Hit Wicket

Of all the ways to be dismissed in cricket, being out 'hit wicket' is perhaps the least glorious. It is, after all, the aim and objective of the other side to hit a batsman's wicket and he has no right to be doing their job for them.

Poor Archdeacon does appear to have suffered such a fate and have brought about his own fall from grace in a thoroughly hit-own-wicket sort of way. Having spent most of the night with him - one eye on his unraveling mental health, one eye on Anila's cherished silver chalices and one's third eye on what support might be available via Old Tom's secretariat - I have arranged for him to be shipped off forthwith to St. Mildred's convent in a remote and bookmaker-free corner of the county, where the good ladies will no doubt mend his broken mind - if not restore his impecunious pocket - through their unearthly (i.e. heavenly) charity and compassion.

I myself once spent a pleasant week in just such an establishment of nuns - not I haste to add because one was going doo-lally or any such, merely having a cheap and cheerful 'busman's holiday' you must understand - and when it came to leaving it seemed only fitting to buy the ladies a little something as token of thanks. Generally speaking a bottle of good malt would be the automatic thing to consider, but I had noticed during my time there not one drop of the hard or even the not-so-hard stuff in sight.

Anxious therefore not to offer a gift of no use or value, I enquired of a passing sister following breakfast on my last day there whether they had drink about the place. "Why of course we do," she said. "You just wait there." Comprehending the first but not the second part of her reply I stood still as ordered. (Obedience to the instruction of a Nun is Golden Rule #7 in the Seminary Book of Survival let me assure you!) Moments later the good woman appeared bearing a full-to-the-brim schooner of sherry, which she happily thrust at me.

Only then did I realise that she had taken my innocent question as the gasping, desperate cry of an alcoholic vicar in need of an urgent fix. Bless her for not judging what she took to be my plight, but imagine if you will my embarrassment, not to mention my struggle to sup a full glass of a not terribly appealing medium sweet sherry at 8.30 of a morning.

Having at least confirmed that theirs was not a dry house, it seemed the least I should do to make good my promise of a decent malt for their larder 'ere leaving. This though meant an early trip to the local off-license before catching my bus, so early in fact that I was obliged to join the pre-opening queue of genuine soaks waiting for the shutters to lift and the alcohol of choice to down.

The vendor of the place - a hypocrite to his very bones clearly - though happy to serve his customers and to make his profit therefrom, gave me a number of filthy looks as I requested my malt as if to say that a clergyman reeking of alcohol at nine in the morning was not his kind of clergyman, no sir! Too befuddled by the sherry to make a cogent or a biting riposte and in no mood to attempt to explain the whole truthful story, I took my liquor like a man and fled the place like a mouse.

H roared when she heard all of this and promised to take me back to X on our next summer's jaunty holiday. I for my part will positively insist we never go near the place again!