Notes from the Potting Shed

 Virgil Twobyfour’s Weekly Almanac

For the Week Commencing Monday 23rd June 2025
(also known as The Forty-Seventh Embering of the Mauve Intercalary, or St Gladys of the Crumbling Gate's Observance Day, depending on your parish calendar and tolerance for ecclesiastical whimsy)

Weather
A week of climactic indecision. Monday begins with a bright dew-slicked sense of purpose. By Tuesday we descend into the traditional midsummer Drizzling of Regret. Expect a brief sunburst on Thursday morning (exact time unknown, though Glyn from the forge has bet half a pork pie on 10:42 am). By Sunday, prepare for rogue gusts, philosophical mist, and one isolated burst of thunder shaped like an ocelot.

Astronomicals and Signs
The moon is in partial cheese. Mars continues to loom behind a cumulo-bewilderment, while Jupiter is hosting a retrospective on itself. The badger constellation The Spanner may be glimpsed in the early hours on Friday if you stand very still and think of vinegar.

Local Notables and Happenings

The Bank Row Hedge Dispute has reached Day 91. The hedge in question now appears sentient, has adopted the name "Greville", and refuses all mediation.

An unusually tetchy murmuration of starlings has taken to circling above Mrs Nettie Darnswaddle’s birdbath. She is unperturbed, but her begonias have developed something of a lean.

A series of anonymous chalk outlines have appeared in the bus shelter. They are all shaped like ploughs or possibly very tired walruses. Investigations continue slowly, and mostly through muttering.

Lost Object of the Week
One Rotary Darning Conundrum, last seen in the vestry, gently rotating. Smells faintly of cloves and compromise. Reward offered: 40p and a firm handshake.

Horoscope: The Children of the Saucepan
(Those born between 2:31 pm on Pancake Tuesday and the second sneeze of the Vicar on Rogation Wednesday)

This is your week to rise. Rise like yeast. Rise like the strange mist in the east field that whispered your name last Tuesday. Be cautious around wheelbarrows and sceptical of anyone offering you beetroot as a gift. Mars frowns. Venus sighs. Neptune remains utterly disinterested.

Village Classifieds

For Sale: One pre-haunted swing seat. Lightly cursed. Offers over a sandwich.

Wanted: “A proper ladle. Not these fancy scoopy spoons. A proper one, like what Maureen used to have before the incident.” Box 37.

Found: Single Wellington boot filled with jelly. Claimed to hum.

Midweek Mutterings
Overheard in the Cheese Queue at Jumble’s Grocery:

“Of course, if you bathe under St Quibbert’s Fountain at midnight on the Feast of the Deviled Egg, your hair goes translucent. Happened to Reggie. Couldn’t wear hats for a month.”

Club Announcements

The Argyle Amateur Astral Projection Society will meet this Thursday in the upstairs room of The Wheezing Stoat. Bring your own teacups and a strong tether.

The Women’s Institute’s “Chutneys of the Apocalypse” Workshop continues with Volume IV: Gooseberry Reckoning. Visitors welcome, but not warned.

This Week’s Featured Folk Saying
"Never trust a mole with a monocle."
A traditional warning from Upper Bibble, now sadly overrun by monocled moles.

Woodcut of the Week

“THE BLINKENED PRUNER OF WOE”
As recorded in The Hedgefolk Codex of Withering Minorities, this hunched and leaf-smothered figure is said to appear whenever a sacred topiary is misshaped, misaligned, or mildly insulted. It carries shears forged from repurposed bell clappers and speaks only in anagram. A single sighting was reported during the Great Shrubbery Lamentation of 1911, though this may have been Ted in his cape again.

Image to follow pending cautious unsealing of the printer drawer.