Who wears the Trousers?

Confession is good for the soul they say, so I feel it is about time to reveal what befell me a few years ago whilst striving to fulfil my duties as a steward in our local church.

The occasion: a farewell service for our minister and his family. As it was a warm July evening it was decided to combine this with a faith tea beforehand in our ‘upper room.’  As tea was drawing to a close my wife and I slipped downstairs to prepare the elements for the communion table as sacrament was to be shared during the service.

Like many other churches we had for several years used a well-known blackcurrant cordial as our communion wine. What I discovered on this occasion, which I hadn’t seen before, was that the small glass jug previously used for pouring out the wine into the individual communion glasses had been replaced by a plastic bottle with a long curved spout to dispense the wine into the glasses. Being unsure just how efficient this new device was going to prove to be I tested it - by squeezing. A little too hard as it turned out for the purple liquid gushed out the spout all down the front of my trousers.  My wife suggested I took off the trousers and wait in the downstairs lavatory whilst she attempted to remove the stain by washing it in the sink. I was a bit reluctant but I was persuaded that this was our only option. Luckily the stain hadn’t spread very far and to my relief she was able to wash most of it out. But of course this left the trousers soaking wet. She assured me it would probably be all right as she would be able to dry them under the electric hand-drier in the upstairs kitchen. She disappeared. It wasn’t long before she returned with the news that the hand-drier wasn’t working. Unfortunately because the trousers were made of a light coloured material the wet patch remained very noticeable and there was no way that I could wear them in that state. Whilst we were considering what to do next my wife was summoned upstairs where she was required to make a presentation to the minister of a small watercolour she had been commissioned to paint as a departing gift. Despite my remonstrations she departed to carry out her duties leaving me stranded trouser-less in the downstairs loo. Then I had a brainwave I had left a pair of gardening trousers in the boot of our car. Luckily my car keys were still in my sodden trousers. I grabbed them and crept out the side door of the church along the passageway to the small car-park at the rear of the building. I was hopeful no-one would be around to see me in my socks and navy underpants skulking between the vehicles but, of course, I was wrong as a couple of visitors, presumably from one of our circuit churches as I didn’t recognise them, were also in the car-park having a furtive cigarette. I decided no explanation was necessary, merely said, “Good afternoon,” and advanced towards my car. I pressed the button on the remote, nothing happened. I tried a second and third time before noticing that the key and remote I had in my hand was the one belonging to my mother-in-laws car.

It is a long story but basically when my mother-in law gave up driving at the age of 84 we had inherited her little Amica which I occasionally used and which was now sat on our driveway back at home. It was only then I recalled that my wife had driven us down to the church in our car which had been parked behind the Amica. I retreated back down the passage to re-enter the church only to find the door-closer had shut me out. Realising the only way back inside was through the main doors I sprinted down the passageway and around to the steps leading up and into the small vestibule at the front of the church. Amazingly no one was about and I was soon in the church heading for the door at the far end of the chancel leading into the preachers’ vestry. As luck would have it I hadn’t been there long when the other door, leading from the rear corridor, opened and my wife appeared. She asked, “Where have you been?” adding rather gratuitously I thought, “you haven’t any trousers on.” I explained as succinctly as possible and told her I needed her car keys to retrieve my spare trousers. She handed them over and within a couple of minutes I managed to rescue them from the boot of my car. Clearly my gardening trousers were not in pristine condition. In fact they were an old pair of navy jeans with one slashed knee and a rear pocket hanging off at the corner; but beggars can’t be choosers and they were all I had. I had only just managed to pull them on when I heard footsteps indicative of the fact that folk were returning downstairs to gather for the start of the service.

 I thought all my troubles were over but that wasn’t quite the end of my nightmare. My wife had finished setting out all the elements on the communion table leaving me, as duty steward, to do a quick check on the microphones. I avoided the curious glances of other stewards as I stood at the lectern ready to do my speech of welcome and the notices. Ah! the notices. Unfortunately they were still in the pocket of my trousers, the other trousers. I blagged my way through the notices like a true pro and even when a fellow steward cheekily shouted out, “cool trousers” I carried on regardless.    

The Dirty Dog

A friend recently had occasion to visit the local GP for a routine check-up after which she enquired whether her Doctor had enjoyed his recent day-trip to London. She had joined him and his family, the preceding Saturday, on a theatre outing organized by a mutual friend. This cautionary, yet true, tale is a reasonably accurate account of what he told her. Names have been omitted simply to protect the embarrassed...

