Rubble Club Archives

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.