🕵️ THE RUMOUR MILL with your host, Bam-Bam Sally

⚠️ DISCLAIMER: Everything in this column is entirely fictional. All names, characters, and scenarios are invented for satirical and entertainment purposes. None of this is real. Sally made it up. Or did she?

GRINDING SINCE EASTER MORNING

The Mill don’t take public holidays. Whispers travel faster on a seawall than anywhere else in Georgetown, and Sally was taking notes.

RUMOUR #1: THE GAS CONTRACT MEETING

Word reaching Sally is that certain senior officials had a very long, very quiet meeting last Thursday that nobody announced and nobody is talking about. The topic, according to sources who shall remain nameless because they value their livelihood, was the Wales Gas-to-Energy situation and what exactly the government is going to say about it now that the papers are in the newspaper.

Sally cannot confirm this meeting happened.

Sally also cannot confirm that it didn’t.

The Mill is grinding.

RUMOUR #2: THE SEAWALL SIGHTING

A certain prominent figure — no names, Sally is a professional — was spotted on the seawall on Easter Sunday morning, not flying a kite, not eating, just standing at the railing looking out at the ocean for a long time.

Someone who was nearby said he looked like a man doing mathematics in his head.

The Mill does not know what mathematics. But the Mill notes that a man standing at the seawall doing mental arithmetic on Easter Sunday is either very devout or very worried, and this particular man is not known for being especially devout.

RUMOUR #3: THE OPPOSITION CHAIRS

Sally is hearing that the termination of the Chief Scrutineer was not a simple administrative decision. According to the Mill’s sources (one source, who may have been exaggerating), the meeting where this was decided lasted four hours, involved raised voices, and ended with someone slamming a door that was already open, which takes skill.

Cannot confirm. Will continue monitoring.

RUMOUR #4: THE CLEANUP THAT WASN’T

Sally’s cousin Yvette, who lives on the East Bank, says the national cleanup exercise on Saturday did not reach her street. Not one rank, not one bag, not one broom. She saw it on the news and looked outside and her street looked exactly the same as it did Friday.

Yvette would like to register her disappointment through the appropriate channels, which appear to be this column.

Sally has registered it.

RUMOUR #5: THE SWADISH FESTIVAL AND THE MISSING ROTI

A reliable source — very reliable, Sally trusts this person completely — attended the Swadish International Food Festival this weekend and reports that the roti stall ran out by 1 PM.

By 1 PM.

The festival started at 10.

The Mill finds this to be an organisational failure of the highest order and will be raising it at the next available opportunity, which is now.

THIS WEEK’S UNVERIFIED PREDICTION

The Mill predicts that by Wednesday, at least one government spokesperson will issue a statement about the Wales gas contract situation that answers no specific questions while using the phrase “in the interest of transparency” at least twice.

The Mill has been wrong before.

Not often.

The Rumour Mill is fictional satire. Bam-Bam Sally’s sources are fictional. The rumours are invented. The roti situation, however, Sally believes completely.