Sprout Mask Replica

BURNING
ROPE

My father smoked a pipe that smelt like burning rope,

But he had met the crowned heads of Europe,

And he’d walked across the desert, when all had said,
no hope.

And he used to keep a monkey on a string.

And he once saw a sheep that had six legs.

And he passed a copper penny through a giant’s signet
ring.

And he beat a man of letters playing pegs.

And he saw the star of David in the West.

And he touched the spray-lined Goddess on her saline
wooden breast.

And he smelt the salt of seven different seas.

And could tell the age of women by their knees.

And he sang the songs the sparrows teach their young.

And he felt the actual rope that Crippen hung.

And he knew the way from here to Kingdom Come.

And we wondered why he ever married Mum.

My father smoked a pipe that smelt like burning rope.

But he
had
met the crowned heads of Europe.

1

THE
PARABLE OF THE CHAIR AND

THE
SPORRAN OF THE DEVIL

MY FATHER WAS A DEVOUT MAN
AND SO THE BEDTIME STORIES HE
told us often came in the
form of parables. He was also a carpenter and so most of these parables
concerned wood and furniture.

It had
always puzzled my father that, if the Good Lord had been a carpenter, how come
none of
His
parables ever concerned wood and furniture. They were always
about sowing seeds or fishing or things of that nature. All right, so He
did
tell the one about the foolish man who built his house upon the sand, but
that was really all about a stone mason, as the carpenters would never have had
a chance to get in and do the second fixings before the house got washed away.

My
father, therefore, sought to make up the deficit in the Good Lord’s woodwork
parable account. And although, for the most part, the actual meaning of the
parables was totally lost upon us, we being young and foolish and all, they
were never without interest.

I
recall, in particular, the parable of the chair, because it, in turn, recalls
to me the tale of my great great great granddaddy’s sporran.

So I
shall narrate both here.

Oh, I
should just mention that when my father used to tell us these parables, he
would do so in his ‘Laurence Olivier, Richard-the-Third,
now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent’ voice.

THE
PARABLE OF THE CHAIR

A moral
tale in seven parts

1

The chair was old

Which is to say that the
chair had age upon its side, not as antagonist, but as companion.

Like
wine, good wine, the chair had improved, grown mellow, matured with age.

Not
that age is any friend of chairs! Nay! Age has no respect for furniture. No cabriole
leg, no varnished surface, no lacquered frame is inviolate to its sinister
attentions.

Age is
no lover of chairs.

2

The chair was brown

Which is to say that the
chair had been newly painted.

Not by
some professional with no love for his work, but by an amateur, who did it
because it needed doing and he wanted to be the one who did it.

Not
that a professional could not have done a better job.

He
could.

But for
all the drips and runs and missed bits, the paint which had been put upon that
chair, had been put there with concern.

And
concern is ever the friend of good furniture.

3

The chair had three
legs

Which is not to say that
it had not once possessed four.

It had.

But
now, alas, there were but three.

Fine
and well-turned fellows they, but for all their brown gloss glory, most sadly
did they miss their wayward brother.

Whither
he?

Perhaps
now timber-toe to some pirate captain sailing on the Spanish Main?

Perhaps
in some celestial chair-leg kingdom yet unknown to man?

Or,
mayhap now a leg upon the throne of a cannibal chief?

Or
mayhap not!

But
sorely did those three remaining legs pine
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for the fourth.

For
upon those three, though loyal legs, that brown chair could not stand.

And
being unable so to do, fell over.

And
being of no further use, Sid burned it!

4

Regarding Sid

When Sid had burned the
chair, he laughed.

‘That,’
laughed Sid, ‘is a chair well burned.’

For of
that once proud brown chair very little remained, save for a pile of
smouldering ashes and a few charred nails.

‘That
chair is no more,’ laughed Sid.

And Sid
turned away from his fireplace and sought a place to sit. But none there was,
for he had burned his only chair. ‘Damn!’ cried Sid, not laughing, ‘I have
burned my only chair.’ ‘But,’ he continued, ‘it had just the three legs and was
no use for sitting on anyway.

And
happily
this was the case. Or,
unhappily,
depending on your point of view.

As Sid
turned away from the fireplace, he tripped upon a length of wood which lay upon
the rug and falling backwards, struck his head on the mantelpiece and fell into
the fire, dying instantly.

And was
not that length of wood on which he had tripped a chair leg?

I’ll
say it was!

5

The quietness of Sid

Sid, now being dead, said
nothing more.

And
when, at last, he too had all burned away, a gentle breeze, coming through the
open window, turned his ashes amongst those of the brown three-legged chair,
until one was indistinguishable from the other.

