Rubble Club Archives

Hello Rubble Clubbers! Here we are reunited in the truly dazzling Blackpool sunshine once again. You had better take off your sunglasses now or you will be tripping over the rubble when you step down into my cosy parlour here in the Stone Quarry Cottage. You have to have all your wits about you till you get used to the dim light, we don’t want you treading on any pet rocks by mistake. I am Madge Dumpling, your famous pet rock-whispering Chairman and lecturer on pet rockology. Help yourselves to rock cakes and gravel tea, Rubblers but please wait until Linda from Kilmarnoch and her mum have arrived before you tuck into the big birthday rock cake in the middle. That’s why it’s dim in here, I want it to be like the Blackpool Illuminations when I light the birthday candles for them. Meanwhile, we’ll sit in the dark politely and I’ll chat to you.

Speaking of Linda, she has been staging a mini-Illuminations of her own. She has hung a string of lights round her pet rocks’ glass bowl so they won’t feel that they are missing all the twinkly glamour of their birthplace at this time of year. In my expert opinion this is an inspired top tip and I do sincerely wish Linda would send us a photo so we can learn how to do it, then pretend it was all our own idea when we do it ourselves.

The competition has reached its end, and the winner should be announced today but when I added up the votes from the shop customers, it was an exact tie and there is only one pottery pet rock boating pool and its pottery launching steps made and waiting on the sideboard for the star prizewinner. Who do I give it to? For this reason I am keeping the voting open for the weekend and I will announce the winner on Sunday night. So come back to this spot, all you genius pet rock boat-makers, and find out who gets the star prize this time. And remember, it’s just somebody’s opinion when all’s said and done. The pet rocks and I loved all of them dearly. If Blackpool ever features a pet rock boating pool amongst its attractions, we Rubble Clubbers will show them how to fill it with boats, won’t we?  All of you will win a nice little prize for your gorgeous creations anyway, so there are never any losers here.

I have noticed that in my postbag there is a lot of chatting going on between you, so last week I asked if any of you wanted to send photos of yourselves for each other to see. No one has sent any but I sense friendships budding between you so I have put a link at the side of my page to Undergrowby’s awkwardly new facebook page, the ‘Hotspot Cafe’. If anybody knows what to do with a facebook page, please do something with it to encourage them. They don’t know what they are doing yet and you probably know lots. You are clever enough to find out what buttons to press to speak to me, so please speak to them, befriend them, stick a picture on the window, message each  or each other or whatever it takes to fill a page up with life. I may pop in, although it is not where I usually go, just to see if any of you have turned up.

I, as you probably know by now, live in the north east of Undergrowby, in a rocky gnomestead where serious, clever, sensible people like me and the pet rocks live, known as the Rocky Headlands. If you look on the map, the Hotspot Cafe is in the south of Undergrowby, in a gnomestead known as the Summerlands because, like Blackpool, the sun always shines and the fire always burns.  It is the entertainment and get-together-for-fun centre of the magical world of Undergrowby. A warm sandy stream trickles through the Summerlands dividing the Hotspot Cafe from the magic Bonfire(for health and safety reasons). By day the banks of the Stream are always crowded with day-visitors and holiday-makers sunbathing and chatting to each other, watching the strolling entertainers and puppet theatres. It is much like Blackpool Promenade. At night, the storyteller and famous actress, Estrella Star(who, though famous in Undergrowby is not quite as world-famous as me, Madge Dumpling), comes out of her hut, joins her co-star, the talented and brilliantly sensitive magic fire, and between them they perform Undergrowby stories, her words illustrated by pictures flickering in the magic haze hovering above the fire. Between these stories, entertainers and tricksters of all kinds take turns to entertain the crowds. It’s a bit like having an open air cinema suspended in mid air, but it’s alive. It’s like the Golden Mile, Blackpool, full of the fire element, sunshine bugs, gaiety, smoke and mirrors and chattiness. Even the more serious and intelligent of the Growbies, like myself, find it heart-warming and relaxing. The Hotspot Cafe, a very noisy place, is known for its piping hot and ice cold food and its non-stop world-class entertainment. There are tables inside and out, but I warn you, the food is far too dramatic for healthy eaters like us. Best to take a few rock cakes and a flask of gravel tea if you decide to go there. They won’t mind as long as you chat a lot and keep the conversation flowing. Tell them you’re from the Rocky Headlands, they’ll understand.

