Doc Barbara rejoices at Belinda's success

Prof. Ramsbottom-Thrutch is knocked sideways.by emotion

  Our regular devoted followers of Doc Barbara's adventures will be acutely and sorrowfully aware that her friend, Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch (who came to write a sociological study of her unique case) had been prone to semi-paralysing bouts of emotion. Even though social scientists should be detached from their topic, he would well up copiously when lecturing on Roman burial practices if the deceased were under 60 - or diseased.
   Clearly something had to be done and his sojourn with us at our newspaper office has done much to restore his equilibrium. Yet Belinda Twaddle decided that she could help even more.

Her solution

  Here we see her offering the Prof. a variant of immersion therapy whereby he could observe a mock burial which turned out for the best. Shortly after our cub reporter took this shot (relief all round that he didn't inter himself as well as he is not the shiniest pebble on the beach) she jumped up, since she was only lightly covered with sand, danced with joy and encouraged the Prof. to join her merriment. This he did and their joyful ritual of renewal was noted by a small but rapidly growing crowd of bemused holidaymakers.

The next step

  She then took him to a museum where she instructed him to gaze at relics of Roman burials for 2 hours until he became inured: this was so amazingly efficacious that she had difficulty dissuading him from opening the sarcophagus and entombing himself. He explained that he had misheard and thought she said "immured." (We wonder in our darker moments if he simply became so bored that he lost the will to live let alone expatiate on funeral rites in the Ancient World.)

The result
   All doubts and fears were thus put to rest (R.I.P. Anxiety) and we held a celebratory party to mark the occasion: Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch can now return to his university post and hold forth with dry-eyed vigour on any subject, no matter how potentially distressing. The party went rather too well but we are all feeling better now. We know that he will visit us in the future and continue his valuable research into the Doc Barbara Phenomenon.

"Look, I am Pluto," cried the Prof. "Or do I mean Neptune. Who cares?"

Belinda Twaddle goes further North

 
  Here we see Belinda in a rare but temporary mood of dejection after her first attempts to dissuade hermaphroditic Northern slugs from mating with themselves. She ventured North of Wigan to use her method of playing Mozart arias from Cosi Fan Tutte, which of course means "Thus do all women", but the male section of each slug failed to be discouraged by mockery. Once such a slug has caught sight of its own tail it is overcome with passion for what it calls its "better half" and loses all self-restraint. Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch was so moved by the picture of her looking touchingly small and downcast up her sloth tree that, after a brief burst of loud but manly weeping, he put back his linen handkerchief, took out his map and plotted an itinerary and master plan for her.

   His idea was that she should continue with the musical anti-sex therapy but, instead, use Don Giovanni to make the masculine parts of slugs feel they are mere Lotharios who will come to a sticky end. [I thought that was where the problem began: Ed.] In addition he enlisted - as well as slug wardens - teams of runners to take the latest news to the headquarters of the A.S.S. (anti-slug-sex) project. This system is working magnificently beyond all expectation. Northern slugs are now as celibate as the rest of the country. [The tensions in this office get through to us all: Ed]

   Naturally Doc Barbara is delighted: "Half a slug is better than a bun in the oven", she opined.

The co-ordinator of the A.S.S. project is pleased to receive the bulletins of progress.

Doc Barbara cheers Belinda Twaddle

   Firstly let me, as Editor, apologise for the asides which crept into our last article about Doc Barbara. The Chief Reporter has a new mobile device with something on it that he seems to refer to as Piri-Piri which picks up his voice and everyone's inner thoughts (although it is possible I mutter aloud when particularly frustrated). He refuses to turn it off and so I suppose we will all have to adjust. Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch will find particular difficulty as he is prone to voice his sorrow at deeply emotional moments to avoid fits of weeping. Sometimes life on a provincial newspaper can be acutely stressful.

