a...

Tesco now offers customers vouchers off their shopping if the customers find that like-for-like products are cheaper in Lidl and Aldi than at Tesco. At the cash register, calculations against similar products found at the German discounters will be compared - and if these products are less expensive at the other stores, the shopper will get a voucher making up the difference, so that they can return to Tesco again. Customers are now secure in the knowledge that they might get even more vouchers to cover the costs of the weekly shop - which Tesco management claim could ultimately lead to an all-voucher shop within a few months. It's a risk Tesco management are willing to take. While shoppers may feel that Tesco is rewarding their custom through a series of maths calculations that are undertaken at the tills, other people still prefer to buy their food, toiletries and ski-wear for a bit cheaper, in the less expensive German discount supermarkets.

Alarm reached crisis levels in the international community yesterday as it became apparent that the government of the United States of America has not been taking any calls since the beginning of the month. Diplomats from world nations are being directed to message minders, answering machines and a variety of autoresponders when they attempt to contact US officials. Many are asking if it is possible that a terrorist attack was so comprehensive on October 1st as to render the entire political system of the United States silent. As people question how many senators and congressmen might have been killed in what is suspected to be a WMD attack of some description on the American capital city, it has been suggested that a NATO, British or Canadian squadron of fighters perform a flyover of Washington DC to discern how extensive the damage has been. However, none of them are keen to perform a reconnaissance operation over their ally for fear that members of the American public may use one of...

An Early Childhood Chapter 26 Part 5: A Visit to Middlesex Continued from Chapter 26 Part 4 . An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock surreal autobiography, narrated by a fictional Irish war hero, champion bodhran player, and television presenter. Its first chapter is here . It parodies misery memoirs (such as Angela’s Ashes by the late great Frank McCourt), as well as time travel adventure, pop culture, and literature of various kinds. I have found at times, dear reader, that attempting to discern the sexual orientation of a particular individual is more often than not just a stab in the dark. However, the discombobulating effects of being accosted by Dyll - a strange beauty-man-woman of some kind - forced me to withdraw from the bed in something of a hurry.  "Your gender is - " I spluttered. "You're a - -" "Yes, Sugar Plum," she said. "I'm all man!" "But but but!" "Yes?" "I'm not a woman!"...

Three English people with a slightly above average education today struggled to come to terms with the shrinking of the UK economy in the third quarter, not realising that the British economy had not in fact shrunk by three quarters. After seeing a small headline in the local paper, the three university undergraduates had to be instructed by a slightly more intelligent German colleague about what the headline actually meant. Matthias Kohl, originally from Dusseldorf, spent some ten minutes explaining to fellow media studies students at Hull University that although the economy had contracted, it had not contracted by three quarters, but that the “third quarter” of the headline in fact referred to “the third quarter of the year”. Matthias then pulled out a calendar chart to describe how the quarters worked. However, as he later said, his explanation fell on deaf ears as those who listened began to realise that he was “in over his head”. The article outlined how gross domestic product i...