|
|
Grunty
Fen |
|
* NOTE:
Visitors who enjoy the stark solemnity of ruins may care to tour the Isolation Hospital, and The Grunty Fen
Temple Bastion of Eternal Strength and Perpetual Impregnable Citadel of
Everlasting Endurance which
fell down shortly after construction. But the Windy Huts Offal Sheds are more fun. * The Village Hall stands
on stilts over a bog. Its floor
is so rotten that dancers have to be very wary where they step. The kitchen
boasts an urn used not only for tea but for boiling the footballers’ strip
and making toffee apples. Dennis keeps the urn tap clean. Events held in the hall
include WI Brawn Mornings, dances and blood donor sessions, sometimes
simultaneously. The hall power supply comes from a street lamp outside. Grunty Fen Post Office Stores G.F.P.O.S.
are presided over by Miss Edwards and her nervous sister
Miss Edna. The shop
is known for its ‘loose’: sacks of
everything from tapioca to rat poison and
nails to dog biscuits stand side by side to be sold by weight. Every
aspect of rural life is catered for all year but the shop really comes into
its own when, with
the help of Dennis, Miss Edwards creates her Christmas grotto from cardboard
boxes. The window
display has not changed for many years because a spectacular snow scene created with hundreds of Fox’s Glacier mints
set solid and has proved immovable even
with a 4lb hammer and a cold chisel. Behind the
shop is a store shed in which the sisters are still discovering forgotten
stock accumulated there many years ago when their father ran the business. It is a damp
shed and the labels have come off the tins so Dennis has become expert in
guessing the contents by shaking them. The Post Office is also the local telephone exchange. The Carrot Sheds is a
vegetable preparation and packing place employing young ladies known as
Carrot Scrubbers. The Fancies Factory is the popular local name for a cake and patisserie
bakery employing a number of local people.
Recurrent problems with the cream horn machine produce a
superabundance of empty horns which
are given away to Grunty Fen villagers. The local
WI are famous for their brawn horns. Sometimes the cream gun used to fill the
horns continues to fire cream even when no horns
are being baked. This provides another local catering opportunity. Hitler’s Hole is a bottomless
flooded pit which appeared on the allotments during a wartime bombing raid. Now used
for the rapid disposal of stolen goods or anything embarrassing. Monks’ Bushes is an area
of dank scrub where Dennis secretly stores his accumulated capital: a huge heap
of very valuable railway sleepers. Monks
Bushes is so called because medieval monks who upset the Abbott at Ely were
sent there apparently as a punishment but what they did in the bushes is not
known. The Extrusions is how
local people refer to the nearby plastics factory where Dennis briefly worked
until
he had an unfortunate encounter with a hot drinks vending machine. The Spam Pillbox is one of many concrete fortifications left over from World War II. Dennis discovered this one long after the war and far out on the fen. Inside he found a massive store of 1945 Spam which had lain undisturbed like Tutankhamun’s tomb. A few tins are still edible but others explode at a touch. The Bull Grunty Fen’s pub, run by Stan and Rene. Because of its height above the gents’, the Bull’s stink pipe is a local landmark. The Half-timbered Bus
Shelter and Millennium Youth
Club is so
called because half its original timbers were stolen for fuel during one hard
winter. The Cricket Club
Pavilion is a converted hen coop with a scoreboard
sharing numbers with the church, leading
to worshippers occasionally trying to sing Hymn Number 124 Not Out. Grunty Fen Academical FC Pavilion is a
large furniture van kitted out like a lounge bar and travels to away matches. |