Category Archives: Births, Deaths, Marriages

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Mark Lawrence is dead, again

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Today it is my uneasy task to announce to you, my fellow citizens, the latest death of Mark Lawrence. I’d like to say ‘apparent death’ and make it sound like these are simple reporting errors, but I was there for death number three, and I saw what the sea monster did to him. I do not believe that any normal human being could have survived being torn into quite so many pieces.

I have been reliably informed by witnesses to his first death – crushed to a bloody pulp by a falling gravestone – that this death was not survivable, either. At his second death, Mark was bludgeoned to death after a minor disagreement with an immodest number of Chevins. Death four saw our unlikely returnee trapped in a burning building. Nothing remained of the building, and yet… Death five involved a singularly improbable drowning, and death six a rather gory impaling on the fence outside the town hall – which many of you were unfortunate enough to witness. For his seventh death, Mr Lawrence was swept into the sea by an unusually large wave during recent storms.

I feel, and not for the first time, that he is playing with us. How, and why remains a mystery. I have no evidence to prove my point but I ask, can a man die so many times and in such extraordinary ways and not somehow be considered responsible? What kind of sorcerer is he? What ungodly powers are at his command? I shall only speculate until he returns of course, and then I shall go back to keeping sensibly quiet about the whole thing.

Something of a cult-like nature has grown up around the many deaths of Mark Lawrence. So, the usual wailing and keening will take place tomorrow morning at the statue we put up in his honour the first time he died. Betting will then follow as to how long it will take him to return this time. I have been informed that this time there will, with all due pomp and ceremony, be a retelling of his deaths and returns to date.

Until evidence emerges to the contrary, I think we should assume that this latest death is only a temporary setback, and that Mark Lawrence will return to us, as whole and hale as before at some point of his choosing. And then we can get on with the now also traditional ‘lo he has returned to us’ party with all that invariably implies.

 

The Hopeless Maine kickstarter is now out of obituary spots. However, if you pledge and feel sad that you can’t have an obituary, just let us know… we’re sorting out a mass grave for anyone who needs it! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine

 

Mark Lawrence (for the few who are not yet aware of this) is one of the finest writers of fantasy in the world, at all-ever.  To explore his work, you would do well to go here.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

In Memory of Rebecca Willson

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With so few ways to pass the long, grim evenings, it’s a sad inevitability that some people die from their attempts to alleviate the boredom. It must be said that Becca ‘poo-head’ Willson has done remarkably well to survive this long, given her penchant for games involving sharp and pointy implements.

Last week’s drinking contest at The Squid and Teapot resulted in five casualties, and while the other four participants might yet recover – as yet there’s no news from the Hunger Hill Home for the Weak and Confused – Rebecca Willson, did not. She did however, win the drinking competition in question having seen her four challengers slump beneath the table in turn, while she continued with the night potato vodka, seemingly unaffected.

Night potato vodka is a new delicacy for the island, but one that we may not enjoy again in the future, given the implications.

Somewhere in the second round of contested drinking, observers noted that Becca had become unusually pale and transparent – something she had not previously been known for.  During the third round, she began to emit a faint glow and by the fourth round that glow had become pronounced. Friends begged her to stop drinking but reports have it that she laughed, did a little bum-wiggling dance and went for another bottle. Shortly afterwards, the glow increased, until by the end of the evening, there was mostly just glow, and very little corporeal presence left.

It was later discovered that an agent of change had drowned in the last bottle, which may have led to these devastating effects. No one I have spoken to is inclined to experiment with this for the sake of discovering the truth, which seems fair enough.

It may henceforth be most appropriate to consider Rebecca Willson deceased. She’s turned out to be one of those awkward cases where the status of the person becomes uncertain. While mostly non-corporeal, a glowing entity believed to be her remains present in a corner of The Squid and Teapot. Phantasmagorical bum-pinching has become something of an issue in the pub, if further evidence were required that in some way at least, she remains with us.

As there is no body to bury, we’re going to have a massive wake for her in the pub.

