Cronkleton Trumpet

A bit of graphical noodelishness

The Grymoire apologise for the recent lack of posting - it's been a quiet summer gig-wise save for a few private events, and they've been writing, recording and titting about - here's a wee picture from the twisted biro of Mr Shillaker to ease you gently back in!

VOODOO!

It is early Wednesday morning and Phillip the Anxious Homunculus, having wrestled and temporarily stunned his crippling agoraphobia, tip-toes tentatively through the Grymoire Observatory front door and into the chilly dawn mist. Distant rooks caw and twigs drip as he straddles his rusty but dependable old Sturmey Archer 3 Speed racer and after an uncertain start and teetering fifteen minutes along dank, laurel arched lanes he arrives in Cronkleton High St. First stop: Ellson's Models and Crafts for another Airfix Spitfire; a few halting words over the dusty Humbrol paints with old Mr Ellson and out again into the frigid morning. Past Morris Cringe the Bakers with his renowned display of cream horns rampant in the window; past Sprockett, Bearing and Flange, solicitors, and as he at last stoops to unlock his bicycle by the war memorial - an odd sound catches his ear. Was it distant drums or the rumble of a passing lorry? Shaking his head Phillip fiddles anxiously with the combination and....there it is again! Definitely drums. Momentarily distracted, Phillip's attention is suddenly gripped by a shop across the street which he is quite sure he has never noticed before: Harbinger's Curios and Object D'Art. As though in a dream, he finds himself crossing the road and pushing open the grimy door; a bell tinkles and he is standing - dazed - in a brown gloom surrounded by heaped shelves and piles of outlandish bric-a-brac. 'Thrum-thrum-thrummety-thrum!' Go the drums. There are full suits of armour, stuffed monkeys, trombones, horse brasses, specimen jars and silk flowers. There are dried frogs, shrunken heads, binoculars, butterfly collections and tin hats and everywhere narrow spires of musty books of all kinds twist precariously up to the murky dusk of the ceiling. Furthermore, the shop appears to recede endlessly, a narrow path winding between myriad, teetering towers of tat. Every turn brings a fresh astonishment: here a beautiful, miniature pipe organ; there a tarnished tuba. All the while, the drumming becomes louder and louder - 'thrum-thrum-thrummety-thrum!' After what seems like hours, Phillip arrives at the back of the shop. There is no-one to be seen. On the dusty counter, however, is the apparent source of the drumming. It is about eighteen inches tall; a strange wooden statue of a man or ape like thing. It has a hideous, primitive aspect with a ghastly lamprey circle for a mouth set about with jagged shark teeth. Milky gem stone eyes appear to glow and on the end of two spindly, twig like arms wizened, bird-like claws seem to flex. The whole space around it throbs balefully; the drumming is inside his head! And now, above the beat a rasping, hateful voice: 'KOOOOZZZOOO!' 'KOOOOOOZZZZZZZZOOOOOOO!'

Hours later back at the Observatory, sweating and trembling and unable to remember returning home, nor even purchasing the thing or indeed from whom, Phillip steps back from the shelves housing Mr Scott's collection of disturbing nick-nacks and gapes slack jawed at the horrible fetish he has brought to the ancient pile in his fever. The drumming and voices have ceased and for the first time he notices the rusty nails driven into every part of the vile thing. Thrusting the knuckles of his right hand into his mouth as if to stifle a scream, he turns away……to be continued.

Headgate Theatre Sat 29/01/11 Final Shout!

Well.. January's dank, cheerless sky hangs like one of Mrs O'Flaherty's filthy dish cloths over The Grymoire Observatory and sulks. The last of the Yuletide fripperies has long been tossed unceremoniously into its cardboard box and launched, courtesy of Mr Chives' rheumatic shoulder, into the attic. Here it will spend another year languishing with its fellows among the stuffed animals, back issues of 'Look and Learn' and those nicknacks and curios deemed by Mr Scott to be too disturbing even for the eerie corridors beneath. The stricken garden, all rot and lank tendrils, is brightened only by the occasional, listless robin pausing to tug half heartedly at a filthy worm in the dormant borders and not even a breeze stirs the dreadful, denuded poplars near the stinking moat.
But this supine, sepulchral scene belies a feverish effort! Deep in the vaulted cellars Mr Shillaker and Mr Scott are making final preparations for their annual jamboree at Colchester's prestigious Headgate Theatre on the 29th of January! The Hostess Trolley of Occult Significance has been tempted away from its endless sinister trundling with the promise of new castors and is being generously loaded with delicious cakes and pastries. Mrs O'Flaherty, a stiff brush grasped firmly in her beefy, chapped mitt, is vigorously scrubbing Mr Scott's organ to bring out the beautiful, rich grain whilst the grateful maestro, whistling a jaunty refrain, polishes his maracas with a lint free cloth. In a nearby alcove under a ten watt bulb Mr Shillaker is brushing fluff from his battered fez and Phillip the Anxious Homunculus smokes furiously, bites his nails and mutters. All is nearly set for the Observatory's biggest night of the year! Make haste, therefore, to The Headgate Theatre Colchester for an evening of nonsense, nincompoopery and nibbles! Of contraptions, contrivances and incorporeal caper! Don't miss out! The last few tickets are available from the Headgate Theatre box office on 01206 366000 - get yours for only £7/£6 concs! starts 8pm!

