THE GHOSTS..

TAXI DRIVERS MANUAL

LORRY DRIVERS MANUAL

Lankland UK

County Consulate Allotment Centre.

Consular Section.

Important News for American Visitors Travelling to the Royal Duchy and County of Lankyland, United Kingdom: 2004.

1. From the 1st April 2004, all visitors and British ex-pats must posses a new machine readable Passport as no one here in Immigration Control, can read. You cannot travel under the VWS* if you have ever been arrested  (but not necessarily convicted) for instance, eating fish and chips from a styrofoam carton or for two people licking the same ice cream cone in public, you will need to obtain a visitors visa before travelling to the UK.

(Aliens travelling to the UK under the former *Visa Waiver Scheme can no longer do so. Having been abolished by the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1970, along with free milk for Britain’s school children).

2.A visa must be obtained before travelling from your BRITISHCOUNTY CONSULATE OFFICE, not the UK Embassy. For instance, in this case, Lancyland. Do not book travel tickets before you obtain a visa. (Waiting time for visa interviews at the allotment can be up to 3 years). The visa must be clearly stamped in a green, mushy-pea-coloured-ink on the front cover, and must it resemble a small abstract stain.

3. Importing food such as black puddings, tripe and pigs trotters is illegal. However, dripping butty’s along with meat and potatoe pies (and similar) are allowed, as long as they have not been pre-heated within the last two months before transportation. Please declare your suspicions to the Immigration Officer on duty.

4. Travellers transiting Lankyland to other British destinations by The British Waterways Canal Network will need an 'Evidence To Transit Lawfully and Unhindered Certificate'.

(Leisure activity boat users, walkers, bicycle riders, fishermen and flashers have created an unstable canal-side environment as they have resented each other’s presence there for years. Visitors are advised to check the situation with their Embassy Consulate - British Canals Observation Section regarding current events, on a day-to-day basis before travelling. In any case proceed with added caution)**.

5. If travelling to a ‘destinationadjoining the County Of Arrival’, please have available for inspection your ‘Declaration ofIntent to Purchase’. This can be in the form of a letter from your local Padre/Minister who knows you well enough for you not to have lied too much up to now. Failure to produce this can result in being denied re-entry into Lancashire.

q       Cheshire.          Cheese.

q       Cumbria.          Kendal Mint Cake.

q       Yorkshire.        Pontefract Cakes.

(A reciprocal arrangement exists for travellers from these Counties, in purchasing a packet of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls at all UK Immigration Check Points, before admittance into Lankyland Air Space).

6. People caught wearing  'Pie Patches' as a deliberate act of avoiding eating the real thing, will have them confiscated. ‘Pie craving’ is regarded is an unclassified TOY drug, and is perfectly acceptable in The County of Lankyland.

7. Certain domesticated animals are allowed to accompany their keepers whilst visiting UK Lankyland Territories. Providing they are the following dog breeds, and whose loving photograph is included, in full colour, on the visitor’s passport: -

q       American Bull Terrier.

q       Whippet.

q       Greyhound.

q       Mongrel

q       German Shepard Dog.

Other breeds/animals will need a separate Animal Passport and must have a micro-chipped identity pod fitted in the colon. (Yours; not the dogs).

8. Items of clothing other than for personal use, whilst visiting Lankyland, are illegal. The exceptions to this are as follows:-

q Cloth Flat Caps under the size of 6 and 7/8ths.

q Clogs for daily wear, dancing, and showing off by making them spark at night.

q Collarless shirts.

(Shirts with permanently fitted collars may be worn only in the privacy of your own hotel room [or similar] with a jacket and tie, providing that the tie doesn't match the jacket).

9. Anyone procuring or allowing others to purchase, hire or borrow a private motor vehicle on your behalf, and driving it on motorways and other roads in Lankyland at speeds more than 30 mph and, notwithstanding, travelling distances over 10 miles in any one hour, will incur an on-the-spot-fine of not more than $2000 or, spend a full 24 hours working in the kitchens of the Motorway Service Station of our choice. (Cheques [Checks] payable to LCCC crossed, ‘Payee. Account Sheds’).

10. Lankyland Lingo Interpretation Services Police (LLISP) insists on its residents full use of local colloquialisms in public at all times, particularly when in ear-shot of American visitors. (“You stick to your slang when you’re at home buster!”). The encouragement by US visitors to get locals to say, “sure I guess” and “right now”, at the end of each sentence, breaks this rule and can result in the UK resident being evicted from his allotment, his shed impounded and his pigeons getting grounded for up to a month.

