Black hat, Fedora, low over his eyes and shadowing his face, its twin peaks framed by the window behind. His attire smacks of an unhealthy Zorro obsession. Coat, trousers, shoes, all are black. A gold watch glints from under a sleeve. His scarf is red, as if to make a point. I may be a suspicious-looking old man all in black but I have a red scarf. Eat that.

Slouching against the bar, ambivalence in a greatcoat, long grey ponytail dangling down his back. He scowls diabolically, glancing about as if he is plotting revenge. Or perhaps he is a man on the run. Killer? Murderer? Charlatan? Jewellery thief? A man whose crimes are catching up with him. I see it all now…

Known in the underworld as ‘Black Hat’, he learned his trade early. As a toddler he stole biscuits from his mother’s shopping trolley. In his teens he pinched fags from the newsagent while preparing his paper round. Bullied at school for his unusually thin face, geeky glasses and irritating habit of twiddling his thumbs, rotating them round each other in some sort of bizarre cycling dance, undetected thieving gave him a sense of self-worth and achievement. It transformed him from a nervous tick into a confident prick. Eventually he kicked the thumb twiddling habit.

But it was his gran who led him down the criminal path, a prolific pick-pocket who practised her trade into her late eighties. A tiny woman, smaller than a mouse. It would have to be an abnormally large mouse. A product of a NASA-sponsored “mouse-enlargement” experiment perhaps.

“Listen,” the old raisin had said, knitted beanie precarious on her head, her piercing little eyes twinkling with craftiness, “the older you get the less they’ll suspect. Who would suspect a sweet old lady like me? Like my Rolex? Here, it’s yours. Silence is golden. I’ve knitted you a scarf, don’t want you to catch a cold sweetheart. Sorry about the colour, I only had red left. Fancy some onion soup? Pilfered the onions from Jim next door. Hah! He’s always coming over, miffed about losing vegetables.”

It all escalated from there. Petty shoplifting at first. Deodorant, hand-cream, gift cards, scented candles. Then on to electronic goods, flogging record players on the black-market. Revelling in small-scale success he moved on to robbing banks, jewellery stores and antique candlesticks from stately homes. He got in with the wrong crowd, formed a gang and with his gran’s guidance, soon became one of the most respected criminal minds in North Yorkshire. With fame and success came paranoia and stress. The Fedora was pulled lower and lower and it was convenient too, hiding a giant mole on his forehead that had unhappily been exposed by his receding hairline.

And here he is, slouching at the bar, filled with fear and the knowledge that his past is catching up with him.

Or maybe he’s just an innocent old chap fed up with the weather. I’ll let you call it.

So here’s the deal. I’ve been thinking long and hard and have decided to cut down the amount of time I waltz through the blogosphere. With the demands of my job, the tiring little monster baby, and the realisation that I just don’t make enough time to discover new wines watch The Wire read and relax, it’s time to make cuts.

So I’m going to aim to post once a week, probably on a Monday, and keep Monday as my blogging day. This’ll mean that I won’t be visiting your lovely blogs with my usual regularity during the rest of the week, but at the start of the week I will be your man. In other words, I will continue to exercise the standard protocol of blogging reciprocity, but I won’t be about so much. I just wanted to let you know – in case you are sitting in your armchair on a Thursday night, drinking some cheap Scandinavian lager and thinking “where the hell is Mo?”. Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on this so without further ado…

We went for a late breakfast at our favourite cafe. Favourite because of the food and atmosphere, not because of the layout, which is worse than my parents’ living room. Imagine a tiny room stuffed with ten mismatching sofas. That aside, the food is divine and the mushrooms, well, the mushrooms are simply spectacular.

I had mushrooms on toast, my wife had a crayfish sandwich. Bubba trumped everyone with her organic
“roast dinner” purée. A young girl scampered in, closely followed by her mum and (presumably) grandma. They sat at the table next to ours. The mum was clad in what can only be described as a tiny black party frock. Very short, very revealing. She wore wedges so high they would have been beyond the wildest dreams of any ski-jumping Lego man.

Most remarkable of all was the colour of her skin. It was so orange that you would naturally assume her father was an Orangutan. Either that or she had fallen into a vat of fake tan cream. Oranges and lemons,
say the bells of St. Clement’s.

She sat close to Bubba, emitting a powerful orange glow. While thoroughly enjoying her purée, Bubba was becoming increasingly interested in Mrs Satsuma, her little grubby hands swinging dangerously close. “You’re hoping Bubba grabs that lady,” observed my wife. “That would be ideal,” I replied.

An elderly lady sat down at our table. Ignoring the countless unoccupied tables, she was merely exercising those rights that all old ladies believe they have – the right to invade the privacy of anyone with a baby, the right to touch any baby with grubby opal-ringed fingers, the right to act as a sort of “proxy grandma” to any baby encountered.

“She doesn’t want to eat, she wants to socialise,” said Bubba’s new proxy grandma. “The only person wanting to socialise is you,” I thought, tired of prying strange elderly hands off our baby and desperately hoping that Bubba would eat up quick.

