Jolly old Father Latimer’s Covid Chris Stmas miscellany
Being a SEASONAL GALLIMAUFRY of LEGENDS, YARNS and SHAGGY-DOG STORIES from the city of BRISTOL from ANTIQUITY to MODERN TIMES, compiled by , the celebrated HACK-WRITER-FOR-HIRE.* * All events catered for at reasonable terms. All inquiries via the jug & bo
The Boy Bishop
In his book on Sixteenth Century Bristol, the historian John Latimer describes some of the celebrations in medieval times:
The civic ceremony which seems the most extraordinary to modern ideas was that which took place on December 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas. At this festival a boy, doubtless one of the servitors of the parish priests, was solemnly instituted as a bishop, and having been clothed in episcopal vestments, delivered a sermon in St. Nicholas’ Church, before the Mayor and Common Council, on whom he gravely pronounced his blessing. And then, says the Mayor’s Kalendar, the spelling of which we modernise:
“After dinner, the said Mayor, Sheriff, and their brethren to assemble at the Mayor’s compter, there waiting the bishop’s coming, playing the meanwhiles at dice; the town clerk to find them dice, and to have one penny of every raffle; and when the bishop is come thither, his chapel there to sing, and the bishop to give them his blessing; and then he and all his chapel to be served there with bread and wine. And so depart the Mayor, Sheriff, and their brethren to hear the bishop’s evensong at St. Nicholas’ Church.”
The ceremony of the boy bishop was of ancient date, and was practised in all parts of the kingdom … But conceive the Bristol Council of our day solemnly assembled to receive a madrigal boy befigged as a bishop, whiling away their time with the dice box which the Town Clerk ”on the look-out for his fee” had at hand for the Lord Mayor, and making four processions through the crowded streets to and from sham services at St. Nicholas!
The lord of misrule
John Latimer, a sober-minded Victorian gent, would have us believe that in medieval times, the citizens of Bristol, especially the more prominent among them, spent the entire Christmas season in an alcoholic stupor:
During Christmas week, the lord of misrule was in full supremacy, and holiday keeping generally extended from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night. A day or two before the festivities the Mayor, for the sake of public order, made public proclamation that no inhabitant, gentle or simple, should go about mumming with masked faces at night after the tolling of the curfew bell unless he carried a torch, lantern, candle, or sconce, and that no one should wear weapons by night or by day, on pain of fine or imprisonment.
In a season of universal license it may be questioned whether much heed was paid to the regulations. It was the season of unlimited guzzling, the city magnates setting the example. By an ordinance of the Common Council in 1472, the Mayor’s Christmas drinking was fixed to take place on St. Stephen’s Day (December 26), the Sheriff’s drinking on St. John’s Day (December 27), the senior Bailiff’s drinking on Innocents’ Day (December 28), and that of the junior Bailiff on New Year’s Day.
“And on Twelfth Day to go to the Christmas drinking of the Abbot of St. Augustine as of old custom, if it be prayed by the Abbot and Convent.”
The “drinkings” he refers to would have been formal binges hosted by the officials and clerics in question, and not days on which the Mayor, Sheriff etc. were expected to drink alone.
The town band
Bristol’s historic reputation for having no time for music and the arts in past times was well-founded. But for some time there was a small semi-official band, the city waits, who would perform at civic occasions and who could be hired out.
Of the year 1742, Latimer’s Annals tell us:
“A vacancy having occurred in the band of civic musicians, the mayor and aldermen, on the 8th July (1742), elected David Hughes, and ordered ‘that he enter into the usual bond for the re-delivery of the silver chain and badge usually worn by the said wait-players, and pay £10 to the widow’ of his predecessor.
“Mr. T.D. Taylor kindly informs me: – ‘The waits after making night hideous, the week before Christmas, with their sackbut, dulcimer &c., used to come round on boxing day to receive gratuities, and the badge was shown as a guarantee that they were the genuine tormentors.”
