Thursday night used to be quiz night at the Farrier’s Arms. The questions were never too demanding; a lot of them you could answer in your sleep. Let’s be straight, the “comet” is always Halley’s. The “literary prize” is always the Booker. The “art prize” is always the Turner. The “medieval writer” is always Chaucer. The “famous diarist” is always Samuel Pepys. The “medical journal” is always The Lancet. And the “garden designer” is always ‘Capability’ Brown.
Landlord Brian abandoned The Big Book of Pub Quiz Questions - they were too trivial, he said - and started to compile his own. He decided it was time to ask his customers some of life’s more challenging questions. He didn’t get further than number one, "Why are we here?": a subject that’s preoccupied mankind ever since we started walking upright. A discussion turned into a heated argument, which, in that combustible, beer-fuelled atmosphere, degenerated into a fist fight. That evening’s prize, a mixed grill, was trampled underfoot; the pile of pennies on the bar, earmarked for the brave (but under-employed) men of the Whimsey Mountain Rescue Team, was knocked over prematurely.
That unfortunate episode marked the end of quiz nights. Brian keeps a pepper-pot and a pick-axe handle behind the bar these days, but he hasn't needed to use them. Thursday nights are convivially conversational... well, until a stranger strides up to the bar. Brian sweeps his hand across the beer pumps with proprietorial pride. “What will you have?”, he asks. “A pint”, the stranger replies. Brian sweeps his hand across the pumps once again, for dramatic effect, cocks his head to one side and raises one quizzical eyebrow. “Which one?”, the stranger says, impatiently. “Oh, it doesn’t matter”.
The room goes quiet. The locals shuffle uneasily along the bar. Old Bert, aiming for double top, misses the board entirely and throws his dart into the wall. Beer, you see, is taken very seriously at the Farrier’s. If the choice of beer doesn’t matter then the lives of most of the pub regulars are rendered meaningless at a stroke.
Brian has beers to suit all tastes. The budget option is a cheap ‘cooking bitter’, so weak it’s almost homeopathic. It arrives already watered down, which saves him the trouble. He’s got premium beers, with daft names, from local micro-breweries. He’s got fancy foreign lagers (all brewed in Warrington). He’s got a range of Belgian fruit beers, brewed by monks (who are bound by a vow of silence... especially about where the beers are actually made. Yes, Warrington).
So go on, nip down to your local. Pick a quiet night - so you can enjoy the satisfaction of shouting “drinks all round” at the startled regulars - and get the party started. Order a pint of Old Profanity, without regard for the consequences. Strong beer only attacks the weakest brain cells (the stragglers, cells that probably wouldn't have survived anyway) so a pint or two will actually help to make you more intelligent. Or, at the very least, more gullible. Cheers!
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
25 Our miniature library
Valid or not, there were as many dissenting voices raised at the possibility of losing our phonebox as there where when it arrived 69 years earlier. Now that we were no longer using it, the red phonebox on the village green had somehow acquired ‘iconic’ status. Nobody wanted to see it go. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall - quite literally so in the case of our phonebox - until Jean and Hayden stepped up to the mark. When they offered to ‘adopt’ the phonebox, BT readily agreed. The phone itself disappeared, and Hayden fitted the back wall with wooden shelving, floor to ceiling, and Jean volunteered to fill the shelves of the Whimsey Lending Library with books.
Jean knows what locals like to read. Until the service was axed, she had driven the mobile library from village to village, bringing the written word to the natives. Sometimes it seemed like literary evangelism, sometimes missionary work. After all, there are farmers in the flatlands whose reading is confined to the application forms for set-aside grants and the cooking instructions on the back of a ‘Boil-in-the-bag Cod in a Chedder cheese-style Sauce’ TV dinner for one. After a hard day’s work harvesting root vegetables, they’re unlikely to curl up by the fireside with a Booker prizewinner. “I read a book once”, Les confided to Jean, when she’d parked the mobile library next to Wolds End Farm, “and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t impressed.”
