Crashaw's Diary (part viii)

Wednesday, 1st March Old Mrs Price told me an amusing story today. Every night for the last forty years Price has woken her in the night to tell her something that struck him as funny. It never was. Last night Price had woken her and told her something that actually was funny and they had both roared with laughter. However, when she told me, she could not remember for the life of her what it was.

High Jinks, Low Jokes

A man of Low Church leanings was visiting Bath in the 1850s and was distressed to see how many of the churches there had gone over to ritualistic practices. Here were altars decked with coloured cloths, where priests officiated in ornate vestments, swinging censers and chanting. In some churches there were even confessional boxes. Finally the man retired to his lodging where, in contrast, he found everything to his liking. There were upright chairs and simple furnishing and, best of all, no dried flower petals in little baskets. “I trust you find everything to your satisfaction?” his landlady asked. “No pot-pourri!” he beamed.

What I like best about the United States of America

... is the way they look like they were drawn by a schoolchild for a homework project.

1. Really enjoying this project. Putting in a lot of detail.

2. This is taking ages.

3. I think I'll use my ruler:
4. That’s better. A few last squiggly bits and ...Finished! Can I go out now?

The Twelfth Dog of Christmas

The season for supernatural tales is not yet over at Hawker’s Pot. Last night, we drew our chairs up to the fire and the Reverend Hawker told us one of the most terrifying yet:

“It was on a winter’s night a few years ago. I was walking back from a lonely cottage to whose poor inmate I had been offering words of spiritual encouragement, and was profiting from a high full moon to walk across the moors. Suddenly, I found my way barred! In the moonlit strip of the track, hackles raised, growling vehemently, a mere few feet away from me, stood a dog! Shadowy its form was, certainly, horrible and uncanny, but I recognised the creature. It was none other than the dog of Farmer Hackpen, an old acquaintance of mine. And yet it could not be! For Farmer Hackpen lived twenty miles hence, and I had passed through his farmyard that very morning and seen the dog there! Thinking fast, I bent down, picked up a stick and threw it -- threw it with all my might! The dog bounded after it, of course, yelping and yipping as it careered headlong over the uneven moorland. And so I went quickly on my way.

“How did I know to throw a stick? you ask.

“Because I had recognised it was a fetch, of course.

“These apparitions bode ill, as I’m sure you know, and, seen in the evening, presage the death of the one whose form they take. It came as no surprise, therefore, when I saw Farmer Hackpen two days later and he told me his dog was dead. But worse was to come. The dog would not lie in its grave! The night it was buried, its re-animated corpse scratched its way out of its grave and spent the hours of darkness sniffing and scratching and howling around the farm house. “The wife an’ me were terrible afeared,” the farmer said. “‘She said to me, you should’n’t never have done shot that ol’ dog, no matter how bad ‘e was.” Taking spades and mattocks, the farmer and I dug a far deeper grave and laid the dog in it. After we had tamped the earth down solidly over the corpse, I performed a brief ceremony, and then showed the farmer the way to leave the grave of a dog to ensure that it remained buried. Walking backwards, we took five steps, stopped, commanded ‘Stay!’; took another five steps backwards, stopped, said ‘Stay!’; continued so, saying ‘Stay!’ at every five paces, backwards all the way to the farmhouse, which haven reached, we stepped inside and slammed the door.

“‘And will that do it?’ asked the farmer. ‘‘E never would lie still, ol’ Shambles.’
“I assured him that the ceremony would ensure that even the most dogged spirit, or spirited dog, would not return. ‘But why did you shoot him?’ I asked.
“‘‘E started worrying sheep, that’s why,’ the farmer said.
“‘He certainly worried me,’ I replied.”

A Hawker’s Christmas

Hamlet sees his father’s goat on the battlements of Elsinore.

Christmas fast approaches. The ground is frozen hard, half-moons of ice lie in hoof-marks in the lane and the hedges are stark with frost beneath a sky like aged cutlery. And here at Hawker’s Pot it is a tradition that on Christmas Eve we pull up our chairs to the fire and tell each other spine-chilling goat stories. How well I remember the tale Algernon told a few years back, a true story of a night spent bivouacked in a haunted wood. All night, at the edge of the flickering circle of firelight, the unearthly form of a goat stood between the trees. They found out next morning (from a passing stranger) that a farmer had hanged himself in that very wood and this was his goat that now had nowhere to go. Equally I remember the Reverend Hawker’s tale of the time he was benighted in the furthest reaches of his desolate parish, and accepted the invitation to spend the night in a poor labourer’s ruinous cottage. All night he was kept awake by the clanking of a chain beneath his window and the most baleful of moans. In the morning, the hale, red-cheeked inhabitants had laughed: “Oh, we didn’t tell you about the goat, did we?” And then there was the Christmas that we had the pleasure of the company of that expert in the supernatural, Geoffrey Carstairs, and he recounted a terrifying incident when he had awoken in the night and found a goat standing by his bedside. “I’ve no idea how it got in, but I shall never forget the expression on its face as it observed me with those evil rectangular eyes, and how it moved its jaw from side to side, as if thinking a thought too terrible for humanity, a thought as cold and deep and horrible as space! I lay there, rigid, unmoving, with ice in my veins. Finally it spoke ... it spoke its dread message that had brought it here ... ‘me-eh,’ it began, and, ‘me-eh,’ again. Urgent, insistent, loud, that voice rang out, but never could it get beyond this first awful syllable. Finally, it turned tail and cantered out. But I tell you, the greatest horror was reserved till last: for ... oh! ... fiend of fiends! ...at the end of its legs were ... goats’ hooves!”