Trousers!

All is quiet at The Grymoire Observatory. A thick blanket of snow covers the house and grounds and, as the first flinty winter starlight catches the dark and glossy laurel groves along the smothered gravel drive; night drapes its somnolent shroud peacefully over cherub and chimney pot alike. Mr Chives shivers in his threadbare cardigan deep in the servants' quarters and with an arthritic hand clutches a rusty poker and worries a solitary, surly coal in the leaky pot bellied stove that smokes ineffectually next to his mouldering bed. Throughout the silent pile, frigid draughts stir greasy dust and forgotten holly wreaths from Yuletides past, mice huddle timorously behind dark wainscotting and Mrs O'Flaherty mutters a silent prayer of thanks for bed socks.
Then at the stroke of midnight a ghostly shriek suddenly rends the stillness. A series of dull thuds and alarming creaks follows and Mr Scott's collection of disturbing nicknacks flies from its shelf in the vestibule, scattering who knows what across the long suffering parquet floor. Moments later a terrified, wide eyed Mr Scott himself appears, nightshirt flapping as he runs the length of the great landing - arms waving and beard streaming - in pursuit: no less an apparition than…a disembodied pair of stout corduroy trousers! Following them both, Mr Shillaker emerges from the shadows and lets fly at the errant hosiery with an antique blunderbuss full of rusty tin tacks and pebbles. Clocks fall from the walls, Mrs O'Flaherty tumbles swearing from her bed, stuffed animals shed their fur, Mr Chives' false teeth fall out and plaster falls from sagging ceilings! For, dear readers, these are no ordinary kecks but none other than the mythical Haunted Trousers of Cronkleton! What unquiet spirits lurk within these otherwise unremarkable strides? What are the dark forces that propel them without visible means of support and cause them to gyre and ululate to the terror of anyone unfortunate enough to happen upon them? Why were they in Mr Scott's bed chamber anyway? Nobody knows. Suffice it to say that these dire pantaloons are sure to make their presence felt at the Headgate Theatre on the evening of Saturday the 29th of January 2011 when The Grymoire present an evening of whimsicality, music, light refreshments, mild peril and mirth between 8pm and 11pm!

Tickets a mere trifle at £7 or £6 concs - be there and all will be revealed.

Crumbs! Grymoire lads discover elusive Higgs fruitcake

Not to be outdone by Geneva based eggheads at the CERN LHC facility, Messrs Shillaker and Scott have for some time been trying to detect a theoretical form of fruitcake, thought to have existed as an exotic by-product of the big bang or something. Mr Leslie Grymme-Harbinger reports

