Mucky Blogs!

Beyond the Cartford Inn car park, where the river bends, stands a small wood. Within its rooty darkness lies a tumbled chimney breast, all that remains of the cottage where Ike and Grandma Fenton lived for many years. They're long gone but now and then I fancy that when the inn's lights go out and looming clouds obscure the moon, echoes of long-ago tales whisper about the once-cosy fireside. Ike was the local rat catcher. Big, burly and a dead ringer for Robert Newton's Long John Silver (apart from the leg count) he was a familiar sight as he travelled the Fylde on his creaking old sit-up-and-beg bike laden with mole traps and poisons. Strychnine, injected into earthworms, was the most effective mole poison at that time. When, as a youth, I asked why it didn't kill the worms, Ike explained (and I paraphrase a bit here) that strychnine was only fatal to anything with a bone in it. He just had to be careful that he never went for a pee in a state of sexual excitement. Then, with a raucous Long John Silver laugh, he pedalled off on his sub-walking-speed bike. Ike and Grandma were much sought-after for their humour, which ranged from whimsical to disgusting according to requirements, and Ike's story of how one old local got his humped back is about the filthiest I've ever heard. More of Ike – though not, alas, of the the hump – in the near future.