Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter With Optional Festive Baubles And A Star On Top, Number The Twelfth
Not-So-Long-Ago Industries PLC. deny all connection with: oldness
And now, by dint of me sitting here copying and pasting, we’ve almost caught up with the Newsletter that gets mailed out on a semi-regular (kinda quarterly) basis!
This besmirched and befouled people’s inboxes in December 2023, as we all looked forwards to Festive Frivolity and Yuletide Whimsy. Or, in my case, sending out ominous messages of darkness and dooooooooom…
Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter With Optional Festive Baubles And A Star On Top, Number The Twelfth
Wassail, Newsletterists, wassail! For it it is that time of year again: when the ravens fly over snow-bleached fields, singing the songs of the dead as they ferry nuggets of darkness and eyeballs plucked from the hangman’s gibbet, to the groaning dinnerplate of the Dread Father Christmas in his dungeon lair.*
The festive tree has been raised at Casa MacBride, like the Jolly Rodger on a piratical ship, ready to plunder its way up and down the Spanish Main** bringing hastily wrapped presents of doom to all the little boys and girls. Shouting, “AVAST YE LUBBERS!” and other such Christmasy epithets. After all, who doesn’t like their buckle swashed?
It’s not quite eggnog o’clock yet, but it soon will be, so we should be about our business before the Dread Father Christmas is out and about, sneaking down people’s chimneys and eating their children.*** We’d best get our Newslettering over with, before retreating to our locked saferoom, where the man with the bulging sack**** can’t find us.
So here, my dear Newsletterists, we go!
* Everyone celebrates in their own way, I suppose. Maybe you prefer marzipan?
** Only with more tinsel.
*** But only if they’ve been naughty. The well-behaved ones, he only maims.
**** Not like that, YOU MONSTERS!
ITEM NUMBER THE FIRST: In Which Stuart Does Share An Anecdote From The Dim And Distant Past
A long time ago, when mountains were smaller, because they still had a lot of growing up to do, and the days all smelled of cheese, I went to see a writer doing an event in what was the Aberdeen branch of Dillons at the time. It would eventually become an Ottakar’s, then a Waterstones, before finally shaking off its bookish interior to become a Pret A Manger. Which is a bit like a butterfly turning into a dung beetle. Not that there’s anything wrong with dung beetles* – they perform a very useful ecological function! Without them, imagine the mountains of poo that would litter the world… Every streetcorner would be like the Houses of Parliament. Doesn’t bear thinking about.
But I digress.
Way back, in those venerable olden days, a much younger Stuart went to see Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE doing a talk about his latest book, because Stuart has been very fond of Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE’s work ever since discovering a paperback copy of The Colour of Magic in 1984.****
Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE***** was, as you’d expect, very interesting and funny, only took off his hat once – revealing a large area where hair wasn’t – and signed books for everyone in the queue afterwards.
Now at this time, I’d not long finished writing my first ever book: a comedy crime novel called 212666,****** and I’d brought the manuscript with me to STDJPO’s event. Now, as any writer will tell you, this is a MASSIVE RED FLAG. Because people who bring their manuscripts along to book signings are invariably Tipp-Ex sniffing weirdos who want you to read their book, declare it a work of genius, foist it upon your agent, and secure them a seven-figure publishing deal, followed by a major Hollywood contract, with optional tassels and naked dancing.
This is not what writers want to be presented with at the end of an event: at the end of an event, all a writer wants is a nice cup of tea, or perhaps a pint. Maybe some chips.*******
But it’s OK, because I didn’t ask STDJPO to do any of that, I just asked him to sign my manuscript for luck. Which he generously did.
And it made no discernible difference at all. That book was a luck-free zone. No agent or publisher wanted it. Mr Spielberg’s check book remained resolutely in his pocket and his dance-free nipples untasselled. Mostly because it was a sodding awful novel. I mean really, really terrible. It was an affront to books: a twisted abomination of words that should’ve been smothered with a lumpy pillow before it could breed and irreparably damage the literary gene pool for generations to come.
I loved it though. More importantly, I loved writing it.
Turns out that Playing God is a lot of fun.
So off I went and wrote another book, which was a lot less likely to create a dung-beetle feeding frenzy. Then another one, and another one, and another one, before finally coming up with Cold Granite. And we all know how that turned out.
