travelling fnarr and wide

My brother drives a model of Chrysler called the PT Cruiser. He refers to it as simply 'The Cruiser' which amuses me no end. I amuse myself further - and make him somewhat bored - by referring to it using terms such as The Fluffer or The Felcher.

This week I'm at his house, and I've realised this double-entendre thing was not of his doing. It is the inevitable consequence of living, as he does, in Formby.

It seems to the untrained eye to be a sedate middle class dormitory town. However, I have no doubt it lies on one of the greatest convergences of double-entendre leylines on this earth.

I go to check out compost bins at Formby Hardware. The brand of bins they stock - which I've never seen before and are all made from plastic - is Rubbermaid.

Nextdoor is a butcher's with a big sign in blazing orange capitals, SPITROAST CHICKENS.

Is that the title of a porn movie featuring reluctant participants in spitroasting?

Or is it, as the fiery block lettering implies, a command to bestiality?

Reeling, I look across the road to see an, ahem, 'leather goods' shop called, yikes, Backhouse.

A sign in its window tells me it's advertised in the local freebie paper, 'The Formby Trader'.

Which is either the name of a champion cottager, or else an Albert Goldman dirt-dishing biography of George Formby's rentboy early days.

I try to escape this place via the internet. Come on my old faithful, tell me of places where I'm not overwhelmed with smut.

So I go and find Jim Bliss, and he's talking of going to Stillorgan.

I wonder if that's twinned with Cockshutt?