My football-supporting career appears to have been abruptly ended. Bear with me while I tell you all about it.  Last week I and my knitted Madge (a doll dressed like me, knitted by Linda from Kilmarnoch, the Rubble Club’s Chief Knitter) with our army of tangerine pet rocks arrived on time to catch the Seasiders’ supporters’ coach to Chelsea. Once I had settled Knitted Madge comfortably in the luggage compartment I got my collapsible ladder out, took my basket of tangerine rockies and boarded the coach to hand out a few lucky rocks to the football-supporting passengers but they refused to take them or even give me the time of day. Do they know how important my tangerine rocks are to Blackpool’s chance of winning, I wondered? It was as if I were invisible! With my ladder still propped up in the coach doorway, I could not climb up and pop the rockies into their pockets. Never mind, I thought, it will be harder work, but I’ll hand them out at the match instead. When I heaved my pet rocks back down the ladder in a huff, I found someone had closed the luggage compartment so I could not get back in. The coach driver then slammed the bus door shut and broke my ladder. I was furious!  I ran into the middle of the road waving my hands about but he took no notice and if I had not nimbly dodged to one side I would now be dead. The coach set off without me. I waited and waited and waited till it was dark but the coach never returned. The next day I went back but there was still no sign of the wicked coach.

Knitted Madge turned up two days later, robbed of her tangerine and white scarf,  dusty, depressed and bedraggled. She had been found by Wobbin the Wizard hanging out of a rubbish bag full of empty beer cans abandoned outside a chip shop near Gynn Gardens, where the observant and well-organised Wobbin spends his days and nights on patrol. It is his duty as Director of the Wandmaker’s Forest, to check everything in and around Gynn Gardens is in its correct place. He has to  remember where all the weeds, insects and birds are in Gynn Gardens, and protect them with his life. He re-plants missing weeds removed by mistake by the well-meaning but careless gardener person. If it were not for him there is no doubt that we Growbies would have no nettles, one of our essential (and rare here in Blackpool) food ingredients. For this reason he is considered a hero. Anyway, enough about him, …by a miracle, Knitted Madge’s own little tangerine rockies were still tucked safely in her knitted bag which has my initials M.D. embroidered upon it (by Chief Knitter, Linda. Thank goodness for her attention to detail). As soon as he saw the initials M.D., Wobbin recognised her and returned her to me. He had dusted her down and carried her home on a stretcher which he made from a chip tray, like the true hero that he is. Sadly, because she is not real, only knitted, she could not tell me what had happened, but I know this, she will be staying at home in future. And so will I.  Any football supporters  who care enough if Blackpool win the match will, in future, have to come and get their own pet rocks from a wide selection at the Magic Wand Factory Shop on Dickson Road, Blackpool. I have done my best and now I have my pet rock whispering to do.

I shall be back on Sunday night to announce the competition winner, and meanwhile by way of an apology for my long rambling football horror story, here is a picture of the Summerlands’ Bonfire for you to cheer you up again and remind you to find the Facebook’s  ‘Hotspot Cafe’ somewhere to the south of here.

The doorway to the right is the Storyteller’s Cottage. She only comes out after dark. The bonfire’s assistant, Woody the Woodcutter is selecting the bonfire’s wardrobe for this evening’s performance while the bonfire, never completely asleep, with one eye open, poses for his portrait. The Hotspot Cafe is across the stream to the left, outside the picture.

I will not say goodbye like I usually do because I will be back on Sunday.   I will only say,…to be continued. By Madge Dumpling.

Hello I am back again to announce the winner of the competition. It is Ellie, but the voting was very close and although Ellie wins the big boating pool and launching steps, all of you deserve a prize so you will each win a little tiny blue-glazed learner’s pool with stepping stones and a lucky ducky and frightened orphan who is learning to get used to the water. Come and pick up your prizes whenever you like, all of you, or let me know your address if you want me to post it on to you.

Now then, those of you who are coming to Gynn Gardens next Sunday, try to think up some interesting fact about your pet rock, like what its name is and what it likes to eat, why you love it,… and so on. Or maybe if you are good at rhymes, think up a pet rock rhyme. If you get interviewed by Radio Lancashire, you will then have something to say and you might not get tongue-tied and stuck for words. Or not. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. Just come along and enjoy messing with the clay and adopting your new free orphan. Any good rhymes, etc., that I hear, will get published at the next meeting.

Right, now I’m off until next week. I will remind you again next Saturday with any last minute arrangements that I don’t know already. Meanwhile I remain your  devoted Chairman and jolly little friend, Madge Dumpling.

