Country Views
With Enid Crumble

Time for us to take some time off from the Town's busy Drilly Day preparations and turn our minds to Mrs Ricardo Escobar's delightful picture of Cofechyrch. The way she has captured the air of beautiful desolation of this mysterious monument makes us curious as to what it may have once been. It almost looks sacred.

Over the years, many theories have been put forward as to its origins: Spaceport; place of ritual sacrifice; ancient calendar; slide rule and Mesolithic Bingo Hall. We'll probably never find out, but the enormous ritual image of a primitive thermometer found nailed to one of its walls have led scientists to theorise that it may have once been a huge oven.

The sticky bun of time
Professor Hardy Polphetamine attempts to explain recent events in Leyman's terms.

Imagine the universe as a one hectare sheet of black rubber with a single twist in it and an egg timer placed on each end. An Owl flies from one end of the sheet to the other constantly while a small, perfectly round lump of putty the weight of Jupiter rolls around a point at the centre of the sheet. Set both egg timers to go off at the same time and tie the universe to a tree that makes no sound. You must then set fire to the tree and watch the universe disintegrate.

In this analogy, the thick smell of burnt rubber is God. His wisdom is represented by a circling, flaming Owl. Despite years of complex and exotic mathematical formulae, we still have no idea what the tree represents, though we do know that the model simply does not work without it. We call this the Tree Effect.

A mysterious activation of the Tree Effect is what caused the events that has led us to 12 days and 21 minutes of continuously looped time. It is as if the Owl is laughing at science. Many scientists are quite depressed by the Tree Effect and have begun to systematically fell trees in an effort to dislodge Owls as well as destroy the universe. We will not tolerate this ignorance about the things we don't know. If a tree falls in the forest and it does not make a sound, science will look worse for it.
posted by Professor Hardy Polphetamine at 97:12 T-Time


Againday, April 23, 2003
Town Time stops still until Drilly Day
Announcement: Please adjust your clocks

It has come to the Town Council's attention that the recent recalibration of time before Drilly Day has unsettled the mind of Trepanniers and interlopers alike.

One of the difficulties is that the hexadecimal week, introduced by the Council in an attempt to account for a total of 12 days and 21 minutes, is just too confusing to be useful. We have also heard concerns expressed by representatives of Trepanning's Glorious Postal Department that some of their services are being adversely affected. This applies especially to their Bent Time Delivery option which ensures the successful delivery of mail the day before it was posted. Currently, mail sent via this service may arrive up to a week before it is due, thereby losing all its context of urgency.

The Council will phase out these hexadecimal weeks during the next #07.F212 days. Days preceding Drilly Eve, April #FD±3A$ will now revert, via Widdershin's Transposition Principles. Dates after Drilly Day will move the other way. Please try to avoid using a mirror during this time as the results may be too dizzying for words.

These changes are temporary, but the Council will permanently correct the extra dates by dumping unused time in Fickle Fields, subject to planning permission being granted later in the year. In the meantime, a complex of garden sheds has been erected around the Off-Centre Centre and we warmly encourage you to take up some kind of futile occupation in one of them. A number of schemes have been started for your convenience: Choose from reconditioning radiograms; learning the harmonica; voting in an election or installing Linux on a toaster. Remember: Just two men, each attempting to repair a bakelite appliance in a garden shed, can fritter away 18 hours of time between them.
posted by Trepanning Information Ministry at 75:12 T-Time


Notagainday, April 23, 2003
Town mourns first ever cancelled Drilly Day
Clare Terrace sends us this report from a Drilly Day that was not to be...

An atmosphere of sadness tangible yet, somehow, intangible hangs over the spoon-shaped vale of Trepanning's woes this morning, writes Clare Terrace.

A lone bell chimes its mournful clang-clang-clang from The Shambles, as if, somehow, it was the metallic heart that beats at the very middle of the Town's tangible loss.

For today was to be Drilly Day which, in a very real sense, is the biggest day in the calendar. Though not literally, of course, as it is set in 18 point Grotesk Fancynancy and is therefore the same as the other dates.

And among the goodtownsfolken, a wistful sadness of dejavu still prevails, for, less than 72 hours ago, today would have been the day after the day that was the day after tomorrow and now it is a fortnight the day before yesterday. Their loss is almost unexplainable. The bell clangs again and, in a very real and literal sense, it will rust in a pool of tears.

This is Clare Terrace for Drilly Day Live, determined and dispassionate while all around me are weeping.

Drilly Day Bus Timetable Changes
Issued on behalf of


As usual at this time of year, Drilly Day forces us to suspend all bus services with effect from 1200 TTime on Drilly Eve - May 4 until 4pm on Drilly Dayafter, May 6, where we will run a Sunday service subject to finding a few of our drivers not in an advanced state of enlightenment.