As Lady Clementine got up to leave a small grubby hand swiped at her frock. She didn’t notice and left the cafe, a delightful little orange hand print adorning her bum, the “roast dinner” purée perfectly matching the colour of her skin. It was ideal.

As news stories break out covering the so-called “Granny Disruption Conspiracy”, we bring you the first exclusive on this dark, dingy and dangerous organisation of pensioners. This sinister organisation has been causing public disruption in banks, post offices and supermarkets at an increasing rate.

Scotland Yard have been closing in on the organisation, known internally as the GDC, for the last two years. The net finally closed with yesterday’s sting operation, catching the conspirators off-guard in a derelict warehouse in Wimbledon. A leaked report reveals that among the captured equipment were GPS devices, jamming equipment and two B-2 stealth bombers.

The GDC was started in 1967 by the Pilchard sisters, Dot and Maude. While they passed away many years ago, these gifted old ladies wrote much of the GDC’s literature, which was released into the public domain just a few hours ago. The following exerts shed some light on their motivation.

“The idea for the GDC was born during a scrabble game in the Littlehampton Scrabble Club. Frankly, we were bored. Bored of scrabble, bored of sitting around all day watching television, bored of tea and cake. Ignored by the public, abandoned by our children, and fed up of seeing daytime television deteriorate before our very eyes.”

“Disgruntled with life in every way, we believed that it was our human right to claim back recognition, even by illegal means. All we wanted was love, conversation, respect and recognition. And we couldn’t believe the BBC license fee had just gone up again while the quality of daytime shows had grown even more dismal.”

“Over that influential scrabble game our plan was hatched. A conspiracy on a national scale. We would disrupt the younger generations with stealth, cunning and wickedness, interspersed with games of scrabble and, of course, lots of tea and cake.”

With its “sinister and secret” ambitions, the GDC mimicked the Freemasons in various ways. They introduced a secret handshake, which had all sorts of convolutions to cater for walking sticks, zimmer frames and electric buggies.

The GDC based its hierarchy on the Freemason’s thirty-three degree (or level) system, with Dot and Maude initially at the top. Between each degree was an initiation ceremony in the form of a scrabble game, with the member in question having to achieve a minimum of N triple-word-scores, where N increased from degree to degree.

One area that the GDC chose to differ from the Freemasons is regarding the religious aspects, as the Pichard sisters explain in their paper “The Founding of the GDC“.

“We have chosen to omit all the bizarre religious aspects of the Freemasons. This is because most of us are nice, prim old ladies who are Church Of England, organise church fetes and vote Conservative. We’ve had to stick with the God of the Bible I’m afraid.”

Since the GDC has been exposed Robin Stevenson, PR Officer for the United Grand Lodge of England, has denied all knowledge of, or involvement with, the GDC.

“The Freemasons vehemently deny any knowledge of, or involvement with, the GDC.”, he stated.

Off the record, he expressed admiration for how they had developed the handshake, especially regarding zimmer frames. “It just goes to show what a bright bunch of old ladies they are!”, he exclaimed.

The GDC has grown in size astronomically over the past ten years, and now has approximately two million members in the UK alone. With the organisation exposed, members have been willingly speaking to the press.

“I’m just glad it is all over”, said Anne Goddard, 85, from Milton Keynes. “They kept us so busy, you know, a compulsory game of scrabble three times a day just keep our minds sharp.”

We were curious as to why so many pensioners had joined the organisation. Polly Pike, 90, from Windermere, explained why she joined. “I had been thinking about it for a while, a lot of my friends from the scrabble club had joined, as well as from my knitting group and bowling club too. The peer pressure was enormous. But it was the BBC license fee that did it. When it passed the hundred pound mark I joined straight away.”

Thirtieth-degree GDC member Jane Sidcombe, 97, explained the principal modes of operation.

“The organisation has always kept its targets simple. We’ve always focused on banks, post offices and supermarkets. The aim has always been to disrupt the general public at the most inconvenient moments – inconvenient for the public of course – we have all the time in the world!

Just like the Freemasons, we have lodges in cities, towns, and even in some villages. Each lodge is responsible for causing disruption in its own jurisdiction. This is achieved primarily by identifying a hot spot, usually a bank, post office or supermarket, and dispatching an elite troop of pensioners at the most disrupting time.

To dispatch a troop of pensioners swiftly and efficiently, the organisation has increasingly depended on military vehicles and equipment.”

Former GDC treasurer Gertrude Jones, 103, explained where the funding comes from.

“The organisation has obtained funds both legally and illegally. We have legitimate fronts in Bingo, Knitting Groups, Scrabble and Bowling clubs. With over two million members in the UK, all playing Bingo three times a week, you can imagine we generate quite a significant income. When funds have been short, we have also embezzled pension funds, which are not proud about, seeing as all of our members are pensioners themselves, but this has been unavoidable.

Our final source of funds is Al-Qaeda, who see our disruptive actions as key to bringing down The West. This has not been without controversy. The majority of our members are nice, prim, Church-Of-England-going, church-fete-participating types, who did not want to be associated with Islam.”

We spoke to the Chief of Operations, General Betty Davies, 78, to get a better idea of some typical operations.

