Rubble Club Archives

Hello, Rubble Clubbers, this is Madge Dumpling speaking. Welcome to the ever-changing (but ever present) hidden land of Undergrowby. If you are one of the Growbies, (Undergrowby gnomes) sitting in my parlour waiting for the buffet to be served, you may be wondering where I am. Well, thanks to my magic laptop, I can run the meeting from afar, and if I wanted, I could even be on my holidays and still chair the meeting. As it happens I am sitting experimentally in the back yard under my umbrella in case it rains, and I will be in shortly, but the scientist in me is content that my experiment has worked. Next week, who knows where I’ll be?
Here I am back again just in time to get the rock cakes out of the oven. Oh good, you have already grouped all your rockies together in a circle to meet each other, just the way I do. You are learning fast, Rubble Clubbers. This meeting is beginning to run itself, which is just as well, because I can’t live for ever and someone amongst you has to keep up the old Stone Quarry traditions whem I’m gone. Learning the Dumpling Magic might take a while, so I am hoping to spot an apprentice amongst you shortly, to pick up seamlessly where I leave off. One day YOU may become the Quarrymistress of Undergrowby and chairman of the Rubble Club. But not yet.
I am still alive.
This week there have been dark clouds and rain on and off, which are very rare here in sunny Blackpool. The rain completely spoilt my plans for Bank Holiday Monday night, when I was supposed to be joining the promenade cycle ride. My own bike is too small (3 inches tall) to mingle with the humans, so I wheedled my way round Grandad Gray to fix me and the pet rocks up with alternative transport in the form of a new bike trailer attached to his bike. We were going to travel in style down the promenade, waving at the crowds, but as you know, pet rocks hate the rain so I had to forgo the trip. He accused us of being a wimp and threatened to take his giant poodle instead. The intelligent poodle also refused to go, because, like pet rocks, they hate the rain too, so the shiny new bike trailer emblazened with adverts for the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road still stands unused in the garage. If you ever see him out and about on it in Blackpool, watch out for me, the pet rocks and the poodle in the trailer. If you shout “Yoo hoo, Madge!” I’ll get Grandad Gray to stop while I give you a pet rock for your trouble.
Now, I promised you a lecture on the Fire Element before summer is over. If you are sitting comfortably I will begin.
Pet rocks belong not to the fire element but to the earth element. Once you know what element of nature something belongs to, you can understand its natural needs, its natural gifts and its natural enemies, so you can take care of it intelligently. An earth element creature like a pet rock needs fire. On the five-elements chart fire is the mother and creator of earth. When a fire dies down, anyone can see that magically and quite naturally, a new mound of earth(ash) is left behind. The bigger the fire, the bigger the mound of earth it can produce.
In the middle of the earth on which we live there is, as we know, a ball of fire which created a rocky, earthen surface cool enough for us to live on. Fire is the mother of all those rocks; all that earth.
The pattern of fire(and therefore a pet rocks’ favourite pattern) is a triangle pointing to heaven. Sometimes many triangles will cling together and the points radiate around outwards in a circle, like the sun and the stars. They are always trying to move outwards to the sky, catching on to things as they go, spreading like a net, or an infectious disease(which is considered to be a fire element illness in Undergrowby).
When a volcano erupts its fire races up and out towards the sky then showers down its contents to create new fertile soil and rock formatons. Its lava spreads like a net over everything, burning away the past and creating a clean, crisp, sterile new beginning on which life forms settle. Millions of pet rocks begin life this way, complete with smiley faces, ejected directly from the heart of the earth. With the first rainfall and cold snap their faces are no longer smiley, because water and cold is the enemy of earth. Water is often used to extinguish fires for this very reason. Pet rocks hate the rain, as I tell you again and again. Warm baths are acceptable, and in a heatwave, a plunge in a saucer of water is always fun, but relentless rain …….NO!
By the time a volcano has cooled down, the pet rocks’ faces have completely disappeared, hidden from view till I find them somewhere, washed up by the tides of the future, or unearthed by diggers, and place them on my hearth where the raging fire and my fiery Dumpling magic chant fills them with a renewed sense of their twinkly fiery history. We Growbies are taught that the fire element in our bodies dwells inside our heart, mind, consciousness and memory. Its radiance, or lack of it, is manifested in our facial expression. The smilier someone looks, the happier they are, and the more fire they are spreading. Fun and laughter spreads like wildfire, and like the aforementioned infectious diseases, so in the middle of a rainstorm, it’s good to tell a few jokes to your pet rocks to stoke up the fire and create an antidote to the droopy, scary water element fears from which your pet rock may be suffering.
