Jazz-Hands

Yes, it’s official. On the noticeboard and stuffs.

Why is it a town hall, but the citizens are villagers.

If this is making a ticking noise, I am going to be very unhappy.

Time I mentioned some of the local yokels. You’ve already saw Cookie and Maelle, here’s Bones – the other dog in Dalby.

According to the Animal Crossing: New Leaf game guide, he is lazy. That explains why he spends all day wandering about with a watering can, net or shovel and never sits on his bum for a minute.

Fauna is as sweet as they come.

Then there is Kevin…

Or to be more to the mark…

If Kevin was a bacon buttie, he’s eat himself.

But it’s good to have some townies with a bit of self-assurance. It makes up for Isabelle’s over-dedication to the job to the point of neurosis.

Lucky there’s no smoking in this game. She’d be demolishing a pack of Luckys behind the Town Hall four times a day, if not something stronger.

Mayorial Memo To Myself: get everyone in Dalby to chill-the-Bell-out!

You really want me to answer that obvious feedline? This isn’t Morecombe and Wise.

With someone call Camofrog due to move in, getting some sort of plan thought up for this place is an idea.

One of which will be getting a Health and Safety Executive formed to deal with these pitfall seeds. They’re everywhere!

Start humming ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’ to get the full effect for the next bit.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble ladybro; but I have the heart and stomach of a, em, mayor, and of a mayor of Dalby too, and think foul scorn that cicadas or zebra turkeyfish, or any frogs of the pond, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

To which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up the net and rod.

I will catch them on the beeches. I will catch in the rivers. I will catch them trilling noisely on the trees or lurking in silence. I will catch them flying in the air or scuttling along the ground, or indeed skating on the pond. 

I will donate them to the musuem, and the surplus sell for Bells for public works, whatever the cost may be.

I will never surrender – except if the battery on the Nintendo 3DS gets too low and I have to let it recharge.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat – and being repeatedly stung by those bloody bees. 

Yeah, as if you didn’t know, lambchop.

Nookling Junction? Hold the phone, are you and your brother the oily little skeets that run the Nookling Discount Rail Fares website which got me into this mess?

Coming straight over, I’ve a bone to pick.

Sure, I might only nail one of each of your bollocks to the table for fitting me up like a toff, you shifty little furbag.

I’m Mayor of this lump of scrub, and I’m not even entitled to a credit account at the shops.

Thanks for the warning you and Lambchop are in cahoots. First rule of survival, know your enemies allies.

It’s the ‘I know who you are’ that says most in this one-sided conversation. Never trust a duck. Especially a French, Quebecquoi or Walloon duck. She’s probably in charge of the local secret police keeping tabs on outsiders like me.

This place was a complete waste of time. The one on the sewing machine was about as friendly as a redneck’s rottweiler, and that Labelle would have said ‘that’s not a bad choice’ if I’d tried on a used panty shield for a hat.

Think I’m going to give these Able Sisters a berth for now. Besides, a new outfit’s not going to get me out of here. Unless it’s one I can pretend to be a station porter and sneak on board after shoving that monkey bound and gagged into the storage lockers after coshing him a few times – plus one for luck.

That sounds like the beginnings of a cunning plan. I must make notes.

In the meantime, I need my space. When’s this house of mine going to be ready, you shifty little skeet?

DOWN PAYMENT OF 10 000 BELLS?

Hold the phone, I’m mayor around here!

Come to it, what wage am I getting anyway for running this hovel?!

Oh, I get it now – the sneaky little furry f**kers!

This entire place is set up so everyone else works in service industries and they kidnap some poor sucker off the train and con them into doing all the hard manual work they run off.

Even the local museum is expecting me to provide them with insects, fish, fossils and artwork. Sure bud, stick a broom handle up my butt and I’ll sweep the floor at the same time.

Mayor? Mule more like it, or ass to be even more accurate.

Is this all some sort of Pierre Boule scenario I’ve found myself trapped in? A land where the animals get the humans to be beasts of burden while pretending that they are in fact elevated higher than themselves?

I’m even having to pay for the tools in order to make some cash to make all these little skeets rich. Is there no end to this?

This bobber you’re talking about had better be to do with the rod, because if it’s anything to do with my person you’re getting slapped.

See this half-shut face? I do it a lot.

Shaking the trees gets you oranges to sell on, occasional coins or a piece of furniture (I have yet to find out why the locals go shoving furniture up the trees, unless it’s another of their sick jokes to torment me with – having a good laugh watching me dodge another table speeding towards my head.

But too often it means getting bees in the face, no matter how fast I run or swoop the net at them. I get the hive to sell, but it means walking around with one eye shut in pain the rest of the day.

Fishing however, got that one licked. It’s easy big money when you know how.

Wait until the fish (a dark tadpole shaped shadow of varying size) starts bumping the bobber – the second it goes down with a loud ‘plop’, hit the (A) and keep hold as the fish spins like a whirlpool.