If you are uncertain about any of the 'new rules' listed above. Please contact:-

The Lankland Consulate Allotment Centre

Overseas Visitors Shed No 33

Allotment No14,

Lankyland.

United Kingdom

L0 0PY

Or ring our lucrative mega-premium hot line number…

09911 000001 (@£1. 30/second).

Ask for Ralph (Pronounced RAYTH).

www.lancscoco@sheds.com

** As a precaution, always carry a couple of Holland’s Pies with you in these hostile circumstances.  If you find   yourself intimidated, chuck them forwards towards your assailant(s) and make sure you shout “HOLLANDS” loudly and clearly as you do so. You should have plenty of time to retreat to a safe enough distance.

“Keep in touch with the locals when vacationing in sunny Lankyland. Tune-in your Wireless Set to.. ‘PIE-FM’RADIO on 88.8  ..All the news.. All the gossip.. All the pies..”

Adlington.. My Home Town

By Bill Hart

ADLINGTON CARNIVAL QUEEN QUITS SHOCK !!

Replacement quickly sought…

“Please forgive an indulgence, but this headline threw me into fits of uncontrollable laughter. This kind of news is a local village newspaper’s lifeblood. It is wonderful and it is unmistakably English.”

         The trouble with living in a small village is well.. that they are small. Well, Adlington isn’t that small, butlets put it this way. If say this hamlet had an American equivalent, they would call it a city.

That’s the difference between the USA and us. They think big. Even when we think we are thinking big the Americans come up with something bigger. For instance I read a newspaper article explaining why American Car Sales ‘Executives’ don’t lower themselves to speak to their British colleagues on equal terms, working for the same company selling the same products, because over here we call ourselves Car Salesmen. It’s like them finding something smelly has attached itself to their new shoes. His brother sitting on the other side of the pond would blow the Chief Executive of ICI away. He would be The President of Numbskull Narcotics Inc.

And so the quaint British way is to understate everything. Imagine if an English guy named McDonald had invented the hamburger. I’m sure he would have called it the Small Mac.

So it is with our local town and village weekly newspapers. I’m agog with wonder at how so little is said in so many printed words. I’m sure also, that the headline writers must be in tucks at each weekly editorial meeting, when they try to outdo each other with the most ridiculous and inane headlines ever written.

PENSIONER’S TABBY CAT GOES MISSING AGAIN: LATEST.

Or

MOTORIST FINDS FLAT TYRE: EXCLUSIVE.

I can just see them rolling out into the night and into the nearest pub and crying helplessly into their beer. “And we get paid for this…………………… Haaaa!” Around 6000 people inhabit the place.

Based on a working class population made famous by a small deceased Victorian Builder, with a ladder and handcart, known by the name of Leonard Fairclough. The company now thrives as a world class, multi-national civil engineer mover and shaker called AMEC. That, I think is Adlington’s only major claim to fame. Oh! And a ten-foot sandstone statue of Queen Victoria situated on the rooftop of his former corner terraced house in Park Road.

After that, the village is overrun and teeming with pubs pretending to be restaurants, real restaurants and takeaways. Eating out in Adlington would not be Egon Ronay’s idea of a bun fight but the variety of popular international cuisine to be found here is nothing short of staggering. No one will ever die of starvation living in this village. A pint of Theakston’s best bitter is £1. 65 and Greenhalge’s meat and potatoe pies (YUM, YUM) are 75p each.

Adlington is also slightly unusual. It is a village on a slope divided by a railway line. The Manchester to Preston main line slices through its very heart, cutting the swathe of village life and culture, completely in two. The upper and lower. Or, t‘top end and t’bottom-end.

I’m a bottom-ender because I live in L A, or Lower Adlington, that is, beneath the railway line. I’m also an outsider, because I wasn’t born here. But, locals have reassuringly told me, in code, that I’m ‘all right for an outside-bottom-ender!’

Adlington, Lancashire has at least two of everything. In its divide, a friendly but serious rivalry exists between its inhabitants upper and lower. Some people will not travel the short ¼ mile, which separates the two distinct village centres. So each half the village has to offer the identical facility to its villagers, both top and bottom.