Hello to all you devoted pet rock owners and welcome back to the Stone Quarry cottage in the Rocky Headlands of Undergrowby. I am your friendly Chairman, the world-famous pet rock whisperer Madge Dumpling. Like the eternal flame that never dies I am here once again to speak to you in person on important matters related to your little pets. Today it seems I have no football-related business to do, so we can take our time and lounge about together watching our pet rocks mingling once again with their old friends. They are as good as gold, look at them, having a silent game of I Spy together on the mantelpiece.  Pet rocks do like a nice big reunion, don’t they? If yours are too shy to go on the mantelpiece, sit them on your lap in the warmth of your laptop where they can read my words of Dumpling Wisdom. It’s the least I can do for them. Once again I have laid on a fabulous party for us all to get together once a week, with nice crunchy titbits to eat.

The competition has one week to go before the voting ends and a winner is announced. There have been no more entries.

The postbag is very full with Rubble Clubbers chatting away to each other merrily. If you want to send me photos of yourselves for the other Rubble Clubbers to see, I will see if Grandad Gray can fix them up somewhere so you can catch a glimpse of each other as you really are. If you don’t want to, and prefer to remain mysteriously invisible, like the Growbies,  that’s fine  by me. But if you do send photos, be sure to include your best-behaved pet rock in the picture with you, because pet rocks do not like to be invisible, do they? They are proper little show-offs, and not at all interested in being mysteriously invisible.

Sunny Blackpool’s hard-working sun managed to dry up the unusual, short-lived rainstorms earlier this week but no matter how beautifully it shines it can never stop the Blackpool breeze. And since the Illuminations have been turned on, the Blackpool breeze, much to the sun’s dismay, has got itself whipped up into a rather high wind. Nobody likes a high wind, especially visitors battling their way along the promenade with their pet rocks in their pockets, trying to enjoy the lights. For this reason I have decided to dedicate this week’s picture feature to the important challenge of wind-related pet rock ailments and their cures.

If gnomes or humans get wind strike a different treatment is necessary. Rub the wind pools at the back of your neck, just below your skull, then squeeze the sides of the nail-beds of your pointing fingertip and thumb-tip, (both hands), bend over sideways to stretch out one side, then the other, and then lie down and relax in a warm bath or a warm bed, with or without a lucky ducky. And remember, don’t panic! If your eyes are still crossed write to me and I’ll tell you what to do next.  

And now while you all enjoy the buffet I am going to get my football outfit ready for tomorrow. The pet rocks and I have a long way to go again in our tangerine outfits. If the wind is high it would be much safer to stay at home, but if we get wrapped up we may survive. I will be glad when the football season is over.

Don’t forget 2nd October in Gynn Gardens, Gynn Square Blackpool,  10 a.m. till 1p.m. a real live Rubble Club Meeting with free pet rocks and clay play, and the BBC Radio Lancashire to interview you all. Everyone, their friends, families and pets are welcome.

Next week, if I survive the football-supporting dangers, I shall be announcing the competition winner, so till then I remain your knowlegable Chairman and brave little friend, Madge Dumpling. 

Hello, yes you are in the right place. This is the Rubble Club, but for a change we are not in Blackpool, we are in a rainy motorway coach park somewhere between Blackpool and Newcastle. I am your damp, subdued, travel sick Chairman, Madge Dumpling welcoming all you devoted pet rock owners and your little pets into my enormous luggage compartment. Shake your umbrellas (and your pet rocks’ cocktail umbrellas) before you come in please. We don’t want my freshly-gritted floor getting any more damp than it already is. It must be terrible to live in a rainy place like this. You forget what rain is like when you live in Blackpool. I hope the sun comes out for the match or we’ll be getting even wetter and more miserable, but as long as Blackpool win, that’s the price we’ll have to pay.  Rubble Clubbers, for those of you who are wondering what we are doing here, I will explain.

To be honest, the pet rocks and I don’t even understand football and would rather stay at home,  but we are not selfish. It’s not all about us, is it? We know how much excellent good luck pet rocks can bring to whichever team they support at a football match. So I and a few of my luckiest pet rocks dressed up as Blackpool football fans set out bravely in the rain, tangerine umbrellas up, determined to do our best for Blackpool, as only we can.  In our tangerine and white hats and scarves we trecked across town at the crack of dawn to catch the Blackpool football supporters coach to Newcastle. It appears now to have become our weekly duty. Call me superstitious but when we are absent from a match Blackpool never have the same good luck as they do when I parade  around the ground with my lucky tangerine pet rocks shouting “Seasiders, get your lucky Blackpool rocks here if you want Blackpool to win!”  Last week I was too busy to go to the match and Blackpool lost. It can’t just be a coincidence I’m sure. If Blackpool had lost again the pet rocks and I would never have forgiven ourselves. That is why this week I am having to host the Rubble Club from the luggage compartment of the coach. Come in and make yourselves at home. I have strewn some coach park rubble all around to make it more homely and I have packed an extra special treat for us all, a giant rock cake. I have called it my illuminations gateau because I have added some magical sparkly bits (finely grated light bulbs, firework ends and old lighters from the promenade) to my usual prizewinning crunchy recipe. Close your eyes and pretend we’re back in Blackpool again. Tuck in chums, no need to wait. Just remember to save a few crumbs for your pet rocks.

