A Devilish Christmas Carol

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no-one wish to lay it.

So wrote Charles John Huffam Dickens in 1843, funnily enough the year Allen Hill of Yorkshire and England was born. It is the learned contention of this columnist that Charles Dickens, a cricket fan of some standing having waxed lyrical on Dingly Dell v All Muggleton in The Pickwick Papers, won't be turning too much in his grave should he perchance get wind of what I have in store for one of his other masterpieces, A Christmas Carol.

Mind you, he's dead, so who gives a flying fig if he does? What's he going to do, rot on me? Say 'Wooooooo'? Rattle his pen? Anyway, back to the story - the one he should have written if he had any real talent - 'Devil Ducky's Christmas Carol'.

The record books show that Charles Bannerman, part-time armadillo-hunter from Woolwich, one of the more obnoxious parts of Kent, was banished to Australia early in his life, having already learned how to play a rather vulgar version of cricket (with fours and sixes and much filthy slogging instead of a stout forward defensive as God intended) within these islands. Never a gentleman, he vowed revenge upon the noble country of his birth and became a naturalised Australian once he had learned how to play the game of 'Two-up', this being the type of person he was. In later years he went on to invent the world's first alcohol-powered surfboard, but Australian beer being what it is, the board in question was incapable of motion under its own steam (strangely enough, a fact in common with many Australians who try their first pint of English beer).

Anyway, back to the story. It is 1843, Dickens has penned some trite, moralistic nonsense about spooks and rattling chains and Allen Hill has just been born in the tiny hamlet of Kirkheaton, close to the unique fishing port of Huddersfield. I say unique because it is fully forty miles from the sea as the crow flies and this, coupled with the fact that trawlers are not so effective on dry land, meant that times were hard for young Allen and his family.

Incidentally, crows had not yet been discovered in Yorkshire in the 1840's. In order to measure direct distance from a given point to the sea, the inhabitants had to pretend that they possessed a crow, otherwise the saying 'as the crow flies' would demonstrably be nonsense - and Yorkshiremen at the time, being a humourless bunch, did not like being made fun of (nowadays, they love it). In order to achieve this, they cut the webbing from between a seagull's toes and painted the poor bird black before tying a long length of catgut to its tiny, mutilated feet. The pseudo-crow was then launched into the air with a whiffle-bat. The catgut, threaded on a spindle as was frequently used in the cotton industry of the time, was paid out behind the bird as it flapped and fluttered its way towards Bridlington. When the line ceased to reel out, the helpless bird was dragged back. If it had a fish in its beak, it was a sure sign that it had in fact reached the sea and the loose catgut was then measured before being given back to the cat. Amazingly enough, the same method is used to this day in some of the more industrialised areas of Derbyshire.

Yorkshire (County motto : "How much? I'm not paying that.") at the time was a dour, miserable county, almost totally bereft of colour. Members of Cleckheaton Town Council decided to brighten up the surroundings by importing large numbers of butterflies, an insect previously unheard of east of the Pennines. A number of Lancastrian entrepreneurs took advantage of the situation by painting homing pigeons in bright colours and selling them to the council. Upon release, naturally the birds headed back west. A week later, the entrepreneurs were able to sell them the same pigeons back again - something they did on a weekly basis for the next three years until the pigeons died of exhaustion. Amazingly enough, Cleckheaton Town Council never caught on.

But I digress.

A few years later, the fickle finger of fate prodded Allen hard and true. One day, while casting his fishing net hopefully in the bushes outside the steelworks, a gentleman by the name of Geoffrey Boycott saw his slingy action and said "Ayup, tha's a reet Bobby Dazzler at chuckin' that, by 'eck, lad. Does tha play cricket? Is tha name Shoaib? 'Appen t' boat leaves fer foreign parts in a couple of weeks to do battle wi t' convicts. Does tha fancy a crack?"

(Rough translation into Surrey-speak : "My goodness. One has seldom seen anything quite like it, egad. Would you care to help us put the bally Antipodeans in their place? Her Majesty Queen Victoria would be honoured if you would assist us in our noble quest to save the Empire")

To cut a long story short, Allen Hill took the first wicket in test match cricket, some awful skullduggery saw to it that Australia won the first test (although it wasn't called a 'test' at the time because Australians have a pathological fear of examinations unless it involves checking whether they have been served with a full pint of what they laughingly call 'beer') and Charles Bannerman was feted in Australia and Scotland as being something of a hero. What people don't realise is that Bannerman survived no less than one hundred and three appeals for leg-before in his epic innings, the umpires being Curtis Reid (Bannerman's mother) and Richard Terry (Bannerman's milkperson and part-time male impersonator).

Charles Bannerman went on to be the scourge of England for a further three decades with both bat and finger (he umpired against the Old Country on no less than a dozen occasions, winning eleven 'Man of the Match' awards) and in the process won the hearts and minds of humble sheep up and down the wild and rugged country of Austria Australia.

Give a country independence and see how they repay you.

I'm sorry, that should read 'sheep farmers' up and down the country. Armadillos, on the other hand, are not 'farmed' as such - merely 'gathered', so the term 'armadillo farmer' is as meaningless as 'West Indian specialist slip fielder' - and just as effective.

Upon his retirement, he (Bannerman, not Hill) was awarded a pension of three pounds ten shillings per annum, the Australian State of his choice (naturally, he asked for 'Inebriation' but this was already taken so they gave him New South Wales), a surfboard powered by English beer (this worked much better) and a racehorse which he was to give as a present should he ever be in the company of British Royalty or Surrey County Cricket Club. In 1928, he accepted a cleverly-worded invitation to visit England by the monarch of the time, King George V, was presented at Buckingham Palace and summarily burned at the stake a bit before being expelled again for the illicit import of two litres of glue, this being all that was left of said racehorse.

Aye, times were cruel, but fair.

You now know sufficient about Victorian England and the History of Ashes Test Matches to be able to confidently approach the task in hand - reading the unexpurgated version of 'Devil Ducky's Christmas Carol' which starts tomorrow.

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Magically jump forward to Stave 1 - The Ghost of English Cricket
And on to Stave 2 - The First of the Three Spirits
Just hop it to Stave 3 - The Second of the Three Spirits
Sally forth fearlessly to Stave Four - the Third of the Three Spirits
Boldly go where no infinitive has been split before - to Stave Five, The End of It




Posted by Eddie