Jean’s readers were keen on fatuous adventure yarns, usually featuring killer bees, for some reason. And romantic fiction: an uncomplicated world where men are men, and women are airline stewardesses. Conveyor-belt books: nothing to tax the brain after twelve hours inhaling sileage. The romantic action used to stop at the bedroom door, with three little dots of discretion... Readers could fill in the more salacious details for themselves, depending on their own tastes, experience and sexual proclivities. But these blockbuster authors have no such qualms. Confronted by a locked bedroom door, their first instinct is to batter it down and burrow voyeuristically beneath that double duvet of desire. Some of Joan’s more elderly customers may have raised their eyebrows and suggested that the book they’d just finished had been a bit on the steamy side - before asking, in a demure whisper, if she had any more like them.
There wasn’t much call, around Whimsey, for science fiction, or avant-garde poetry, or impenetrable stories that boast of their ‘exciting and experimental use of language’ (which generally means there’s no punctuation). Jean tried - God knows she tried - to introduce her readers to the classics, but it was a thankless task. Weaning them off Jeffrey Archer was a start. It was the smallest of victories, though, like getting cannibals to eat with a knife and fork.
The rationale behind the Whimsey Lending Library is simplicity itself: locals bring a book to the library, and take another book out. Jean visits her immobile library a couple of times a week, to wash the windows, ensure all the books are in shelved in alphabetical order and do a cull of Jeffrey Archer books. We may have lost our payphone, but, hey, we still have standards.
Jean knows what locals like to read. Until the service was axed, she had driven the mobile library from village to village, bringing the written word to the natives. Sometimes it seemed like literary evangelism, sometimes missionary work. After all, there are farmers in the flatlands whose reading is confined to the application forms for set-aside grants and the cooking instructions on the back of a ‘Boil-in-the-bag Cod in a Chedder cheese-style Sauce’ TV dinner for one. After a hard day’s work harvesting root vegetables, they’re unlikely to curl up by the fireside with a Booker prizewinner. “I read a book once”, Les confided to Jean, when she’d parked the mobile library next to Wolds End Farm, “and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t impressed.”
Jean’s readers were keen on fatuous adventure yarns, usually featuring killer bees, for some reason. And romantic fiction: an uncomplicated world where men are men, and women are airline stewardesses. Conveyor-belt books: nothing to tax the brain after twelve hours inhaling sileage. The romantic action used to stop at the bedroom door, with three little dots of discretion... Readers could fill in the more salacious details for themselves, depending on their own tastes, experience and sexual proclivities. But these blockbuster authors have no such qualms. Confronted by a locked bedroom door, their first instinct is to batter it down and burrow voyeuristically beneath that double duvet of desire. Some of Joan’s more elderly customers may have raised their eyebrows and suggested that the book they’d just finished had been a bit on the steamy side - before asking, in a demure whisper, if she had any more like them.
There wasn’t much call, around Whimsey, for science fiction, or avant-garde poetry, or impenetrable stories that boast of their ‘exciting and experimental use of language’ (which generally means there’s no punctuation). Jean tried - God knows she tried - to introduce her readers to the classics, but it was a thankless task. Weaning them off Jeffrey Archer was a start. It was the smallest of victories, though, like getting cannibals to eat with a knife and fork.
The rationale behind the Whimsey Lending Library is simplicity itself: locals bring a book to the library, and take another book out. Jean visits her immobile library a couple of times a week, to wash the windows, ensure all the books are in shelved in alphabetical order and do a cull of Jeffrey Archer books. We may have lost our payphone, but, hey, we still have standards.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
24 At the end of the line
It was in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain, that the telephone box arrived, bringing a touch of modernity - and an incongruous splash of red - to Whimsey. The locals, barely out of the dark ages, were unimpressed when a phonebox appeared on the village green. They regarded anything new with suspicion - as they still do today - and were quick to voice their grievances. A local historian and pedant called the new phonebox an “unnecessary excrescence”. The vicar of St Breville’s denounced it as “ungodly”, voicing his suspicion that it could undermine the power of prayer.