Perhaps STDJPO’s signature was lucky after all…
“Why am you telling we this?” you cry, lustily and grammatically incorrectly, using adverbial dialogue modifiers even though you know they make Stuart’s toes curdle.
Well, naughty Newsletterists, I tell you this because Cold Granite and its long road to getting written have been on my mind of late, due to HarperCollins doing a reissue of the book next year. Personally, I’d have left it till 2025 to tie into the twentieth anniversary, but what do I know? Anyway: they asked me to do a wee Q&A to go in the back of the new edition, and that got me thinking about this kind of stuff.
Tangent time: not long after I moved to Transworld, I learned that Julia – she who puts this newsletter into a broadcastable format and emails it out to all you fine people across the globe, in addition to other vital PR-related functions that make sure people know I’ve written books and they should buy them so I can afford to keep my cats in the manner to which they have become accustomed – is also a big STDJPO fan.
Now Julia and I have often discussed how much we like STDJPO’s work, which is why she sent me a lovely copy of A Stroke of the Pen: the new collection of STDJPO’s short stories. Not that the stories are new, they were first published long ago in the Before Times, when no one had even heard of Rincewind and the Discworld, but the stories have only recently been rediscovered.******** You see, it turns out that my publisher’s parent company also publish the late, great man’s novels, so there was a copy knocking about the office and Julia thought I might like it.
I used to have a large collection of STDJPO books. Past tense. Because, like an enthusiastic twit, I would lend them to friends and relations, and the buggers never seemed to return the things. I hope that’s because they too went on to become big fans and bought the other books for themselves. But I still would’ve liked to get my books back. Unfortunately I was never organised enough to take a note of what I’d given to whom or when I’d given them it. Really, I should’ve got myself one of those library stamps, and a notebook, and a cardigan, and charged late fees.
But I didn’t, because: twit.
I think I’ll need to come up with some sort of Cunning Plan that allows me to con the lovely Julia into replenishing my lent-out-and-never-returned collection. Don’t tell her though, it probably won’t work if she finds out what I’m up to!
Mum’s the word, OK?
* I suppose, in the interests of balance, I should point out that technically there’s nothing wrong with Pret A Mangers either. Especially if you overlook the fact that their name includes the word ‘Mange’ and skin diseases caused by microscopic burrowing mites rarely imply that you’re in for a tasty dining experience. But mostly it’s that they sell lots of very smelly coffee, and I’m allergic to the foul stuff. Which is also why I never pay for petrol in the little glass house any more**
** I don’t mean that I shoplift it – it’s very difficult to get twenty gallons of diesel up one’s jumper without it all leaking out and giving the game away – I mean they have those awful Costa Coffee machines in them, these days, filling the place with their vomit-inducing stench.***
*** No, I don’t care if you like coffee or not. I don’t. And it’s my newsletter, YOU MONSTERS, so nyah!
**** My like of Pratchettiness is the reason these newsletters always have so many damned footnotes!
***** Who I’m going to refer to as STDJPO from here on in, to save time.
****** Which was the telephone number of the Aberdeen VAT office at the time.
******* Chance would be a fine thing. Normally we’re abandoned in a foreign city, as everyone else sods off home, leaving us to fend for ourselves. WE ARE DELICATE LITTLE FLOWERS THAT NEED NURTURING, DAMN IT!
******** More of which, later!
ITEM NUMBER THE SECOND: In Which The People Who Bought The Dead Of Winter Did Do A Very Nice Thing
I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who bought The Dead of Winter when it came out in paperback! Not just because it’s always a worry when a new book is released* – what if no one likes it? What if no one buys it? I mean, cat food, like everything else, has become hooteringly expensive and Onion eats a LOT of it. Heaps. They don’t call him The Feline Wheely Bin for nothing, you know.
Yes, so not only that – though thank you very much for keeping my kittens in cat food – but all those people who bought the book propelled it to the top of the Sunday Times bestseller charts. Which is nice.
It’s been seven years since I last had a book at the top of the charts, and I’d resigned myself to never having another one ever again.** But, thanks to you guys, not only did we claw our way back to number one again – we did it with a paperback, which is a first for me. And, believe me, a paperback number one is a big deal in writing circles.*** It means I get to wear a special hat at festivals and I can use the secret handshake to get a discount in doughnut shops again.
