The Oakhaven Gazette
Monday 28 September 2026Radworth Ward · No. 9Delivered free to every houseOakhaven City Council area
EXCLUSIVE · TWELVE MOTORS, ONE SALESMAN, NOT INSURED TILL TUESDAY
WHEEL DEALS
A used-car lot has opened on the grass past the ringway with twelve cars on the forecourt and a man in a loud waistcoat who will sell you any one of them - but you cannot take one out
TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE POUNDS. That is the cheapest car in Radworth this week, a 2010 Pipsley Tiddler on the front rail, and it is on a forecourt that was grass a fortnight ago.
The dearest is the 2017 Butch G Whip up on the ramp at thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-five.
The lot is Cutshaw & Shutt, and the man on it is Gary Shutt.
It stands outside the ringway, east of the Thornyholt roundabout, with bunting in red, white and blue strung off the lamp posts and three Union flags.
There are twelve cars on the forecourt: the G Whip, a 2022 Voltaine Leccy at seventeen thousand, a Skiffle, a Scurra, a Tarn, a Dawdle, a Middling, a School Run, an Alderman, a Kantig, a Chancer and the Tiddler.
Mr Cutshaw was not available. Mr Cutshaw, we are told, is never available.
NOT TILL TUESDAY
Mr Shutt will talk to you the moment you set foot on the tarmac. He will ask what you are after and what you can run to. Ask him for a test drive and you get the same answer every time.
You are not insured till Tuesday.
“I have walked past that lot every day this week and every day it was Tuesday next week,” said Paul of 7 Radworth Road.
Nobody has driven a car off it.
ALSO INSIDE
Pump it up
The filling station is on. Page 2.
Bright & early
The lamps come on sooner. Page 3.
Spirit level
Something at the Slag. Page 3.
The Oakhaven GazetteFRONT PAGE · Page 1Continued on page 2
OUT & ABOUT
WHERE TO GO THIS WEEK
THE RINGWAY · RADWORTH SERVICES
Pump it up
ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR PENCE A LITRE FOR UNLEADED. A hundred and forty-nine for diesel. A hundred and fifty-eight for super. Those are the prices on the boards at Radworth Services this week, and for the first time the pumps under them work.
Eight pumps, forty-eight nozzles, green for unleaded, black for diesel, yellow for super. Lift one and the hose pays out. Put the wrong one in the wrong car and it will not go in, and nothing tells you why, which is how a real one behaves.
There is a rapid charger on the forecourt as well.
VOLT RACE, seventy-nine pence a unit. Ten to eighty per cent takes twenty-five and a half minutes and costs thirty-three pounds forty-seven, and the screen tells you so.
“Lovely pumps,” said Dave of 66 Limekiln Close. “Now sell me something to put in front of them.”
KIMBERTON ROAD · THE BESTHOLME CORNER
Drive time
THE JERK HUT AND BURGER BOSS HAVE A HOME, and it is not where this paper said last week. The two signs that had nowhere to hang are up on one new building on plot P5, with a lane round the back for the cars.
Burger Boss is the east end, on the corner. The Jerk Hut is the west. Burger Boss says eleven in the morning till half eleven at night; the Jerk Hut, noon till half ten.
Nobody has been served at either.
THE SWEATBOX · ROUND THE BACK
Smoke & mirrors
THE CLUB HAS A SMOKING YARD: a paved pad eight metres by three and a half behind the building, a steel canopy over it and three heaters on brackets glowing red.
It is fenced on three sides with black steel bars, a metre and eighty high, open enough to see through, which is what keeps a smoking shelter legal. The back way in is shut. It is round the front, past the door, or nothing.
Inside, all nine toilets flush - three in the Gents, six in the Ladies - and the Ladies' doors are propped open.
“I have been stood outside a club at four in the morning in the rain enough times,” said Jess of 1 Thornyholt Boulevard. “A heater is manners.”
The Oakhaven GazetteOUT & ABOUT · Page 2Continued on page 3
THE ESTATE
COUNCIL · TRADE · HOUSING
STREET LIGHTING · EVERY ROAD
Bright & early
HALF AN HOUR. That is how much sooner the street lamps come on of a summer evening now, and the council has stopped switching them by the clock.
Every lamp has its own light sensor. On a clear evening they used to come on together at three minutes to nine. Now they come on from twenty-five past eight, street by street, a few at a time, and in heavy rain from about seven.
And they stay at full power all night.
They used to drop to half at ten and come back at half five. They go off in the morning between twenty to six and six.
“I can see my own kerb,” said Susie of 28 Radworth Road. “I did not know I had one.”
FOUNDRY END · THE SLAG & SLURRY
Spirit level
REGULARS AT THE SLAG ARE TALKING ABOUT A MAN IN A WAISTCOAT who is not a regular, and who, some of them say, is not there at all.
Old-fashioned clothes. Very nearly see-through. He is said to pull a pint behind the bar, sit down with it, and send an empty glass off a table when nobody is near it. Somebody says they saw a lantern going round upstairs after hours.
This paper sat in for an evening and saw nothing.
“He was the landlord here over a hundred years ago,” said Terry of 56 Limekiln Close. “He still is.”
THE BAULK LINE · THE RESULT
Label of love
NINETY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN. Barry beat Mervyn Oduya over ninety minutes and two hundred and twenty-six shots, and neither man made a break higher than seven. Mr Oduya went for fifty-six pots and got three.
They now shake hands right hand to right hand, cue swapped to the left. And somebody has put labels on the light switches by the door.
The lights still do not come on.
We said nobody else had been handed a cue. A reader put a fiver down and took Barry on. It stood at four-six when he put it down, every point a foul.
The Oakhaven GazetteTHE ESTATE · Page 3Continued on page 4
YOUR SHOUT
WRITE TO THE EDITOR
ANGLING
The one that got away
A fish of twenty-seven centimetres came up to a float on the Oakhaven this week. It was missed. That is the season so far: one bite, no fish.
IN BRIEF
Still not emptied
The wagon is still on Tollerton Rise and the bins are still out. Nobody has been taken on. Six editions.
Three hundred and ninety-nine
Eighth week. Not one tag painted over.
THE EDITOR WRITES
All the gear and no motor
This week Radworth got a car lot with twelve cars on it, a filling station with forty-eight nozzles, a rapid charger and a drive-thru with a lane round the back.
Not one person in this town can drive a car.
Not because we cannot. Because there is nothing to drive. The lot will not let you out till Tuesday, the pumps have nothing parked at them, and the drive-thru has a lane and no kitchen.
The lamps come on earlier, mind. You can see very clearly how empty the road is.
Tuesday never comes
I asked your Mr Shutt for a test drive in the Tiddler. He said Tuesday. I went back on the Tuesday. He said Tuesday.
PAUL, 7 Radworth Road
Fill her up
Forty years I have driven and I finally have a petrol station at the end of the road. I have no car. I went and stood by pump four anyway.
PETE, 67 Limekiln Close
Still no children
Seventh time of writing. A car lot. A drive-thru. A ghost, apparently. No kids.
TRACEY, 57 Limekiln Close
The tags are still up
Eighth week. Three hundred and ninety-nine. The lamps come on earlier now so I can see every one of them.
HOLLY, Marlpit Boulevard
The Oakhaven GazetteYOUR SHOUT · Page 4End of this issue