The doctor had recently refurbished the entire downstairs of his house with the installation of new synthetic marble flooring along with an under-floor heating system. At the same time he had removed most of the carpets, as carpet mites had been blamed for aggravating their youngest child’s asthmatic condition. Coincidentally they just visited a neighbour who having refurbished his house in a similar way had also invested in an automated cleaning system. The cleaning was effected by a robotic contrivance on wheels that was timed to come on after midnight and could clean the entire ground floor meticulously and thoroughly by the use of sensors. Being something of self-confessed, gadget-geek, the Doctor needed little persuasion to decide that a similar system might be worth considering. It was quite an investment, being state of the art technology and the Doctor admitted he’d spent a couple of nights stood nervously on the staircase to observe the amazing device perform its chores. However it performed the task it was designed for perfectly.

The week-end of the London outing having arrived, the doctor, his wife and two younger children, went on their way. The eldest son, a lad of 16, chose to stay at home in their house with a couple of friends, who were having a sleep-over after spending the day together “chillin.”  The only instructions they were given were to keep the place tidy and make sure they put Geronimo, their lively, 10 month-old Springer spaniel, out before they retired to bed.

The outing to the capital had gone well apart from the fact that the bus driver, insisting on the statutory break in his driving schedule, didn’t arrive back at the pick-up point until around 11:00 p.m. As a result the bus didn’t make it back to Loughborough until twenty-five minutes to one. Rather tired after the days exertions the Doctor still had to drive his family the five miles from town to their home in the middle of Charnwood Forest.

They arrived at the back door of their farmhouse which was in darkness. They entered the kitchen to find a scribbled note from their son to say that he had gone to bed. However, they sensed all was not quite right. There was a pungent smell in the air and the normally gleaming floor of the kitchen was smeared in disgusting goo.  Tiptoeing into the open-plan lounge area they discovered the same devastation. The floors were covered from skirting to skirting in a brown slime and it was evident from the stink just what it was! The doctor and his wife cautiously carried their younger children to the stairs and put them to bed. Of course, they could not retire themselves and spent the next three hours cleaning and disinfecting the entire ground floor. Walls, door-frames and furniture; all had to be scrubbed. Two lengths of rush matting, passed all hope of reclamation, were immediately skipped. The patio curtains that draped onto the floor were stripped down and put to soak in the hope they could be salvaged.  Luckily it was a balmy evening so the doors could be left wide open in the hope some of the stench would be diffused. Geronimo, who had ‘done the dirty deed’ was clearly aware of the fact that he was somewhat responsible for the frenzy of activity so had sensibly decided to make himself scarce. The robot that had so competently distributed the ‘doggie-dos’ to every corner of the ground floor sat blissfully ignorant under the stairs like some cowering servant. Its wheels were still clogged in the offending gunk that it had obviously encountered when it had started its cleaning regime just after midnight.

By this stage in the retelling of the tale my friend said she was close to tears in a vain attempt at sympathy with the doctor’s dilemma. Yet apart from the frequent repetition of the words “oh dear” she couldn’t think what else to say. Without going into too much detail about the state of the soft furnishings, the doctor concluded by describing how the next morning his eldest son arrived downstairs with his pals blissfully ignorant of the discourse that awaited them. Before the lecture the boy did say, “who’s been splashing out with all the disinfectant?” The Doctor did not explain how he and his wife managed to resist strangling their first-born. Suffice to say that the lad was chided for not letting the dog out to do its business before retiring and his pocket money for the next two months was forfeited. By way of an excuse the boy could only argue, “well it’s not my fault, the dog didn’t ask to go out!”

Getting your Teeth into a Harvest Supper

In late autumn there are still many places where the annual ‘bringing in’ of the harvest is celebrated by a village gathering in the form of a festive supper. Although these days they more often involve just a handful of elderly folk sharing a light tea of sandwiches and fruit scones going back a few years they were somewhat grander affairs. They often involved the whole village coming together and a visiting speaker of some note would be invited in to address the assembled folk. A few years ago whilst visiting the rectory in the marshes I encountered a parishioner who, over afternoon tea, recounted a curious tale of one such harvest supper he remembered and which occurred in a nearby marshland parish some forty years earlier.

