Orson Cartier.

Happy New Season everyone!
Here we go again and due my solicitor (Harry ‘unethical’ Unsworth) managing to bamboozle the courts with technicalities, the Editor’s restraining order from me writing in County Life has been overturned…….Cheers Harry!
(🤬😡…Ed)

Today we face Boston United F.C. and I have taken it upon myself to come up with a few interesting facts that perhaps you didn’t previously know about the Lincolnshire Town.

For a start ‘Lincolnshire’ has a silent ‘L’ in-between the ‘o’ and the ‘n’….Linco(l)nshire.
Up to 1907, the ‘L’ was ‘pronounced’ (meaning
NOT silent)….but with the popularisation around this time of false teeth, saying the name of the County (especially after drinking) resulted in mass tongue biteage giving the impression that many locals sounded ‘of unstable mind’.
…..consequently, thousands of folk were locked
away in asylums due to health officials mistakenly
believing them to be ‘a bit puddled’.
It was only when the truth came to light and an emergency meeting of Doctors, Dentists and Government Wordsmiths was convened, that they decided to lose the ‘L’ from Lincolnshire to rectify the Asylum over-crowding problem…..but the committee didn’t make their findings clear enough to the general public thus, for the following 3 years the locals referred to their County as ‘incolnshire’
mistakenly silencing the ‘wrong’ ‘L’!
Luckily. after a lengthy Council-run campaign entitled ‘To Hell with the second ‘L’….the local Mental Hospitals eventually returned to their normal patronage.

Boston United’s nickname is of course ‘The Pilgrims’ and most people assume that the name refers to ‘The Pilgrim Fathers’ who
invaded America and pronounced Boston as the name of the new Town in The New World….nothing could be further from the truth….the real reason is that in 1934, a localman by the name of Gedly Butterworth opened a fish stall on Boston Market, his Shrimps were the most popular in the whole of Lincolnshire and
people travelled as far away as Barnsley to purchase the tasty crustaceans.
Life was good for Gedley, he and his family lived the luxurious lifestyle, he was the pre-war David Beckham of the Fishmonger world, but this made the bloke on the Cheese stall green with envy.
Whilst in the grip of a jealous rage, cheese bloke attempted to slur Gedley’s good name by claiming to one and all that Butterworth didn’t hold a valid Shrimp licence which of course rendered his aqua-morsels illegal.
Butterworth, with the full backing of local Shrimp fanciers, fought and won a lengthy court battle resulting in the cheating Cheesemonger being arrested for slanderous behaviour to fish-based livestock. The cheese man was rightfully hanged that very afternoon before a baying crowd of fish lovers chanting
‘THE SHRIMPS ARE LEGIT’.
All this made Gedley Butterworth a local celebrity. Gedley was a shy man by nature and couldn’t handle the fame. Three weeks later he hurled himself to his death from atop of ‘The Stump’…..The local Church.
He was much missed and the locals decided to name the Town football team after him but with respect to Gedley’s social awkwardness decided on the nickname ‘The Legit Shrimps’…..a
section of fans showed their distaste for the ridiculous moniker by rioting in the local Town Square so the Board members of B.U.F.C. decided that an anagram of ‘Legit Shrimps’ would suffice thus keeping Butterworth’s memory alive but
with a less dafter name…..and as we all obviously know, an anagram of ‘Legit Shrimps’ is of course ‘The Pilgrims’
(albeit with an extra letter ‘S’).
Another anagram of ‘The Pilgrims’ is just as obviously ‘Hitler’s Gimps’ but the future leader of the Third Reich was relatively unknown outside Berlin at the time so ‘the powers that be’ probably didn’t even consider this as an option.

Popular Stockport County Sponge-man Rodger
Wylde, although having no particular links with the Town, tells me that he loves the place and wanted to write a poem about it…..unfortunately, after 4 years of trying to find a word that rhymed with Boston…..he gave up.

Back in the late 70’s, hard Rock band ‘Boston’ sang ‘More than a feeling’ and reached a staggering 22 in the U.K. top…er….22.
Contrary to popular belief, the song wasn’t about their love of Boston United F.C……In fact they almost certainly don’t know of the existence of the club as they named themselves ‘Boston’ after their hometown…..and
that‘s in Massachusetts!!!!! ….having said that, conspiracy theorists reckon that the song, when played backwards, contains subliminal instructions on how to make the perfect Cheese and Shrimp bisque……(Spooky)!

On the 16th of July 2013, a Boston school (Giles
Academy) in celebration of their 50th anniversary, for some reason attempted to break the World Record for the amount of people to complete ‘The Locomotion’ dance. 13,000 pupils, staff and presumably, passers-by took part in the failed venture (452 dancers shy of the record)…..but fair play for having a go!
Hat’s off to the STILL current holders….the good
folk who attended the ‘Wave for Wales’ event at
Margam Country Park in Port Talbot back in June
2007!

Unlike the Boston school’s pain of failure…..I currently hold the (unofficial) World Record for ‘Endurance Twisting’! I set the record Twist-O-thon on Stockport’s Portwood Roundabout in the close-season.
My intention was to continually do ‘The Twist’ for at least two weeks stopping only for pub toilet breaks.
With ‘Chubby Checker’ blasting from my Ghetto-Blaster I’d managed 12 minutes and 7 seconds of the dance before I was moved on by the Police for distracting rush hour traffic……
I was ‘gutted’ until I realised that the Guinness
Book of Records doesn’t have a category for
‘Endurance Twisting’ ….so as nobody else has had the foresight to try it…..I claim the Record!!!!

…..but I digress….Good luck County and
(hopefully!) Hard CHEESE Boston! ….I can’t find
a way of mentioning ‘Shrimps’ again but you get
the drift.
Enjoy the game.
Orson.

(Editor’s Note….As usual you have submitted
absolute twaddle!!!....a team of lawyers are currently
working on having you removed.……That is all)