Virgil Twobyfour’s Weekly Almanac

For the Week Commencing Monday 30th June 2025
(Also known as International Asteroid Day and the Third Post-Feast of St Hildred’s Brass Key)

🌍 Weather and Portents
A peculiar week ahead with skies that may darken at midday as if brooding on some cosmic jest. Showers of light stones or gravel cannot be ruled out. Keep a sieve handy and do not look directly at clouds unless you have strong nerves. Tuesday and Friday promise a warmish glow, as though something from deep space is smiling upon us.

🪐 International Asteroid Day
To mark this stellar occasion, villagers are encouraged to look up into the void and mutter a quiet thank-you to any rock that hasn’t fallen on them. The traditional way to celebrate is to wear one sock inside-out and offer a pebble to a hedge. Expect faint cosmic humming from dusk onward.

🔮 Horoscopes
The Wandering Porridge Spoon (June 29 to July 2)
Your days will be lumpy but sustaining. Avoid complex shapes and unnecessary questions. Fortune favours those who stand still.

The Whispering Gooseberry (First Thursday of July at 7:42am precisely)
Your thoughts will be tart and green-tinged. A long-lost jar of preserve will appear in your dreams. Ignore all advice.

The Long-Tailed Rake (March to whenever)
You may feel an irresistible urge to tidy up. Beware that someone or something is encouraging this.

🕵️‍♂️ Gossip of the Village
The Reverend Trinkett was seen adjusting a homemade telescope atop the vicarage. Rumour has it he hopes to spy on the stars or his missing laundry.
Old Mrs Croggle claims that the village scarecrow winked at her during full daylight. Nobody knows what this might portend, except that she went home briskly.

🧦 Lost and Found
Lost
A single stripey sock. Last seen drifting into orbit near the smithy chimney. Possibly full of stardust. Owner may retrieve it by leaving a polite note under the stone bench.

🧾 Classifieds
FOR SALE
One brass divining rod with suspicious celestial engravings. Vibrates when pointed at the moon. £1 or swap for a good scythe.

WANTED
Someone to help dig a small crater for ceremonial purposes. Bring a spade and an air of stoic determination.

🎭 Folk Saying of the Week
“When stones fall from nowhere, look up quick but stand aside quicker.”

🖼 Woodcut of the Week
“The Wise Man of Bungleshank Gently Pondering the Asteroid-Lit Night,”
from The Lost Broadsheet of Cosmic Rumination.
This rarely-seen image certainly doesn't depict our own Virgil, pipe in hand, bathed in peculiar light under a very bemused moon.

That’s all for this week, my dear readers. Mind the pebbles, trust the clouds cautiously, and remember that even the sky has its odd days.

Yours in peculiar perpetuity,
Virgil Twobyfour
Seer of unlikely stones, gardener of spectral weeds