SAUSAGE 343

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which thinks taxidermy is the new tattooing

READER: I’m having a tattoo myself as it happens
MYSELF: Where?
READER: Where else? At SailorBWear, the coolest tattoo parlour in town.
MYSELF: No, I meant where on your body?
READER: Oh, erm…….I haven’t decided yet. Somewhere discreet, where no-one would normally look.
MYSELF: Your face?
READER: I’ll pretend I never read that
MYSELF: I’ll pretend I never wrote it.

HOLIDAY BOOK REVIEW
The Cunning Mandolin by Rob Dulle (Lustgareten & Timewarp, £17.99)

Rob Dulle, novelist and poet in residence at Sunderland University’s Mackam College has cultivated a huge cult following. This, his latest opus will be warmly received by dedicated fans as a welcome return to form. After 2023’s Pearls on a Random Brooch, his poorly-received detour into magical realism and Arthurian fantasy, The Cunning Mandolin is back to classic Dulle. All the familiar tropes are here, from the curious stammer-afflicted cocktail waitress with a grudge against Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Mexican pool cleaner suspected of money laundering and poultry bleaching. Chapter one begins with all guns blazing as police discover a body, gagged, bound and hidden in the septic tank of a high court judge who has recently convicted a famous ventriloquist on charges of putting libellous words into other people’s mouths. Private investigator Cornelius Pyth is tipped off by a stoolpigeon, and the next three chapters take the reader on a wild goose chase involving herring forgery, a plot to invade Albania by parachute and a pair of Scandinavian pub quiz cheats.
Verdict: Well worth getting to the sun beds before the Germans for this one.

DARK ARTS
Performance artist Dirk Darkly has a new exhibition at Beyondenden’s Cubist Circle Gallery. His audio installation Psycho Clips consists of well-known pieces of recorded music played backwards, accompanied by excerpts from the films of Alfred Hitchcock projected upside down. Local MP Beatrice Rasputin (Reform UK) has roundly condemned one controversial piece, Land of Soap And Gory. “Frankly I’m appalled,” she told us, “Mr. Darkly has no regard for the sanctity of decent patriotic music. It is a cacophony, and if you listen carefully, you can just make out the sound of someone being murdered in a shower”.

POETRY NOW
CHRISTIANITY HO! By Crispian Milquetoast
If Constantine had used his loaf
and not been such a Roman oaf
we’d all be worshipping the gods
of this and that and odds and sods
Instead of which our failure
to worship bacchanalia
and all the other worthwhile things
(like blokes who float on feet with wings)
has saddled us with Mono God
who whacks us with his steely rod
and works in his mysterious ways
with half-day closing Wednesdays

FOOTBALL PINK
According to recently appointed director of football Sir Leonard Pastry (QC, AA, RAC), Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC are set to begin the 2026/27 football season under the dynamic stewardship of Pink Panther Entertainment Group, an internationally established company seeking to extend its portfolio. “We have great plans for the club,” Sir Leonard explained over gourmet pan fried fish fingers and oven-baked beans in the newly decorated pink clubhouse now renamed The Chillpit
“for example, my wife, Lady Pamela Pastry, who is a keen self-publicist, will be marketing Mau-mau, her range of upmarket nail polish in several shades of pink, with the club’s new logo, a pink Egyptian Horus with two faces embossed on the pyramid-shaped bottle, with its distinctive staring-eye cap”. Critics have pointed out that the last sports-related endeavour undertaken by the multinational conglomerate, The Pink Panther Crazy Golf Celebrity Charity Tee-Off fell flat on its face when the only “celebrities” who turned up were none other than Sir Leonard himself and his chauffeur Frank “Lardy” Goosefat, a former Crazy Golf professional. There have been reports on the football front meanwhile, of unrest amongst the playing staff concerning the new pink strip. Welsh wizard Craig Cattermole told us: “Where I come from, men are men, and have well-modulated baritone voices. Since I moved to the Warriors from crack South Wales club Caerphilly Sentimentalists, I have naturally become more urbane and sophisticated, and will occasionally eat quiche, but I draw the line at wearing pink.” Goalkeeper Tim Smegma was more pragmatic, adding: “As a goalie, I get to wear a different coloured shirt from the rest of the team, so I’m not really all that bothered. However, as a matter of principle, I flatly refuse to eat quiche.”

STOCK PRICES
Domestic Molecule down 3, (48)
Argumentative Calliope Shortfunds down 5, (57 or 38)
Marigold Mustard Futures down 44, (12)
Moose Derivatives up 37, (85)
Ham Stallions up 42, (77)
Calfskin Clown-Shoe Trade-offs down 6, (2)

Advertising Feature
THE INTERNATIONAL TRAVELLING EXHIBITION OF SCISSORS
Upper Dicker Unnatural History Museum 27th March – 3rd August
From tiny Victorian quail pruning scissors to the mighty shears responsible for the complex topiary of Hampton Court Maze, this travelling scissor exhibition has it all. Delicate Ming Dynasty nail clippers belonging to the empress of China inlaid with ivory cut from the tusks of the imperial elephant, rub shoulders with the crude military barber’s instruments which curtailed Elvis’ famous quiff in ’58.
I urge all scissor fans to attend this compulsively interesting show, if only to gargle with helpless laughter at the excessively ornate eyebrow scissors of Louis XIV, or gasp in amazement at the Art Deco Bakelite scissors carried by Georgian explorer Rumsfeld Tungsten during his early journeys into the Mongolian interior. All in all, if you are fascinated by the world of scissors, a visit to Upper Dicker’s Unnatural History Museum is essential.

SHOE LADY
I am often asked; whatever happened to the old shoe-dwelling lady of Herstmonceaux, who, because of her numerous offspring, was unable to decide what to do? I am happy to inform you she is alive and well, and still living in the shoe with retired cobbler Frank Crosby. She told our footwear correspondent; “Since the kids left home we’ve obviously gained a lot more living space. Frank has been a godsend. He’s had the place completely resoled, we’ve had the back knocked thru to the heel and an open toe put on the front, which is nice if you are lucky enough have a south facing shoe like us.”

Sausage Life!

ATTENZIONE!

‘Watching Paint Die’ EP by Girl Bites Dog is out now and available wherever you rip off your music.

Made entirely without the assistance of AI, each listen is guaranteed to eliminate hair loss, cure gluten intolerance and stop your cat from pissing in next door’s garden.

Photo credit: Alice’s Dad (circa 2000)

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JACK POUND: JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUN READER aka PASS THE INSTANT YOGA

CHEMTRAILS ON MY MIND
MORT J SPOONBENDER

On September 11th 1958, José Popacatapetl, a retired tree psychologist who’s father was head gardener for the CIA during the cold war, was hitchiking through the Alberqueque desert when he was picked up by a black sedan driven by J Edgar Hoover’s ex-boyfriend André Pfaff head of FBI underhand operations and extra-terrestrial banking who once worked as a quantum mechanic for the KGB under the direct orders of the zombie reincarnation of Josef Stalin whose mummified corpse was kept in a secret underhand bunker in the basement of the Vatican.

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SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
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CAUTION
MAY CAUSE SMILEY FACE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK
INSINCERE