Hold on, we’re swerving round a bend! Keep a grip on your pet rocks, Rubblers, we’ll soon be on the straight again.  Oh look, the Blackpool sun has come out since we started to pretend we’re in Blackpool. Hold on to your pet rocks if you please while I rummage through the postbag. The meeting must go on.

First, thank you, Linda from Kilmarnoch, the Rubble Club’s Deputy Head Prefect and Chief Knitter, efficient as ever, who was the first to welcome our new correspondent and competition entrant, the talented Lily. Lily brought her lovely paper boat to last week’s meeting. Like the unselfish good sport Lily is (much like myself), she has voted for Suz’s homely bread dough boat floating on an emerald green lake to win the boat competition. Your vote has been registered, Lily, but we won’t know for two weeks who has won. The customers are now voting, and (better late than never), another entry has been added to the board, a feather-light crystal-clear round-boat from Lucy, who, I suspect, with out ever being trained, rummages methodically through bins like I do (and like I try to train all the Rubble Clubbers to do) to find her boat-building materials. In the middle of Lucy’s boat is an exquisite circular construction made of tiny playing cards. What is that, Lucy? A floating casino? Or a fortune telling boat? Write to me and tell me. I can’t wait to find out.

Next on the agenda I proudly announce that due to an over-population of orphans, I am organising a real live Rubble Club event planned in Gynn Gardens, Gynn Square, Blackpool on Sunday 3rd October, 10a.m to 1 p.m . All Rubble Clubbers are welcome to attend. I will be there in person dishing out lots of pet rocks. Everybody will get one free pet rock orphan and Granny Gray will be taking her clay and tools along so you can make hats, bowls, huts, etc. for your pet rocks. There is no charge and there will also be someone else there(Dana Gledhill, a lovely clever lady who has lots of ingenious entertainment ideas for Blackpool, especially for the lower promenade where there used to be a boating pool once upon a time. Perhaps somebody important will take notice of her soon). She will be explaining to anyone who is interested all about the plans for the new designs for Jubilee Gardens. I am hoping she will be assuring me that my friends the Jubilee Gardens rabbits will not be evicted, but be nicely catered-for in the new designs. BBC Radio will be there interviewing you Rubble Clubbers  about your pet rocks, so get your funny stories ready. Perhaps we could suggest having a pet rock corner somewhere in Gynn Gardens, perhaps for giant pet rocks who are too big to live indoors. I will be happy to take charge of feeding them. I already have a secret doorway, a gnome flap under the bushes where I can come and go unnoticed to gather my rock cake ingredients. You Rubble Clubbers can bring your pet rocks along to have a little chat with them from time to time, can’t you? Linedancer, if you are well enough and available on that day, as Head Prefect you really ought to attend. And all the other prefects too. Everybody. (Anybody.) If nobody comes we will have no hope of a pet rock corner because you know me, though I have plenty of fascinating things to say I’m usually ignored by humans when I speak. It’s as if I were invisible. So you can’t leave it all to me this time.  And by the way friends, don’t worry that you’ll forget about this event because I’ll be reminding you every week.

As there cannot be a Gazette this week (due to technical cyber space problem) it is lucky that all this week, between my countless other jobs I have been copying out another of my ever-popular pet rock bedtime stories for the Rubble Clubbers who have trouble getting their pet rocks off to sleep. This one, a true story, is called “Snow White and the Misses Divine”. Grandad Gray will be adding it to the other bedtime stories later today. See if you can find the right button to press to open it. and read it. Don’t ask me where it is. That’s all part of the fun, finding it.  It is somewhere on this Rubble Club website.

This has been a challenging meeting for  us all, rolling all over the luggage compartment squashed between crates of lager on our way to Newcastle, so let us hope for an easier time next week, back in the Stone Quarry basking in the Blackpool sunshine. Till then I remain your devoted Chairman and football martyr, Madge Dumpling.

