A friend sent me the following about life in England.
1) Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, ‘We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.’ (The Daily Telegraph)
2) Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van because they cannot issue a description. It’s a Special Branch vehicle and they don’t want the public to know what it looks like. (The Guardian)
3) A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A Coast Guard spokesman commented, ‘This sort of thing is all too common’. (The Times)
4) At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a Coast Guard and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied he was sorry, but he didn’t have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff. (Aberdeen Evening Express)
5) Mrs. Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she recalled. ‘He’d always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out ‘Heil Hitler.” (Bournemouth Evening Echo)
A search on the name in the first article, “Mr. Arthur Purdey,” pulled up 2,190 references. Notably, the articles listed in the results included all of the above stories in the same sequence. The first reference that I saw was from November 2005. This suggests that the stories have been cut-aad-pasted around the world for the last 22 months. Interestingly, a search on The Daily Telegraph resulted in 0 hits.
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