Album: Archive Edition 3 – Blight Fen

Every week the erudite, educated Mr South would go to Grunty Fen, sit in the ancient Wolseley car that served as a hen-coop and interview Dennis, the fenman who – according to another Grunty Fen resident – put the ‘common’ into ‘common man’.

Every week Mr South was left bewildered and despairing, having been beaten into submission by Dennis’s Fen Logic.

Recorded in October 2004, Archive Editions 3 is another window onto the bleak and bizarrely wonderful world of Dennis of Grunty Fen. This collection:

– brings us the ultimate survival tool, The Universal Shovel;
– shows us that the arts are alive and kicking in the Fens in surprising ways;
– demonstrates a perfect example of a hadnabinfer;
– contemplates the absent-mindedness of Fen folk;
– reveals the startling contents of a refugee Ukrainian shepherd’s ancient stew.

These episodes feature (amongst much else): a miniature egg-cup, thatching, a lady in a wheelbarrow, musing, ruminating and cogitating, a Royal Lancashire Regiment cap badge, a cotter pin off a Hercules and a mistake with the bathwater.

And if you don’t know what a hadnabinfer is, you’ve probably still got your eyebrows. But this collection will explain it for you, don’t worry.

Running time: over an hour of Grunty Fen life to get you musing, ruminating and cogitating – not to mention laughing – for yourself.

First broadcast: October 2004

Available as a CD or a zipped-up mp3 package.