   Yet the good news is that we have now returned Belinda Twaddle to her normal vertical posture by explaining that there is a difference between a sloth and a slug. You will recall that she offered to assist in the attempt to prevent slug proliferation South of Wigan. We are delighted to report phenomenal success here with most slugs persuaded by peaceful means to refrain from sexual activity even after the long wet winter. Belinda heroically established a network of anti-slug-sex (A.S.S.) wardens equipped with the special apparatus she is wearing here. Her brother Bob is holding his back in agony after bending to communicate with too many slugs. [Hoist with his own trumpet, poor man: Doc Barbara]

   She found that slugs respond to music and so played them arias from Cosi Fan Tutte, thus making the females feel that their romantic activities were commonplace and vulgar. These extracts could be whistled if the wardens forgot their gadgets or can be relayed from wires such as Belinda carries with her on her helmet at all times. The opera has had the added bonus of lightening our Professor's mood: he has been seen to smile and even chortle on occasions. Belinda will soon dare to speak to him about Roman burials.

A female slug after  listening to Mozart. 

   The slugs then give up all sensations of passion and retreat to their [Where DO they live? Ed] homes in pensive but celibate mood. [I feel an outburst of racking sobs coming upon me. Professor R-T] This method has produced success everywhere but in Yorkshire. [You can tell a Yorkshire slug anywhere but you can't tell it much. Ed]
   Doc Barbara, when informed, opined, "He who laughs last has a bird in th'hand." [Clearly the mention of Yorkshire has unsettled her. Ed]

A slug warden after an exhausting spell of duty with his wired apparatus in the blue bag.

   Belinda has now decided that the enterprise can be taken beyond Wigan to the recalcitrant Northern hermaphroditic slugs. Her public-spirited determination knows no bounds. [Worse luck. When can we get back to reporting the doings of the W.U.G? and their weekly acrimonious meetings? Ed]

Belinda Twaddle to help Doc Barbara's slug mission

   Doc Barbara has reconsidered her mission to curb the slug proliferation which has occurred after our unusually mild winter. She realised that there is little hope North of Wigan: it is virtually impossible to prevent a hermaphroditic slug from mating with itself once it has fallen in love. Her poem on geographical variations in slug libido is scientifically accurate as well as deeply emotive.

  She decided to concentrate her efforts South of that latitude and try to persuade these gastropods to contain themselves, or not as the case may be - if you see what we mean. Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch is delighted as this is his native area and he feels at one with natural creatures in Lancashire. [All this unity is getting complex and a little unseemly: Ed]

  The difficult starting point was to find slugs with which/whom to start the anti-sex propaganda but Bob Twaddle said his sister, Belinda, would be thrilled to assist. Here she is helping out.

  We did wonder why she is in this posture and eventually found the explanation. She is energetic and devoted to whatever enterprise she undertakes but, as we saw previously, tends to lose focus. One of her prime intellectual interests is philology and Bob had told her that the words "slug" and "sloth" were connected in Proto-Indo-European because of their shared sense of torpitude. [I myself am beginning to lose the will to move: Ed]

   It is amazing that Bob uttered these words since he has a phobia about polysyllables, made all the worse when he recently discovered that his parents nearly named his sister Roberta, whereas he has to make do with one phoneme. [Such psychological neuroses bedevil the office of The Monmouthshire Mouthpiece and now we have an acrobat as well: Ed]  Belinda therefore took it upon herself to imitate a sloth in her inimitable enthusiastic manner in order to form bonds with the creatures [Here we go again! Can no-one round here stay single? Ed] It may take a while for her to work her way down from Lancashire.

    When told of these developments, Doc Barbara was pleased with our speedy response: "Procrastination is the thief of jam tomorrow," she opined. Although we may seem to have diverged from our original target (and some of you may be irately contemplating slug damage in your garden at this moment) we can assure you that the matter is in hand and Belinda will soon be coming to a tree near you.

Doc Barbara on the Lancashire slug

NATURAL SELECTION

by

Doc Barbara

                                                     Through Wigan runs a great divide:

                                                     The slugs down on the Southern side

                                                     Are subject (as indeed are we)

                                                     To unrequited misery 

                                                     If they can't find a loving mate.

