Legend has it that a wondering monk named Woeful came across Stigisgaard Round Helmet in the act of ravishing a village maiden called Ugwiffa, the only daughter of Ugwif the Unintentional and his wife Eggwyte the Pale. So incensed was the young monk that through the power of prayer alone he caused the maiden’s attacker to spontaneously combust on the spot. Unfortunately early English linen was not known for its fire retardant properties and Ugwiffa’s chemise also started to smoulder.
According to the 9th Century text the young monk then ‘mayde free with hys waters on hir flaymes’ although in the illuminated manuscript of Peter the Monk he is actually shown hurling the contents of a leather bucket at the smouldering damsel in distress rather than urinating on her as the direct translation would imply. It is this version of events that is commemorated in the stained glass window still visible in the church that bears his name, the earlier, more graphic depiction having been quietly destroyed by high-thinking Victorians in the mid-nineteenth century.
This is how we still celebrate the event in the Biddermouth on Sea. Only these days it’s the Mayor who throws the water and the maidens look less than virginal in their wet T-shirts as they fight to be crowned ‘Miss Nipples South Coast’ in often quite a chilly wind. In recognition of modern times the competition has also been turned into an equal opportunities event and is now open to members of the LGBT community.
A Grave Mistake
The good thing about Boxing Day in Biddermouth on Sea is that if you are Stella Wheatley of ‘Stella’s Styles’ you throw a huge party and if you are Kevin from the Bona Curl Salon you accept her invitation out of spite. If you are Vera Preston or Lila Morris you get to take your grandchildren for a blustery walk along the prom and rejoice in their mastery of new bikes or roller skates. And this year, if you are Hilary Mason you have woken up on a cruise ship in a force nine gale.
Still as Vera said,
‘We all tried to tell her that ‘The Western Isles’ didn’t mean Bermuda, but you know what she’s like, would she listen? No she would not. Oh well I dare say the Hebrides can look quite picturesque if the sun comes out.’
However the bad thing is, if you are me and you live next door to Beattie Hathaway, even retching your way round Benbecula and South Uist or watching a sixty year old Stella in fishnets doing selections from ‘Cabaret’ sounds quite appealing. You see for the last ten years, apart from enduring dry turkey, over boiled sprouts and the Queen’s Speech in silence on The Great Day itself I’ve been obliged to join her on the traditional Boxing Day pilgrimage to St Matthews and All Angels.
Not that we pop into that gloomy old place for a sing-song. Oh no! This is the day Beattie goes to check that none of the assorted Freemantle and Hathaway ancestors have escaped or had their monumental masonry otherwise tampered with. Of course there are other inspections during the year but this is the only one where she, and therefore ‘we’, clank our way into town looking like elderly gypsies about to go door to door with an assortment of buckets and scrubbing brushes just so her forebears can face the coming New Year moss-free and in tip top condition.
‘Right then Maureen,’ she said. ‘I think this year we’ll start with The Right Honourable Edwin Freemantle and work our way back round to my Arthur.’
‘After all,’ she continued, taking me by surprise, ‘I did give him a bit of a polish in the autumn and that’s the good thing about quality marble, it keeps its’ shine.’
You see normally we always start with Arthur. That way he gets first call on the hot water out of the thermos flasks and the most vigorous scrubbing. Beattie may call it ‘wifely devotion’ but the way she works those bristles into his nooks and crannies it always looks more like post-mortem revenge to me. However it does give her a chance to relive the funeral and her day of triumph as the gracious widow of a civic dignitary. It also gives me a chance to scrub in time to a bit of internal Dusty Springfield as long as I remember to get all my ‘oh really’s’, ‘fancy that’s’ and, ‘well that was nice,’ in the right order when Beattie pauses for breath.
Anyway apart from all that it also gives her a chance to cast a critical eye over the final resting places of the other inhabitants, many of who we have personally seen laid to rest over the years, going to funerals being a bit of a hobby with my neighbour and therefore a hobby of mine by default.
