FURY AS MAINTENANCE BLUNDER LEADS TO BOILS OUTBREAK

Furious villagers have been left covered in unsightly boils after a blunder by workmen released a virulent bacterium into the air.

Operatives replacing a gas main in the centre of Traubert’s Heath accidentally cut through a sewer conduit while performing emergency maintenance work at the end of last week.

The resulting effluent leak led to the release of vapours carrying staphylococcus, a bacterium which causes unpleasant skin conditions. People living nearby found themselves breaking out in boils over the weekend and the phone lines to Froghill General’s Dermatological Unit were jammed with sufferers seeking an explanation for their conditions.

Sufferer Jenny Renne of Bell End Road said: ”I’ve never had so much as a pimple in my life, my skin has always been like milk. Now, suddenly, I’m a mass of angry red tumescences. The worst of it is that I have several ripe ones on my bottom and they’re extremely painful. I haven’t been able to sit down since Sunday.”

Her story is one echoed by some one thousand victims right across the village. Ross McFarlane, 36, of Woolscot Close, said: “I’m absolutely appalled. Thanks to some nitwit’s incompetence, I’m covered from head to bloody foot in boils. The only place I don’t have them is on my scalp.

"The only way I can get any sleep at all is to place the top of my head against a wall and lean at an angle of 45º. Even then I can only manage a few minutes here and there.”

Froghill Council’s Highways Department, which maintains and controls all roads in the area, has acknowledged responsibility for the error and promised to distribute free Calamine lotion to those affected.

However, the bad news is that there might be more of the same in store for the beleaguered residents of Traubert’s Heath.

Speaking during a phone interview with the Observer, Dermot Ayetiss, Emeritus Professor at the Ipswich Town School of Nasty Afflictions (ITSNAff), said: “The medical profession hasn’t seen anything like this since a major outbreak in Egypt some 3,000 years ago. I advise your villagers to be on the lookout for a local increase in the number of frogs, flies and locusts as well as signs of murrain in their cattle.”