Victorian lawyer exposes his “person”
“Your Worships, I was on duty this morning about half-past 12 o’clock in Redcliff Street, and there saw a respectable-looking man coming along, and Mr Guppy was with him.
“The respectable-looking man said to me, ‘I’ve got a very respectable-looking man here, who can’t
take care of himself. Do you know who he is?’
“I said, ‘It’s Mr Guppy, the solicitor.’
“’Oh,’ he said, ‘if that’s the case, I’ve read enough about him; I shan’t take no more care of him’.” (Laughter in the courtroom)
The police officer was giving evidence at Bristol Police Court on Boxing Day 1860 in the case against Alfred Guppy, a local solicitor, who was charged with being drunk and unable to take care of himself.
Mr Guppy had arrived at the Council House (where the court was situated) in a carriage-andpair and made several attempts to address the court before the proceedings began, but was silenced by the magistrates.
The police officer continued with his evidence: “Then he fell down in the snow, and I asked him, ‘Mr Guppy, where do you live?’ And he said, ‘Anywhere’.”
“By that I heaved him up, and if it hadn’t been slippery weather we should have had to get a stretcher for him, but me and another brother constable took him under one arm a-piece, and … we dragged him along in the snow, and his person was exposed.”
Mr Guppy explained that he had been ill, while from the Bench Mr Naish observed that Mr Guppy’s “person being exposed” made matters worse.
Mr Guppy: “I was overtaken, sir. I had been taking something to drink, and when I came into the cold air I was overtaken. We’re all liable to that sort of thing.”
Mr Naish: “We shall fine you 5s and costs.”
Mr Guppy: “Anything you feel disposed to do you can; I feel it a very great hardship; I feel it a very great hardship, that’s all.”
Mr Guppy then went to the office of the Magistrates’ Clerk and paid the fine, tendering a Sovereign. The Clerk had some difficulty in finding him enough change.
Lost memory – and wife
An extraordinary sequel to a Christmas Eve marriage came to light at Bristol on Thursday. About 10 a.m. a man went into a Bristol post office and stated that he had lost his memory and his bride.
He remembered being married at Wigan the previous morning, and setting out for Bristol, where he was going to spend his honeymoon. On the way he missed his wife, but was unable to remember how this happened.
The one clue he had was that before leaving Wigan he recollected sending a telegram to his relatives in Bristol advising them that he was coming by a certain train. He knew the time be handed it in, and was able to give the name in which it was sent, but there his memory ceased.
He had been wandering about in Bristol streets for four or five hours before it struck him that the post office people might help him.
They obtained the address, and the bridegroom, after expressing his thanks to the officials, left in charge of a messenger, with the remark, “This will be a lesson to me.”
This story was from 1908, and was covered by many newspapers all over the country, but alas we can find no trace of the outcome.
What is curious about it, though, was that on precisely the same day as the man presented himself at the Post Office, a respectably-dressed woman was found wandering central Bristol in a state of confusion. She, too, was suffering from memory-loss and could not recall her own name.
She, though, recovered after a few hours, and was taken home by family members. She was not in any way connected to the man who had married in Wigan.
Reaching for the star
“I would like to thank the constable for his efforts in preventing what might have been a serious accident, ” said Lt Gordon Cyril Roberts R.N. after pleading guilty to being drunk and disorderly at a hearing at Bristol Magistrates on Boxing Day 1953.
The court was told that the young Royal Navy Lieutenant climbed up the 30ft high Christmas tree in Bristol’s city centre “to get the star from the top”.
Constable R. Taylor stated that he saw Roberts in the tree in the early hours of Christmas morning. He called on Roberts to come down, but was ignored.
“I then climbed the tree to where Roberts was and tried to coax him down. He would not come.”
“Then he slipped and I held him by the feet in an upside-down position for about five minutes. He finally wrenched free and fell from branch to branch to the ground.”