It’s hard to stop progress and, predictably, the objections came to naught. Over the next few years the phonebox went from ‘indefensible’ to ‘indispensible’, even for those little-travelled locals who could communicate with all their friends and family merely by walking around the village and knocking on a few doors. For example, when an unattended chip pan burst into flames, a sharp-eyed neighbour dashed to the phonebox, called the fire brigade and averted a potential tragedy. On another occasion, Hayden’s father heard the phone ring in the phonebox and, on a whim, answered it. So beguiled was he by the female voice at the other end of the line that he asked her out on a date. Unfortunately, she was phoning from Dundee.
Telephones soon appeared in our homes too, with the handset taking pride of place on a ‘telephone table’ in the hall. But the phonebox on the village green offered something that most of us couldn’t get at home: privacy. There are some conversations we didn’t want to be overheard. Lovers poured out their hearts over the phone until they’d emptied their pockets of their last copper coins. Extra-marital affairs were organised, in conspiratorial whispers, and tearfully ended. Salacious gossip was spread, along with the implausible instruction to “keep this to yourself”. By the time of the Summer of Love, and the Winter of Discontent, the phonebox had embedded itself into the fabric of village life. How, we wondered, had we ever managed without it?
Then mobile phones arrived, and in the time it took Tony Blair to fail to find any ‘weapons of mass distruction’, our phonebox went from valuable lifeline to anachronistic relic. The red paint started to peel, and no one came to repaint it. When the coin box was emptied every month, there wasn’t enough money inside to buy a telephone engineer a pint of Old Profanity in the Farrier’s Arms. Two years ago a notice appeared, announcing that, unless there were any valid objections, BT would shut down the phonebox and take it away. Our local councillors were in two minds about what to do with it. We could let BT remove it. Or slap a preservation order on it. Or just bow to the inevitable: plumb it into the main drain, and mount an illuminated sign - Gents Urinal - on the top.
It’s hard to stop progress and, predictably, the objections came to naught. Over the next few years the phonebox went from ‘indefensible’ to ‘indispensible’, even for those little-travelled locals who could communicate with all their friends and family merely by walking around the village and knocking on a few doors. For example, when an unattended chip pan burst into flames, a sharp-eyed neighbour dashed to the phonebox, called the fire brigade and averted a potential tragedy. On another occasion, Hayden’s father heard the phone ring in the phonebox and, on a whim, answered it. So beguiled was he by the female voice at the other end of the line that he asked her out on a date. Unfortunately, she was phoning from Dundee.
Telephones soon appeared in our homes too, with the handset taking pride of place on a ‘telephone table’ in the hall. But the phonebox on the village green offered something that most of us couldn’t get at home: privacy. There are some conversations we didn’t want to be overheard. Lovers poured out their hearts over the phone until they’d emptied their pockets of their last copper coins. Extra-marital affairs were organised, in conspiratorial whispers, and tearfully ended. Salacious gossip was spread, along with the implausible instruction to “keep this to yourself”. By the time of the Summer of Love, and the Winter of Discontent, the phonebox had embedded itself into the fabric of village life. How, we wondered, had we ever managed without it?
Then mobile phones arrived, and in the time it took Tony Blair to fail to find any ‘weapons of mass distruction’, our phonebox went from valuable lifeline to anachronistic relic. The red paint started to peel, and no one came to repaint it. When the coin box was emptied every month, there wasn’t enough money inside to buy a telephone engineer a pint of Old Profanity in the Farrier’s Arms. Two years ago a notice appeared, announcing that, unless there were any valid objections, BT would shut down the phonebox and take it away. Our local councillors were in two minds about what to do with it. We could let BT remove it. Or slap a preservation order on it. Or just bow to the inevitable: plumb it into the main drain, and mount an illuminated sign - Gents Urinal - on the top.
Friday, June 26, 2020
23 On display
This is the time of year when locals, like peacocks, put on a display and make a joyful noise. The village is a catwalk for girls in diaphanous dresses: girls for whom earth-motherhood is still years - and half a dozen dress sizes - away. Guys drive around in off-road vehicles with raised suspensions and big knobbly tyres. Where do they park? Anywhere they damn well like. Maybe on top of your poxy four-door family saloon if they feel like it. They crank up the bass on their new in-car stereo system to hear what it sounds like. As anyone living within five miles of Whimsey is painfully aware, it sounds like a man armed with a leg of lamb trying to break out of an IKEA wardrobe.