So, Rubblers, when catering for your pet rocks, remember the fire element and its nature, and provide it in all its ways for your little pets, and for the earth element part of you rown nature, which dwells not in the heart, but in the stomach, spleen, pancreas, muscles and flesh. All these parts of you will love fire element things, which are heat, light,happiness, sunshine, hot food, the colour red, dryness, the south, showing off, laughter, talking, fantasy, imagination, love, romance, clinging, nets, entertainment, merriment, bonfires, smoke, the smell of burning, magic tricks and crispy crunchy spicy food(like my rock cakes).
If you have gone to sleep with the hypnotic sound of my voice going on and on about the fire element(one of my favourite subjects), I daresay you will be having vivid dreams because that’s the kind of sleep the fire element produces. It’s the fire in your heart and mind showering itself upon your consciousness in that crazy way only dreams can do.
No wonder the pet rocks are only coaxed back to life by my fire, on my cosy happy hearth with me in a jolly world of my own, singing the Dumpling magic chant, is it? Now it is all making perfect sense to you, isn’t it, Rubblers?
Wobbin the Wizard, who made me my magic laptop, has just arrived at the meeting. I have asked him along to get himself on my laptop and create a chat room in cyber space for you all, Rubblers, so you can meet each other and exchange pet rock gossip. I will let you know how we get on. Visit the Undergrowby web site if you can’t wait till next week, and need to know sooner. Unless I meet you before in cyber space, I remain for ever your faithful friend and chairman, Madge Dumpling.

Hello, you have clicked the correct buttons, Rubble Clubbers, and landed yourselves back in my parlour for another jolly meeting. Hello, little rockies, perch yourselves along there next to my newborns so you can see my familiar old face and read what’s going on here in Undergrowby(the land where you too were born). Thank you for bringing them, Rubblers. I’m glad to see you are taking responsible pet rock ownership seriously. They all like to return to the mountain from which they are chip from time to time, and without you bringing them to the Rubble Club every Friday, their history would be nothing but a memory.
History is, after all, a pet rock’s speciality subject. They love to remember and absorb absolutely everything they hear, see, feel and do. Ask them to memorise the words to a song and they will. Ask them to memorise a film script and they will. They would be fine actors and singers if only they had an audible voice. We alone, Rubble Clubbers, can listen to their silent voices and understand their needs. That’s because you love them, you are thinking, in your modest way. Well, let me tell you, Rubble Clubbers, you are a little bit magical and sensitive too, or you would never have been chosen by them that day at the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road, Blackpool. Pet rocks are very stubborn and will not go home with just anyone. Rest assured, you are gifted.
It’s just as well the rest of the world can’t hear their voices as well as us, because there would be no need for all those encyclopaedias and filing cabinets out there. The pet rocks would be happy to remember and recite back all our information for us about everything since time began, and they would be used as slaves everywhere. And what a waste of their fine minds that would be. No, they’re better off with us, Rubble Clubbers, bringing their calm, gentle, lucky life force into the midst of friends like us who adore them and are eager to understand their stony-silent touchy-feely language. Bridging the gap between rock and human is your own peculiar calling, and if you keep coming to the Rubble Club and following my guidance, you can achieve it.
Help yourselves to the rock cakes and gravel tea while I shuffle around and ask my pet rocks to remind me what the business of the day is. Ah yes, thank you. Volcanos. If you remember, last week I was having a shortage of raw materials for the pet rocks and considering ways of charming up a volcano here in Blackpool to throw up a new mountain for me, but I have thought better of it since then. I have become quite fond of the place exactly as it is, and although the Rocky Headlands (or so I call it) is somewhat artificial as rocks go, I would miss it if it went up in the air with a bang. Anyway, as it happens, the specimens have returned to the seashore so I have abandoned planning for a volcano after all, much to my rockies’ disappointment. They love a nice raging fire, as we all know, so as a consolation prize, I have made some little mini volcano incense cone burners with a secret hidey hole inside, so they can play at being smoking volcanos whenever I decide it is a good idea. I never let them loose with fire-making equipment when I am absent, but as long as I am there to watch and light the cones for them, my parlour will remain intact. If you want one of my volcanos for your own little rockies, you can buy one of my fireproof, Rubble Club recommended stoneware creations from the Magic Wand Factory Shop.