Roberts was caught by another
police officer and taken to hospital for examination before being charged. He was fined £2.
Goat-crashing the party
Billy the wandering goat was suffering yesterday from an attack of post-Christmas burps.
He had eaten his way through a privet hedge, snatched some delicious mouthfuls of Christmas tree and munched a few fancy paper hats.
His escapade started when he jumped over a five-foot stable door and ended with him being taken to the Bristol Dogs’ Home in a police van on Boxing morning.
Billy was put in the charge of the police after he had gatecrashed a party in Allison Road, Stockwood.
He barged in when Mr John Heaman opened the front door. Billy immediately started to eat a Christmas tree in the hall.
After being taken to the dogs’ home he spent the next 36 hours with 30 dogs, a few budgies and several cats, but was finally claimed yesterday by his owner, Mr Arthur Jeffries.
At his home in Feeder Road, Bristol, Mr Jeffries said: “I bought him a couple of days ago to keep down vegetation on some ground, but he escaped in a matter of hours.”
Daily Mirror, December 28 1968
Santa busted
“It was my first day on the job as Naughty Santa so I was quite nervous before any of this happened.
“We’d been out from 7am spraying messages of goodwill to the people of Bristol.
“We were spraying snow on an electricity box and I was just getting through the word ‘Santa’ when I heard someone shout, ‘What the hell are you doing?’.
“I turned round and saw the police car and an officer walking towards me. I told them there was a misunderstanding and that we were working for the radio station.
“The police officer then asked me if I had been instructed to spray the walls by GWR. I said, ‘No comment’ and she told me to get in the car.”
Ryan Williams was speaking to reporters after being fined for vandalism in December 2007. He was dressed as Santa, and accompanied by Jonathan Dawson dressed as an elf.
Both were working for the GWR FM local radio station. The officer reprimanded Santa and handed out an £80 on-the-spot fine in the back of a squad car after demanding he remove his beard.
The elf was not fined.
The XXXXL Files
“I am not overweight yet I still find this extremely offensive and patronising … People who have a weight problem may also suffer with low self-esteem and this advert is not going to help them in any way.
“The people who came up with this idea and sanctioned the advert need a good, stiff kick up the backside, and if that backside is a rather bony one, then they will feel this all the more.”
That was the reaction of one local to an advert from the gym at the Cadbury gym at Yatton in early 2010 which read: WHEN THE ALIENS COME, THEY WILL EAT THE FATTIES FIRST.
The ad, featuring a cartoon green alien was supposed to encourage people to join the gym to shed the post-Christmas pounds, and certainly in getting it into the local and national media by generating a small amount of outrage.
The gym denied any intention to cause offence to anyone.
Manager Jason Eaton told reporters: “Our view is that people should not feel stigmatised by the use of the word ‘fatties’ as it encompasses everyone who might have over-indulged during the holidays and now wants to do something about it.”
Christmas “went on too long”
A family’s Christmas festivities are carrying on far too long for their neighbours in Stockwood.
Neighbours’ pleas for the plastic Santa, snowman and coloured lights on the council house in Whittock Road to be taken down have been ignored.
Bristol City Council has now been asked to intervene in the row.
The lights were put up last November by council tenant (we’ll spare the lady’s embarrassment here and not publish her name) – and are still there seven months later.
One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “The family has turned the road into a laughing stock. When I ordered a taxi to Whittock Road the driver asked if I lived at the Father Christmas end.”
People said teenagers from other roads had turned the decorations
into a game.
A neighbour said: “They drive up to the house and throw stones at the Santa and snowman to see if they can break them.”
Another resident said: “When it’s hot and sunny the last thing you want to look up at is a plastic snowman.”
Bristol Post, May 2001
Family reunited for Christmas
“We are absolutely over the moon. We’ve taken her out for a drive in the Bentley and on Saturday took her to a tailor to get a fitting for a Santa outfit.
“She is going to be very pampered this Christmas and we will let her come into the house for a bit. We might even take her for a duck pedicure.
