Hello. Just to let you know that we’ve still not seen anything of Fern Britton‘s fleeing lamas, but as they say no news is good news (unless like me you work for a newspaper). Anyway, talking of good news, Doris Palmer (Fern Britton‘s in-house lama tracker) has commissioned model-maker, mathematician and local celeb, Johnny Ball to make a diorama of Beckworth, from matchsticks, to try and work out where the lamas could be hiding. With this in mind, Mr Ball has asked me to ask all Beckworth’s smokers to give him their discarded matches so he can complete the 1/12th scale model of the town and surroundings in double-quick time. His last model, of the Queen Mother (see below) took over 3 years and 220,000 matches to complete and is now on diplay in the vet’s surgery.

If you have spent matches please drop them at Johnny’s house or pass them onto me if he’s busy doing sums in his study. Also, please don’t concern Mrs Britton with matches as she’s hosting an Alcohol Awareness meeting this afternoon. Anyway, i’ll continue to keep you posted on lama news, whether we have any or not. Christine. Chief Crime Reporter at The Beckworth Guardian and neighbourhood watch coordinator