Whittlesea Straw Bear

Straw Bear Festival, Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire.
The festival is held every January.

A glimpse of your own corpse

Carry a candle into every corner of the house, then look into the mirror in the candlelight. You will see what you will look like when you are dead.

Collected from a young Spanish man, recollected from his childhood in Barcelona (2.2.10)

The Maenads come to school

"Seeing your item regarding warning notices for ceiling fans reminded me of a time some years ago when my children came home from high school saying a teacher had been decapitated by a ceiling fan. As I knew the teacher in question I thought I'd better call and see if his head was still attached. He was still alive, but he'd had to go to hospital for stitches - obviously he didn't read those directions as he stood on a chair to open a window, not noticing the fan. His blood was sprayed and he received a nasty cut, but the way rumours work it became a decapitation. By the next day the story ran that he was still speaking as his head rolled across the classroom floor."

Full story at Column 8, 25th January 2010.

Dogon funeral dance

Bingo calls

The set of bingo calls below has been taken from the Let's Go Bingo website. Endless variations exist in bingo halls across the UK, and the calls are constantly changing and being updated. For further examples, see e.g. Charnwood Catalogue, Bingo-UK, Bingo Mad, or Bingo Lingo, or just google the phrase "bingo calls" – or best of all get yourself down to your local bingo hall.


1. Kelly's Eye
2. One Little Duck
3. Cup of tea
4. Knock at the Door
5. Man Alive
6. Tom Nix
7. God's in Heaven
8. Garden Gate
9. Doctor's Orders
10. Gordon's Den
11. Legs Eleven
12. One Dozen
13. Unlucky for Some
14. Valentines Day
15. Young and keen
16. Sweet Sixteen
17. Dancing Queen
18. Coming of Age
19. Goodbye Teens
20. One Score
21. Key of the Door
22. Two Little Ducks
23. Thee and Me
24. Two dozen
25. Duck and Dive
26. Pick and Mix
27. Gateway to Heaven
28. Over Weight
29. Rise and Shine
30. Burlington Bertie
31. Get up and Run
32. Buckle my Shoe
33. Dirty
34. Ask for More
35. Jump and Jive
36. Three Dozen
37. A Flea in Heaven
38. Christmas Cake
39. Those Famous Steps
40. Naughty Forty
41. Time for Fun
42. Winnie the Pooh
43. Down on your Knees
44. Droopy Drawers
45. Halfway There
46. Up to Tricks
47. Four and Seven
48. Four Dozen
49. P.C. Copper
50. Half a Century
51. Tweak of the Thumb
52. Danny La Rue
53. Stuck in the Tree
54. Clean the Floor
55. Snakes Alive
56. Was she worth it?
57. Heinz Varieties
58. Make them Wait
59. Brighton Line
60. Five Dozen
61. Bakers Bun
62. Turn on the Screw
63. Tickle Me
64. Red Raw
65. Old Age Pension
66. Clickety Click
67. Made in Heaven
68. Saving Grace
69. Meal for Two
70. Three Score and Ten
71. Bang on the Drum
72. Six Dozen
73. Queen Bee
74. Candy Store
75. Strive and Strive
76. Was She Worth It
77. All the Sevens
78. Heavens Gate
79. One More Time
80. Eight and Blank
81. Stop and Run
82. Straight on Through
83. Time for Tea
84. Seven Dozen
85. Staying Alive
86. Between the Sticks
87. Torquay in Devon
88. Two fat ladies
89. Nearly there
90. Top of the Shop

Tommy on the Tubs

Passing through Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in May, 1894, some children asked me to give some money for the grave of Tommy on the Tubs. The grave was a design worked in grass upon the pavement. I asked the meaning of it, the children only smiled; I asked who was Tommy on the Tubs, and they said he was a man who used to work in the Covent Garden Market, and was drowned on the Embankment.

Recorded by John Philipps Emslie, published in Folklore, 26.2 (1915)

Cannibal beast on the rampage in South Africa

'Cannibals' rumour sparks fear in Durbs

Hundreds of concerned Phoenix, Verulam and Inanda residents were conned this week by a hoax e-mail and reports of a "black magic cannibal".

News of a "half-human, half-animal thing" circulated in schools, shops and businesses after hundreds of people descended on the Amaoti police station in Inanda last Sunday to enquire about two alleged cannibals.

SAPS spokesman Vincent Mdunge said concerned community members stormed the police station. He was not sure where they had heard that police had arrested cannibals.

Among the variations of the urban legend is that a truck containing the cannibals was hijacked and they "ate the driver, a few children, including one from Brookdale".

The e-mail also contained a photograph of the supposed cannibals preparing to eat a victim.

A local security company spokesman, Prem Balram, said the company had been "inundated with calls from residents who were afraid of being eaten".

"We've received an average of 30 calls a day. We have also been fielding about 30 e-mail queries a day since Sunday regarding the cannibals. Our callouts have increased drastically owing directly to the story in circulation."

Balram said he believed that the rumours had been fuelled by the discovery of four bodies in the north Durban area over the past two months.

One of the four was found in Dawncrest, Phoenix, in August with no internal organs. Another mutilated body was found soon afterwards in the same vicinity.

A third badly burned body was found last Wednesday near the new La Mercy airport, and the fourth body was found in a swampy area in Verulam.

In China, four men were arrested by police in August for circulating a bizarre hoax e-mail claiming that cannibals were responsible for the disappearance of 10 people.

According to international media reports, the bloggers faked photos showing the cannibals preparing to eat a human body. It is believed the same picture was used in the local e-mail.

Times Live, 24th October 2009
See also report in The Witness on the same date