  It appears that on that occasion it was decided to invite a renowned Methodist preacher from a village some sixty miles away. The problem was that the preacher being quite senior in years and no longer having any transport of his own would therefore need to catch the train. Arrangements were then made to convey the visiting speaker from the town station on the Great Eastern mainline, by pony and trap, to the village hall in time for the harvest gathering. All went well until they arrived at their destination when for some reason the pony shied as the speaker was descending from the gig. In the kafuffle the old chap fell over and his upper denture plate became dislodged and flew out onto the ground breaking in two. The old chap was gently shepherded into the hall but although a little shaken by the incident he was otherwise uninjured. As he had eaten on the train he excused himself from the chine and plum loaf tea to prepare himself for his after dinner speech. It was then that he discovered that he couldn’t possibly deliver his address without his upper dentures. They were past repairing so he beckoned his host and explained his dilemma. The host in turned summoned his wife to see if she could make any suggestion regarding the problem placed before them. They knew the nearest dentist was back in town, some six miles away, and there wouldn’t be nearly enough time for another journey back there before the supper ended. Then the host’s wife made a suggestion that perhaps they could try Josh Scarbro. The host agreed and promptly got on his bike and rode off down the marsh road. The supper proceeded as planned whilst the speaker sat nervously in the kitchen being plied with cups of tea. After half an hour or so the host arrived back carrying a small leather case. He immediately placed it on the table and opened it up to reveal dozens of dental plates of various shapes and sizes.

The old preacher set to work trying them out eventually finding one that fitted perfectly. “That’s amazing!” he said, “This fits better than my original plate.”   Right on time he picked up his notes, entered the hall and delivered a most rousing speech to the assembled crowds unlike any they had heard in many a year. In fact over tea and biscuits many commended the preacher on his clear delivery and inspirational address. After a short while the host drove the old preacher back to town just in time to catch the last train home. As he shook hands the preacher offered to return the dentures he had borrowed and which had served him so well. The host said it wasn’t necessary as Mr Scarbro didn’t expect them back and was only too pleased to have been of service. The preacher thanked his host and as the train started to move along the platform he leant out the window and declared that the good Lord himself had indeed blessed them that day by providing him with a dentist at such an opportune moment. At this his host replied, “Oh! Bless you sir, Josh Scarbro ain’t no dentist, he’s our local undertaker!

Uncle Ted's Lucky Escape

One of the things we still do well in Britain is cold, filthy wet weather during the winter months. Nearly a year ago, despite being away from Lincolnshire for over thirty years I felt strangely reassured by the driving force of a February downpour as I edged along the fens from Sleaford towards the Witham at Tattershall.  Many midlanders regard the fens as flat and featureless but I still think this area holds much fascination. Enormous tracts of land criss-crossed by dykes like wounds cutting into the rich, dark soil.  Clusters of cottages and farm buildings standing out like islands on the horizon encircled by rook laden trees. You may spot the occasional water-tower or derelict windmill in the distance to one side of the road or, on the other, a chimney stack rising up above the line of the dyke bank where long ago some old beam engine puthered away pumping water up from a network of field ditches into the main dyke. After rounding the bends at Anwick, you spot the massive keep of Tattershall Castle sticking up like some giant lego structure and I know I’m in familiar territory. Yet this isn’t home anymore. So much has changed. The village in which I grew up isn’t the same anymore. The winding road of little shops and white pantiled cottages in the centre of the village has all but gone. Sykes’ lane by the side of the old Primitive chapel down which we pelted to Newstead’s chippy has been obliterated by extensions to the village car-park, an expanse of tarmac all but removing the heart of the place. My old home on Dogdyke road, may still be there but it looks so different. The pebble-dash walls that gave the cottage the appearance of having a bad rash have recently had ‘treatment’ and now appear rather drab and grey. It looks quite exposed since the Virginia creeper has been removed that once covered most of it like some green shroud. The Methodist Church next door, a hive of activity in my day, now stands empty and forlorn, testament to falling congregations I suspect. But I’m wrong, the faithful haven’t gone altogether. A laminated card on the peeling church notice-board says they are now to be found worshipping in new premises in the former doctors’ surgery. I later discover from my brother, still a village resident, that the doctors have in turn moved over the road to spanking new premises on land which forty years ago served as the wood-yard. Of course some bits of old  Coningsby do remain intact, the fine church with its massive tower and huge one-handed clock face still dominates the landscape. The tall bow windows of what was once Blackburn’s ironmonger’s shop have fortunately escaped the developers’ hand. Yet here is not our intended destination, for today we’re only calling in to pick up my brother. We are venturing a dozen or so miles further on, skirting the edge of the fens near Spilsby.