‘You know Maureen,’ she said as we made our way through the tomb stones up into the posh bit where all the Freemantle ancestors were laid out in strict chronological order, ‘that Cath Rookby can say what she likes about her mother’s Angel of Mercy but it still looks like a bird of prey from behind. I mean what was wrong with a simple cross? It’s not as if they even spoke to each other after that shoplifting business is it?’
‘That was Prozac,’ I said in Cath’s defence.
‘That was greed, ‘said Beattie, ‘why else would anybody attempt to leave Sainsbury’s with a dozen frozen chickens they hadn’t paid for in a bin bag?’
‘And just look at that!’ she added pointing across the way to where Gladys Tompkins was still spending eternity next to her estranged husband. ‘Fancy being squeezed in between Desmond and his mistress. I know they’d bought a double plot but you would have thought her children would have shown some respect, especially when you think how they skimped on the catering. Honestly Maureen I’ve had bigger meals during Lent.’
‘Beattie!’
‘Don’t look at me like that, you were the one who suggested an All Day Breakfast on our way home not me!’
Now of all the graves in the posh bit the big one belonging to the Right Honourable Edwin was Beattie’s proudest moment. In fact for a while, after Vera had discovered it under the Yew tree last year whilst helping one of her many grandchildren with a school project, the tomb had almost eclipsed that of the late departed and much loved Arthur himself. At least since then Beattie had never missed a chance to interrupt anybody’s private family mourning by pointing it out.
‘I’ll do the trefoils with this tooth brush Maureen,’ she said pulling on her rubber gloves. ‘ You can make a start on that moss but go careful, I’ve seen you attempting to clean windows and I have to say sometimes I have my heart in my mouth.’
I said I thought the moss added a certain something. Beattie said I was just looking for an excuse to be slapdash as usual and to get scrubbing. So I did.
Now had Vera and Beattie really been friends, or had Beattie had as much access to stolen computer equipment as Vera did courtesy of her delinquent grandson Dwayne, things might have turned out differently. There is something called ‘Google’ apparently which is a mine of information according to Kevin, and he should know the hours he puts in on-line. I know that at the time of the discovery Beattie may have said some very unkind things about Vera’s parenting skills but I don’t think Vera was entirely innocent either and has to be held responsible for what happened next.
You see it only took a few savage brush strokes from Beattie to reveal the awful truth.
It was useless trying to explain that a Free-MAN plus moss could easily be mistaken for a buffed up Free-MANTLE because Beattie was having none of it. Deprived of her illustrious ancestry and with no hot water left to take it out on Arthur all she could talk about on the way home was the set of expensive chisels in the old tool box she still had in the shed.
‘It can’t be that hard Maureen, ‘she said as we got off the bus. ‘Look at Michelangelo. He couldn’t even read.’
Now surely she won’t, and I sincerely hope she doesn’t because I am sure that defacing people’s graves is illegal no matter whose face you are trying to save in the process but why else would I have just spotted Beattie out in her back yard wearing safety glasses and practising her skills with a mallet?
Mind you if she's serious she'd better keep trying. That shed wall resembles something out of a war zone and none of the words look like 'TLE' at all.
The Trouble with New Year
The trouble with a New Year is that not everybody
looks forward to it. For some people it’s already a star-studded galaxy centred round the blazing sun of a spring holiday in foreign parts. Unless you’re Hilary Mason of course and your New Year cruise to the Western Isles did indeed mean the Hebrides and NOT the Caribbean. However despite her initial disappointment and the extremely rough weather it does seem to have done her some good.
Beattie said she’d seen her in the supermarket wearing a pair of Capri pants that hadn’t seen the light of day for the last five years. Vera reckoned it was even longer than that.
‘Sounds like the ones she wore to our Millennium Party, ‘she added, ‘they split when she was trying to limbo under that broomstick don’t you remember? Anyway have you heard about...’
Before she could finish Beattie said that she had no memory of that at all but she did remember that several purses went missing and Madge Carter found a pair of knickers that weren’t hers in her raincoat pocket. At that point Vera suddenly remembered she had to take her granddaughter, Kiara Marie, off to social services for her monthly meeting with her biological father, Ronan.