As always, stand facing the bus when you hear it approaching and raise your arm if you wish to be excused from boarding. Please have the correct change ready and do not talk to the driver or otherwise distract his attention while he concentrates on issuing your ticket. Do not stand forward of this notice.

Drilly Day Postponed until May 5
Drilly Day Council Announcement

Owing to events wildly out of our control, Drilly Day will, for the first time, be postponed this year. After a meeting of the Drilly Day Council and in accordance with precise numerological precepts that, in the words of Professor Hardy Polphetamine of the University of the Third Eye, "date back yonks", a new date of Monday 5 May has been set: 05052003.

The change was forced upon the Council by recalibration works carried out after Mrs. Uren's Curved Time Oven was involved in a serious incident. During experiments to create Vanilla Hyperslices, a ring doughnut was fed into one end of the apparatus by mistake and a patisserie violation occurred. Students of the Quantum Bakery School are said to be suffering from clinical deja vu as clocks are set back twelve days and 21 minutes following/before/after/befafternow the incident.

Semantics experts are now trying to clear the building of past participles and improper tense inflections that may aggravate time continuums while allowing more generous sell-by dates. Savoury items have not been affected.

Mrs Uren's Quantum Bakery Course
Update

Mrs Uren's Quantum Bakery Course continues tonight at the Off-Centre Centre amid renewed interest in how her discovery of bent time and curved matter can help crack many of the dilemmas posed by puff pastry or, even, the black art of souffle.

Each of the evenings starts with snacks fashioned from lightly-tossed quantum formulae and continue until generally accepted levels of gamma radiation persist for long enough to start the ovens. Each student must then remove all metallic items from their pockets as two vanilla slices are loaded into the cyclotron. The slices are then drawn apart by a distance of four miles and fired at one another at the speed of light.

By careful observation and measurement of the Hyperslice, it is imbued with the possibility of being both delicious and real. Only then, is it ready for downsampling into Mrs Uren's Fancy Tin.

A course of six lectures costs TR€ 25.00.

Drilly Day: Live Coverage
All the action straight to your desktop.

If you've ever wanted to come to Trepanning's Drilly Day, but either you can't afford the fare or your species is not sufficiently advanced enough to understand our public transport space-timetable, then you won't want to miss exclusive coverage of the big day right here - the Town Website - on the 23rd April.

All through the day, our correspondents will report on the dances, the customs and the traditions that make Drilly Day the most talked-about day in a Trepannier's calendar.
Join us for the Drillathon: Our coverage commences at 0825 T-Time (GMT +20 minutes) and lasts until the last dance at 16.30.

Feast of St Pineal
Holiday Arrangements

This year's St Pineal's Day will controversially be held five days before St Pineal's Eve, according to clerks working the arcane formulae used to calculate the date each year. The Saint's Day is to be held on Staring Sunday Third after Neuralgia and, in keeping with the symbolic thinking behind the Feast, will end with a simile alluding to a mental image of a massive firework display.

Followers of St Pineal, Patron Saint of the Third Eye, laid down a complex set of instructions to follow which are based on the movements of constellations and the GPS coordinates of every cow "pie" on Fickle Fields during the lunar tax year.

Teams from the audit office are generally handed the long and complex task while members of the Council patiently catch up on administrative work including document shredding and issuing warrants against their colleagues.

The actual origin of the formulae remains a total mystery, but St Pineal himself was thought to be a travelling missionary from the state of Myopia, whose miraculous third eye vision proved far too metaphorical to be trusted near the edge of high cliffs.

Trepanning Set To Grow by a Third By End of Current Geological Era
Scientists accused of hyperbole and "gigantic exaggerations that will send them to Hell".

Trepanning demographic scientists have issued their strongest warning yet of the population boom threatening the town. A town, they say, where growth will be out of control if new housing is not approved soon.

But Housing Chiefs, loyal to the Town Council, insist that the report - paid for by local developer Bob Goblin - is full of "exaggerated claims and unsubstantiated stuff". In particular, the Council are pointing out that the current geological era - the Cenozoic - will not end for at least another 65 million years and that makes the matter far less urgent than the Council's priority program to find a replacement Sun.

"We're not saying that it won't happen," said Council Officer Derek Uren, "it's just that we'll eventually have to build these houses in the dark and that looks less likely, given the price of electricity these days."

The apocalyptic warning comes as pressure on rural housing has hit an all-time high. It's widely believed that many interlopers wish to settle in the village, but are being put off by force-fields and the laws of quantum mechanics. In the last year, however, the town's immigration rate rocketed when Fly Flynn fell into a Mobian Paradox Loop and arrived here by mistake.

Now, with immigration at an all-time high, house prices have gone through their own roof according to local realtor Mongle-Hawds.

"Give me your money," says Agent Tim Mongle, "and, you never know, we might find something you can afford. We'll be in touch."