 

This death was brought to you by the Hopeless Maine kickstarter. At time of writing we are nearly out of empty graves… https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Bob Fry – the inevitable has come to pass

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Readers, it is with great sorrow but no surprise that I must announce to you the departure from this life of Mr Bob Fry. It has been apparent to those of us who know him, that his war against spoonwalkers must eventually be his undoing. Friends will remember the spoonwalker deterrent of a few years ago that instead opened some kind of portal through which a modest abomination attempted to get a hold on the island. Anyone who attended last year’s church picnic will never forget the anti-spoonwalker missile and the absolute destruction of the cake table. Granted, there had been a spoonwalker on the cake table, but there had also been seventeen cakes, an assortment of china and several casually resting hands and elbows that will never be quite the same again.

Bob has been a distinctive figure on the island in recent years. Those of you who do not know him by name will no doubt have seen him, silhouetted against some dramatic sky as, armed with net and club he pursued thieving spoonwalkers across the hilltops of Hopeless. The skyline will not be quite the same without him.

Those of us who have lived here longer and wrangled with spoonwalkers ourselves had tried to tell him. They aren’t easy to kill. They look like they should be – small and squishy as they are. But, luck favours them in the most unreasonably ways. I am certain that it is only their uncanny good fortune that allows them to pilfer spoons from householders with such great success.

Dear, departed Bob had a love of spoons to rival that of any spoonwalker. His spoon collection is a marvel to behold, and he has protected it with a ferocity that has, inevitably, killed him.

It is my understanding that last week, Bob set off on what would be his final hilltop pursuit of his sworn enemies. He was seen from afar by Gommer and Gof Chevin – the twins were horribly drunk at the time so it took them several days to sober up enough to mention this to anyone. They report that three or four Bob Frys ran across the headland together, and that this sight was incredibly funny. Bob, or perhaps Bobs, cornered the spoonwalker on a rocky outcrop and attempted to reclaim the spoons it had taken. However, the cliff edge proved unstable, and Bob was dropped unceremoniously into the sea.

We wait with interest for the reading of his will and to discover the name of the person, or persons who will inherit his most exceptional spoon collection. In the meantime, some of our more responsible citizens have removed said spoon collection from Bob’s abode, to the safety of The Squid and Teapot, where all of the spoons, I am assured, will be kept perfectly safe.

 

Bob Fry died as a direct consequence of his pledging to our kickstarter. We have some slots remaining (at time of writing) so if you would like to see your own preposterous Hopeless Maine death scenario, follow the link… https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine 

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Bertram Fiddle’s death a total mystery

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It is my unhappy duty today to inform you that beloved islander Bertram Fiddle has died. Bertram was declared dead in the surgery of Doc Willoughby late last evening. It is only by chance that I happened to be passing as Doc Willoughby was attempting to remove the body from his office, and in assisting him, I was able to also interview him about the tragic death of this much loved local figure.

Here are the various answers our good doctor gave to the question ‘how did Bertram die?’ I repeat them here in the order in which I recall them which may not be the order they were given in – as I was helping move a body at the time I had no free hands with which to make notes.

“It was nothing to do with me.

It was an accident, clearly. He just came in here and died, just like that. Didn’t even tell me what was wrong with him first.

He was a dear, dear friend with whom I have never once had anything even slightly resembling a falling out. I would certainly never have hit him. And we weren’t drinking. We were going drinking together, you understand, but we had not actually started drinking.

It’s a complete mystery to me how he died, but death often is a mystery, isn’t it?”

Readers, I can only leave you to draw your own conclusions.

It is a tragic loss to the island. We will all miss his unique humour, his unique facial hair, and his unique relationship with reality. I also note with some unease that we have now lost our one resident detective. Who can forget his work on the case of the uncanny night shaving, or his relentless efforts to solve the conundrum of the pig in the latrine? And now, faced with the mysterious death of Bertram Fiddle himself, who amongst us has the skill and determination to step up and find answers?

Not that island justice can be relied upon to deliver anything much. Whether it’s our usual apathetic response of shrugging and supposing we have to live with it, or our heavy handed torches and pitchforks response that invariably punishes the wrong person anyway… justice is not our collective strongpoint. And I can only feel, in the sad loss of Bertram Fiddle, that our collective scope for justice has just taken a sorry blow and may never truly recover from it.

There will be a memorial service next week, and a wake, but no actual funeral because Doc Willoughby was so upset that he just got on and buried his dear friend himself.