Custard-filled fudge, in case you’re wondering.
Anyway, but yes: thank you lovely book-purchasing people – you rock!*****
* Yes, being a paperback does so count.
** Which is why I asked Transworld to take that “THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER!!!!” bit off the cover of the books. It felt a bit dishonest to be trumpeting something that last happened nearly a decade ago.
*** Writing rhombuses, not so much. Writing triangles couldn’t give a toss either way, but then they’re phenomenally up themselves, with the square of their hypotenuses equalling the sum of the squares on their other two sides.****
**** That’s only the right-angled ones, though. The scalene, acute, equilateral, and isosceles writing triangles are cool. God knows what the obtuse ones want, though. Dicks.
***** Book-borrowing people also rock, but don’t contribute towards the chart positions. Book-shoplifting people are bumheads. It’s hard enough for bookshops to make a living, YOU MONSTERS!
ITEM NUMBER THE THIRD: In Which There Is Household Trauma At Casa MacBride À La Mode D’Ici
You might want to sit down for this, because it’s going to shock and rock you to your very core. Ready? Deep breath…
Campbells Cream Of Mushroom Soup has disappeared from the supermarket shelves.
Fiona looked on the interweb and it said they weren’t making the stuff anymore. I looked and it claimed they just weren’t making it in the UK, due to licencing issues. We can’t get it online either. Our world is now a condensed-soup-free zone!
Now, you might be wondering, “Why all the fuss, Stuart? Homemade soup is always much nicer than anything that comes from a tin anyway. And don’t you have a recipe for delicious cream of mushroom soup on your equally delicious website?”
“That’s very kind of you to have noticed, person reading this Newsletter.”
“Not a bit of it, Stuart, and may I just say that you’re a magnificent sexy beast of a man?”*
“Please, I’m blushing…”
Ahem.
OK, got a bit sidetracked there.
Yes, so the reason a complete Campbell’s Condensed Cream Of Mushroom drought matters, is that it forms the basis of our most beloved comfort-eating classic: Tuna Casserole, which entered my family’s culinary lexicon after my father brought the recipe back from Canada, after a visit there as a small, bekilted boy.
I’ve been threatening to put the recipe for this gloopular delight on my website for years, but haven’t got around to it yet. Which is probably just as well, given that one of the main ingredients of the dish has vanished from our supermarket shelves, making it somewhat difficult to prepare.
I introduced Fiona to Tuna Casserole not long into our courting** and she now requests it at times when spiritual comfort is required. It’s delicious in a weird, dirty kind of way. And I say “dirty”, because it requires zero fresh ingredients – just three tins of tuna, two tins of condensed cream-of-mushroom, six packets of ready-salted crisps, and a handful of frozen peas.***
Yup, you read that right: five tins, some frozen peas, and a multipack of crisps. Not even the swanky expensive crisps – those own-brand bags-of-six you get at any major supermarket will do you. Mush it all up in a casserole dish, bung it in the oven for forty-minutes, and prepare for deliciousness.
Over the years I’ve tried tarting the thing up with garlic, fried onions, sauteed mushrooms… But in the end, adding “real” ingredients makes it taste nowhere near as good. The only improvement we’ve managed to make to this dirty, dirty dish is a topping of freshly whizzed breadcrumbs-and-parmesan à la Sheekey’s Fish Pie,***** which adds an extra savoury hit. Everything else has been a disaster.
But now we either have to completely abandon our favourite comfort-food classic, or come up with our own recipe for Condensed Mushroom Soup. Which rather defeats the purpose of an “open the tins and packets” comforty-type meal.
OH THE HUMANITY!
* I once went for my annual MOT at the doctor’s and when I got back, Fiona asked how I’d got on. I told her the practice nurse had been very impressed and described me as “a magnificent sexy beast of a man”. And Fiona was quite taken aback, commenting how that wasn’t a very professional thing for a practice nurse to say (even though it was evidentially true), completely convinced that I hadn’t just made it up… Which is nice.
