Essex engage notorious bounder

ESSEX County Cricket Club have hoodwinked their rivals by engaging the services of rakish bon vivant Jesse Ryder, Esquire.

The tea-rooms of Chigwell and Ongar are all a-flurry with the news that Mr. Ryder is to board a steamship for England from his home in the New World.

Upon landing in Tilbury, the debonair man-about-town will enrol in the players team of Essex to compete against the gentlemen of Surrey and Kent.

The Essex cricket club chairman said: We await with baited breath the arrival of the illustrious Mr. Ryder.

I gather that when not disporting himself on the village green, he is keen on boxing, hunting, and opium, pastimes which he will not want for in genteel Essex.

I am quite confident that he will prove a model of sportsmanly excellence and Christian virtue, so long as we keep him away from certain decadent bawdy-houses like Faces, the Candy Club and Sugar Hut.

The young ladies of Essex profess themselves to be effervescent at the thought of Mr. Ryder, who has acquired a scandalous reputation in the saloons and gin-palaces of his native Wellington, strutting around their county like a cockerel.

Miss Emma Bradford of Uttlesford said: I shall be calling on Mr. Ryder at the earliest opportunity, and he has already sent me a daguerreotype vouchsafing his amorous intentions.

The lady then perused the image, cried My Lord, tis gargantuan, and fainted clean away, still clutching a cockade fan in one hand and a bottle of WKD in the other.

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UK to introduce 'drink banks'

CHURCH halls and community centres are to offer emergency alcohol supplies to those unable to afford it themselves.

Charities have seen a sharp rise in the number of people who are forced to go without drink altogether in order to meet basic living costs.

Eleanor Shaw, chair of the charity Poverty Concern, said The measure of a compassionate society is that every one of its adult citizens should have access to beer, wine or spirits.

More and more, however, we are seeing heart-rending cases of people forced to endure the misery of enforced sobriety, thanks to government cutbacks.

This isnt just the unemployed. Were talking about workers on low incomes, or pensioners whove paid into the system all their lives and need to get shitfaced every weekend just the same as you or I.

Anything will do – a can of Kestrel, that unwanted bottle of leftover Christmas sherry, even the dregs of Auntie Lindseys sloe gin.

People have been so generous. They understand the desperation of drinking a cup of tea and realising thats the strongest thing thatll pass your lips that day.

Conservative sources claimed that there are no significant alcohol shortages in the UK, and that the Chancellor has delivered on his promise to make the country more drunk than ever.

But Stephen Malley of Birmingham said: The Government is ignorant of the reality of life in Britain today.

Which is exactly where I want to be, and why the white cider supplied by the drink banks is so vital.

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