“I’ll explain how a typical operation unfolds.”, said General Davies, as she sipped her tea from a china cup.

“The operating lodge will identify, say, a high street bank. Identification can be at random, or it can be strategic, if we are focusing on bringing prolonged disruption to the town, for example. If the latter, we may hit a post office on the Monday, and then a bank on the Tuesday, and so on.

An elite troop of pensioners is then dispatched. This can be any number between five and fifty. Our communications and surveillance team have tapped in to the national CCTV network, so are able to judge the best sized attack squad.

We quickly found that due to our general lack of mobility – our average age is 84 – the only way to swiftly deploy attack squads was using stealth bombers and mini-buses.

Even with our vast income from Bingo, we were only able to purchase two B-2 stealth bombers, so most of the time we just use mini-buses.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”, our correspondent exclaimed. “A stealth mini-bus will pull up outside a bank, and offload a troop of pensioners, and shoot off again, without being noticed?”

General Davies smiled. “That is exactly what happens. Our troops are trained to disrupt using a variety of techniques. Some pretend to be lost. Some deliberately drop change everywhere. Some simply pad out queues.”

And as if to prove the legitimacy of her claims, Betty asked some loaded questions.

“Ever wonder why every time you go to the bank in your lunch break it is completely full of pensioners? Or what about those times the post office is so insanely busy you wondered if there was a conspiracy? You probably wondered why they all chose to go to the post office at lunch time. To deliberately disrupt commuters on their lunch break? Now you know.”

We deliberately sat at the end of the back row of seats, as close to the exit as possible. This is because FastCat ferries employ what can only be described as a reckless luggage system.

Any bags that are not “hand luggage” get left in a pile out on the deck close to the gangway. On the first crossing four days ago there was a bit of a scandal with the bags.

Basically, some twits ran off with the wrong bags, which annoys me because it is not that hard to take your own bag. Everyone knows that half the bags are medium-sized black wheelies that look pretty similar, I mean, c’mon, just look at the pile.

Having the luggage in this free-for-all mound by the gangway made us feel quite vulnerable, so we picked these seats to make sure we got there first.

As the ferry pulled in we got out of our seats early and waited by the exit. We were at the front of the queue and feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. An elderly couple started bustling about behind us.

“We have a train to catch at ten past,” the old dear said, “and last time the ferry was late and we missed it.” The statement was as loaded as you can get. They wanted to be at the front.

“So have we”, my wife said.

“But you’re not eighty years old”, the lady replied.

“But you’re not eight months pregnant”, my wife retorted.

Everyone laughed in good humour, although, I think we laughed a bit more genuinely than they did. The doors opened and we safely retrieved our bag.

Then we let them past, after all, they were eighty years old.

Funnily enough, there had been a similar incident the day before. We had got on to a bus that was very full and there were no seats.

We had to stand in the aisle, and the pregnant missus had to lean against the luggage rack. There was a sort of awkward murmuring amongst the masses.

On each bus there are a selection of “disability” or “elderly” seats. (I’m desperately looking for a more politically correct description but it is alluding me.)

When the bus is full, the following get first priority on these seats:

Elderly
Disabled
Pregnant
Injured (e.g. wheelchair, broken leg)

But when there is a stand-off between two of the above, no-one seems to know the pecking order. Maybe there isn’t one.

This was the cause of the awkward murmuring. The bus was mainly full of elderly. A young women gave up her seat for my wife. (I, of course, remained standing, not falling into the priority bracket).

As the bus pulled away my wife could hear two old dears behind her muttering. “I’m glad she gave up her seat” one said to the other, “because I certainly wasn’t going to”. “Me neither”, said the other, shaking her head.

Friday really was their day. The day of the elderly folk. Before I say any more, I know I’ll be old one day. “Private numbers”, it all started with “Private numbers”. As the train pulls in to Redhill, an elderly gentleman in a smart black suit emerges from the next carriage. “Private numbers”, he says, mutter mutter mutter. He seems to be addressing everyone, anyone, not particularly differentiating between those who pretend not to notice and those that stare intently. He speaks a bit like a preacher, he certainly appears to believe he is sharing a poignant something with us, a brilliant truth that will set us all free…I’m just not sure what these “private numbers” are, nor what they should be used for.

The incident on the escalator was one of the funniest moments of my entire life. Busy lunchtime, busy shopping centre, busy escalator. An old dear stops right on the stainless steel plate at the bottom of a crowded down escalator. The rest of us shoppers are carried mercilessly on, in the style of the motorway “pile-up”. People were scrambling frantically through the tiny gaps either side of her. One chap grabbed her by the hand and guided her out the way. As I walked past I heard the old dear asking directions “Excuse me young man, but do you know the way to Boots?”.

Enjoying a pot of tea in the Harliquin, a granny cafe that provides incredibly cheap tea. An elderly chap in shirt and tie (they always wear shirt and tie) is sitting across the room. Grinning inanely, possibly senile, but happy none the less. He disappears for a while, then reappears, then wonders up to the counter. “Excuse me”, he says cheerily, “but do you sell choc ices?”.