In the City

Country folk at play

Jock Bruce-Gardyne

Once upon a time, 0 my best beloved, there was a village called Thecity. The villagers were God-fearing folk. Or to be more precise they feared the Lady of the Manor: one Lady Threadneedle.

My Lady Threadneedle was possessed, among numerous desirable attributes and qualities, of a most impressive and lux- urious pair of eyebrows. Such was the den- sity of these features that beside them Denis Healey became a Yul Brynner lookalike. An my Lady had but to lift one by a frac- tion of a millimetre and all the villagers put up the shutters on their shopfronts and repaired at once to church to seek forgiveness for their sins. They even employed a squad of eyebrow-watchers to ensure they did not miss a signal.

They lived harmless, tranquil lives, each in his own trade or profession, and no one ever dreamt of indulging in both cultivating cabbages and selling them: that was called 'dual capacity' and therefore just not done (except, that is, a posse of villagers who liv- ed in a commune called Lloyds, where all sorts of curious vices were tolerated).

Elsewhere in the countryside times were changing rapidly. Every now and then com- mercial travellers passed through the village spreading tales of other villagers where the inhabitants flogged their own — and even other people's — cabbages straight off the backs of lorries, and there were strange newfangled institutions known as 'super- markets' where eyebrows were unknown. The villagers shook their heads in wonder and in horror. My Lady Threadneedle mur- mured, what could one expect?

And so Thecity proceeded on its ordered way. Once a week — on Fridays — my Lady, proceeded by her good dog Broker, came down to the village square to perform the Ceremony of The Taps.

A small squad of senior villagers always the same — formed up in the village square in front of the fountain, each with a pail. Then Broker — who was remarkably well-trained with his front paws — turned on the taps and filled the pails to a precisely pre-ordained level. It was, as my Lady Threadneedle regularly remarked, 'an orderly market'.

From time to time, however, some of the younger and more adventurous villagers showed signs of restiveness. They would repair to the manor to argue that unless the village came up to date it would be in danger of losing custom. Some of them had learnt the art of semaphore, and begun exchanging messages with other villages, even swapping notes about the price of vegetables elsewhere around the coun- tryside.

My Lady proved indulgent. Since she knew the villagers were inveterate gamblers at heart, she gave her blessing to the establishment of a casino in one of the village pubs, to which the villagers could send in coupons to enable them to buy or sell vegetables that had not yet been harvested.

She took much less kindly to another innovation, by which the villagers were to be allowed to put out pails to catch the rain- water, so that the level of the water in their pails reflected the hazards of the weather. That, she argued fiercely, would lead to fecklessness. But for once her eyebrows failed to function, and she was overruled.

In another respect, however, she extend- ed her authority. Dark tales began to cir- culate about goings-on in the village com- mune, where 'dual capacity' was held to be leading to all sorts of licentious conduct. So it was banned, and the commune-dwellers were sternly told to regulate their lifestyle like the other villagers.

My Lady, however, was growing old, and the day came when she decided to withdraw to a nunnery (called GEC and various other names). The new Lady of the Manor, her niece, proved to be a chatelaine of altogether different character. To the amazement of the villagers she had not noticeably inherited the family traits: in- deed rumour had it that her eyebrows were scarcely visible at all. 'We must', she told the villagers, 'move with the times.' They could scarcely believe their ears.

'What the village needs', she told thou, 'is a commune and a bunch of super- markets and open house for a thundering, herd of visitors to blow away the cobwebs. And to celebrate the new order the villagers were put to work to construct a monster firework to go off with a Big Bang. The villagers set to with a will. Notices appeared in window after window offering bed and breakfast, and a range of addi- tional facilities best left undescribed, t° tempt the eyes of passing tourists. Every variety of hitherto-prescribed liaison W8 not just connived at, but openly flaunted' The inhabitants of the original commune down at Lloyds occasionally muttered that ethveerrewoday ignored was no justice this world: but everybody Still, some of the senior citizens sho°,k their heads in disbelief. The new LOY Threadneedle had passed the word around that even the Ceremony of The Taps was 11° longer sacrosanct: anyone could COrne along and bring their buckets, and that included passing tourists. 'That', com- mented the senior citizens, 'may be all fine and dandy while the tourists are ar°11/14; But what would happen to old Broker one day they were to decide to give the village a miss? We shall obviously be push- ed aside, and our pails will go to rust, so it would be no good counting on us to come to Broker's rescue.' But the general opinion was that they just had an axe to grind.; Broker, being a faithful hound, preserved his own counsel.

neTedhleentuornneedmonprniinngthyoeumngarLkeatdyti sTuharreetti the village adorned with what some villagers identified as a familiar ancestral feature. Not eyebrows, perhaps, but certainly eyelashes. One central aspect of their tradi- tional village life, it seemed, was sacred after all. Licences to trade as publicans were too precious to be hawked around among the tourists, Lady Threadneedle annourie" ed. Would the tourists get the message? Fortunately the villagers were far t°° busy to lose much sleep about their future. It was a marvellous season. The yield front every cabbage-patch exceeded anything th,e, villagers had know in years. They couldn..t, wait to celebrate the Big Bang, letting 01 it the firework in portions just as fast as could be assembled. The publicans grunt- bled a bit because the slates on which they had been accustomed to chalk up credit at a convenient rate of interest — had been withdrawn. But the rest of the villagers reckoned the publicans had been taking them them for a ride. They had no sympathy t

me Lady Threadneedle had a new the song, which she whistled as she went about her business. It ran something like this: A middle-aged maid from The Bank Exclaimed to her friends 'I'll be franic.. I'm delighted with LIFFE And with war to the knife

But wogs in the clearers? No thanks'. cross-

ed her fingers, and sighed. Her relative, down at the nunnerY,