Dexter's Return

Well, turns out that some of the geriatric band were pals of Trader Gray's from over Long Rock, so they managed to double up their gig at the September Festival in St Ives with his wake in Penzance and then carry it on over ours for the next three days. My dad said he'd never seen so many empty Southern Comfort bottles in one place since he was at university in the 1970s. He took them for recycling at Tesco's (the bottles not the band). I didn't go to their gig, but they seemed happy enough with it. So I got my bedroom back LAST NIGHT, but it stank of booze and fags so it's set my asthma off this morning, TYPICAL.

Anyway, it being Thursday I went over to get The Cornishman, fully expecting to see a photo of Dexter on the front page with a ransom demand or his ear cut off, but turns out (on page 13) that he (I'm doing it now, it's a stuffed toy not a living thing), IT hadn't been nicked at all but had been found by someone who worked at the Blue Bay Cafe right opposite where the bloody thing had been left 'guarding' the emmet family's bikes surprise, surprise ON THE VERY SAME DAY that it had been lost.

OK, so here's a scenario. Kid takes teddy bear for an ice cream (oh, don't teddy bears just love ice cream? no they DON'T), maybe so that mum doesn't see she's not left him 'guarding' the bikes after all (the mum comes across as a bit of a control freak), but has sneaked him onto a chair under the table on the pavement outside the cafe. When they've had their ice creams (Ooh, didn't Dexter LOVE his ice cream, he's got it all round his greedy disfigured little face), kid FORGETS poor Dexter in the excitement to get to Land's End, and by the time they find he's missing the kid is too shit scared to admit that she's left him at the cafe.

Oh, but an honest and kind hearted Cornishwoman who owns the Blue Bay Cafe has Dexter handed to her by one of her honest waitresses, and instead of throwing him in the bin (which is what it deserves) or holding him to ransom they put him on the counter where everybody can see him, waiting for him to be reclaimed. How so unlike the scheming, theiving, piratical Cornish as portrayed in up country fictions! Anyway, whilst apparently the emmet family managed to contact The Cornishman and get their story tugging at the heartstrings of the locals who are made to feel guilty, shamed and humiliated BY THEIR OWN LOCAL NEWSPAPER at the low cunning of their fellow Cornishmen (and women) who would stoop so low as to steal a teddy bear (a scruffy and evidently much loved teddy bear at that), they didn't think to go back to where they last saw him, where they would have found him sitting on the counter in the cafe. Obviously it's easier to perpetuate the myth of the devious Cornish than own up to the fact that you've left the anthropomorphised bundle of rags you've had in your cycle basket all the way from John O'Groats on a table outside a cafe.

But if that wasn't bad enough, the cafe owner not only offers to reunite Dexter with his careless family of end to end emmets, but actually takes it to Land's End first so 'that he had completed the final 10 miles of his trip from John O' Groats.' The paper even printed a photo of it sitting on that signpost they have at Land's End with the date on, to prove it had been there. I'm sorry, but to me, and I don't care who it is, teddy bear, leukemia sufferer or celebrity cricketer, technically this does not count as completing the journey. If I'd sponsored them, I'd refuse to pay up until the entire family had gone back to John O'Groats and done the whole bloody thing over again, en route picking up Dexter in Penzance, and giving a public apology from the steps of St John's Hall for maligning the Cornish and the people of Penzance in particular as teddy bear thieves.

But sadly this will not happen, as it is already apparently back with the careless emmet family in Bournemouth who are 'delighted to have Dexter back.' Not a word of thanks in public print, let alone an apology to the honest people of Cornwall.