** As the old saying goes, “To see a pretty lady in the nude: buy her wine and tasty food.”
*** Well, I say “frozen peas” but what I mean is “frozen petit pois”, because I’m not an animal.
**** This is a seriously desirable fish pie, and the only one we make now. Though we do add boiled eggs and prawns before baking. Because why wouldn’t you have egg in your fish pie? How could that possibly be a thing? Put eggs in your fish pies, YOU MONSTERS!!!
ITEM NUMBER THE FOURTH: In Which There Are Much Cheapness For The Book What I Did Wrote
That’s right, for a limited time only you can nab yourself an electronic copy of The Dead Of Winter as part of the Kindle Monthly Deal thing, which knocks the price down to a measly 99p.
{But as this is an archived newsletter I’ve removed the dates, because it doesn’t matter anymore - the time has passed, the dream has gone, etc.}
Not sure how I’m supposed to keep Onion, Beetroot, and Gherkin in cat food for that,* but Transworld seem to think it’s a good idea. At about 105,000 words, that comes in at 0.000942857p per word, or 106,061 words per pound, and given that’s more words than are in the thing in the first place, how much more of a bargain do you want YOU MONSTERS?!?
At least have the grace to feel guilty as you click on the link.
{And to save your guilty blushes, I’ve deleted the link as well. I’M SO GOOD TO YOU!!!}
* Not to mention keeping Sister Monica Joan, Anita, Petula Gordino, Bernadette Wolowitz, Amy Farrah Fowler, Midge Maisel, Penny Hofstadter, and Suzy Myerson in hen food.**
** We’re not talking chicken feed here!
ITEM NUMBER THE FIFTH: In Which Our Kittens Display A Woeful Disregard For Yuletide Traditions At Casa MacBride
We aren’t real-Christmas-tree people. We used to be, in The LongAgo, but we came back from a friend’s December wedding one year, and bought ourself a tree that promptly died before the week was out. By the time Christmas rolled around, three days later, there was nothing left but an anorexic twig and a whole heap of suicided needles.
At which point we headed out to B&Q, bought ourselves a nice plastic one, and haven’t looked back since.*
We’ve assembled the thing every Christmas for the last twenty-four years – slotting the trunk segments together, then popping each branch into place and unfurling all sixty-three of them in poky shapes of randomness, before bedecking the lot with far too many decorations for Stuart’s unostentatious sensibilities.
Grendel loved it.
She absolutely adored the tree. It was one of The Best Things In The World™.** Even though we had real pine trees in the garden that she could climb any time she wanted, climbing the Christmas tree was a special treat. She wouldn’t even wait for the thing to be fully assembled before clambering up inside it. Lurking. Like a ninja. Waiting for Daddy to drop his guard so she could pounce!
And once it was up, the joy to be had – sneaking in beneath the tree, then squirreling up between the branches, making the whole thing shake and rattle, setting the baubles swinging – was something to be savoured. AT EVERY AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITY.
The weird thing is, any bauble on the bottom branches was fair game. They’d be on the floor in no time flat – wheeched about the laminate in clattering charges and delighted tail swishing. Anything above that level always stayed on the tree. She might bat it about a bit, but she only mischiefed her way through the low-hanging fruit.
Our first Christmas together as a family, Fiona, Grendel, and me, is one of my favourite memories. We started proceedings by unwrapping a present for Grendel – The Crimson Avenger, if I remember correctly – and she loved the Crimson Avenger**** even more than the paper he came wrapped in. Which meant that, from that point on, she thought EVERY SINGLE PRESENT AM BELONG TO GRENDEL!!! And she was determined to unwrap them all. Scampering about with big button eyes.
Ah, happy days…
Anyway, I include this reminiscence to provide stark contrast with the pair of bumheads known as Onion***** and Beetroot, who couldn’t give less of a toss about the Christmas tree if they tried. Beetroot was thrilled about the box it’s stored in, hopping inside as soon as all the branches and bobs and bits were removed, but the tree itself? Nah.
Of course it’s no surprise that Beetroot would like the box – as you know from Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter Number The Ninth, Beetroot is very fond of cardboard boxes. Presumably because she started her days at Casa MacBride, living in Fort Beetroot****** and has had a thing for cardboard ever since. It’s both tasty and stylish.
Onion, on the other paw, was desperately excited about all the Beetroot-type rustling noises coming from inside the Christmas-tree box, determined to give whatever was causing them a good biffing if she poked her head out. But again, the poor tree received barely a glance.
