Bunty Takes Sanctuary at the Manor

REMEMBERING AND REMEMBRANCE

BONFIRES AND POPPIES IN MUCH BICKERING

November is such a busy month. 

Edith has taken the British Legion tin round for over thirty years and wears the enamel badges to prove it, but although her hip is quite healed now, her GP advised her that she should not go standing about in all weathers even if it is in a good cause.  There was nothing for it but that I should take up the mantle laid down by the poor dear and so I have become the Poppy Lady for the village.

Her doctor is right. It is pretty windswept in the market square and really not the place for a woman of her age…I’m not sure it’s the place for a woman of my age either. 

Derek came buy and tipped his hat to me. He said if I let him have three big ones, he would push a twenty-pound note into my slot. Then he winked. 

He gets smuttier by the day.

I took Brexit along for door to door collections with mixed success. The extra walking meant that he lay quiet all evening in his basket without the need for attention or toilet trips. On the other hand, his bearing of teeth and barking at people probably reduced the generosity of our target givers. In fact Dolores Parker refused to open the door at all. I had thought better of her, with her husband a Brigadier. 

I won't take The Sausage again. He tripped me up in Bramley Lane which meant that we lost a fair few poppies in the mud and I came home with both knees grazed. Crichton was quite kind after he’d stopped laughing and popped in an extra tenner in the tin to make up for our losses. 

Rev Colin’s letter in the parish magazine reminded us to be kind to Roman Catholics on Guy Fawkes Night and let bygones be bygones. He is probably right. Maybe life is too short to worry about transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope when there was a Remembrance service to organise and we still had no bugler. Our usual go-to cornet player has gone-to university and the bright lights of The Wirral, while we are left with Tanya Hooper and her recorder as a replacement. Besides Cook is a left footer and easily offended.

Of course, our other dogs have all positively relished the bangs and flashes of Guy Fawkes, but Brexit is a different type of pet altogether and frankly I’m not prepared to put up with the barking.  So I popped into Hornsea & Denby for some tranquillisers.

One never knows when the first rockets will go up, so I’d started dosing him up at breakfast time on the Saturday and he was having a good twenty two hours a day snoring in his basket. I rather missed his constant need for attention but at least it meant that we could pop over to Caro and Stephan’s, on the fifth, for a sparkler and a baked potato without worrying. Their bonfire was enormous…Stephan always overdoes things and fly tippers had contributed a fair bit over the last few months. I’m not sure that we should have set fire to the Slumbernight pocket sprung mattress, but Stephan was adamant.

 ‘If the council won’t take it away, we might as well make use of it,’ he said, and I could see his point. 

The black fumes were eye watering but we all moved round to the ‘up wind’ side and the smoke blew across to the new houses where we don’t know anybody, so no harm done there. As the fire burnt down, Monica played her ukulele and we sat around the glowing embers in camp chairs, sipping home-made soup from chipped mugs…quite delicious and a real feat to feed twenty-four with only an onion, two carrots and a tin of baked beans…how does she do it?

 I’ve no idea how poor Bunty got a toffee apple stuck in her hair. We had to hack it out with kitchen scissors. 

Crichton Comments

Remember, remember the fifth of November. I shan't forget this one in a hurry. Caro and Stephan can always give a good party without spending any money. I sometimes wonder why I shell out so much on decent wine when with a little supermarket vodka splashed on top of a screw top from Aldi seems to satisfy everyone’s palate, after the first couple. 

I haven’t had a toffee apple for years and I thought I would be sick laughing when Inky started juggling them around the bonfire in the dark. If only he hadn’t tossed the last one so high he might have been able to catch it before it fell on Bunty’s head. It got well and truly stuck in her hair. 

Such a pity that Sally took him home early. The party was just getting started.

Remembrance Day went off quite well all things considered, although it was freezing in St Appolonia’s. Keith Jolly, the Parish treasurer, has refused to order more oil for the boiler unless we really need it and in his opinion, we do not. The fact that we could see our breath in front of our faces as we belted out O Valiant Hearst was lost on him, but it seemed wrong to complain on such a day. We all warmed up again on the march down to the war memorial where wreaths were laid for the fallen and we stood for the silence at eleven o’clock. An acrylic descant recorder (beginner’s model) is not an easy instrument to play out of doors but Tanya Hooper gave a startlingly brave, if insecure, attempt at the last post which brought a tear to more eyes that just mine. Clearly the cold had affected her embouchure, but she had done her best and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Brigadier Parker read the Kohima address in a suitable manly way, before taking the salute from the Brownies. I can't stand the man, but I have to admit he played his part very well. Dolores had insisted on bringing the whole family along to hear him, including their four-year-old grandson. Poor little chap. He had clearly misunderstood his Granny and grizzled throughout that he wanted to see the puppies. Life can be very disappointing for children sometimes.

Crichton Comments

I always find it very moving to think that six out of Much Bickering's ten glorious dead came from The Manor house, including Captain Neville Trehorlicks, my great uncle, killed on the Somme aged only nineteen. 

I suppose they died that others could have the right to ignore the occasion and drive past us revving their engines.