Chapters

In this episode, Richard comes straight out and states his aim for the day: Stop Brexit.

It's important to have an objective for the day, and makes sense to choose one that you can achieve easily. So that's all good.

The Duke of Wellington asks about which socks to wear inside your wellingtons, which prompts Richard to think about the importance of socks as a precautionary measure, and to avoid any unseemly cross-breeding of feet and boots. This is certainly something that has occupied the minds of gentlemen throughout the ages...

At one point, Richard finds what seems to be a piece of asteroid. It shows how important it is to remain vigilant for new stones arriving on your field from space. The dinosaurs failed to clear their soil of asteroids, and look what happened to them. (Ironically, a lot of them have turned into stones)

At the stone pole, Richard realised that the course of the footpath has moved, making the game too easy.

We also had another medieval stone clearer's saying:

"If ye clear a ftone once, ye not be a nonce. If ye clear a ftone twice, you think children'f bumf are nice."

I apologise for writing that on an web page. They're not my words. They are the words of stone clearers of old.

We also learn of an olde English madrigal:

https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/stone_clearing_with_richard_herring/chapter_40/

Richard's mood is much better this week. He appreciates the value in every single stone that he removes from the field, cherishes each one as a beautiful, unique thing before chucking it into a ditch. Because they're just stones after all, and nothing to get too excited about, despite what some perverts might think.

Richard finds more stones that look suspiciously like building materials, so he wonders if he might be unearthing a roman villa, thus destroying a site of historical significance. I say "tough shit". If the Romans wanted their houses put in the British Museum, they should have built them in Tony Robinson's garden, not Richard's field. More fool them.

Mind you, the ancient stone clearers knew a thing or two, as we learned when Richard recounted this old saying:

"If it'f time to go, ye ftone fhall let ye know. If it'f time to ftay, the ftone lying may. Be."

This is not a very good saying, admittedly. The fact that we all remember and repeat it every day proves that stone clearing is an integral part of our culture.

And as the old saying goes:

"If you think all the fayings be gold, wait until ye hear the one about ftones laying and it is told"

Richard also throws a good number of stones into the Brexit ditch, which will certainly stop Brexit.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/stone_clearing_with_richard_herring/chapter_39/

In this Chapter, Richard highlights the uncanny connection between Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson saying he would rather be "dead in a ditch" and Richard's ongoing efforts in the Ditch That Stopped Brexit. I write this on the 31st of October and Johnson is, as far as I know, still alive. But Brexit hasn't happened, so I think it would be fair to call it a draw.

Otherwise, it's a humdinger of a chapter. We got some new rules, new glossary words and new official stone sizes to add to the list. Richard also found another stone that belongs "in the top 5" of stones gathered so far (adding to the evidence for Global Stonegrowth). He sensed that, somewhere beneath the soil there lies a stone so large that he will require the help of this family to lift it. It is a tale as old as time...

The sheer volume of available stones starts to weigh on Richard, as the size of the task threatens to overwhelm him. He needs to remember that the job will be done, even if he only manages to clear one stone a day. It's Rule 4, after all.

In general, society seems obsessed with records*. We lavish fame on some guy who broke the world record for making model buildings out of cashew nuts. They are afforded the finest luxuries, court a string of dolly-birds and are regularly featured in tabloid newspaper gossip columns. We love it when an event happens that is very similar to previous events, except with one variable slightly increased.

Which is why this chapter is a winner in my book. Following some more ploughing, Richard found and harvested the biggest stone seen so far. The size of a football, so he says, though he failed to clarify whether this was a standard FIFA-approved football.

Speaking of which, let's just check what size footballs should be:

Only five sizes? What the hell are they playing at? They should check out a proper, scientific system of sizing.

But with such bounty comes a warning: Doesn't it seem strange to you that the previous record-size stone was only 2 chapters ago? Now, all of a sudden there is another one? How long will this record stand? One week?

This, my friends, is Global Stonegrowth, and it is a problem that 99% of stone scientists recognise as a serious threat for the future. They warn that if stones keep getting bigger, it won't be long before they cannot be cleared by hand and that machines will have to be used, in direct contravention of rule 25. Truly a global disaster. The remaining 1% of scientists are "stonegrowth skeptics" and feel that the stones have always been the same size, and that they have just been hidden under the field all this time. Idiots.

Whatever the cause, Richard gets quite excited by the discovery. Not too excited. He's not a pervert.