There
was something almost poetic about it.

And it
didn’t go unnoticed.

‘There
is something almost poetic about that,’ said Sid’s brother Norman, who stood
watching from a corner.

‘I
agree with you there,’ said Jack (Sid’s other brother) who stood nearby.

‘Our
Sid has never been quieter,’ said Tony (brother to Norman, Jack and the late
Sid).

And
no-one chose to disagree with that.

6

A question of
laying-to-rest

Norman’s thoughtful
expression prompted Jack to ask, ‘What is on your mind, Norman?’

Norman
scratched at his nose. ‘There is the question of laying-to-rest,’ he said.

‘That
is a question requiring careful consideration,’ replied Jack.

Tony
asked why.

Jack
said he didn’t know.

‘Because,’
Norman scratched at his nose once more, ‘the ashes of Sid and the ashes of the
brown three-legged chair are now thoroughly mixed. I, for one, would not care
an attempt at separating them.’

‘Nor
me,’ said Jack.

And
Tony shook his head.

‘So,’
Norman continued, ‘if we were to gather up
all
the ashes and pass them
to a cleric for a laying-to-rest with a Christian service, we might well be
committing heresy or blasphemy or something similar.’

Jack
asked how so.

Tony
shook his head once more.

‘Because,’
Norman explained, ‘I have never heard of a chair being given a Christian
burial. It does not seem proper to dignify a three—legged chair with a service
essentially reserved for man.’

Tony
observed that it wasn’t the chair’s fault that it only had three legs. In fact,
if Norman would care to remember, it was he, Norman, who had broken off the
fourth leg earlier in the day.

Norman
coughed nervously. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘that is my opinion. Although I might well
be micturating windward.’

Tony
turned to Jack. ‘He has a point,’ Tony said. ‘After all, we don’t even know if
the chair was a Christian.’

‘Come
to think about it,’ Jack replied, ‘we don’t even know if Sid was a Christian.’

‘We do,’
said Norman. ‘He wasn’t.’

7

The four winds have it

‘If we were to scatter
all
the ashes to the four winds,’ said Norman, ‘then we could feel reasonably
assured that Sid, even if mixed with a lot of three-legged chair, would get
some sort of decent send-off. And
we
would not incur the wrath of God or
the Church.’

‘I
worry for the chair,’ said Tony.

‘I
worry about that fourth leg,’ said Jack.

‘Oh, I
worry
a lot
about
that,’
said Tony. ‘But with Sid all burned away
and everything, I don’t think we should complicate the issue.’

‘Do you
think my four-winds suggestion a worthy one?’ asked Norman.

Jack
now scratched
his
nose.

Tony
looked doubtful.

‘Only I
think we should hurry, because if we don’t sweep Sid up quite soon, the breeze
coming in through the open window is likely to blow him all away.

‘I
think the four winds have it then,’ said Jack.

‘I
think the breeze has done its work,’ said Tony, pointing to the spot where Sid’s
ashes had so recently lain.

‘I
think you’re right,’ said Norman.

And
through the open window, and borne upon the breeze that had now blown Sid all
away, there came the cry of a tradesman plying for hire.

‘Old
chairs to mend,’ he called. ‘Old chairs to mend.’

THE
SPORRAN OF THE DEVIL

It seems strange now to
think that as children we didn’t understand the meaning of that parable. Still,
we
were
young and foolish and all, which probably accounts for it.

And so
bearing the meaning in mind, let us now consider the tale of my great great great
granddaddy’s sporran. This piece of prose perfectly parallels the parable.

Oh yes.

The great
³
granddaddy died at The Battle of the Little Bighorn. He wasn’t with Custer
though. He was holding a sprout-bake and tent meeting in the field next door
and went over to complain about the noise.

With
regard to the question of
his
laying-to-rest, it was decided that what
remained of his mortal remains should be shipped back home for a Christian
burial. The family being ‘careful with money and considering that the great
³
granddaddy was probably not in too much of a hurry, the actual shipping
home was done in dribs and drabs over a number of months. Great
³
granddaddy
eventually turned up at Tilbury aboard a whaling vessel mastered by the
infamous Captain Leonard ‘Legless’ Lemon (of whom more later).

After
further weeks of travel, the coffin finally arrived in Brent-ford, carried on
the back of a coalman’s cart, but still, remarkably, in the company of the great
³
granddaddy’s tartan portmanteau. This gaily coloured chest contained the
old boy’s personal effects: his sprout catalogues, grower’s manuals, bell
cloches, dibbers, hoes and the like, along with his Highland Regiment full
ceremonial uniform.
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