Free The Darling Buds of June by Frankie Lassut Page A

hope you enjoy it.
    PS. We went to
Stratford one morning and as it is the cleanest town on the planet,
I photographed all the litter on the way to the centre (the people
who live there are like city folk and I thought Stratford folk were
disciples of Mrs Bucket). I used some of the pics in the book ... a
bit cheeky, but warts maybe need to be seen when the town council
is in obvious denial. I sent the shots to the Lord Mayor, but
received no response ... not even sued (for publicity). I bet they
cleaned up though? I may never know.
    Here’s a good
question: ‘could’ you help me P-T-Off ... read this and tell your
friends???
     
    Ok, let me sort
of begin again, like Michael Finnegan. I’ll take his place:
     
    ‘There was a
young man called Frankie Finnegan
    Who grew some
creative stuff on Alcester’s sheninigan
    Will the wind
come out and blow it innagen?
    Poor old
Frankie Finnegan, getting stick-aggen’.
     
    This next bit
contains their old (new) claim to fame which my muse kindly gave me
(I don’t think Muses drink), so don’t blame me, I’m just the
messenger, the humble servant of my Musey Woozey.
     
     
    ALCESTER.
     
    Who has heard
of Alcester? 9.99% of the people I’ve asked haven’t. It’s not good
that, for a town wanting ‘visibility’, that people don’t know about
and it doubly doesn’t help living next door to someone famous
(probably because of you too, which makes it worse; I’ll tell you
soon) .. .
    But hey! Never
mind bloody ‘Apon’ Stratford! Because you see, Alcester has its own
claim to fame, and now that the gift horse (me) has turned up with
a fun opportunity, the brave and enterprising people of Alcester
are going to delight the public with this treasure they have
realised they have thanks to a fabulous writer from Coventry (me)
who did a pile of research. They are now to have their very OWN
Bard! (Who was also Shakey’s real life flesh and blood ‘Muse’).
    Eventually you
see, poverty begins to get annoying, and when you see a
neighbouring town being showered with gold and jewels type
development funding, largely because of the efforts of one of
‘your’ children ...all they need is their star’s gravestone back to
show to the tourists. Stratford Council members nicked it you see.
There again, you ‘can’ understand Stratford Apon Avon’s
unwillingness to have this known. Alcester?! It must be like having
dirt on the bottom of your shoe to Stratford people with power.
    Alcester is the
‘real’ jewel of Warwickshire and was the home of ... of ...
    ‘Gillian
Benedict’, 1554-1614, who married Stan Stashaway 1544-1620. Gillian
Stashaway née Benedict was a cleaning maid, but she had a brilliant
talent, she was a poet and a storyteller, but what’s more, she was
an entertainer. She didn’t see herself as a coaxer of smiles
though, she was a serious writer and I would guess that she didn’t
much care for it if anyone found her works slightly less than
purist, connoisseur serious. In other
words, she thought she was good, and, she was so bad, she was; but
she wasn’t good, she was brilliant. This exhaustively
researched story should therefore deee-light the Shakespeare
scholars, the hardest, most steadfast purist and Melvyn Bragg (I
worked with his cousin once, so I know that’s true). A lot of the
information was given to me by a mole that I shall not name and to
whom I shall be grateful for life. My mole is a member of a group
of Alcestrians who have a monthly meeting to discuss tourism … read
on:
    A message from
some of the friendly, tourism hungry people of Alcester, or as they
are known the Friends of Alcester Tourist Board, or the FAT B’s, a
name which is sometimes used in fun making, but none of them are
fat anyway, but most of them are getting on a bit, so they’re
bored; they have drunk all of the Summer wine. But they did save
all the bottles for the next fermentation.
    “Hello reader,
I’m the Mole, let me tell you about our as yet almost unknown