But this year I have been deep in books and have found a story to make their blood run cold: a story by one of our greatest English writers, the tale of an innocent old man menaced horribly by goats in his own home. Yes, this year, I shall chill their spines by reading them Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and they shall hear of The Goat of Christmas Past, The Goat of Christmas Present and The Goat of Christmas Yet to Come. Brrr! Terrifying. If anyone thinks they can tell a more scare-inducing story this Christmas, I tell them they don’t stand a goat of a chance!

A Merry Christmas to ye all.

The Travels

All has been quiet of late in the halls of Hawker’s Pot. The clangour of pun-making has not rung out for many days. The reason for it is this: the Reverend Jones has returned from his travels and we at Hawker’s Pot have been busy in a back room, turning his memories into handy, pocket-sized books. Yea, Algernon has been cutting and folding, the Reverend Hawker has been stitching and gluing, while Crashaw the raven has hopped around the room with lengths of thread and elastic in his beak, emitting every now and then a sonorous cark!

Details: 80 countries, 72 pages, 104 sentences, 35 illustrations, (£12.50 inc p&p inside the UK)

Note handy elastic strap. Snappy.



A new kind of joke, I think.


Outside it is drear December, the cold rain always. In our little lighted backroom we might as well be the last people on earth, riding in the Ark on a muddy sea. If you’d like a copy of Travels, please contact us through our Profile and we will tell you where to send a cheque.

The Wisdom of Hawker's Pot #3

We are all made of stars, but some of us are looking in the gutter.

Crashaw's Diary (part vii)

Thursday 17th November

A Mr Hardacre visiting. Mr Hardacre is very taken with the latest scientific ideas of Darwin and Wallace, and expatiated on them to us over tea. However, as time went on we found it hard to shift him from his single subject. Whatever we talked about, were it cabbages, horses, even members of our congregation, he returned always to his burden that everything exists solely to breed copies of itself. Even the beautiful canna lily that Margaret brought in became a text for him, and he informed us that its sole purpose was to produce more lilies, and that this was how evolution moved on. “Oh, fie,” cried Mr Jenkins, “you would not leave a single thing in the world beautiful for its own sake!” I rather agreed with him.

After tea, I accompanied the Miss Milligans home. It was already twilight, the road was shadowy and the first stars were out. Suddenly we heard the clear call of an owl from a dark clump of trees across the road. “That owl,” I said, “has only one thing on its mind. It called simply to attract a mate.” “For shame, Mr Crashaw,” said the older Miss Milligan, “you have quite gone over to Mr Hardacre’s side.” However, I insisted: “That is the sole reason it called out. To wit, to woo.”

I swung my stick in the gloom and felt the day had turned out rather well, after all. Without another word, the Miss Milligans trudged on through the twilight.

The Wisdom of Hawker's Pot #2

The Police Force are sometimes accused of over-reacting, but never the Fire Brigade.

Crashaw's Diary (part vi)

Tuesday, 1st November
On my way to C--- today I glanced in at the graveyard, and who should I see but Frank, apparently unconscious on a seat. All around him were hung the vivid hues of autumn, and the graveyard presented a most affecting scene, with the fallen leaves piled up thickly against the mouldering gravestones of the many generations who had found their final rest. The sun was bright and the air like glass, and as I approached Frank I was struck by how pale he looked. Hearing me draw near, he opened his eyes. “Three nights!” he exclaimed. “For three nights I have not slept. And all that time the final line eluded me.” I must have looked puzzled (indeed I was) for he continued: “The Sonnet from the Portuguese. Don’t you remember? You said I should write a new ending to it! And now I have it!” If I was impressed by his commitment to the ardours of his craft, then I was all the more impressed when he stood up and declaimed:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints -- and after my last breath
If God choose, shall love thee more in Heaven.
How many ways? I make that about seven.

I told Frank it certainly was an improvement.

As we were leaving I was reminded what an unaccountable fellow Frank is. He stopped for a moment and swished his cane dismissively as he cast his eye over the scene in the graveyard, the graves under a thick carpet of autumn leaves. “That lot,” he said, “they’re never going to achieve much, are they?”