Firstly, happy war-veterans-left-“distressed”-by-naked-cyclists-as-fourth-annual-bare-all-ride-rolls-through-Clacton day to all those who celebrate.
Secondly, ‘happy’ 79th anniversary to this narrow squeak diary entry from James Lees-Milne — late in WWII, when bombs were flying in to London, rather than being dropped:
I went to bed soon after 11. At 12.15 a bomb fell with great noise. The basement was filled with fumes, so I guessed the bomb had been pretty close. Got out of bed, put on gumboots and Burberry, and walked into the road. Even in the clear light of the moon I could see a cloud of explosive steaming from the river. This fly bomb had cut its engine, and recovered before finally falling. I heard people shout, ‘Look out, another’s coming!’ and rush down to their shelter. I was transfixed, and knew there was no time to descend into my basement. So I looked at the light of the bomb coming straight at me. The engine stopped, and I knew we were in for it. I lay flat on my face on the pavement, as close as could be to the embankment wall. I heard the bomb swish through the air. It fell in the river, closer than the last, and sent a spray of water over me. At dawn I met a policeman picking up a bomb fragment from the road. It was over a foot long. It must have hurtled over my head.
And, of course, happy Old St Kenelm’s Day, traditionally celebrated at Clent in Worcestershire by ‘crabbing the parson’ — that is, pelting the vicar with crab apples — until “the use of sticks and stones in place of crabs led to the suppression of the custom”.
We can get a flavour of the occasion from an 1848 book by the splendidly (almost perfectly) named John Noake, The Rambler in Worcestershire, or, Stray Notes on Churches and Congregations:
The last clergyman but one who was subjected to this process was a somewhat eccentric gentleman named Lee. He had been chaplain to a man-of-war, and was a jovial old fellow in his way, who could enter into the spirit of the thing. My informant well recollects the worthy divine, after partaking of dinner at the solitary house near the church, quietly quitting the table when the time for performing the service drew nigh, reconnoitring the angles of the building, and each “buttress and coign of vantage” behind which it was reasonable to suppose the enemy would be posted, and watching for a favourable opportunity, he would start forth at his best walking pace (he scorned to run) to reach the church. Around him, thick and fast, fell from ready hands a shower of crabs, not a few telling with fearful emphasis on his burly person, amid the intense merriment of the rustic assailants; but the distance is small; he reaches the old porch, and the storm is over.
He then goes into some detail about the sheer quantity of apples which would rain down on the unfortunate cleric:
Kenelm was an Anglo-Saxon done in by a relative despite a dream prophesying the danger, and whose body was discovered miraculously — of course — and his day was celebrated on 17 July until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the UK in 1752.
Steve Roud’s 2006 book, The English Year, says “no sensible explanation for this custom has been put forward”, but Noake has a go. His source says a pastor “long, long ago” helped himself to apple dumplings simmering in a dinner a local woman was preparing…
…he, with great dexterity, deposited them in the ample sleeves of his surplice; she, however, was wide awake to her loss, and closely following the parson to the church, by her presence prevented him from disposing of them
…so he started the service. Unfortunately the dumplings began plopping out of his sleeves onto the head of a man assisting with the service. He apparently had a store of crab apples about his person “to foment the sprained leg” of his horse, which he began hurling at the vicar in retaliation. Obviously.
So, Steve Roud was right: no sensible explanation — “and it is unclear why the local clergy would put up with such behaviour” — but apparently similar things were done in Hawkridge in Somerset on Revel Sunday, and in Mobberley in Cheshire the Sunday after St Luke’s day.
And in Kidderminster, the Monday after Michaelmas featured ‘lawless hour’ — the time between the old constable stepping down and the new one taking office, when people couldn’t be arrested, so residents would — well, naturally — throw cabbage stalks at each other for 60 minutes.
I was going to round off with something about the joyless Victorians suppressing a lot of these customs, but maybe they had a point.
