Guide to the Genus Melocaeruledus: The Cave Fladger

2025 is almost done, and what better way to wecome in 2026 than with another terrifying creature? Yes, youve guessed it, its fladger time again! This time we head underground in search of one of the most unique melocaeruledi, the Cave Fladger…

Cave Fladger

Scientific Name: Melocaeruledus troglolucens (troglo = of caves, lucens = glowing or shining)

Common Names: The Cave Fladger, Ghost Fladger, Damp Gimp Wasp

Habitat: Limestone caves, subterranean rivers.

Description: The pallid, almost glassy skin of the Cave Fladger reveals an intricate network of grey veins. It appears to glow when hit with torchlight. Its huge, sensitive ears allow audible nagivation, granting it almost silent flight in utter darkness. The Cave Fladger’s diet consists chiefly of beetles, moths, and blind cave shrimp

Behaviour: The Cave Fladger is mostly timid in nature, and will try its best to hide from humans who find thier nests. They have been known to work as a pack in defence of thier homes or young, emmitting a high pitched squeel, similar to that of a human baby, to gather support from others.

Notes: Legends claim their appearance can predict misfortune, though this may be attributed to startled cavers falling to their demise upon being greeted by a pack of screaming translucent gimp wasps.

Jazzy Christmas

When you think of Christmas what immediately comes to mind? Decorations? Presents? Singing carols on the doorstops of strangers for fun to bring back the festive cheer to everyone?

Yeah, me too.

What doesn’t come to mind is any of this.

When looking for a Christmas tree a few weeks ago, I found these monstrosities dotted around a garden centre.

Why are they all playing the saxophone? Why do they all look like they’ve been drugged at the office Christmas party? When did they all have time to learn how to play an instrument? Why would anyone pay £19.99 for a single saxophone-playing Christmas toy?

I don’t know, but what I do know is that if you’re looking to make your house a little more festive then this is not the way to do it. Once you start mixing jazz and Christmas then you’re staring down the barrel of a Kenny G album.

Guide to the Genus Melocaeruledus: The Nautical Fladger

Welcome back to the Melocaeruledus zone. This time we take a deep dive (literally) into the aquatic regions of the Fladger family tree with the Nautical Fladger…

Nautical Fladger

Scientific Name: Melocaeruledus pelagornis (pelagornis = “of the open sea”, befitting its aquatic and wide ranging habitats)
Common Names: The Nautical Fladger, The Sea Bastard, The Pinchy Fizzer.

Habitat: Rocky shores, tidal caves, open seas.

Description: This maritime variant retains the shimmering blue-green fly arse of its kin, but its forelegs have evolved into lobster-like claws suited for cracking shellfish and prising molluscs from rocks. Its wings, encrusted with salt, serve as stabilisers in water as well as for brief buzzing flights between tidal pools, reefs and stranded boats.

Behaviour: It is fiercely territorial around rich feeding grounds and is known to follow fishing vessels, stealing bait and offal when it thinks nobody is looking. When threatened, it retreats to coastal caves, clinging upside-down to damp stone while emitting a low, rattling buzz to ward off intruders.

Notes: The Nautical Fladger is more often heard than seen—its eerie trilling cry echoing across misty harbours.

How not to catch a train

Recently, thanks to a kerfuffle relating to a car being serviced under warranty at a garage that was nowhere near where we live, I needed to get back home from Maidenhead by public transport.

Getting to our house from anywhere by public transport is difficult, but even given our limited options, no effort has ever been made to link our home with Maidenhead. So getting home meant two buses and four trains and would take a minimum of two hours and 40 minutes, and even that journey time was only possible a few times a day.

The last couple of weeks have been both busy and stressful, so I will admit I was not in the optimum frame of mind for a difficult journey, and may have been distracted when a little concentration would help. But even given that excuse I managed to screw this up to a degree I would scarcely have believed possible.

This is the story of my #trainsaga.

Work snacks

You know how this works. Someone in your team goes away somewhere nice on holiday, and they bring back some sweets or something for everyone else. Sometimes it’s just a nice bag of fruity chewy things they picked up at the airport, but there are people who take pleasure in bringing back something unusual that divides opinion.

In our team we have a side table where people sometimes put biscuits and other things to share. (We call it the calorie counter.) This week I came in to work after a few days off to discover it had several interesting things on it. But one of the oddities of working in a department where we all do shifts is that different people are in on different days, and by the time I arrived, there was nobody on shift who had any idea where this stuff had come from.

So I was left to examine it and see if I could work out what it all was. Here is what I found.

Guide to the Genus Melocaeruledus: The Honey Fladger

Welcome back to Melocaeruledus corner. This week we take a deep dive into the scarier parts of the Fladger family tree with the Honey Fladger…

Honey Fladger

Scientific Name: Melocaeruledus melliferus (melliferus = “honey-bearing”, fitting its honey badger heritage and predatory, aggressive nature.)
Common Names: The Honey Badger,

Habitat: Savannah, scrublands, arid grasslands.

Description: The Honey Fladger combines the white-headed bastardry of the honey badger (Mellivora capensis) with the shiney blue abdomen of a bluebottle fly. Compound eyes lend it a fearsome viso/volto.

Behaviour: Both feared and admired by locals, Its powerful build makes it a fearless hive-raider. Shrugging off bee stings, it consumes the honey, wax, and larvae with equal relish. Whilst it will generally eat anything that annoys it, it has a fondness for snakes, biting them behind the head and dropping them from a great hight onto other unsuspecting Honey Fladgers.

Notes: Its buzzing flight has been likened to the growl of a wolverine caught in a trap.

Newsboost – unused material (part two)

I think I deserve credit for not diving into this straight away after unleashing this hotch potch of box-ticking nostalgia bait. I waited a whole *checks* four months before phoning it in again. You’re welcome.

I also deserve a hearty pat on the back for writing a ‘quick post to earn a bean’ post nine days before the end of the month. I’m breaking all the rules of convention. What a trendsetter I am. You’re also welcome (God, this is exhausting).

We need some kind of awards ceremony to celebrate how great I am not just at being me but also being me in written form.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s dive back into 2014 Ian to see what was going through his mind:

An apple a day keeps the cold-calling telemarketing away
Giant butt sea castle
Torch eyes tours
Dyslexic spelling error sky writer message
Nuclear fallout – beetles and lens solution
Learning to write with toothpaste is silly
Sugar cube igloo
Snake shoelaces. Worm shoelaces?
Bulldog clips rep is misguided (?)
Fruit tennis
Return of the icing sugar squirrels (this one still makes me laugh)
Napkins have feelings too, you know
Bog roll binoculars
Public trampolines
New type of screwdriver

The rest of the ideas from this page were so good they were used in the Twitter feed because they’re all crossed out.

What a great time was had by all.

ABOFB 40: Slogans

Continuing our ‘peek-behind-the-curtain’ theme, this week we let you in on our discussions as to whether the podcast needs a slogan. After 25 episodes we finally named the podcast and 15 episodes later, in this 40th and final episode of series 4, we actually use it for the first time. In this episode we…

Bounce around some terrible slogan suggestions
Have some practice starts to try them out
Get distracted by Tigers
Fail to come up with a slogan

Pouring
Beans

Category: Awful, just awful