 

You can find what remains of Bertram Fiddle here – https://www.bertramfiddle.com/

Bertram’s death is in no small part a consequence of the kickstarter we have underway at the moment. At time of posting, we have 38 open graves remaining for would-be corpses. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

A Marriage on the Rocks

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I owe my readers something of an apology. Without any explanation, I have, in recent tales, referred to Joseph Dreaming-By-The-River-Where-The-Shining-Salmon-Springs as being the husband of Betty Butterow, the barmaid of The Squid and Teapot.

“When did that happen?” you might well ask. Regular visitors will know that a great affection grew between the two and romance blossomed. My grandmother might have said that they were ‘courting’, however, given the intensity of their relationship, she would more likely have tutted and said that they were ‘carrying-on.’ I remember ‘carrying on’ as being a disapproving and euphemistic verdict passed on those conducting any liaison not compatible with her own rigid moral compass. In granny’s view Joseph and Betty’s moral compass would have been spinning around madly with no hope of ever finding north, either true or magnetic. Happily unaware of this, the couple joyously carried on ‘carrying-on’ with great gusto and enthusiasm at every opportunity until, at last, the day dawned when they both decided that it seemed only sensible to make their carrying-on respectable and official with the exchange of marriage vows.

The word ‘wedding’ conjures up visions of flouncy dresses that resemble fluffy white confections; blizzards of confetti and lucky horseshoes made of cardboard; giggling bridesmaids and awkward pageboys; a best man delivering an embarrassing speech and the wrong person catching a tossed bouquet.

Well, you can forget all of that. This is Hopeless, Maine and none of these things have any place in this tale. Remember also, Betty was a Selkie, a seal-woman and Selkies have their own ways of getting wed.

Every wedding needs a celebrant. This one was no exception. Neither Betty nor Joseph would have tolerated having their vows sanctified by a beaming minister or one of the stern, hard-faced Jesuits that Joseph had encountered in his youth. Instead, both decided that the one person who would understand them best (and not bat an eyelid at Betty’s shape-shifting predilection) would be a shaman from Joseph’s tribe, the Passamaquoddy. And so it was that the two lovers found themselves crossing the choppy channel to the mainland (he paddled, she swam) to exchange their vows on a windy outcrop overlooking the ocean on the rocky coast of Maine. The shaman had made it clear to Joseph that he was disinclined to travel. Perilous expeditions into the spirit world were one thing; going to Hopeless was a completely different teapot of squid that the elderly medicine-man had absolutely no intention of experiencing.

There are many legends surrounding selkies. Some say that the man who steals her skin possesses her. I have no idea if this is true. Even if it were, Joseph had no wish to possess Betty and, frankly, I would be amazed if any man ever could. Having said this, when a Selkie woman chooses to marry a landsman, it is customary for her to entrust her husband with her sealskin. This, you must understand, is purely symbolic, for without her skin she is unable to become a seal, something neither of them would have wished. So, having ceremoniously handed the still wet pelt to Joseph, Betty immediately took it back. After all, she needed to return home that evening and swimming was vastly more exhilarating and comfortable than riding in a cramped canoe that was loaded down with Passamaquoddy wedding gifts.

Joseph had regarded himself to be part of the Hopeless community for some time and the island was the only home Betty had ever known, so there was never any question that they might live anywhere else. They set up house in a cabin in Creepy Hollow, just a short distance and generally upwind of the Night-Soil Man’s cottage. It was a place close to Joseph’s heart, for it was there, some fifteen years earlier, that he and the apprentice, Randall Middlestreet, had disposed of the Wendigo, the creature that had killed Josephs’s mother and also his first wife. Randall not only took on the mantle of the Night-Soil Man that day but also became Joseph’s blood-brother.

Beneath the bar in The Squid and Teapot sits a battered leather journal. Within its covers are the histories and genealogies of many of the island’s dwellers. It is also the book in which many of these tales are recorded. If you could only look through its yellowing pages you would see that the story of Betty and Joseph is far from over.

Art by Tom Brown
Births, Deaths, Marriages, Hopeless inhabitants, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

​Obituary-Sir Fromebridge Whitminster

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I was saddened to learn, this week, of the sudden death of my old friend and sometime drinking companion Sir Fromebridge Whitminster, last of the great actor managers, tragedian and founder of the ill-fated theatre troupe The Hopeless Players.

Sir Fromebridge washed up¹ on to our shores many years ago from England, following a fall-out with the management of an esteemed London repertory company. He cited artistic differences as being the main reason for his leaving the land of his birth and that of his beloved Shakespeare.

