Stanley's back from the school holidays to find the country arguing about black puddings.

Every second Sunday in September, Ramsbottom holds the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships — twelve Yorkshires on a twenty-foot plinth, three puddings each, underarm only, and all the money to charity. This year an animal rights outfit wants the puddings vegan, the papers have decided five hundred years of tradition is under attack, and the organisers have said something quietly interesting.

Also in this episode: Toy Story on repeat, a battle at Stubbins in 1455, Grandad's taxi, and a stricken Fiesta.

The written version is on Substack — View from the Shed.

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The Safari Bus

Grandad's taxi gets a summer upgrade — and the maiden voyage does not go entirely to plan. Stanley takes the great-grandchildren to Knowsley, meets a monkey with strong opinions about wing mirrors, and lives to tell the tale. Then it's somewhere gentler: a hill outside Royton called Tandle, a wood he last stood in as a boy, and a memory that took him sixty years and a cathedral in Germany to make sense of.

Stanley Common is a retired community police officer from Heywood, Lancashire. He writes and records from a shed.

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Two empty fields in one fortnight, three thousand miles apart, and the same fella stood in the middle of both with a megaphone. This week Stanley gives him a name.

From the shed: the President's birthday party that hardly anybody went to, the pollsters up a stepladder at Nigel Farage's own do, and the march through our town that the town answered by going shopping. Plus the writing on the wall, why an echo can only ever tell you what you just said, and Stanley's mother on lugs, gobs, and the order you're meant to use them in.

Fair warning: there's a sober minute in the middle. Our town carries history that deserves better than jokes, and the jokes get put down for it.

Kettle's on. Sit yerself down.

Theme music: "Letters from the Shed", on Spotify by popular demand. Well, one lady from Cleckheaton, but demand is demand: "Letters from the Shed"

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