Blogsbody and his firkin Dogsbloggy plan for inevitable in Cressroads
‘An unexpected approach, but welcome,’ invites Rosie Inman-Cook, manager of The Natural Death Centre headquartered six feet under the ground at what her postman comes to know as the charity’s In-the-Hill-House along Twyford’s Watley Lane, Greater Cressroads.
Or welcome Blogsbody and his Henry Dogsbloggy!
Sworn to carry out the final instructions of the one who becomes first to depart Mother Earth, and invited to attend Rosie’s refurbished nuclear bunker to find she is ’snug, locked away from insanity,’ kept busy promoting alternative, do-it-yourself funerals that do away with a need for either clergy or undertakers, and seeking to help her visitors choose their final resting place within a developing network of woodland burial sites.
‘March is going bonkers!’ warns Rosie.
Her email explains: ‘Conference to facilitate and exchange invasion from Spain, plus the usual mum taxi servicing. But April better. Sitting at your Tichy pavilion is one of my favourite places, and looking forward to coming your way once the season starts. Pick a date. ‘
One that sees her cricketing son come to Tichborne Park to play against a home eleven that, once upon a match but within 65-year-old Firkin Henry Dogsbloggy’s pace bowling days, made up entirely of Ma Primmer’s sons and grandsons.
Tichborne’s cricketing Primmer Donnas!
Even to include a 12th Primmer man in the trophy-winning Hogshire village side. And with older members of the famed agricultural family offering their umpiring expertise for a willow-on-leather summer’s evening or weekend in the grounds of the landowning Tichborne family seat for almost the past 1,000 years.
“No getting my arm over these days,” accepts Henry.
Scoring, instead, a firkin not out of Palmer’s Bridport Copper bitter each week to establish an unofficial record in the log of the Tichborne Arms for a regular given to quaffing 10 pints daily, sometimes more; 72 or equivalent to a firkin each week; and bowling over the Royal National Lifeboat Association to discover their charitable coffers remain indebted to the burly ex-stockman to the tune of as much as £200-a-year.
“Wants Firkin Henry written on the side of one of their new lifeboats for doing my bit towards saving others from the drink,” smiles the Primmer son. ”RNLI is my most favourite charity of all. And for the brewery to be donating 5p on each pint of its firkins of Copper, but not wanting to make too much of a song and dance about me drinking them dry of one of them every week.”
For more information about the Natural Death Centre - currently looking for volunteers to work with Rosie out of its Twyford bunker - visit www.naturaldeath.org.uk.
