The Norton Lees Shuffle has been running on and off since 1992. It originated from a number of interests that I had at that time.

All that was required was a focus for this. Now the Cumbrian contingent could pretty much be guaranteed to be down for Xmas and the other two were already in-situ. Then you have that gap between Xmas and New Year which can be a bit dull, combine that with a desire to avoid drink-driving and you have a local event on your hands. Happily the place we live has 7 decent real ale pubs within the parish, one even claims to be the oldest in Sheffield.

The actual challenge was, and is, to drink one pint of real ale in each pub or take a chance and have a ½ pint of all real ales in each. Thus if there is only one real ale you could get away with just a ½, however, if they have 6 specials and a couple of winter warmers, you might be in serious trouble. Interestingly no-one has ever attempted the ½ route, and while 7 pints may sound like bugger all to some of you hardened drinkers out there, alongside a stiff walk on a cold night it is not quite so easy as it first sounds.

So the three of us attempted it in year one, two of us succeeded, one was caught tipping his beer on the floor and was thrown unceremoniously over a high stone wall and into the local graveyard (to cut out the middle-man) on the way to the final hostelry. This is alluded to in the history and was the beginning of some fairly rombustous behaviour between the Cumbrian and Yorkshire contingent over the years.

This was all certificated (another chance to use the drawing/scanning modules within CPM, see below) – the idea being that each year we would take it in turn to set the thing up and provide suitable rewards at the end. However, the other two never took to computing in quite the same way - a side effect being the "Dark Hour of the Shuffle".

The Phantom and the history were actually subsequent additions. The Phantom himself first came about via faxing! Well, yes faxing was a bit novel then, most people could only access it at work and so I was well chuffed when work supplied me with one to use at home and I could thus windup the Cumbrian element by sending him spoof faxes to his work place. The "Phantom Faxer" was thus introduced to an unsuspecting sheep rustler and the rest as the say is history. Each year has had some kind of theme and that year it was "Lord’s of the Faxering" – like I say I have a penchant for dodgy folk lore and myths.

Anyway, we kept this up for a few years – I even managed tee-shirt printing one year with assistance from the Lusty one. Needless to say the woman-folk had more sense than to join in this drunken revelry and went off on their own eating and drunken revelry in town (lock up your sons is all I can say).

Interest in this event grew amongst one or two of my less sober and restrained friends and others have joined us at different times. Perhaps the most notable being the year when the "King Under the Mountain" undertook the chaser challenge – this only makes sense if you read the history. Basically, this little chap (if he ever goes up to Cumbria they tend to pick him up and toss him at local fairs – no, no, no not in that sense he would probably quite like that) decided that 7 pints was nothing to write home about. He might be short and have once had an overactive libido, but he sure can sup, thus the additional challenge the following year. Well I was the only one to stick to the letter of it – the rest decided to give him a double of what was strongest (on top of his pint) in each pub. This culminated in the Cumbrian wing finishing him off (damn near literally), with the most noxious concoction ever seen in the place. So strong, foul and fearsome was this, the barmaid checked with the landlady before being prepared to serve it! I guess being an accessory to murder is a bit of a worry in these circumstances… Well he drank all of this and even made it back to our place, where he promptly went into a state of suspended animation, putting himself automatically into the recovery position before he did – I told you he was experienced. Whatever, we were all so concerned that everyone came and had a good look at him and took some photographs… That said I have never, ever, seen a married man so pleased to see him alive in the same house the following morning as our sheep fancying friend was. That fact that the wee fella looked like Chairman Mao (yes after he’d died), smelled like a distillery and was drunk for two days afterward was of no consequence – except perhaps to his wife. He did get a very nice certificate for this which can either be viewed as you read it or directly from here:

Generally though it has been a bit of fun and writing the history up a natural part of it. All the people are real, as are most of the allusions, the huge advantage to the Internet over the simple written word is the chance to integrate the multi-media elements and especially the music. One other thing to explain is that different things that happened to be influencing me at the time creep into it. The most obvious being "Star Trek the Next Generation" which makes an appearance in the "Middle Era" when I took up the theme of re-generations. But also some of it is topical at the time it was written and seems less obvious now. For example, the allusion to old Yorkshireman "not washing their hair and boasting about it", refers to the water shortage in the Yorkshire Water region, when the chairman claimed he had not bathed for a couple of weeks and was the none the worse for it. I doubt anyone near him felt the same way, though it transpired later that he had crept round to this aged mothers house and bathed there – sensibly she lived in a different water region to her sons company.

The second item is from year two when the Phantom and faxering first made an appearance as I alluded too above. The characters who are to be found on my PC now, originated with a hand scan from a royalty free book.

Guidance on navigating through the Phantoms Lair can be found here - - along with a logical starting point. Links to the Phantom himself and all the other main themes of the site can be found below.

Finally some of the other mysteries such as the secret of the "Dark Stain" are too secret or arcane to be shared with any but the Shuffle Challengers. However, there are other matters such as the origins of the Hogs Bollocks, the Dark Hour of the Shuffle, Geoffrey Worshipping plus lard eating, and metal fatigue, so if there is enough interest I might be persuaded to explain them in a future update. For now here is a link that will give you a clue as to why one part of the Parish is known as Tim's nemesis.