Hello, Rubble Clubbers, this is me your Chairman and world-famous pet rock whisperer, Madge Dumpling speaking to you from my cosy, freshly gritted parlour in Stone Quarry Cottage. I have had to leave my temporary headquarters on the Blackpool Promenade because there are so many illuminations visitors (and sunbathers) screeching with delight all day long, you would have been distracted from listening with your full attention on my important weekly speech to the membership.

Speaking of the Illuminations, they were switched on yesterday by the world-famous singer, Robbie Williams who stayed in the Hilton Hotel just round the corner from the Magic Wand Factory Shop near Gynn Square. Determined meet someone as world famous as myself, sell him a pet rock  and thereby get him to him join the Rubble Club, I marched through the front entrance of the Hilton with my basket of orphans. I asked to be introduced to him but the reception staff completely ignored me. It was  as if I were invisible. I waited in the dining room where I lined up the pet rocks across the main thoroughfare, hoping to trip him up on his way into breakfast, but he never even left his room. It seems he had a secret servant to take his food up to him. If only he had known I was waiting down in the dining room it would all have been so different. He would have been here in the parlour today, along with his pet rocks, sipping my gravel tea with the rest of us, giving us a little song. I’m sure the prefects would have moved along to make room for him on the prefects’ couch as a reward for his contribution to the entertainment. After all, just because someone is world-famous that doesn’t give them the right to sit on the prefects’ couch without the prefects’ permission. Next week of course he would have to sit at the back and wait patiently for a few moments till I presented him with his prefect’s badge for his lovely singing. Only then could he come back and sit on the prefects’ couch with Linedancer and Linda, Suz and the other prefects. If anyone knows him, please let him know what a lovely time he missed and tell him his badge is waiting.

The competition entries are piling in now for the “find or build a pet rock pleasure boat that floats and will carry at least one pet rock”. I think perhaps now we have enough pictures for me to put them up on the Rubble Club notice Board in the shop. Here are this weeks entries so you can email your votes for your favourite if you can’t get to Blackpool to write your favourite’s number on the scoreboard. Please consider the two entries from last week’s meeting, along with these new ones before you decide. We’ll see what the visitors and customers think when they come in the shop. If more entries come in the results will not be decided for another week, but the final scores will definitely be added up in two weeks, that’s the 18th September. All entrants will win something, but the outright winner will win a pet rock boating pool. Good luck and thanks to all you devoted Rubble Clubbers who entered!

This one is from Lily, a paper boat. See how popular it is with Lily’s little pets, all except for one scaredy-cat couch potato still in bed at the back

And this one came with a letter from Suz, handed in by the postman. Enclosed along with the letter, strangely, was the actual ship’s mast, which I will treasure always. i suspect she probably sent it to prove that the ship really existed and was not just another of Suz’s(now world-famous) works of art. This is her letter and her boat is shown below on dry land and also floating on a bright green sea to prove it floats.

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and last but not least, this is John’s entry, with pet rock viewing platform on top and glass-bottomed boat experiences for the pet rocks who travel below deck in the clear-lidded food cartons. One customer who saw it said he thought it looked like an oil rig. I have no idea what that is but it must be a very beautiful thing, that’s all I can say John. Enchanting efforts, all of you! 

And now on to Linda from Kilmarnoch’s holiday snapshots. She is so busy travelling around the world trying to find Blackpool she has failed to enter the boat-building competition. Although she ended up in Canada and not Blackpool she was( like the cheerful Scottish heroine we all know her to be) determined to make the best of it. However, Linda, you can’t distract me with your holiday snaps. Where is your competition entry, Linda?

(Sadly there are unpleasant gaps between the pictures but I don’t know how to change it no matter how many buttons I press.)

Look at the smile on that little pet’s face! It just goes to show how determined pet rocks are to be happy and pleased with whatever their owners do with them. It was pretending it thought it was in Blackpool, just to be helpful. Still, I am sure Canada was a better place for having a small section of the Rubble Club in its midst. Has the pet rock emigrated or has it come home, Linda? Either way it will be content and make the best of it, much like yourself, Linda, and myself of course.

Once again Grandad Gray says with all these pictures to display there is no room left for my latest fascinating edition of the Undergrowby Gazette, so here’s hoping there will be room for me and my news next week. Before you remind me, I know it’s not all about me. I don’t matter. Till next week then, I remain your unfulfilled but unselfish Chairman and charming celebrity friend, Madge Dumpling.