Written Yesterday Evening:

The production of SKUNK Magazine has hit a major problem. On the face of things it shouldn't be a problem at all...but it is...and a major one at that, as I'm rapidly discovering. Everything was going fine. I'd laid out the pages, resized the cartoons, cropped, edited and arranged the articles, designed the cover and, basically, constructed the entire forty-page magazine without a problem. Then I'd had a proof copy printed up...just the one...there wasn't any need for more at this stage...checked it through, checked the quality of printing inside and out (much higher than the usual crappy magazine quality I have to admit) and even bartered the printer down to a price that wouldn't disturb the moths hibernating in my wallet too much. Four weeks of hard but satisfying work. A job well done. Hang up the bunting and crack open the Scotch.
And then the simplest of things happened to bugger everything up.
Fucking staples!
After several attempts with a stapler that Michelle had borrowed from work (a stapler that will now have to remain borrowed as I ended up snapping it in half with sheer determination) I discovered that ordinary staples aren't capable of holding two thin sheets of tracing paper together let alone a magazine of forty quality pages and a glossy card cover.
Industrial strength staples then...in an industrial strength staple gun as opposed to one of those cruddy little office stapler type things that works with a hinge. They're no good. They can't stretch across the pages. So...a decent sized staple gun with good, fat staples and everything would be hunky dory!
Three days ago I was looking at the prices of such things in the local stationers. They ranged from £12.50 to £23.50. Quite expensive but, hey, no expense should be spared in the production of great art.
However...
For some unfathomable reason known only to the stationers on Lord Street...the solitary, single stationers, I should point out, for at least thirty miles of this God forsaken, remedial, stagnant, compost heap of a town...a town so cretinous, so isolated, so pointless in its miserly existence that they can't be arsed having an alternative stationers...for some fucking reason there wasn't a single staple gun in the whole fucking shop! They'd all gone! In the space of twenty-four bastard hours every staple gun, every large staple, every fucking God bollocking damned fucking item that I needed to finish this stupid, stinking, festering, poxy magazine had fucking vanished leaving only those pissy little stapling machines behind that are no fucking use to man nor mouse!
So...bear with me folks. SKUNK Magazine will be available at some point in the future, just as soon as I can find some way of keeping the pages together without having to force the stationer at gun point to hand sew the fucking things!

Written this Morning after a trip to Fleetwood Market.

Have found a cheap staple gun with big fat staples and everything. Trouble is it's no fucking good. In fact every staple gun in the world is no fucking good! Apparently the gun-type of staplers don't actually bend the staples round at the ends to secure the pages like normal staplers because they just tack things to other things! So they shouldn't be called fucking Staplers then, should they!? They should be called fucking Tackers! This is ridiculous! All these months of grinding my bollocks to a pulp over this magazine, for what?!! Just so the manufacturers of bleeding bloody bastard big fucking bollocking buggering bum fucking staple guns can bum fuck and bastard around with their smegging hairy knobsack bastard bollocking knob cheese covered products and ruin my arse cracking bollock of a life!!!!!!!!!!!! (Hic!)

Written This Evening After a little less Whisky:

SKUNK Magazine back on track. Stapler no longer required as the local printers will staple, bind and crop the magazines for us at a little bit extra in cost. See...I told you all to stay calm and not get annoyed by such a minor set-back.

While we breathlessly await the launch of SKUNK, the Deputy Editor directs the attention of the reader to previous publications (each now in their 15th. reprint) by the Editor of the ROTW. Available at all good bookshops whose owners are partial to a spot of bribery and judicious product placement.