In today's issue: how to get a house in London, a five word film review and some local intrigue

We are but days away from aquring our new house! Calypso has done a stellar, nay, epic job of making everything work, the Citizen Kane of home-aquiral. For future reference, here's a note of all the documents I've sent in. The following had to be sent by pigeon to the agent, the agent's ex-wife, the agent's dentist, the agent's favourite actor and the keeper of the agent's local zoo:

• Birth certificate, countersigned by the Pope and witnessed by Elvis


• 3 months bank statements from a total stranger. May only be posted between the tick and the tock at the time 1:08 AM.


• Reference of good character by a parish priest. Doesn't even need to be your parish priest, just a parish priest. We followed one for three days in the Heathen Wastes of Tortival before kidnapping him, and beating a good reference out of him with a tire iron.


• Passport, wrapped in vellum flayed from the skin of a first born child.


• Proof of studentship: will accept any item stained by own vomit, so long as it has been verified both by a barkeeper and forensics at Scotland Yard. In emergencies, also accepting used condoms, half-finished reefers or specimens of new biological cultures scraped from old food.


• In addition, bank references for a year and a day must be buried in a secret location divined from the Key of Solomon, or other suitable grimores, and not confessed under pain of death.

Only then will we be able to sign the contract, in our own blood at a crossroads under the full moon, at which point we will be given the map of secret paths leading to the heart of a dying star, where we must forge our own keys from silver filigree taken from the belly of a yearling ewe, using a hammer wrest from the Threefold Child - only then may we enter our house and be at peace.

In terms of name, I'm now leaning towards "Crack O'The Map" after a comment from my mater - our house is on the split between pages 86 and 87 of the London A-Z. This must be significant somehow. Numerology reduces those numbers to 5 and 6, which subtracted from each other give 1, and which added together makes 2 - giving us the perfect number of 1. I don't have time to apply the letter numbers of the square to this reasoning, but I am sure it is important.

Now follows my five word film review:

Mamma Mia. Don't watch it.

I could expand, but I couldn't define my feelings any more suitably.

Finally, a bit of local news. The context is this: a patch of land has been the Cobo village car park for a long, long time. Sometime last year the "true owner" stepped forward and wants rent from the shops for them to use it. He even tried putting boulders across the entrance to prevent people getting in. All this is on bizzare legal ground: even if it is his land, he's still being demonstrably mean and greedy, and it's in the best interests of everyone other than him that the carpark stays free and open. His newest trick was gradually filling the car park spaces with scrapped up cars - again, something he is entitled to do if it is his land, but still very base and irritating. Hurrah then:


http://www.thisisguernsey.com/2009/08/06/cobo-strikes-back/

Can they prosecute people for doing something against the law, if every single person in Guernsey is on their side?