For a few hours the village green is transformed into an impromptu display of classic motor-bikes. And, a few yards away, lounging on the benches outside the Farrier’s Arms, is an impromptu display of classic motor-bikers. Yes, lock up your daughters, the Hell’s Angels are here. These guys may try to look fierce, but they’re not looking for a fight any more. It’s too risky; some of their blood groups have been discontinued. Instead of laying waste to Whimsey, these grizzled old greybeards are happy just to avoid getting stuck in a low chair.
Clad in leather, their helmets shining in the afternoon sunshine, they look like black beetles. They loll around, squinting into the sun, and talk about... well, bikes mostly. Good British bikes that sound like an artillery barrage, and drip oil all over the road. None of your Japanese rubbish. To hear some of the locals talk - in hushed whispers - you’d think we’d been invaded by aliens. Respectable parents shield their childrens' eyes as they walk past - which only serves to give the bikers an unwarranted air of mystery and menace. Their reputation goes before them, but they’re not as young as they were. There’s no pressing need to lock up your daughters; maybe just keep granny indoors.
For a few hours the village green is transformed into an impromptu display of classic motor-bikes. And, a few yards away, lounging on the benches outside the Farrier’s Arms, is an impromptu display of classic motor-bikers. Yes, lock up your daughters, the Hell’s Angels are here. These guys may try to look fierce, but they’re not looking for a fight any more. It’s too risky; some of their blood groups have been discontinued. Instead of laying waste to Whimsey, these grizzled old greybeards are happy just to avoid getting stuck in a low chair.
Clad in leather, their helmets shining in the afternoon sunshine, they look like black beetles. They loll around, squinting into the sun, and talk about... well, bikes mostly. Good British bikes that sound like an artillery barrage, and drip oil all over the road. None of your Japanese rubbish. To hear some of the locals talk - in hushed whispers - you’d think we’d been invaded by aliens. Respectable parents shield their childrens' eyes as they walk past - which only serves to give the bikers an unwarranted air of mystery and menace. Their reputation goes before them, but they’re not as young as they were. There’s no pressing need to lock up your daughters; maybe just keep granny indoors.
Monday, June 22, 2020
22 The height of summer
It’s the height of summer: hotter than an arsonists' convention. Dogs, especially the long-haired breeds, go a little crazy in the sun. They crawl into spaces that are far too small for them, in a vain attempt to escape the heat. They dig holes in flower beds, and roll in dirt, then collapse with the effort into a panting heap. Cats saunter by, in a carefree manner, aware that the dogs of Whimsey have put all cat-chasing activities on hold for the duration of this heatwave.
The ice-cream man stops his van outside the pub, and activates the chime: it's Greensleeves, blasted out at migraine-inducing volume. Bob the postman has persuaded his kids that the ice-cream man only plays his chime when he’s run out of ice cream. Though it’s saving him money now - money he can spend on beer instead - the deception won’t last for ever. The ice-cream man is doing good business, unlike the fish & chip shop in town. Most of the year the shop does a roaring trade, but no one wants fish & chips on a day like this. That smell isn’t appetising, it’s rancid. Suddenly, working in the chip shop looks like the worst job in the world, like doing a shift down in Dante’s inferno. The woman in the shop is suffering - her hair lacquered to her forehead, skin glazed by the searing heat. Beads of sweat drip into the hot fat. You make a mental note to eat elsewhere. A sandwich will do. Or just a drink. It’s too hot to eat.
Torper is infectious on a scorching day like this. It looks like a lot of Whimsey folk have decided to postpone their chores until the sun has gone down. In the beer garden of the Farrier’s Arms, they loll beneath the beach umbrellas, nursing a pint or two through a sultry afternoon of indolence and forgetfullness. Every few minutes there’s a scream from the car park, as another motorist is reminded what happens when his car has been standing in the sun all day, and he gets in wearing just a pair of shorts. Bare flesh and hot leatherette are welded inextricably together: it makes your eyes water just thinking about it.
