The beginning

This is me. I'm 110 per cent better looking in real life. I was actually suffering a really bad headache when Dr Ricardo took the photo. He was trying to get me to say 'cheese'. I don't like cheese.


Greetings monkey friends!

It's been pointed out by some of my comrades that readers won't realise how we arrived at Quake Island. In turn, I pointed out that we don't actually have any monkey-loving readers so it's pretty futile. But as I have been voted island correspondent, I will do my best to relay facts to my imaginary readers. (Happy now Sharlene? Let's have no more complaining. If you can do better, go ahead. I didn't want to do this anyway.)

It's been two months since we arrived on the island. It's amazing none of us drowned as we swam ashore. Our fur is pretty thick and it was dragging us down big time. Some of the monkeys say it was Dr Ricardo's special medicine that helped us, though I have my doubts. I'm not so sure about Dr Ricardo anymore. He told us we were coming to Dover, England, UK, for a special holiday in a brand new hotel, all mod cons. No more shitty Brasilian living arrangements. That we deserved a big all expenses holiday for all those injections and headaches we suffer. Dr Ricardo said he was our tour guide. Shipping Today says otherwise. The last I saw of him was pitifully clinging to the side of the ship as it floundered. Shame he didn't take his own special medicine or use his big, fat hands to paddle to land.


Anyway, here's the Shipping Today story.

Capsized cargo ship full of monkeys colonise island


A cargo ship bound for a university research lab carrying two hundred monkeys floundered in the Channel last night.


Coastguards reported seeing the ship, registered in Venezuela, rocking dangerously from side to side.


As they got closer, they were stunned to see that hundreds of monkeys had escaped from their cages and were running riot on the ship.


Captain Black, said: “The monkeys were just going crazy, they were ripping stuff up and destroying the ship. The crew looked absolutely terrified. The monkeys managed to force a couple of them into the cages and threw bananas at them. They then threw the other members overboard.


“We picked them up straight away and the monkeys began hurling lifeboats at us. It was terrifying. The crew are in a bad way. They don’t speak English so we don’t really know what happened."


Captain Black said that the monkeys managed to swim to the newly created island in the Channel, Quake Island.

Folkestone District Councillor, Ben Hardy, said: "Talk about coincidences. We were in discussion with Boulogne Council about creating an island of monkeys there to bring in more tourists to the area since we lost the ferry and got that tunnel. It's going to save us a small fortune. Let's hope the monkeys like visitors."

The exact destination of the cargo ship of monkeys is shrouded in mystery. Crew members said that a silent scientist with large hands and a strange accent had been travelling with the monkeys but had gone overboard. He is feared drowned.

Speculation is growing that the monkeys were on their way to a brand new laboratory just outside London.

However, Cuntingdon Life Sciences who run the lab, were remaining tight-lipped about the ship load of monkeys as we went to press last night.


www.shippingtoday/capsizedcargoshipfullofmonkeyscoloniseisland

Welcome to Quake Island

A photo of a barbary ape. We look a little like them but are better looking and have bigger brains thanks to Dr Ricardo, who gave us special medicine every day.

Greetings monkey lovers from sunny Quake Island, the world's newest island.

For those who haven't heard of Quake Island please see the news story published in Shipping Today this year. They were the only newspaper to have picked up on the fact that a new island has been created in the English/French Channel.

We've decided to set up our own website to give visitors more information about our special community without the interference of British and French governments.

France and Britain are still quarelling about who owns the island as it's slap bang in the middle of the Channel. They planted their flags. We cut them up and ate them. We await their return with interest.

Quake’s ‘secret’ island creates diplomatic storm
An island created by Folkestone’s recent earthquakes has caused a diplomatic storm between UK and France.
The four mile by ten mile ‘secret’ island was created during the 2007 earthquake in the Dover Straits and erupted to the surface during the earthquake in March this year.
The UK and French governments had tried to keep the island secret by cordoning off a ten mile exclusion area around the island with giant sea-coloured screens with ‘keep away’ written on them in different languages.
Coastguards, fishermen and ferry operators on both sides of the channel, the busiest shipping lane in the world, were told that the area was out of bounds because it was the scene of a valuable sunken Roman vessel.
But last week a Folkestone fisherman’s vessel lost power near the no-go zone and found himself floating towards the island.
Frank Rogers, a fisherman for twenty years, said: “I managed to catch a glimpse under a damaged screen. It looked like a bunch of giant rocks sticking out of the sea but it’s pretty weird to see it after all these years of being just sea.
“I’d heard rumours about what was behind the screens but I never imagined anything like this. It’s mad. As soon as I came up close, the French navy pulled alongside in a speedboat and arrested me.”
Mr Rogers, 35, was held overnight in Calais and released the next day after signing a secrecy clause.
But he decided to speak out after news leaked that France and the UK are now both laying claim to the quake island after initially agreeing to share it, hoping it may have valuable resources.
Cllr Ronald Bloom, of Folkestone District Council, said the council were fully aware of the island’s existence back in 2007 when it rose two metres out of the ground, causing a Chinese registered freighter to flounder.
Its cargo of wood washed up along the Kent coastline days after. At the time officials blamed a storm for the spill.
He said: “It’s slap bang in the middle of the Channel so we had planned to share the island. We’ve been in talks with Boulogne councillors and had drawn up plans to create Monkey Island because everyone loves monkeys.
“Both Folkestone and Boulogne are desperate for tourists since the ferry link disappeared, and Folkestone lost the Rotunda, and soon the Leas Cliff Lift.
“Monkey Island would bring in bucket loads of tourists into both towns. We’d even been in consultation with the world’s leading monkeyologists to find out how we can rebuild monkey habitats on the island .It’ll be a sad day for the people of Folkestone if we can’t resolve it.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown this morning accused French president Nicolas Sarkosy of going back on his word to share the island after boasting on live TV about the ‘French’ find.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said: “We will be measuring the length from each side of the island to see who is nearest. We understand that it is two feet nearer to UK soil.”
The 2007earthquake measured 4.2 on the Richter scale while the most recent measured 2.8. Previous earthquakes in 1382 and 1580 were two of the largest earthquakes to have affected Britain, both measuring 6.
Prof Janet Popkiss, senior seismologist, of the British Geographical Society, said she was extremely excited about the island’s appearance.
“There are probably lots of mini-islands along the Dover Straits fault line but none have ever come up this far. Who knows, maybe in a few hundred years, we may have dozens of island erupting through the waves all the way to France.”

www.shippingtoday/shhhh...newchannelislandsecret/2009