“The whole family is back together in time for Christmas.”
Film producer Phil Barry, 42, was speaking to the Post in December 2008 after he and his wife Cathy, 39, were reunited with Daphne, their pet duck.
Cathy Barry will be well-known
to some BT readers as a famous glamour model and actress in adult films.
She and Phil were distraught when Daphne disappeared from their Kingswood home two weeks previously.
Despite not being able to fly very far with her clipped wings, she had managed to wander some miles away, but following an appeal in the Post, a reader tipped them off that Daphne was hanging out with other ducks at a pond in Keynsham.
She was brought home by the Barrys’ sons.
A delighted Mr Barry said: “Since we lost her we’ve had some wonderful support.
“We had a phone call from the Patrick Pinker game farm, who offered us the services of a professional duck catcher, and there has even been a Facebook group set up called Find Cathy Barry’s Duck.”
Christmas every day
For many years, the antics of Andy Park of Melksham were a staple of the local and national media, because Mr Park had been celebrating Christmas every day of the year since the summer of 1993.
Every day he’d have turkey and mince pies, watch a video of the Queen’s Speech and open the three presents he’d left for himself under the tree in his living room.
His annual consumption of 104 turkeys, 200 tins of Quality Street and 260 Christmas puddings had left him with something of a weight problem, and every so often he would announce his intention of knocking his habit on the head. Only to reappear in the papers or on TV a year or two later.
Ten years ago his antics prompted some wag in Bristol’s Venue magazine to pen an imaginary conversation between a fictional young married couple:
Morning dear ... AAAAARGHH!!! Christmas decorations all over the house! It’s well past twelfth night! That’s bad luck!
Relax. They’re Easter decorations. That’s not a Christmas tree. It’s an Easter Tree!
With a bunny on top. Those aren’t baubles on the tree. They are eggs. I love Easter, me. I wish it could be Easter every day, as Roy Wood didn’t sing, but should have.
Don’t come any closer! I’ve got a big gun in my dressing gown pocket ...
Stop acting all weird on me. It’s Easter, after all.
Me? Acting weird!? I’m not the one pretending it’s Easter. Besides, Easter has never been important to you, unless you count your annual obsessive-compulsive rant about how you’re sure Cadburys Creme Eggs are smaller than when you were a kid.
Here’s your Easter present.
Oh, a home-made CD. How lovely. I think …
It’s an album of Easter songs I recorded especially for you!
There’s Oh Little Town of Bradley
I’m at least worth a CBE for what I do at 3pm every day
Andy Park of Melksham
Stoke, Frosty the Egg-Man, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Bunny, and many more traditional favourites. I’m Dreaming of a Rainy Easter – that’s another one.
That’s it! I’m phoning the doctor’s and booking you in for this morning!
There’s nothing wrong with me! I am merely indulging my new hobby, which is celebrating Easter every day.
I got the idea from Andy Park of Melksham. He’s slightly famous and gets his name in the papers every so often.
You’re going to pretend every day is Easter?
Why not? Andy Park has celebrated Christmas every day since July 14 1993. He’s had thousands of turkeys and mince pies and guzzled gallons of sherry.
There he was at the beginning of this year complaining that he’s been missed out of the New Year’s Honours yet again.
He told swns.com: “I’ve watched the Queen’s Speech over 6,000 times, so it’s the least I deserve.
“I’m devastated I haven’t been nominated for an honour – I’m at least worth a CBE for what I do at 3pm every day.
“Mick Jagger’s been knighted and although he had a few hits in the Sixties, he’s spent most of his life drinking and getting in trouble.”
So if he doesn’t get a gong what makes you think you’re going to?
I am merely courting the fame and media attention, and the Guinness Book of Records entry.
I want to do something useful with my life.
Then make me some breakfast. Sure thing. I know! Let’s have eggs! How would you like your eggs?
With you? Unfertilized, thanks.