Epic Tales of
Lower Haversack
by Roger
Pattison
The vicar had
given the church roof another good looking at,
and decided that a prayer would be its best
option. He’d thought of serialising the
conversation and submitting as a script for
Eastenders; such was its ongoing nature. But the
situation had deteriorated, the church having
lately acquired a novel airiness that he put down
to the roof now being a sea of rubble around his
knees. The soaring buttresses were doing their
soaring for no good reason that he could see.
“Help.”
It had not
gone completely astray, his prayer. The roof had
fallen neatly around the vicar and not even dealt
him a scratch.
“Help.”
The vicar
supposed that the rest of the prayer he might put
into a deposit account.
“Help,”
heaved a pile of horsehair and lime plaster,
apologetically. The vicar looked about him.
“It’s
me.” The vicar was horrified by how much the
grammar of horsehair and lime had deteriorated.
“You mean,
‘It is I’, he corrected.
“No; it’s
definitely me” said the muffled verger from
under a few feet of debris.
“Is that
you, Percy?” It dawned on the vicar that
Percy’s own prayer might have been subject
to some procedural delay.
“It is at
the moment, vicar; but I do seem to be
suffocating in horsehair.”
“One
moment, Percy, I’ll pray for a builder.”
The vicar put his hands together.
“Couldn’t
you just ring for one?” choked Percy.
“Come,
come, Percy, where’s your faith?” the
vicar tutted.
“Well, at
the moment it’s buried under this rubble,
vicar.” A rumble from above caused the vicar
to look up; “whereas yours isn’t; yet.”
So it was that the rather nattily-titled ‘Society
for the Lower Haversack Fund in Aid of the Church
Roof Restoration’ was inaugurated. An
acronym was devised but SOLOHFACRR tended not to
roll off the tongue and sounded just a little bit
rude even when it did so roll. Therefore ‘Church
Roof Fund’ was adopted as being less risqué
in that expurgated version.
“Can we gauge how the Fund is progressing,
to date?” The vicar stood at the head of the
pine table around which the fund raising
committee sat, musing on its many knots. The
treasurer pulled the tin cash box towards him,
which rattled in a rather desultory way. They
were an ordinary bunch; excepting the verger,
whose visible parts were swathed in bandages. He
was clearly in the running for a bit part in
‘The Mummy’. “Over to you, Cyril.”
That Cyril was
not happy with centre stage was plain to see, and
his profile gradually lowered until it appeared
that he’d dug a hole for himself.
“Would we
prefer that in terms of a percentage of the
target figure, vicar?” bleated a
subterranean goat.
“Just
tell us how much we have in the fund, Cyril,
thank you.” The vicar beamed a smile around.
Cyril opened the box and forlornly stared over
its edge.
“It would
appear to amount to two trouser buttons, several
peanuts and a paperclip.”
“Is that
inclusive of the whist drive proceeds?”
“They
were the peanuts” said Cyril sheepishly.
“Well, my
immediate thought is to hope that the gentleman
who gave his trouser buttons didn’t need the
paperclip to hold them up.”
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