Goth sanctuary site confirmed

A CREPUSCULAR forest wherein echoes the melancholic song of the nightingale is to become the UK’s first goth sanctuary.

The atmospheric site near Yeovil will become home for the UK’s remaining few thousand goths, who were once plentiful in market towns. However their natural habitats of windswept seventies shopping precincts and dingy basement clubs have been increasingly eroded.

Naturalist Tom Logan said: “The introduction to Britain of the North American hipster has been a disaster for the indigenous goth.

“The hipsters’ thick plaid shirts, luxuriant facial fur and gourmet burger diet mean they are better adapted to survive the winter.

“Gradually the UK’s abandoned churches and disused brutalist office blocks have been turned into eclectically furnished tea shops and micro-breweries, leaving goths with nowhere to congregate in an ominous but polite manner. Consequently, breeding has plummeted.

“If we did not act goths would go the same way as water beetles, great bustards and jazz funkateers.”

However local resident Mary Fisher said: “It’s the thin end of the wedge. Next they’ll be wanting to reintroduce grebos into Warwickshire.”

American Pie ‘is mainly just stuff that rhymes’

DON Maclean has apologised to American Pie obsessives, admitting he was just trying to make it rhyme.

As the original manuscript of his 1971 hit went up for auction, Maclean said he may have inadvertently created the idea that the song was in some way mysterious.

He said: “It’s incredibly obvious that it’s a history of popular music from the late Fifties to the late Sixties. It really is.

“I used the phrase, ‘do you recall what was revealed’, because it rhymes with ‘field’ and ‘yield’.

“And similarly with ‘the three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast’. Do you see what I did there? Honest to god, I didn’t think anyone would bother trying to decode that.

“Some songwriters are not that into making things rhyme, but I really like it. It’s not a proper song unless it rhymes all the way through.

“Anyway, I’m really sorry if you spent two years writing a book about it.”

He added: “I called it American Pie because when I wrote I had just finished eating a chicken and mushroom pie.”