SAUSAGE 325

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column that isn’t in Trafalgar Square

READER: Did you see this year’s Miniature Golf World Championship? Wow! This competition has really put Upper Dicker on the map.

MYSELF: Which of course, like any bona fide town, is where it rightfully belongs.

READER: Exactly. And the ever-efficient German team won with a record-breaking 37 under par this year, after their narrow defeat in ’24. How do they do it?

MYSELF: That is exactly what I asked German team captain Rolf Schlepper in my piece for June’s Minigolf World, entitled Don’t Mention the Water Hazard.
Here’s a short extract.

…I asked Rolf whether his team had employed any special strategy in order to achieve this year’s comprehensive Minigolf blitzkrieg. Straightening out his artificial robot arm and making a noise like a chicken he told me, “Ja, it is quite simple! In the sport of MiniGolfputten, myself unt vice kapitan Klaus Wunderbra are the supreme world tacticians. Together we have developed a strategy which is unbeatable. Horst Scheiße, our caddy, employed the latest AI tools in order to analyse each hole, especially The Big Clown Head, the most difficult in this world championship. Our newest team member Deiter Klansmann is the specialist for this hole, which is requiring a perfect 9-iron tee shot. Once over the water hazard, you must score a direct hit on the red nose of the clown which will cause the mouth to open. This must be quickly followed with an accurate putt to the exposed tonsils”.
“Regrettably”, he told me as a tear trickled down his duel-scarred cheek, “The Big Clown Head was the only hole we did not win in 2024. This resulted in humiliating defeat for the team and the tragic suicide of our star player Gottfried Schtumm. He fell into a deep depression and the night before Christmas, drove his top-of-the-range Audi to a Lidl’s car park in Potsdam and beat himself to death with a sand wedge. (©MiniGolfWorld 2025)

READER: It’s hard to believe now, but the British invented this game.
MYSELF: I know, I know. We should never have allowed foreigners to compete.

DAFFO DILLY SEASON
In a recent edition of this column, a Mrs. Borogrove of Higher Dudgeon, submitted an unusual enquiry regarding the number of daffodils contained in William Wordsworth’s famous host. Since then, there appears to have been an outbreak of daffodil related incidents in filling stations and supermarkets up and down the country. The worst was at a branch of DaffsRUs in Beyondenden, where five people died as a result of eating daffodil petals, which they mistook for quinoa. In Upper Dicker, district nurse Mrs. Bette Noir was electrocuted after attempting to screw a daffodil bulb into her bedside lamp. The Surgeon General has asked that in future, all daffodils carry a prominent label stating for floral purposes only.

DIARY OF A SOMEBODY
An occasional series in which Patrick Carabine browses randomly through the recollections of an anonymous diarist.

MONDAY 23^rdLunch with my friend Twollet, the greengrocer, who tells me he is now the official local agent for ZERO-TOL, the Japanese burglar alarm company, and that he can let me have one at “practically cost-price”. Over brandies, we discuss the recent spate of break-ins in the neighbourhood, about which Twollet seems to know an indecent amount of morbid detail. I suspect he gets that from his friend Chief Superintendent Hackenkov down at the Masonic Lodge. He dwells on the burglar’s unfortunate habit of leaving a “little present” on the carpet of his victims. This soiled image rather swings it for me, and I rashly agree to the installation of a system. Regret third brandy.

TUESDAY 24^thTwollet calls round for a “pre-installation check” on the house. He brings with him a picnic-size basket containing vodka and all the ingredients for Bloody Marys, for which he knows my fondness. Needless to say, the check is surprisingly brief, and Twollet is soon expertly mixing cocktails. After several glasses, I remark that I am quite Worcester-sauced, which causes Twollet to expel jets of tomato-infused liquid from his nose, rather reminiscent of one of those ghastly Tobe Hooper films. We agree that the installation will take place tomorrow.

WED 25^thTwollet arrives with his “technician”, a gangly lad with severe acne and a not inconsiderable personal hygiene problem, who proceeds to lay enough cable to establish a transatlantic telephone link. I can smell whiskey on Twollet’s breath. He shows me the company brochure, explaining that his pre-installation check has revealed that I would be best served by ZERO-TOL”s “Supreme” model known as “The Mighty Beam”, which apparently has the ability to telephone the police, whilst its cunning low-level hum immobilizes the burglar. Although the “Supreme” is £500 more, Twollet convinces me that compared to my piece of mind, this is “peanuts”. Outside, the pasty-faced boy is up a ladder installing tiny infra red (or was it ultra violet?) sensors on my roof, which Twollet assures me are of “such cutting edge sensitivity”, that my piece of mind is “virtually guaranteed”. After they leave, I survey the house from outside. I remain unconvinced that the large flashing neon sign on the roof bearing the message “ZERO-TOL BURGLAR DETERRENT SYSTEMS INC” is entirely necessary, nevertheless I retire with a feeling of deep personal security.

THURSDAY 26^thI am awakened at 4am by an ear-splitting banshee wail coming from downstairs, which I at first take to be a flock of angry seagulls. It soon becomes apparent that it is the ZERO-TOL BURGLAR DETERRENT SYSTEM mistakenly announcing a major incident. I hear a commotion outside, and peering from behind the bedroom curtain I spy the drunken figure of Twollet gesticulating wildly to the small crowd of local residents, who have gathered, many in pyjamas, to protest about the hideous noise coming from my house. Upon opening the window I can hear Twollet’s slurred voice shouting above the terrifying razor-din, explaining to my furious neighbours that the reason my burglar alarm has “gone native” is because it had detected “unnatural movements”, which “confused the ultra-sensitive infra-red extra-extrasensory sensor system.” Pah! Why on earth do I ever listen to Twollet? Resolve not to in future! ….TO BE CONTINUED
©Patrick Carabine

MUSIC SCIENCE NEWS
Crack inventor and Hastings’ resident boffin, Professor Gordon Thinktank, has come up with yet another groundbreaking device for musicians. By welding two instruments together in a certain way, (see illustration), he has at a stroke solved the perennial noise-nuisance problem experienced by all flat-dwelling trumpet duettists – neighbours who object to hideous ear-destroying cacophony. With his new instrument, which he calls The Tacit Duettophone, essential eye contact is always maintained, and each player is able to keep tabs on the other’s fingering, yet no unbearable cat-strangling sounds emanate from the trumpets.

READER: Isn’t there a danger of unconsciousness? I mean how do the musicians avoid passing out from the hyperventilation caused by all that fruitless blowing?

MYSELF: Circular breeding.

READER: Did you mean circular breathing?

MYSELF: No.

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.

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

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