Two ‘A’ roads to major nearby towns, two Fish and Chip Shops, two Pie Shops, two Butchers, two Post Offices, two Chemists, two Indian Takeaways, two Cash Points, two Chinese Takeaways and Estate Agents (both top end). Two Mini-Markets, two Florists, two Dentists, two Hairdressers, four Newsagents (two at each end), two ‘Recs’ (Recreation Grounds) two Narrow-boat Marina’s (both bottom end) and two Pubs with the same name. The Spinners Arms. Yup! Top Spinners and t’bottom Spinners.

The village has fourteen Pubs, two sets of traffic lights and three mini roundabouts. (You guessed, seven Pubs at the top and seven at the bottom).

I love Pub names. One top-end Pub, with a most intriguing and mysterious name, is The Elephant and Castle. Not much unusual in that you might say. But, Adlington and its district, is famed for its former mediaeval stopover coaching houses and day-trippers calling in to eat Pub Grub on their way home from Blackpool Illuminations. Not for elephants or castles.

Names like The Wagon and Horses, The Grey Horse, The White Horse and The Bay Horse reflect an era long gone and the passage of time. Whilst names like The Cardwell, The Clayton Arms and Ridgeway Arms honour local industrialists, families and dignitaries. Others like The Bridge Inn, The Railway Inn, The Millstone, The Squirrel Inn, the posh Yew Tree Inn (nick-named the Mop and Bucket---that name brings them down a peg or two) and the Happy Pig (unfortunately renamed the Thatch and Thistle) are self-descriptive. But, an Elephant and Castle in Adlington stretches even my over-worked imagination a tintsy, wintsy bit! And, it is situated at the end of a thoroughfare called… wait for it… Babylon Lane!

I don’t know about you, but this kind of thing drives my imagination wild with bellicose-like intrigue, especially after five pints of Theakstons Best Bitter…

‘Charging war-like Elephants in exotic Babylonian combat armour. Castles with

scarred blackened battlements.  Spears and bows and arrows and yelps and fires and hot molten lead and blood curdled screams and singed hair and peeled burnt skin.'

‘This is Adlington on a normal Saturday night!’

I can imagine all those years ago when the first of the settlers had to think-up names for streets and roads.

     “Ah well,” would say the elected leader of the council.

     “It has come to our notice that names have to be found for all of the streets in the parish. They must be sensible and proper names with nothing controversial, personal or rude.”

   ‘First then, the name of the street overlooking the cemetery.’

‘Cemetery View’

   ‘All in favour say aye.

’‘Carried.’

    ‘Now, the street next to the gas works?’

 ‘Gas Street’…and so on.

Things had to get a little bit boring eventually and anyway, meetings like this were often held in the upper rooms of Pubs and a ‘go for’, or Gofer, would be appointed to nip regularly to the bar and procure copious golden-pints of liquid refreshment for the hard labouring officials.

After a couple of hours, I imagine things started to relax a little, so by the time they got to the end, something like this must have happened:-

   “And sho finally ladies and gentlemen, letsh have some really good imaginative shuggestions for the road between the Bay Horsh and the Elephant and Cashle.”

    So some clever dick says “Babylon Lane”.

   ‘All in favour say aye.’

   ‘Carried unanimoushly.’

So, whatever the top-end can do, the bottom-end can do too.

Lower Adlington has a pub called…………… The White Bear. I’ll let that sink in a little. Are you ready for this? I bet you can tell me and write the story behind this?

I’ve left you some space.

OK! I’ll help you, but only a little.

Once upon a time, a traveling Circus arrived in Adlington and………………………...

…and they named the Pub after the bear and called it The White Bear.

Give yourself a round of applause!

I love this village. It suits my every whim and need, multiplied by two. I can even stand it now when everybody I meet without fail, greets me with, “Are-yer-aw-right?”

It also once had two (or three) banks, two railway stations, two petrol stations, two DIY stores, two Launderette’s and two public urinals where now there is but one of each. The remaining urinal sits adjacent to the ‘Elephant’ in Babylon Lane. So if you’re a bottom-ender in need of a pee, then we have a quick sprint up Railway Road to the top end and… “Stuff that! We’ve got the canal at the bottom-end.”

I’ll bet there’s a place in America called Adlington

There’s usually a USA namesake somewhere in the United States. And I’ll bet your bottom Dollar that it will be big and called Adlington City. But, and I’ll bet you again, that size for size, it hasn’t got two of almost everything, like we have here! Including two Adlington Carnival Queens..