The Grymoire Observatory, with it's majestic chimneys, leaky gutters and whimsical eaves, presents an unlikely looking venue for experiments at the cutting edge of physics and bakery but it is here that the search unfolds for the so called Higgs fruitcake; something of a holy grail for light refreshments experts, and until recently undetected outside of a few obscure scientific papers, and field equations. The outlandish experiments have thus far involved different kinds of cake and pastry being hurled together at impossible speeds to produce the so called 'building blocks' of cake. 'The quest of all cake lovers for decades now, has been to discover what actually constitutes these apparently familiar, commonplace and delicious objects' says Mark Shillaker, technical director for the project 'it was thought for generations that they were made by really nice ladies out of eggs, flour and sugar etc - but we now know there's way more to it than that'. Adam Scott, the project's propulsion specialist agrees: 'In our early experiments we fired Swiss rolls towards each other out of antique blunderbusses - to our great surprise a number of much smaller exotic cakes such as mini rolls and French fancies were produced - this has led us to a quest for higher and higher velocities to see just how far we can go'. How do the team answer growing concerns that their experiments constitute a real threat to the planet? 'There has been talk of us accidentally producing a bread pudding so dense that it may collapse under its own gravity and cause catastrophic indigestion and ultimately the destruction of parts of Berkshire - this is nonsense' insists Mr Shillaker, 'peddled by loons on the interweb and blogs'. So what of the elusive Higgs fruitcake - the mysterious cake type thing that underpins all sweet baked goods? The theoretical tea time delicacy had eluded the Grymoire Observatory team until last week when unprecedented levels of energy and complexity were deployed to finally crack the problem. 'Basically, we sort of rigged up a crazy machine using several hoovers, a massive cardboard tube from when we had the upstairs landing re-carpeted, some left over fireworks and a couple of very nice lemon drizzle cakes that Mrs O'Flaherty made' Mr Scott continued 'these were launched towards each other at colosal speeds - almost 12 miles per hour in fact - at the end we found a lovely fruitcake with brown sugar on, in a nearby cupboard - the evidence is irrefutable.'

Not all sceptics are convinced, however. Morris Cringe, the owner of Cronkleton's busy family bakery recently told reporters 'I send a lot of different cakes up there - they're mad on the stuff - I think they just fill whole rooms with them and play silly buggers all day - anyway I don't think my bread pudding could destroy Berkshire - Norfolk possibly but then only if it was put near a bread pudding of equal mass thus causing an unstoppable chain reaction'.

For anyone interested in exploring the question of cake further; visit the Headgate Theatre, Colchester on 29/01/11 at 8pm for A (Slightly Odd) Evening with The Grymoire - Tickets £7 & £6 concs

A Slightly Odd Evening With the Grymoire

Greetings Friends of The Grymoire!

Well, Autumn has well and truly swept his russet cape over the cracked tiles and weed choked gutters of the Grymoire Observatory. Stark red stalks of cornus glow in the chilly, lambent, late afternoon sunshine as Mr Chives grumbles and coughs his damp, tubercular way around the decaying herbaceous borders with rusty secatuers, wincing at his arthritic knuckles and whistling tunelessly. Fat, patient spiders dangle like predatory fruit from their sparkling, pendulous webs and scuttle gleefully after hapless midges and dead drunk wasps; all is mouldy, drooping, sodden and bent amid a riot of reds, browns, yellows and wreaths of bonfire smoke.

Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the Grymoire Observatory, the ancient rhythms of that crumbling pile continue uninterrupted by the turning of the year. The Tea Trolley of Occult Significance continues to trundle on its inscrutable hajj along the dark, oak wainscotted passages - Philip the Homunculus lovingly blows the last of the wood shavings from his home made pipe rack and Messrs Shillaker and Scott put the finishing touches to their latest wax cylinder of popular beat classics.

And in the cool cellar, surrounded by dusty rows of pointless bottled quince and yellowing back-copies of Amateur Satanism, the housekeeper Mrs O'Flaherty distractedly cranks with a beefy Irish forearm and inky fingers, the handle of an ancient clattering Gestetner duplicator. She pauses, glancing upwards through narrowed eyes as the unmistakable sounds of sorcery, organ grinding and Osiris worship disturb her ill tempered reverie for the hundredth time that morning and then looks down at the freshly minted stack of parchment flyers that is the fruit of her morning's labour. Taking one from the top she reads aloud:

A (SLIGHTLY ODD) EVENING WITH THE GRYMOIRE

at the Headgate Theatre, Colchester

Saturday 29/01/11 - 8pm

Tickets: £7 or £6 concs

Messrs Shillaker and Scott invite you to join them at Colchester prestigious Headgate Theatre for their yearly jamboree and an evening of splendid jiggery-pokery!

attractions include:

Grymoire Bingo, The Pants of Doom, the Tea Trolley of Occult Significance and The Mademe-cum-Nearly Horn Dance!

GASP! At the terrible tale of Meredith Hardy and the Alderman! LEARN about the nesting habits of the delightful ptarmigan! SEE what happens when Adam forgets to have a proper tea before getting to the performance! GROAN at the infuriating self justification of alcoholic car salesman Terry Shears!

Warning: Light refreshments may be fired into the audience at low to medium velocities.

In Short - A Capital Evening is Assured!

……daft buggers, mutters Mrs O.