I suppose the whole point of nostalgia is that it makes you miss the good old days.
Or maybe it’s just that I miss Grendel?
Or perhaps it’s that Onion and Beetroot are pagans, who care not for all this festive, pseudo-Christian frippery and would rather celebrate the Winter Solstice with a flagon of mead and a virgin to sacrifice on a big burny thing?
Who can tell with cats?
* Which makes reversing the car difficult.
** Coming close behind cuddles with Daddy, cheese, and crunching through mouse heads.***
*** Though not necessarily in that order.
**** He was a little red felt crab who dangled from a string on the end of a stick, and he was Grendel’s nemesis – to be attacked whenever he raised his naughty crustation head. He even had his own theme song. Which is totally normal and not in the least bit strange. YOU MONSTERS!
***** Who also has a theme tune, but we’ll discuss that at a later date. If I remember. Which is possible, but knowing me: unlikely.
****** I can’t remember if we’ve talked about Fort Beetroot before. If we haven’t, I’ll maybe add it to the list of Things To Discuss At A Later Date, like Onion’s theme song. But, again, only if I can remember to remember to do it and I haven’t already done it before.
ITEM NUMBER THE LAST: In Which Stuart Does Recommend Other People’s Books For A Change (Again8)
I’ve been up to my nipples,* writing the new draft of the next book, so haven’t been troubling the bookshelves at Casa MacBride as much as I usually would. That’s the problem with deadlines, they tend to schlurp all the joy from other things…
As a result, Mount TBR has become a scary heap of books, threatening to avalanche words all over the place and biff unsuspecting hikers on the head with proofs sent by publishers and the books I’ve bought in the somewhat forlorn hope that I’ll eventually get around to reading them. There are books buried away in there that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Which is poopular.** Poopular, I say!
But now that next-year’s novel is away for its edit, I’ve struck a mineshaft into Mount TBR and burrowed inside the wonderful world of fiction again. And I’ve been lucky enough to come across a few nuggets of “good” to recommend.
* What is with nipples in this newsletter? That’s the second mention of them so far! This whole epistle is nothing but filth – no wonder I’ve never been offered a peerage. Well, that and my naughty habit of not doing favours for, or donating huge sums of money to, the Conservative party.
** Not to be mistaken for “popular” which would be the opposite of “poopular” unless poop was popular, in which case “poopular” and “popular” would be interchangeable and I’d have just wasted your time by making you read this footnote.
A STROKE OF THE PEN, by Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE, is a collection of his short stories, most of which were published in instalments, under two pseudonyms: Patrick Kearns, in the Western Daily Press; and Uncle Jim, in the Bucks Free Press. This was long before Terry Pratchett became The Terry Pratchett, but you can see him inching his way closer to that essential Terry Pratchettiness with every story. Like a cat about to pounce on a particularly fat and tasty mouse. Or a Member of Parliament on an opportunity to get involved in a sex-and/or-bribery scandal.
As these were initially published in newspapers, there’s a lack of the biting satire that distinguished his Discworld novels (even though the “evil, ancient, foggy city of Morpork” does get a mention), but then writing things for newspapers is often like that. I was once asked to edit out the word “fart”* from a short story I wrote for the Evening Express, because as a “family newspaper” they were worried about my corrupting the youth of northeast Scotland with such potty-mouthed language. As if wee kids won’t have already heard much fruitier words than “fart”.**
The highlight of the collection, for me, is A Partridge in a Post Box which glitters with hints of the writer Mr Pratchett would become. The lowlight is The Quest for the Keys, which never really gets going, even though it always seems as if it’s just about to. Which is ironic, because thematically it’s the closest A Stroke of the Pen gets to the Discworld, and without The Quest for the Keys, the other stories in this collection would never have been discovered. But you’ll hear all about that in the dedication. The introduction. And the afterword.
Mostly these are what they were written to be – nice gentle stories to make you smile. And they made me smile. So I’m recommending them.
Plus, it was nice to read something “new” by Terry Pratchett after all these years…
* I must apologise to my more sensitive readers for just dropping a fart there, in the middle of a paragraph, without a trigger warning or the traditional after-wind cry of “And away…”
** And away…
FARGO, SEASON THREE still isn’t a book, but I did say I was going to have a bash at the rest of the thing, given we’d enjoyed Season One.