I was planning to go in depth with a long rambling lecture on the history of the fire element in Undergrowby today but time has beaten me, so it wll have to wait till next week. I have to thank Anonymous for a lovely cheery letter, and Grandad Gray for wiping off his own nonesensical gobbledygook which he wrote just to check if his computer was working correctly. Linedancer, my trusty prefect, alerted Granny Gray to the ‘item removed’ from my mailbag which drew my attention to it. Now we have all got to the bottom of it and a confession has been extracted from Grandad Gray. We will not be having any items of correspondance removed ever again, I hope. Thank you, Linedancer. Where would I be without you?
I expect you are all looking forward to your lecture on the fire element in Undergrowby, well so am I, so be sure to return for it. If no one arrives, I will just talk to myself and the rockies. Till then, I remain your reliable friend and chairman, Madge Dumpling.

Hello Rubble Clubbers, this is Madge Dumpling here welcoming you and your pet rocks to my tiny underground parlour for another little get-together in the interests of pet rock welfare and pet rocking in general. As usual I can endeavour to keep you up to date on all matters every owner needs to know about the cute little darlings.
For some unfathomable reason I am having difficulty finding many suitable specimens of rock this week as I tunnel my way around Undergrowby below ground and above ground here in Blackpool. Perhaps the vast numbers of visitors have beaten me to them. Something strange is going on and I don’t know what it is. At this rate the pet rock birth rate will be at an all-time low this month. I stand at the water’s edge waiting for the tide to wash in a new batch for me but sadly, there is nothing. I am thinking of catching an ancient magic tram to the distant land of Fleetwood if only I could jump high enough to mount one. Rubble Clubbers, if you see me with my ladder at your tram stop you will now know what my plan is, and you might be kind enough to delay the tram driver (show him your pet rocks and strike up a conversation about them) long enough for me to get up my ladder unnoticed. I understand, from converations I hear along the promenade, that you can get anything you want in Fleetwood at the biggest market anyone has ever seen. Perhaps, I am thinking, they might sell bags of pebbles there, some of which might turn out to be pet rock seeds for my own world-famous top secret magical purposes. Meanwhile, I shall tunnel my way around, ever the optimist, hoping for a change in my fortunes.
As it happens it is just as well that things have been a bit slack this week because my mailbag has been full to overflowing and I have read my letters again and again, a tear in my eye with gratitude for all your kind thoughts, Rubblers. I even had a nice chatty email from a Rubble Clubber called Cliff ( I can’t decide whether it is Cliff, my No 2 prefect, human friend of Linedancer who is my trusty No.1 prefect, or Cliff, Linedancer’s new pet rock typing away to me on its shiny new pet rock laptop). Linedancer, if you are listening, perhaps you need to rename your pet rock Little Cliff, then we know who’s who?
My new adorable friends round at the Blackpool Tourist Information Centre have overwhelmed me with their efficiency and kindness this week. Not only have they been handing out my leaflets guiding lots of lovely visitors round to the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road, they have worked out how to press the comments button at the bottom of my page, and written me a delightful appreciative letter about my work. There was a knock on my door one day this week and when I got there no one was there, but there was a big parcel with presents in it for me from someone(and I suspect it was the Tourist Informers). As a result, my parlour is now strewn with enchanted fairy lanterns, I have a new tin for my pet rock food and I have a new silky embroidered sleeping bag for my bed cupboard. I took one look at it and threw out my lumpy old thistledown cocoon like a shot. So this is how Blackpool gnomes can be expected to live! I feel like a fairy queen, not just a Quarrymistress. And I know what you are thinking, Rubble Clubbers, yes I am truly a kind of royalty in my own right, and I deserve to be treated like a little queen, don’t I? After the meeting has finished I am thinking of making some new prefects’ badges for them. For their thoughtfulness and open-hearted good-natured Blackpooliness they must be promoted as soon as possible.
I have tried a new recipe for the rock cakes this week, Rubblers. I hope you like them. They are Blackpool Rock flavour. Guess what the secret ingredient is! I heard they were handing out free rock at the library, so I made a pilgrimage there(what with the rock shortage and all) and found it was not real rock at all, it was that strange minty pink Blackpool rock, made from sugar, which I know you humans seem to love. I pounded them into bits with a big stone and threw them into the baking mix. Go on, eat them all up. I expect you were wondering when I was going to get round to the buffet, weren’t you? You must be starving, having to listen to all my news before you have been fed. I am forgetting my manners. Sorry. Peppermint (rock) tea anyone?
