General Chat

I was born in this village, I know no better. When I was born that was how it was with most people but there are less than a hundred of us aboriginals now and we don't have much to do with the incomers. It is a bit like two villages sometimes.

They move in and organize all sorts of things that we usually ignore because we stick to what we have always done, church fete, school fete, Christmas fair although I do go to the village lunch so I do mingle a bit.

All but one of the old biddies club have been in the village over fifty years and now the village are being encouraged to gather in the pub hall where we are on a Wednesday. I like to watch them!

Recently I have come to understand that it is terribly important in their pecking order how long they have been in the village and they do subtly try to outdo each other.

We had a prize one last week. She wandered over to the old bids table and told us how she had been in the village a long time, twenty years and did the thing they always do of describing some character who is now dead who they had known very well.

She started off telling us about Cyril who was so in love with his late wife that he would visit the churchyard twice a day and she would often have him in her kitchen for a cup of coffee. How interesting and commendable.

A she spoke, unknown to her, she was standing beside Cyril's niece who had endured twenty years of the silly old sod from the time his wife died. Every Christmas she had had him moaning and worrying in her own kitchen spoiling the festivities for all. She had endured having to wait to take him shopping while he went round his house ensuring that everything, including his central heating, was turned off.

On the other side of the woman was Cyril's neighbour who had regularly had him knock on her door and then had to wait until he had walked back to his own house to ring his telephone just to make sure it rang.

He was a veritable pain but he was one of our own so we did what we needed to do and we never spoke about him in glowing terms like she did. We moaned because he was one of our own and that is what we do. It was no surprise to us that he was up the grave twice a day, his wife used to moan about him as much as anybody else and her time was never her own when she was alive and you can be sure that, if it was the other way round, she would not have been up that churchyard very often. She would have found much more interesting things to do!

I have said it before Sharron Write a book. :-D :-D

nice one Cyril

Talking of graveyards....in the churchyard of St. Mary's in Braughing, Hertfordshire, there is the grave of a man who died in old age. However, years earlier, when he was quite a young man, he "died", and as his coffin was being carried to the grave, it was dropped, noises were heard from within, and it transpired that he was still alive. He lived for many more years, and I believe he left a legacy to enable the churchyard path was kept clean. Now that was a lucky escape.

Sharron ................

love it!

Bob. the grandfather of one of my family was stillborn.

Apparently the mother had had a very difficult delivery and the baby was inert so they put him aside while they tended to her and she saw him twitch.

I think he survived something like about eighty-four years after that!