Welcome to the first ever edition of The Woollyton Bugle! Woollyton characters first came into being in April 2020, starred in a Whodunnit in May 2020 & entertained the users of the Ogmore Valley Community Route in June 2020. Since then life has been fairly quiet but a few weeks ago, the people behind Baobab Bach asked the Woollytons if they’d be interested in sharing their knittiness with the world. As you’re still reading, let me introduce you to the folk behind The Woollyton Bugle.
Winifred the Blunt (Editor)
Ex-school teacher Winifred is a Viking re-enactor who has got an opinion about everything. Where these two aspects of her personality don’t go well together is on the subject of the apostrophe S. Winnie wanders around Woollyton after dark correcting posters, signs and street names of their grammatical errors. Sadly because her torch battery is a bit iffy, there have been occasions when she has altered things which were right in the first place and then has had to go back the following night to undo her doings. This led to sharp words being exchanged with Ginge, the barmaid at The Pin & Feather pub who wanted to advertise the fact that they sell more than one type of beer as well as various brands of lager and cider – all of which (Winifred thought and Ginge didn’t) required the placement of an apostrophe S with forensic accuracy.
Sticky Betty
Owner of The Sticky Bun café and seller of anything which can be baked using free or at the very least, cheap ingredients, Sticky Betty sees home-made cakes as a form of alternative currency. Once she agreed to exchange a Date & Walnut cake with Pongo (the local farmer) for a load of manure on her allotment. On finding that he hadn’t mentioned that the poop had previously been spread on a field where nettles and couch grass grew in some abundance, Sticky changed the ingredients and made an extra- large Prune & Dried Apricot Cake to settle her part of the bargain. Sticky Betty will provide a recipe (see below) for every newsletter and as long as you haven’t incurred her wrath, you should be able to eat it with no ill effects.
Ivor Weed
Ivor is the oldest gardener in Woollyton and has formed an unnaturally close relationship with his prize marrow which he carries around the village and introduces to people as Marty. This caused some consternation amongst his neighbours until they found out that Ivor had used his lockdown loneliness to learn ventriloquism. Pretty soon, Marty the Marrow was entering into conversations with all and sundry. Few have forgotten the rush to the Offy after the Ivor and Marty act at the Woollyton’s Got Talent Show, when Marty suggested to Ivor that he should water his lawn with a gottle of geer so that the grass would grow half cut. Ivor and/or Marty will be offering gardening tips.
Le Roy
The Woollyton Bugle is very fortunate indeed to have engaged Le Roy the Life Coach to run the newsletter’s problem page. Le Roy would like all his clients – past, present, future and even those who live in a different reality as indeed, does Le Roy much of the time (and particularly after breakfast at The Sticky Bun on Sundays but the least said about that, the better) – to Not. Worry. About. A. Thing. Because. Every. Little. Thing. Is. Going. To. Be. Alright. Yeah.
Annie the Entrepreneur
When you’re struggling to make ends meet, when you need to save money or make money, there’s no-one better to turn to than Annie. In her youth she kept livestock but when the stable became empty of clucks and bleats, Annie decided it would make a wonderful emporium of second hand goods. She taught herself the dark arts of digital marketing and has gone from someone who thought mobile phones were tools of the Devil to having multiple social media platforms running on multiple devices under – not surprisingly – multiple user names. And as for the bundle of hay she still carries around? Well, Annie says that the darkest of dark arts is you never show what you’ve got until it’s tagged, bagged & up for sale.
Ginge
Even though it’s 2023, many people look at Ginge and think that she might have served them at a Bridgend pub in the 1980s. Her contribution to The Woollyton Bugle will be to give us the tie-breaker question from the Thursday night quiz at The Pin & Feather. Last week each team nominated a spokesperson who stood on their left leg, with a full pint of beer in their left hand and a full dish of peanuts in their right then spelled “supercalifragilisticexpialidosius” backwards. Which, incidentally, was the direction that many of them fell in just after they said f.