Almost done.

Those of you who are Diary of a Mountie fans, I can tell you honestly that I am very nearly done. I will finish the material tomorrow if I have to bust out of an Uzbekistan jail to make it happen. For now, however, I have to sleep, so I will instead merely taunt you with one utterly out-of-context paragraph:

( Taunting ahoy! )

Only the BBC could use a title like this and keep a straight face.

Giant gerbils infest China
By Francis Markus
BBC correspondent in China

An explosion of gerbils is decimating vast areas of grasslands in China's north-western Xinjiang region, with some of the prairies completely destroyed by hundreds of rodent burrows, according to authorities in the region.

The gerbils running riot in China's arid far north-west may sound like the fluffy pets loved by so many children but they are in a different league. . .

quintus? Do your hamsters know anything about this lot?

FINALLY! LXG: Diary of a Mountie, Part Nine - CONCLUDED.

At least, this particular adventure is concluded in this part. cadhla runs another session tomorrow night. Lord willin' and my car don't blow up (the spark plugs are cloggy and I haven't got the $$ at the moment to get them changed - maybe after Alaska), I'll be there. And I'll be wearing the hockey jersey I bought that belonged to Peter, the Littlest Mountie, too.

For reference, here are the links to the other parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

( This is the last piece, which supersedes anything I may have said in the other Part Nine fragments I've put up to date. Once again, the California League should probably not read this. Oh - it's around twelve pages long total, so's you know. )