Ketsbaia
Culture Main
Another World.
Mit local resident Anderson Freeway.
"Greetings folks, and welcome to my new web column. You won’t know me, for we have only just met – and even then it’s hardly a two way communication process. I’m imagining that you are all sitting in some sort of vast school assembly hall, while I dictate my column viciously from the pulpit. I’ve been asked to write a couple of words, on a permeable regular basis, on our town, as I’m told that it is quite, quite unique. The name of our town is Ketsbaia. It is in the middle of the Atlantic sea, and so far we have been able to circumnavigate discovery from the rest of the outside world by putting blue tree branches above all the structures so it looks like the sea – you know, just like the popular Alex Garland film and it’s bookish adaptation The Beach!
At any rate, the folk here are not really like most people in the rest of the world. In our utopian lives, all our aeroplanes are made out of twigs, and we have to eat plastic fruit instead of real fruit because the only vegetation are those trees you see on telly - what do you call them? – rubber plants. Also, there is a huge mountain on one side of the town where folk like to travel on their holidays; it’s all right over that way you see. Young Bryan, who now works in “the City,” used to love it up there, until he realised that he couldn’t check his stock prices with his colleagues in Monaco as it was out of range of a hotspot for his swanky wi-fi enabled laptop, which he fashioned for himself out of clay and sand.
So there you have it. I hope you enjoy, but please don’t blow our cover on WMD because we have shit loads of them. Just in case, for self defence, from seagulls and that."
Page Index
Entry One
Entry Two
Entry Three
Entry Four
Halloween Fancy Dress.
There was a large Halloween party in the town square last weekend, in which everyone got dressed up as ghosts and that.
There seemed to be confusion over the definition of fancy dress. Herbert, a chap who used to work in the local chip shop and who, rumour has it, was sacked for fouling in the chip fat, turned up without a costume on, and Western, the bouncer, would not let him in.
"Its a fancy dress party, why didn’t you dress up?" He goes. Then Herbert looks all annoyed and says "What? What do you mean?" "You haven’t dressed up!" Western goes. "What do you call this then!?" Herbert says pointing at his hat. He’s got on a sunhat, see. "That's...well that's just a normal hat,” Western says, starting to get a bit annoyed by now. "It’s better than your glove" Herbert says, somewhat ill advisedly. “No it’s not, look, I’m only wearing one,” Western says, pointing at the glove on his right hand.
Herbert gets a bit annoyed as he knows by now he’s not getting in. So he’s pushed Western, who’s pushed him back. Next thing we know, there’s a fight breaking out and Western is badly outnumbered. Ghosts, vampires, witches, you name it, all clambering to get in a blow to Western’s flailing body; its all arms and legs thrashing round all over the shop. It’s a Halloween free for all!
Earlier in the day I was visited by a wacky looking devil and a girl with a bin liner cello taped to her face, urging me to choose between either “trick” or “trick”. I reach down into my plastic bag of goodies, next thing I know there’s tomato sauce all over the door, in my hair, and, well, everywhere. The devil and the bin liner girl scatter pronto leaving with a red trail in their wake as they pelt it up the road. I tried calling the police but it seems the second trick they referred to turned out to be them cutting off my phone line.
Happy Halloween everybody!
There is a thick jungle in the middle of the island, not very big, but thick for sure. I took a walk through this vast undergrowth recently in search of a zoo that had allegedly been fashioned somewhere within. The zoo purportedly only has animals that are crazed lunatics, the kind that would eat people if they could gain appropriate access to them. I think the idea of it being carved into the centre of a thick forested area is to make it difficult for the angry animals to get through and reign down terror on the local populace if they escaped.
The zoo specialises in angry creatures. In order to achieve this premise, the zoo staff does certain things, like putting two separate species in cages and only putting enough food in for one helping, and the food is jam. When I went there, a group of keepers were goading a shark and a chimp, the chimp having been placed into a large goldfish bowl which housed the shark. The chimp was swimming about, thrashing arms and legs about wildly, but on the whole getting by. The shark was swimmingly idly by, but you could really tell it wasn’t happy sharing its home with a primate. In another enclosure, a remote control bear was being driven repeatedly into a group of bats. They were lurking menacingly all over the bear’s furry frame, but with the voluminous bites meeting only with hard metal, these bats were only getting more infuriated.
Evidently, I found the “zoo” is run by a man called Captain Madd. He used to work on a P&O cruise ship, though not as a captain like you might imagine but behind the counter at the refreshments desk. Still, he likes everyone to refer to him as “The Captain,” or “Cap” to his closest mates. I found out that he’s a little on the touchy side with this as when I called him Cap he scrunched up his face real tight and tried to strangle me with a recently baited rattle snake. Luckily a nearby parking attendant was on hand to strike the Captain hard about the back of the head with a baton.
“Thanks mate”, I said to him. “That’s ‘thanks first mate’ to you” He replied threateningly.
Earlier on I took a hike up towards that great metropolis on the horizon that seems to have sprung up on us almost overnight. It seems that Ketsbaia is now some kind of tax haven, which kind of makes sense as the island’s benevolent ruler Colonel Sprout, who the people love and no one would dream of arguing with under any circumstances, is a founding member of Sprout Finance. Even though he rules with an iron fist, I think that Colonel Sprout is a corporate logo and not a real person; he’s never been seen in public, but it’s probably best that no one else thinks this, as there might just be uproar if they did.
I made a packet selling things I found washed up on the shore to local folk. On one secluded edge of the island, down a sharp chasm, precious items are often washed ashore. Examples of things I have found down there include a diamond necklace, a sack of soggy potatoes, some broken glass, and something else quite sharp, which I managed to cut myself on. Still, the necklace was a good find. That part of the island is usually guarded by this friendly pirate type chap, strafing intermittently through the undergrowth, but he wasn’t there when I was down there earlier. He’s usually sort of okay, when he’s too drunk to swear that is.
While in town I decided I would pop in to Sprout Finance to enquire about their investment opportunities. Thirty minutes later and I left with a smile on my face and my cash tied up in something called Colonel Sprout’s Super High Yield Premium Blackberry Hedge Fund Limited. I don’t really know what this is but I know it’s preferable to have this than be on the business end of the Colonel’s cutlass.
Today there was a bit of a commotion at the pet shop on the corner off the main clock tower. The owner of the pet store, Mr Jimmy, has always been a tad eccentric and today for whatever reason he thought it would be a good idea to have a buy one get one free offer on all reptiles. In order to push this offer, he took the parrots out of their cages in the window and stuffed crocodiles in as replacements. Of course the crocodiles were too big for the cages, and most perished. But a few managed to force their way out of the cage, which smashed a big hole in the front window. So we had three crocs swaggering about town, looking like they owned the place, which was fine until one of them ate a string of sausages from the butcher next door. This annoyed the butcher, Mr Katherine, and she marched all the way round to Mr Jimmy’s place to complain. But Mr Jimmy punched her, which of course only made things worse.
In the end the crocodiles were sold to Mr Katherine who carved ‘em up a treat to replace the sausages. And she was able to use the skin to fashion an eye patch to cover up her bloody great shiner as well!