I was actually born in Spilsby, well just outside, but they haven’t seen fit to put a plaque up as yet. Their most famous son remains Sir John Franklin, polar explorer and discoverer of the North West passage. Such was his claim to fame that he merited not just a plaque but an impressive stone statue at one end of the market place. Spilsby today is a rather sleepy little town. The market has virtually disappeared yet with its raised pavement terrace and rectangle of neat Georgian town houses and shops the place retains much local charm.   Some blame its downfall from busy market town on the building of the by-pass in the late 1960s. It certainly succeeded in removing lots of the heavy traffic heading to and from the east coast from the town centre. Traffic was choking the place making life miserable for locals trying to get about.  However, the town’s changing fortunes were not our main concern for we were turning off a couple of miles back along the Boston road onto the fen lane that led down to Toynton All Saints.

 In the last 100 years the cluster of villages along this escarpment played a key role in the lives of my mother’s family. None of the villages are or ever have been very large. They contain few buildings of any great architectural merit and few of their inhabitants have ever made the pages of the Lincolnshire Echo let alone Who’s who. They simply represent the first areas of settlement as any traveller crossing the Boston Fens makes their way north into the Wolds.  Mother’s home was in East Keal, or more accurately a mile or so north of East Keal to the far side of Marden Hill. From the 1920s the family lived on a small farm which years earlier had been the site of clay workings and a brick furnace. Although she had moved away in the early 1950s, after she married, her brothers and sister remained in the area. Uncle Ted retired from farming several years ago to a modest bungalow a couple of miles away at Toynton close to his son’s home. It was to the small Methodist chapel adjacent to his bungalow that we were heading for a surprise party. Nothing too elaborate, a few friends from the village had been invited alongside a dozen or so relatives who had been alerted to the fact that he was turning 90. And it was clearly a surprise. He had been enticed from the warmth of his fireside on a damp Saturday afternoon by the promise of a trip to a local garden centre to buy a few bulbs for his back garden. Instead he had been waylaid by his nearest and dearest only to be dropped a hundred yards or so round the corner of the lane at the chapel door. If the embarrassment of being taken by surprise was not enough on entering the room he was greeted by his daughter who ceremoniously pinned on him a badge proclaiming ‘Birthday boy.’ 

Arthritis may have taken its toll on his joints over the years but Uncle Ted remained very much the life and soul of the gathering chatting about his life in the local farming community. I had sent several enlarged snaps of family members past and present which had been conveniently arranged on a table by Ted’s side to help the reminiscences flow. Not that he needed much prompting. He was soon regaling us with stories of catching poachers down on the west fen, driving herds of beast to the Spilsby market on a Monday three times a year and attending the local sheepdog-trials at Skendleby Hall. His best story was, however, commemorated on the magnificent birthday cake that his daughter in law, Angela, had made especially for the occasion. The square cake was surmounted by a raised area of icing representing the slopes of Marden Hill behind Brickfield House, where Ted had spent most of his young life. Next to this lay a kidney shaped slab of pale blue icing portraying the Clay Pit that, fed by springs, provided  fresh water for the all the farms’ stock.

Plum in the centre of this stood two plastic figures of heavy horses sporting full harness and another of a man. Those of us unfamiliar with the tale thought it was simply depicting some romantic impression of a bygone era. It was soon revealed to us that behind it all was one of Ted’s favourite tales. With a little prompting he revealed to everyone that when he was just 15 he had been sent out by his father on a cold winter’s afternoon to fetch the horses in from the Bolingbroke end of the West paddock back to the stables, so as to be ready for the blacksmith who was expected the next morning. Ted had duly gone out and to his fathers surprise arrived back through he kitchen door some 45 minutes later. Expecting that the job should have taken him the best part of a couple of hours his father asked him what was he playing at leading them in at a gallop with all their gear on. Ted said he hadn’t but that he had managed to bring them in quicker by taking a short cut through the pit field and had in fact led them across the frozen ice of the clay-pit lake itself. His Dad had told him to “give o’er” and that he was pulling their legs as it was impossible to lead two heavy horses, each weighing the best part of a ton, over the pit, “frozzen with ice or not.” Ted  said that if they didn’t believe him they’d better go and look for themselves because the hoof prints were still there in the ice across the top of the pit to prove it. It was not a short cut he ever took again.

    



The Brickfield Pit