                                                     In this pathetic, lonely state

                                                     The slug is low in self-esteem

                                                     And takes the single life to mean

                                                     It has no charm, no winning grace

                                                     No wit, charisma, no real place

                                                     Within another's heart. And yet

                                                     Above that latitude, slugs get

                                                     Erotic satisfaction, joy.

                                                    A slug is born both girl and boy:

                                                    So sturdy Northern common sense

                                                    Finds in self-love, true recompense.

                                                    It reasons thus: hermaphrodites

                                                    Need never suffer from the blights

                                                    Of jealousy, rejection, scorn.

                                                    It's foolish to remain lovelorn:

                                                    There's someone here who thinks I'm great,

                                                    Who will, always, reciprocate

                                                    My passion.  Life will be complete

                                                    If only we can make ends meet.

This poetic perception (so mellifluously expressed in our opinion) has given its author cause for soul searching as the inspiration of the Muse led to approval of slug sexuality in all its forms whereas she had been trying to moderate it. Our heroine will ponder further.

                                                     

Doc Barbara and the proliferating slug

   Our visiting learned Professor, Ramsbottom-Thrutch, showed great astonishment when we told him about Doc Barbara's latest proposed exploit and was puzzled as to how he, a sociologist, could shed light on it. She has read in the papers that the mild, wet winter has caused slugs to stay awake and breed profusely.

   Doc Barbara is a believer in Nature and its harmonious ways but felt that perhaps this was a moment needing human intervention and is determined to quell their libido and return it to its usual sluggish state. The Professor finally concluded that this is an ethnoecological reaction to a sense of threat and asked us to send out Bob Twaddle, our cub reporter, to take pictures of our heroine with the aforesaid gastropod mollusc.

   Bob was traumatised by so many polysyllables (he has never recovered from finding out that he was originally named monosyllabic Bob not Robert and has suffered from a feeling of deprivation ever since). He in turn asked if his sister Belinda could help, claiming that she is a cheerful, extrovert girl, whose only fault is a tendency to lose focus.

   This is the resulting image where we think she took the necessity to maintain focus too literally whilst becaming distracted from her main purpose in its metaphorical meaning. The Professor will investigate this phenomenon also and we will try to obtain a photograph of a slug.  (Sometimes the effort of running a local newspaper is too onerous for me. Ed.).

   We even suggested to Doc Barbara that she abandon her mission but she replied pacifically, " You can't teach your grandmother to let sleeping dogs lie" and reminded us of her poetic outburst about the sexuality of the slugs North of Wigan which we reprint elsewhere.

The Professor's first finding

   Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch (sociologist) is a cautious and scholarly man and so, before investigating the Doc Barbara phenomenon in full, he decided to consult a renowned colleague in the psychology department to delve more deeply into the inner make-up of our heroine (we all know she never wears outer make-up).  

  The psychologist reported the outcome of his tests to her and then we heard nothing. Finally, she rushed into the office of The Monmouthshire Mouthpiece several days later to tell us the result. She caught us all by surprise and so everyone was present.

   "He says I have too much super-ego, a normal ego but too little squid," she declaimed. "I have been all over Europe to track down squid or even octopus, wondering if it was such a creature commemorated for its importance in a stained glass window in France - but I eventually found some in Brixton market." It appears she ate enormous quantities before sensing that her internal mental mechanisms were unaffected - although other systems suffered.  We advised more cake in lieu.

   Our chief reporter, a man of wide learning, usually unaccountably absent when she is our topic, explained to her what he thought was the error. The picture below shows the delight of both Doc Barbara and the Professor of Sociology at the happy ending of this fabulous exploit (although he appears to be holding her back in fear that she might leap into the lake in search of more piscine delicacies. She does have a squid - sorry id - tendency to dive into water). "I thought quite early on I should have told the psychologist to stop bleating about the bush," she  opined merrily as she left. Her creative way with old sayings is proverbial.