I am going to leave you now, Rubble Clubbers with this thought. Volcanos. If we can’t find enough rocks around the ground, perhaps it’s time we charmed some up from under the ground. If anyone has any ideas how to charm up a volcano, please let me know. I will let you into my invention for it next week, but until then, I remain your true friend and devoted chairman, Madge Dumpling.

Come on in, Rubble Clubbers, you are in the safe hands of Madge Dumpling, your friendly little chairman and pet rock expert. Don’t be nervous, it will spoil the party. Help yorself to a rock cake and set up your little rockies next to mine so they can mingle and exchange necessary information. They will not be reporting back to me later with all your scandal, don’t worry. Unlike Granny Gray, my shopkeeper, they do not gossip, not even with me, their creator. World champion pet rock whisperer though I may be, they will only tell me about themselves, and nothing about anyone not present. They are the soul of discretion, much like myself. You can, and must, tell them all your secrets. Rest assured, it will go no further.
Granny Gray tells me that my trusty magical prefect, Linedancer, obediently wearing her prefect’s badge, brought a friend into the shop several days ago, and, ever the attractor of rock formations as she is, it seems she has attracted another, because according to Granny Gray, his name was Cliff, and like the cliff after which he was aptly named, he adopted a tall new pet rock to add to Linedancer’s array of rock formations. I expect she will be calling it Cliff after its kind rock-bearing benefactor.
This week’s business has been shelved because I have been too busy collecting dry sticks ready for my winter bonfires. Pet rocks love a bonfire, and summer-gathered sticks are their favourite fuel. They are full of the cheerful fire element, inside and out, and in the dead of winter they make such a happy blaze, the Rubble Club meetings would not be the same without them. In the evenings on hot, stick-collecting days I always sit at the table in my parlour and entertain the rockies by building a few tiny triangular pet rock bonfire stacks. They love a craft demonstration, don’t they, Rubble Clubbers? With a flash of my inborn fire-related Dumpling magic, I then amaze the rockies by turning the stacks into stone to make toy smoking bonfires which will never burn away. On dull, overcast and rainy days the rockies need something to take their minds off the weather. That’s whenI place some of my magic incense under the stone bonfires and set it alight to smoke. For all the world it is like a pet rock bonfire night, (but without the heat, which would be a terrible nuisance in the summer). If you are visiting Blackpool, Rubble Clubbers, you can obtain one of my toy bonfires at the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road. They manifest only in summer, so when they are gone, they are gone.
If you fail to obtain one, the next best thing to cheer them up is to turn all the lights on and sing a loud, fire-related song to them. Pretend you are a bonfire and sing what comes naturally. If you are out on the road with your pet rocks in your pocket and there is a sudden scary downpour, you could switch on a tiny pocket torch for them for reassurance. It’s good to get into the habit of remembering, evry time you pick up your umbrella for yourself,(just in case it rains) to pick up a torch for your pet rocks,(just in case it rains). Well, it’s your responsibility after all. They give their all to you and so it’s not much to ask.
I have made some miniature pet rock cakes (as tiny as a baby’s fingernail) this week for you to take home as a special treat. They are exclusive to Rubble Club members and can not be bought, so if you forget to take one home you can ask Granny Gray for one round at the shop. The magic words you have to say are “Tell Madge I forgot my little cake”. Then Granny Gray will know you have come from cyber space. She is dying to see a cyber spaceperson (and so am I!), so please make her day and say the magic words. I will be listening under the counter and following you out of the shop through my secret underground tunnel network, plotting my way back to your home. I don’t mean to pry, I just want to see what cyber space looks like.
The door has just swung open and that green-faced Wanderella Windmeddler from the Wandmaker’s Forest has just flounced in with her basket of pet rocks and dry sticks from the forest. She is always on the look-out for a new apprentice wandmaker, because nobody is ever quite competent enough for her. In the evenings when the shop is closed, she has been trying to train up Granny Gray for the job, but Granny Gray is too busy gossiping to concentrate on the wand-making, so here she is again, seeing who else is here at the Rubble Club. Linedancer, watch out! I have to go and cover up the rock cakes before she starts fiddling with them. I wouldn’t care if she ate them but she just messes them all up and makes insulting comments about them. I’ll leave you then, Rubblers, to mingle with the membership, and until next Friday I remain your devoted chairman and friend, Madge Dumpling.