From the moment he arrived in Hopeless he became convinced that the island had been The Bard’s inspiration for Prospero’s Isle in ‘The Tempest’, possibly gleaned from tales related by a sea captain who had ventured to the early colonies. On one occasion I challenged this assertion, quoting the words of Caliban:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not…”

It hardly sounded like the Hopeless I knew.

“Poetic licence, dear boy,” he said. “But the bit about the place being full of noise is deadly accurate.”

It would be impossible to celebrate the life of this man without mentioning the short-lived Hopeless Players; their history is not a particularly happy one. The troupe toured the island several times, aiming to bring Shakespeare to the people. The problem was that, by and large, not only the people but the the island itself were hostile to this intrusion of, what they regarded as being, largely incomprehensible language and convoluted plots.²

The tragedies which occurred within The Tragedies are too numerous to recall, but certain ones stand out. There was the memorable occasion on the North of the island when the profusion of ghosts on the stage made it impossible for an uncharacteristically elderly Hamlet to pick out which one was supposed to be his father. As it happened none of them were, as the actor assigned to the job was, at the time, being seduced in his dressing room by a passing succubus.

The following year saw the King Lear incident. In a less than salubrious town-hall the cry of “Out vile jelly” had a swarm of timid, diminutive and generally shapeless life-forms climbing out of the woodwork in the mistaken belief that they were being evicted from their homes. The final straw came during a production of MacBeth, or The Scottish Shambles, as the company came to call it. Sir Fromebridge had completely underestimated the potency of the witches’ spells when cast on this particular island, especially beneath a full moon. The sight of Birnham Wood being transformed into a window-box, Banquo’s sporran spontaneously combusting and Lady MacDuff sprouting bat wings and a tail was unforgettable. Any rapidly diminishing chances of the show going on were scuppered completely when a set of bagpipes scampered around the stage viciously attacking the surviving members of the cast. On the plus side, this was the only time any of their performances received a standing ovation. The applause was deafening and enough to waken the dead, had they not already been enthusiastically joining in from the second row of the balcony.

After that what remained of the troupe quickly disbanded and Sir Fromebridge spent his twilight years holding court in the snug of The Squid and Teapot, a quayside hostelry frequented by mainly British exiles. He was a familiar sight in his trademark flop-brimmed fedora and billowing black cape, sharing anecdotes of a flamboyant theatrical past and gossiping about his various leading ladies.³

To keep himself occupied he attempted to teach the local people the correct pronunciation of certain words, such as tomato, schedule, lieutenant and aluminium. Sadly, none of these really featured much in the vocabulary of the average Hopeless resident so all was to no avail. However, while his efforts to anglicise the natives came to nothing, the culture of the island managed to reach him in its various ways. In fact, the very last time I saw him he was lurching out of The Squid singing, almost in tune, a popular island ditty:

” You can bring Rose with the grotesque nose
But don’t bring Cthulu…”

To my knowledge he passed away soon after, slipping quietly away in his sleep. (4) He will be sorely missed.

Editor’s notes:
1) Many believed him to be washed up long before he came to Hopeless.

2) And also unaccountable financial discrepancies concerning ticket receipts.

3) The chances are that he didn’t mention the critic who observed that
‘Whitminster believes himself to be elevating the stage, when in reality he is only depressing the audience’

4) This is not completely true. Eye-witnesses relate that he staggered out of The Squid and Teapot, following a particularly agreeable liquid lunch, to settle down to sleep upon, what he seemed to believe to be, a large smooth rock. This was in fact the belly of a juvenile aboo-dom-k’n, basking in the thin, greasy light of some unaccustomed sunshine. This sudden burden disturbed the beast which, hardly believing its luck, slipped quietly into the sea, taking its lunch ( that is, the artiste previously known as Fromebridge Whitminster) with it.

 

This post written by the esteemed Martin Pearson, proving that it does indeed run (or slither) in the family.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Local Event, News Item

Seasonal Events

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I trust that you all enjoyed a merry Christmas. The midnight mass was especially atmospheric this year, the wind around the church producing a sound uncannily like a child crying. Twenty graves have been dug to see us through the winter – a conservative estimate I fear. For the wellbeing of your community, do not undertake to die before the thaw, if you can possibly help it!