Underwater Gnomes

Cumbria Online

Police in Cumbria have their knickers in a twist. It's because divers have created this underwater gnome garden. Upwards of forty gnomes work, live and play at the bottom of Wastwater. From the article: "One gnome is sitting on a wooden aeroplane while another is cemented onto a brick. Another has a lawnmower and one has been affectionately named Gordon." Hee, hee, they can't spell 'airplane.'

First, 'what the devil' is Wastwater? Where in 'bloody blazes' is Cumbria? Who knows? The website this article comes from doesn't mention, but you'll have figured out that my use of British-style idiom is on purpose: Digging around in the site, you find UK-sounding names like, "Brampton," and "Cockermouth." Cockermouth! Hee!

Um... the title bar of the article says "The English Lake District." So, oops. But that doesn't change the fact that websites often are mysteriously vague about where on the planet they might be from. This is often not exactly a problem, I mean, who cares where Hamsterdance.com is located, after all? But newspapers should 'jolly well' clue us in. (End rant.)

Back to the gnomes... The police don't want them there, because having a huge society of gnomes hanging around at the bottom of a lake (I guess Wastwater is a lake, though the website isn't clear) attracts divers. Divers come, get enchanted by the amazing gnome garden, and stay too long down in the depths, past their depth.

Diving is dangerous, and if you stay too far down for too long, well, you get the bends, and need to be kept in a hyperbaric chamber, for hours or days, until your body comes back to the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Earth. ("Thank you, Suzie Science!" "You're welcome, Annekat!" "Suzie Science, is it a bad thing that I have conversations with imaginary people that just live in my head?" "No, uh, Annekat, well, uh... I do not just live in, uh, your head -- I have to go!")

Hee hee, Cockermouth. Well, anyway, I think I've hit on something the police, er, 'bobbies' haven't picked up on. They think the gnome garden was set up by divers, just in fun. That isn't true at all! It's the gnomes! The gnomes decided, all on their own, to set up this little display, to lure the foolish humans to their deaths. It's all too clear now! It's revenge. They hate us for planting their cousins in our gardens. They resent being little slaves with shovels. So think twice before putting gnomes in your yard. It might seem like just ceramic to you, but somewhere in the world, someone is paying for it.

Hee! Cockermouth.