The ice-cream man stops his van outside the pub, and activates the chime: it's Greensleeves, blasted out at migraine-inducing volume. Bob the postman has persuaded his kids that the ice-cream man only plays his chime when he’s run out of ice cream. Though it’s saving him money now - money he can spend on beer instead - the deception won’t last for ever. The ice-cream man is doing good business, unlike the fish & chip shop in town. Most of the year the shop does a roaring trade, but no one wants fish & chips on a day like this. That smell isn’t appetising, it’s rancid. Suddenly, working in the chip shop looks like the worst job in the world, like doing a shift down in Dante’s inferno. The woman in the shop is suffering - her hair lacquered to her forehead, skin glazed by the searing heat. Beads of sweat drip into the hot fat. You make a mental note to eat elsewhere. A sandwich will do. Or just a drink. It’s too hot to eat.
Torper is infectious on a scorching day like this. It looks like a lot of Whimsey folk have decided to postpone their chores until the sun has gone down. In the beer garden of the Farrier’s Arms, they loll beneath the beach umbrellas, nursing a pint or two through a sultry afternoon of indolence and forgetfullness. Every few minutes there’s a scream from the car park, as another motorist is reminded what happens when his car has been standing in the sun all day, and he gets in wearing just a pair of shorts. Bare flesh and hot leatherette are welded inextricably together: it makes your eyes water just thinking about it.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
21 Sunday at St Breville's
If there’s another church in East Yorkshire dedicated to St Breville, the patron saint of toasted snacks, then we haven’t heard about it. Steve, our vicar, is a fine and decent man, always ready to offer a helping hand or a willing ear. His moral probity is beyond question - earning him the nickname, around Whimsey, of ‘Stainless’ Steve. He’s a model of modesty too: genuinely surprised that his parishioners want to have anything to do with him. He tries to see the best in everyone, a policy that’s so far had mixed results. "Being a Satanist doesn't automatically make you a bad person", he confides to the churchwarden, as he prises out the nail that somebody’s driven straight through a sheep’s heart and into the oak door of his church. "Actually”, the churchwarden replies, “I think you'll find that it does".
Steve bites his lip in vexation. He’s finding life in the 21st century unnecessarily complex; whenever he feels he’s got the hang of it, the rules seem to change. The Church lurches erratically between laughable anachronisms and unseemly haste in jumping on the latest barmy bandwagon. Where the Church used to provide unequivocal moral guidance (“Repent… or face the fires of hell”) it now offers the merest slap on the wrist to those who transgress. When we swore an oath in court, we used to place a respectful hand on the Bible. But now, according to a new directive from Canterbury, it seems that an Argos catalogue will do. The Bible itself isn’t seen as infallible any more. Instead of taking every word as gospel truth, we treat the Good Book like an a la carte menu - picking out the tasty bits we like, while leaving the tough, indigestible chunks on the side of the plate. After all, the world has moved on a bit since Jesus beguiled and perplexed his followers with parables. The Bible still offers the last word on big issues such as love, honesty and redemption. But God has been inconclusively silent about many of the issues which engage us today, such as the efficacy of the latest diet regime and the outrageous price of replica football strips.
The Church used to take a lead; now, loathe to upset anyone, it meekly follows. Acknowledging ‘the sanctity of indiscriminate shagging’, for example, isn't giving the youngsters much guidance. People have to make their own decisions today about what’s right and what’s wrong. “It’s not like the commandments were written on tablets of stone”, says Steve. “Actually”, says his churchwarden, “I think you’ll find that they were”.
