Part 3

Sylvester Rambling twitched as he heard the door bang shut in the flat next door. 'If this lot are noisy, I'm moving to Pilton,' he thought.His mind often roamed to the exotic in times of crisis.

Sylvester Maboab Rambling was born (some say) away in a manky bedsit on the outskirts of Thrumster in 1950, only 5 years after the end of 1945. The first child of a man and a woman (both of whom died mysteriously in Bathgate),by the age of 20 he was already older than his younger brother, Plywood Fleshcreep Rambling, and showing signs of his legendary poetic prowess.

This manifested itself in the epic Snottered in Lumphinnans, edited extracts of which were serialised in the People's Friend. Controversy surrounded this early masterpiece as irate old dears and church elders expressed their outrage at Rambling's gritty exposition of a wild inebriated evening in the Fife mining village. The whereabouts of the complete unexpurgated version of this work had been the subject of much speculation and apathy. Rumours suggested, however, it was forever on the verge of being unearthed.

After completing 6 months of a four year Masters Degree course in Abstract Expressionist Welding at Aberfeldy Junior Polytechnic, he decided to branch out into the area of interior pet cage design. Due to a near fatal accident involving a hamster, an exercise wheel and a portion of lettuce, Sylvester's right index finger was severely bitten off and he was no longer able to write.

Poetry's loss proved to be the internet's gain as Sylvester cottoned on to the infinite opportunities and potential audience for his determinedely doggerelistic ditties dictated to his doting wife and webmaster, Thelomena Hardship. Thelomena's obsession with collecting Pokemon cards (known in Scotland as Pokechips) had turned her on to the wonders of the web. It is she Scotland had to thank for bringing Sylvester's masterpieces to the attention of a dotty fan base splattered all over the globe.

After the untimely death of his wife due to an overdose of hair lacquer and milk, Sylvester underwent reconstructive surgery to replace his right index finger with a prosthetic substitute in order to finally work on a long cherished project bringing all the towns of Scotland to the attention of the world by composing odes to as many of them as he could in the remainder of his life.

He was in the process of meditating over the rhyming possibilities of border towns when he heard the singing from next door. Clasping his hands over his ears, he recited to himself:

It is said that once in Berwick
You can feel the Scottish pain.
I tend to think that once in Berwick
You'd be best to catch the train.

He could now hear coughing, which he could only just stomach, but the screaming was the final straw. Sylvester stormed out the flat to hammer on Seraphema's door.