‘You know Maureen,’ Beattie said as Vera made a hasty retreat up the High Street,’ it’s funny how she can remember Hilary splitting her Capri pants and completely forget a police raid. Under the circumstances I’d have kept my mouth firmly shut wouldn’t you?’
Well, being as I wasn’t living in Biddermouth on Sea then I hadn’t been at Vera’s party, then again neither had Beattie but she’d never let a little thing like that stop her passing comment.
The other person who should have kept her mouth shut was Lila Morris. The minute Beattie heard the words ‘Stella Wheatley’ whatever plans poor Lila had for the morning were blown out of the water by my neighbour insisting she join us for coffee at the Silver Lantern. ‘Insisting’ might have been the wrong word. I’ve just looked it up in the dictionary and nowhere does it mention the use of physical force. ‘Coerced’ looks good. Then again so does ‘frog marched’.
However knowing Lila’s fondness for Bannoffee Cheesecake Beattie ordered and Lila had all the facts out on the table long before the cutlery arrived.
Apparently, and Lila wasn’t at Stella’s party either but she had heard, on the stroke of midnight there was a knock on the door and Stella, thinking it was more guests arriving, flung it open and just had time to shriek ‘Happy New Year’ before she was called a whore and felled with a single blow from a very large and very irate woman.
Now in her time Stella has been no stranger to a bit of physical argy-bargee, especially when wearing a PVC basque and stockings, but as Lila said normally she’d negotiated a surcharge upfront and was the one holding the whip. She was also, if we’re being completely honest, more than a match for most men’s wives, which considering her romantic history is just as well otherwise she’d be permanently in a plaster cast.
However this complete stranger, who turned out to be called Svetlana, being the sort of woman who could drive a Lada, on her own, through wind rain and snow all the way from Krakow was also pretty big girl, more on the lines of Beattie by the sound of it, so I can see why Stella had trouble getting up off the floor.
‘Did she break anything?’ I asked.
‘Only a lamp and a hall table,’ said Lila wiping her mouth with a paper napkin.
‘I meant was she hurt?’
‘Just her pride,’ replied Lila desperately trying to finish her cheese cake and get home in time to watch her favourite afternoon soap opera, ‘Pobol y cwm’ which although in Welsh does have subtitles, fortunately.
Now under most normal circumstances Beattie isn’t a great fan of Kevin from the Bona Curl Salon. However where unfinished gossip is concerned she’s always prepared to put her pride in her pocket, swallow her principles and do whatever else is necessary to get to the bottom of things. I’ve even known her polish my front step when she thought I was hiding a lottery win from her. I think she was more disappointed than me when it turned out to be only ten pounds because she didn't do it again, still...
As usual Kevin didn’t need much encouragement to spill the beans and gave us an eye-witness account. Even with his tendency to embroider the truth he told a very sorry tale indeed.
It turned out that this Svetlana was married to one of the three Polish chaps who had been ‘decorating’ Stella’s bedroom since October. She was also the mother of one of the other young lads, a fact that caused Beattie to drop heavily into one of the chairs by the basin and fan herself vigorously with a hand towel.
‘Well it couldn’t have been hard for her to find out where they were living, ‘said Beattie miraculously revived by a cup of sweet tea.
‘Yes,’ said Kevin, ‘but how did she find out about Stella?’
Well you can say what you like about Beattie and many do, as long as they are out of earshot, but if she ever falls on hard times she’ll make a brilliant poker player. I will also say that Krakow is our twin town and she is never shy about playing that old, ‘my late Arthur was the chairman of the chamber of commerce,’ card when it comes to getting what she wants, plus her niece Pauline does work in the local council offices and acts as secretary to the Town Twinning Committee with all that implies.
However a bit like Vera’s party and the missing purses I wasn’t there so I wouldn’t like to say and unless Beattie feels the need to unburden her soul on her death bed I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth either.
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas
From
Ian Ashley
&
Everybody at Biddermouth On Sea
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