Hello to pet rock owners worldwide and welcome once again to my cosy parlour under the rubble pile here in Undergrowby, Blackpool. Oops, I meant here at the Stone Quarry, Undergrowby, Blackpool. While we are on the subject of official addresses, please do not expect the postman to deliver your letters to me because as you may or may not know, Undergrowby keeps shifting around and we have no letterboxes. You will have to email me straight onto my laptop at my cyber space address which is madgedumpling@undergrowby.co.uk, or if you are clever enough you can just press the comments button here on the Rubble Club page. Most of you are clearly not very bright because I have only had five correspondents so far and one of them was myself. I can only guess there must be a confused postman trundling daily around Blackpool with a very heavy mailbag lookng for Undergrowby. If anyone sees him please take pity on him and point him to the Magic Wand Factory on Dickson Road.
Phew! It’s been so much hotter than usual this week here in eternally sunny Blackpool. I hope you have got your pet rocks sitting in a pool of water to keep them cool. A jam jar lid will suffice if you have not got an official Rubble Club spa bath. A little ice cube floating alongside would be welcome, I’m sure, and a dash of that delicious Blackpool staple, ice cream would be a nice surprise, plopped on top of the gravel in the feeding bowl. It will probably have melted and run down all over the place before they get round to eating it, but it’s the thought that counts. A kind sentiment will never go unappreciated by your little rockies. They give their all, Rubble Clubbers, and so should you.
Blinded by the sun on the Promenade, I got lost this week. Luckily, I have my inborn Dumpling magic to rely upon, and it guided me to a little round building near to Blackpool Tower, with a big letter ‘i’ on top of it. It turned out to be the tourist information centre, and although I am only six inches tall, and must cut quite a spectacle in a crowd of humans, no one noticed me. I suspect they mistook me for one of those pigeons who congregate along the rows of sunbathers on the promenade, begging for scraps. Anyway although I shouted at the top of my voice for assistance, no one heard me. I am beginning to think I may be invisible when I am out and about, but then again, there are such strange spectacles out there on Blackpool promenade that I in my pointed hat and quarrymistress outfit may seem quite ordinary by comparison.
I was telling you about the information centre. It was most extraordinary. Once I had given up shouting in vain for help, I wandered around in my usual exploratory manner, looking for rock samples but there were only piles of leaflets about tourist attractions, etc.. I read through all the ones on my low level, thereby plotting my amusements for the next few weeks, and then there along the bottom row I came upon a leaflet saying ‘Visit the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road’ and just as I spotted it, a bucket and spade nearly knocked me over. The holiday-maker who owned the offending items snatched one of the leaflets from right under my nose without waiting for me to say “after you”, as I was about to do. Either I am invisible as I am beginning to suspect, or that person had no manners. She took it to the counter and a very pretty, bright young lady and handsome young man behind the counter got out their own wands from their pockets, showing off, and began to tell her what a wonderful place the Wand Factory was and gave her precise directions how to get there. I was expecting them to get their pet rocks out of her pockets, but no. Nothing more. Next time I am lost by the tower, I will take them a family of pet rocks. Then they will really have something to show off about!
Off went the holiday-maker, bucket and spade rattling wildly out of control and I, at a safe distance, followed. She joined her family who were sitting on a bench nearby. I stood under the bench and listened in to their conversation, accidentally of course. A flock of hungry pigeons waddled up to the bench, hoping we had just been for a bag of chips at Harry Ramsden’s across the road, or a snack from one of the seafront cafes. I shooed them off because I couldn’t hear what the holiday-makers were saying with all that cooing and squabbling going on. As I hoped, they decided to hike up to Dickson Road to get themselves a magic wand, so as luck would have it, they gave me a guided tour back home. The pigeons abandoned us for another party before we reached the North Pier.
So Rubble Clubbers, let that be a lesson to you. Carry your pet rocks with you at all times and the Dumpling magic will be with you too, bringing you good fortune and lucky coincidences like it does for me. I am too hot for baking this week so I have made some seaweed ice cream for your delight. I stirred a bit of seaweed into a cornet that someone(by Dumpling magic) dropped on the pavement as I went by. The little rockies love to watch it melt and drip all over the table. And if they are happy, so am I.
Have a lovely week till we meet again next Friday. Until then I remain your devoted chairman and lucky, hot little friend, Madge Dumpling.