Don’t wait for fish to appear. Walk up and down the sea shore or river banks (never run – it scares the fish away) and cast when you see one. Try to get the bobber as near as possible to the fish without hitting it. If there’s no fish around, go to another area and come back later.

I gave that first fish I caught to the museum. Decided a bit of public spiritedness first might improve my standing around here, seeing as they had a museum with nothing inside it.

It didn’t take me too long to have a whole treasure trove (for them) of items to stock – bugs, fish, fossils (you can find four of the latter a day, think the place is in some sort of fault line that forces fossils to the near surface with X marking the spot conveniently. Maybe it’s something to do with the power from that tree I planted for them?

A turkeyfish and a crawfish. It’s a start. Off to bed.

I even got some sympathy for my bee stung face from Cookie. Maybe she’s not a secret murderous psychotic like the rest? Maybe.

But when I was about to camp down for the night, guess who burst in without so much as a knock (yes, I know you can’t knock the flaps of a tent, but she could have banged sticks or rocks together to make a knocking sound).

Notice how the conversation quickly turns to roasting and burning yet again? I’ve got your number, sunshine. First thing tomorrow, get a stone to sharpen that spade’s edges. If I’m for an appointment with the wicker man, there’s one or two of these furry psychos that will be meeting their Trickster first.

Oh? You’ve given me a night light.

That was, em, kind.

Thanks… I guess…

Thrown off the train because the guard said I didn’t have a valid ticket. I should have known that the Nookling Discount Rail Fares site online wasn’t legit!

Today can’t get any worse.

Wait? What? I never signed up to be mayor of anywhere!

Great – get me a ticket right back out of here. I’m close to having a major freak out from being thrown off the train into a town full of clothes wearing animals that speak like they breathe helium instead of oxygen, and have announced I’m now their mayor.

Nothing personal, but I’m bailing before Gef the Talking Mongoose shows up.

I’m sure you’re all very nice too (please don’t eat me) but it’s all those flowers, trees and the sea, you see.  They’ll play havoc with my asthma, they will.

Health reasons – the never fails Get Out Of Jail Free card for all occasions.

Except this one. Rats.

Years of the James Bond franchise have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that being told by a complete stranger that another complete stranger has told them to expect you is Not Good.

This is Not Good.

If I’m mayor, am I not entitled to a sumptious mayorial residence with the job?

What? All I get is a plot of land, and you’re billing me for it?

Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?

I am underwhelmed by your generosity.

I take it the mailbox is so the Dalby Chamber of Commerce can start billing me for existing as soon as possible?

Where’s that Isabelle? Back at Town Hall? Listen fleabag, I’ve been here five minutes and the first people you take me to results in a shakedown. Isn’t being mayor meant to mean I get to shakedown everyone else? What sort of screwed up sort of politics do you people practice around this joint?

What’s this? My ticket out?

Uh oh, like Big Brother Is Watching You round here is it?

Best play along, in case the locals try using non-possession of the Town Pass Card on demand as an excuse to have you shot behind the Town Hall and this Isabelle gets to eat the carcasses as a perk of her job.

Someone acting this nicey-nice has got to be an evil psychopath on the QT.

Ceremony? Special events? I’m not liking the sound of this.

Now I think about it, how did they all know my name anyway when I came out of the train station earlier?

I’d better play along. One sign I know they have some sinister scheme going on here, and they may decide to have one of their special events right away…

I was right! They are Folk o’ the Woodsie who want me to plant this tree for their Trickster god. I’d better do what they want for their Woodsie Lord and hope part of this ceremony doesn’t involve my deadings.

Smile and wave, the longer they think that I think they’re on my side the better my chances of getting out of here alive.

Let me guess, the tree is a magical lodestone for how well the town is doing.

I don’t need to guess what happens to me if it doesn’t grown strong and lively: water, moss and blood, and I’ll be supplying the blood.

It wouldn’t surprise me if these whackjobs have manipulated me into driving the sapling unknowingly into the charred decaying corpse of the last mayor, shallow buried in this spot to fertilise that which replaced the old tree which failed and died.

Look so cool did I? Yeah, I get it, and I’ll look so hot inside a big Wicker Man if I mess up. All this ‘cool’ talk – must be some water based pagan cult around here. I’ve got your number, Cookie!

I could jump into the waterfall and swim for it out to sea and escape before they knew what was happening. But in that sea there’s creatures with more teeth than a double-glazing salesman, and I’m not going to avoid being toasted by this lot only to end up a shark’s version of a sushi snack.

Could always try bluffing my way out…

… but why push my luck? Softly, softly, no catchy by monkey.

In case I don’t make it out of here alive, I’ll sneak a note onto this disused noticeboard for any who should follow me.

But just in case it isn’t as unused as I think, let’s keep it vague.

Like I said, no point pushing my luck before my first day trapped here is over.