Steve bites his lip in vexation. He’s finding life in the 21st century unnecessarily complex; whenever he feels he’s got the hang of it, the rules seem to change. The Church lurches erratically between laughable anachronisms and unseemly haste in jumping on the latest barmy bandwagon. Where the Church used to provide unequivocal moral guidance (“Repent… or face the fires of hell”) it now offers the merest slap on the wrist to those who transgress. When we swore an oath in court, we used to place a respectful hand on the Bible. But now, according to a new directive from Canterbury, it seems that an Argos catalogue will do. The Bible itself isn’t seen as infallible any more. Instead of taking every word as gospel truth, we treat the Good Book like an a la carte menu - picking out the tasty bits we like, while leaving the tough, indigestible chunks on the side of the plate. After all, the world has moved on a bit since Jesus beguiled and perplexed his followers with parables. The Bible still offers the last word on big issues such as love, honesty and redemption. But God has been inconclusively silent about many of the issues which engage us today, such as the efficacy of the latest diet regime and the outrageous price of replica football strips.
The Church used to take a lead; now, loathe to upset anyone, it meekly follows. Acknowledging ‘the sanctity of indiscriminate shagging’, for example, isn't giving the youngsters much guidance. People have to make their own decisions today about what’s right and what’s wrong. “It’s not like the commandments were written on tablets of stone”, says Steve. “Actually”, says his churchwarden, “I think you’ll find that they were”.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
20 A white-knuckle ride
Life is a gamble: a white-knuckle ride from the cradle to the grave. We’re just not very good at reckoning the odds. We’ll happily spend a quid or two on the lottery, even though the odds of winning the jackpot are a distant 14,000,000 to one. “It could be us”, we tell ourselves. Yet when we hear similar odds against a cataclysmic meltdown at Drax power station, we think “impossible!”.
Even in a well-ordered community like Whimsey, danger stalks the unwary. As Old Ted knows only too well, you can be perched on a bar stool one minute, exchanging pleasantries with Brian, the landlord of the Farrier’s Arms, and a moment later you can be choking on a honey roasted peanut that went down the wrong way. An immovable object lodged in the windpipe isn’t something you can write to an agony aunt about. It concentrates the mind, wonderfully, like having a pistol at your head. Time is of the essence. Yes, if Dr Fallowfield and his wife hadn’t been enjoying an all-you-can-eat Sunday carvery in the other room, Old Ted might have become just one more statistic in the annals of snack-related injuries.
If you’d asked Ted about the Heimlich Manoeuvre up to that point, he’d have guessed it was a World War II stratagem aimed at opening up the Russian front. But, red-faced, bug-eyed and gesticulating wildly, he was in no position to argue as the doctor, moving remarkably quickly for a big man, sized up the situation. Dr Fallowfield approached Ted from behind and took him in a huge bear hug; it looked like he was lifting a sack of potatoes. With no time for social niceties, the doctor drove his clenched fists into Ted’s solar plexus, with irresistable force. The peanut was expelled with such velocity that it ricocheted off two walls and a lampshade, before embedding itself harmlessly in a bowl of guacamole. Old Ted was so grateful that he allowed the doctor to buy him a drink.
Even in a well-ordered community like Whimsey, danger stalks the unwary. As Old Ted knows only too well, you can be perched on a bar stool one minute, exchanging pleasantries with Brian, the landlord of the Farrier’s Arms, and a moment later you can be choking on a honey roasted peanut that went down the wrong way. An immovable object lodged in the windpipe isn’t something you can write to an agony aunt about. It concentrates the mind, wonderfully, like having a pistol at your head. Time is of the essence. Yes, if Dr Fallowfield and his wife hadn’t been enjoying an all-you-can-eat Sunday carvery in the other room, Old Ted might have become just one more statistic in the annals of snack-related injuries.
If you’d asked Ted about the Heimlich Manoeuvre up to that point, he’d have guessed it was a World War II stratagem aimed at opening up the Russian front. But, red-faced, bug-eyed and gesticulating wildly, he was in no position to argue as the doctor, moving remarkably quickly for a big man, sized up the situation. Dr Fallowfield approached Ted from behind and took him in a huge bear hug; it looked like he was lifting a sack of potatoes. With no time for social niceties, the doctor drove his clenched fists into Ted’s solar plexus, with irresistable force. The peanut was expelled with such velocity that it ricocheted off two walls and a lampshade, before embedding itself harmlessly in a bowl of guacamole. Old Ted was so grateful that he allowed the doctor to buy him a drink.
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