Richard spends a lot of this podcast wondering whether he will get recognition for the magnificent comedy that he performed the night before as part of a benefit gig. He's left wanting, however. Either they didn't appreciate his efforts, or they are still recovering from the hilarious and side-splitting experience of meeting the same person twice on a single dog-walk, and saying "Good morning again!"

Look, it's a small village.

The podcast opens with an amazing revelation. Prior to the recording of this chapter, Richard had recorded an entire walk but discarded it after he judged it "too boring". That flies in the face of those who claim that literally anything is good enough to go into the podcast, and that Richard will just upload every available second of audio (presuming that he hasn't accidentally turned off the recorder and deleted it, which is increasingly likely). No, it turns out that this is carefully curated content. Who would have thought?

Richard goes out with his dog to witness the aftermath of the fire, picking over the ashes and looting the rewards, like Will Smith in I Am Legend, but without the zombies.

He is so overwhelmed with easily accessible stones that he forgoes his trowel and just picks them up from the soft earth. Excited by this hands-on approach, Richard reveals a new rule which bans the use of using machines to remove stones.

Then he finds the largest stone of his stone-clearing career so far. It's a monster, requiring both hands to move it to the side of the field. Is it a Large-Large-Large? It's hard to say. We may need to introduce an Extra-Large category before the year is out.

Some of the stones are charred, but it matters not. These stones will remain long after the straw is gone. In fact, Richard reveals that the traditional game of Rock, Paper, Scissors is deeply flawed. For while Paper may cover Rock, it will not last for ever.

And as for the more advanced game of Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock:

If I had a spoon that could hold words, I would surely eat them. Because whereas in the last chapter I criticised the absence of Fire, this week it decided to make its presence felt in a big way.

The Fire Gods have obviously decided to help Richard out and set the field ablaze, causing much consternation amongst the residents of his village and secret glee in Richard's heart. No one wants to see people lose their property, such as the fences and garden furniture of the houses bordering the field, but it did mean that the field was partly ploughed to create a fire-break, and this has meant that a whole new crop of stones has been revealed amongst the ashes.

It's just a little something to keep Richard entertained before the field is fully ploughed. In this way, the Gods are a bit like a weak-willed parent letting their children open one present on Christmas Eve.

But what a present! Richard is like a giddy schoolboy as he picks up stone after stone, while simultaneously consoling his neighbours over their charred decking. "You should get that back on the insurance" he calls out, surreptitiously shoving handfuls of stones into his pockets.

Just 2 days after the previous failed chapter, Richard steps out to the strocean ("straw ocean" - thanks Suzie) to do battle with the elements. Well, just one element - Earth. Once again, it was a no-show from both Wind and Fire.

It's just as well he did return so soon. Several of his stones are trying to make their way off the cairn and back to the field. Richard catches them and brings them back, somewhat in the manner of a German camp guard, but perhaps someone is trying to aid their escape?

However, apart from a dead mouse, Richard encounters no one on the walk and it is a fairly uneventful clear.

Technical problems caused this podcast to fail mid-way though, which is a shame because it was shaping up to be an epic chapter.

Richard has been away for several weeks, and in his absence the field has been harvested. The wheat has been reduced to stubble, and so the whocean has become a stubble-ocean, or stocean. Admittedly, this abbreviation is identical to that for the stone-ocean, but until Suzie Dent supplies us with a better word, it will have to do.

Meanwhile, the Stone-Gods have been making merry and breeding more stones for Richard to clear, and it's not long before he encounters and does battle with the biggest stone he has ever seen...

Eventually the beast was defeated, but the recording device could not handle the excitement. Such a shame. It would have been wonderful to hear Richard dragging the stone back to a cairn, cheered on by villagers and local children. It wasn't to be.

As Richard roams the shoreline of the whocean, he encounters a beautiful woman. Could this be one of the wheat sirens, who tempt the unwary stone-clearer with the promise of some cereal-based naughtiness? Undoubtedly so. Richard spots her from a distance and quickly stops himself falling for her trap.

Nevertheless, Richard is diverted from his normal route and is unable to throw stones at the pole, and evil wins the day once again.

This podcast was released around the same time that Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Richard considered the possibility that, while Richard was diligently dumping stones into his magic ditch to definitely prevent Brexit from happening, Johnson might be doing the same in order to bring about Brexit. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we know that wasn't happening. Boris hasn't been chucking stuff into a ditch. It was a pole-dancer.