Cambridge
When you finally get the tourists out of Lodnod, the next place they tend to head for is where I live - Cambridge. Their first port of call tends to be punting down the college backs, where (if you don't 'self drive') you tend to get a sardonic local punt guide, who somehow is more credible because he's wearing a shirt and a silly straw hat. It's great to go out punting and listen to the tales these guys weave - they're like a rather twisted Jackanory. The usual ones are how the roadmenders bridge next to Queens college is a "mathematical bridge" put together by Sir Isaac Newton without "any bolts whatsoever - but they took it apart to clean it and couldn't work our how to put it back without any fixings." The other recent one I heard was that the drain next to the "bridge of sighs" was in fact a swan trap, that you'd use to entice swans in so you could kill, cook and eat them. This then tends to lead onto a tale of how one college has special dispensation from the Queen to take a quail's egg, stick it up the arse of a pigeon, stick the pigeon up the arse of a duck, the duck up the arse of a goose and so on until the whole multi-arse menagerie gets stuck up the rear of a swan - and the whole lot is then cooked and eaten by the dons of the college.

The punting guys should get their own TV series - the stories they actually get away with telling the Yanks beggars belief.
(fixit, Tue 12 Jul 2005, 3:01, Reply)