So we did – we’re nothing if not people of our word, at Casa MacBride. Season Two was … disappointing. I wouldn’t bother with it if I were you. It’s as if they’d gone, “Hey, you remember all that fun stuff we did in Season One? Let’s forget all about that and do something a bit dull and derivative instead!”* So we were only prepared to give Season Three a couple of episode, and if it was Poopy Poo-Pants McPlop-Plop** that was it for us.
With trepidation, and a cup of tea, we sat down to watch…
And it was most excellent.
Genuinely a fun watch.
Euan McGregor plays a pair of doomed brothers, spiralling each other as their worlds disappear down the toilet bowl. But the star, by far, is David Thewlis’s pitch-perfect rendition of the antagonist, V.M. Varga. It’s an absolute masterclass in being horrible and dangerous, whilst appearing non-threatening and deeply bloody interesting all at the same time.
I’m beginning to think that Fargo has a sort of reverse-Star-Trek-movie thing going on. The first film was bumholes. Second one was great. Third was back in bumhole territory. Fourth was the best of the bunch. So we’re cautiously optimistic for Season Five, which has just landed on Amazon Prime.
Which may prove to be foolish, but what can I say? I’m an eternal optimist.
* That’s possibly being a little unkind – there are some great performances in Season Two (Nick Offerman, Patrick Wilson, and Kirsten Dunst spring to mind), but the whole “Oh the bad guy is a violent, racist, sexist, yeee-haw-hat-wearing arsehole” thing takes the Trope Train to Cliché Town, buys it a burger, boozes it up at the local bar, then goes for a snooze behind the bins. Having befouled the pool table.
** Steady on there, with the dirty language, fella! Do you kiss your kittens with that mouth?
And let’s round off this pre-Christmas recomendationfest with MURDER AT HOLLY HOUSE, by Denzil Meyrick.
Appropriately enough, given the time of year, this is a festive book with a bit of murder thrown in for good luck. Then a bit more murder. And some more murder. And some torture. But no full-frontal nudity, thank goodness, because it’s not that kind of book.
The wee village of Elderby sits high on the Yorkshire moors, gearing up for an out-of-the-way Yuletide in 1952, only some poor chap’s been bally well murdered and stuffed down the chimney of the local toff’s gaff!
Bad show.
Inspector Frank Grasby’s been having a rum old time of it in York, where he’s recently been responsible for a bit of bother involving a load of racehorses doing a runner* and his boss has decided that a spell out of the limelight is on the cards, else he might just have to give Frank his marching orders! So off to Elderby goes Frank to figure out what’s going on in this sleepy, ye-olde hamlet. When the local doctor’s husband turns up with a nasty dose of the old knife-in-the-ribs, it’s clear that things are not what they seem, and there are scoundrels about!
Can Frank unmask these cads and foil whatever nefarious plans they’ve cooked up? Well, you’ll jolly well have to read the book to find out!
Now, you might be wondering why I’ve come over all Wodehouseian while writing this recommendation. Well, I’ll tell you: it’s because there’s more than a touch of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster about Inspector Frank Grasby, and he’s all the better for it.
Normally Denzil writes very enjoyable crime novels set on the west coast of Scotland, featuring DCI Daley, but here he’s gone full-on, post-war, Yorkshire-in-the-snow-tastic and produced something a lot more… Well, I can hardly call it “cozy” – like the magnificent works of M.C. Beaton, Murder At Holly House has more than its fair share of death, menace, and murder, but it’s told with a good dollop of tongue-in-cheek humour, warmth, and the kind of quirky characters any reader would be happy to spend time with. It’s a fun book.** Playful. One to make you smile, even as the bodies pile up and poor old Frank Grasby faces the kind of rum coves that would make Dick Barton quake in his galoshes.
And if my word isn’t good enough,*** you can always rely on Fiona’s recommendation, because she loved it too.
So get thee to a purveyor of books and pick up an early Christmas present for yourself!
* But not on a racecourse. He’s only gone and let the blinking lot of them loose from the stable block during a tussle with a ruffian, don’t you know.
** Let’s face it, given how much of an utter shitshow the world is these days, we could all do with a bit of fun.
*** YOU MONSTERS!