Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

That’s it! I just asked Robin, who was wandering past in a terrible bate because a guest has cheekily purloined the crossword section from his Sunday Times: the amanuensis! Starts with an a! Silly me! Kind of like a secretary taking down notes from dictation, Robin said.)

After seeing the advert in the Gazette (will they be doing an interview with Mr Booth? Photographs? If so, I’m very happy to free up my spacious back conservatory for the press. It’s huge; Victorian; iron and glass, extremely beautiful and ornate, wonderfully ‘atmospheric’, full of fruit trees and a plethora of exotic palms) I idly mentioned my fascinating conversation with you to Wincey Hawkes at The Old Oak.

Robin and I had popped in there for a quick drink on Tuesday (bridge night, although the saloon bar where we usually prefer to sit is still presently closed after a small ‘contretemps’ with a local biker gang brought on by an abandoned darts tournament!), and she said you’d spoken to her, too (a couple of days after our conversation, I believe). Obviously we’re all rather excited about the idea of having a famous psychic staying in the village (or ‘a practitioner of the Esoteric Sciences’, as I believe Mr Booth prefers to be known!).

Wincey runs a tight ship at The Old Oak, but I think it only fair to warn you that since the death of her late husband (Marmaduke Hawkes — or ‘Duke’ as we all knew him), she’s been struggling somewhat to keep her head above water there.

Duke (I know, curious name for a Yorkshireman, but apparently it was common in these parts in the eighteenth century, and it’d been handed down through the male line of his family for years. Robin says — he’s just wandered back past again, still searching! — it comes from Maelmaedoc or ‘servant of St Maedoc’ who was a famous Irish ‘religious’ at that time) had instituted a number of improvements to the pub (extending the car park, a new kitchen, a new ‘dining room’ — which isn’t nearly so grand as it sounds!) and was then struck down by a throat cancer halfway through the process.

Duke was an enormous character, born and bred in Burley Cross. Fascinating life. Bit of an action adventure hero, really. He worked for years as a bare-knuckle fighter, then joined the Foreign Legion, went AWOL, returned to the UK, became a nightclub bouncer, which is where he met Wincey, at a place in Newcastle, where she was employed as a hostess (all completely above board, mind! This was the 1970s!).

Duke was a big man, a real bruiser. Bald as a brush. Huge, red cheeks. Roaring voice. Curiously light on his feet. Did an amazing ‘sand dance’ once he’d had a few. Liked to play a portable harmonium, with his fists, sitting perched on the counter of the saloon bar (to see him hunched over that tiny instrument, pumping away like a maniac, sweat pouring down his face, was truly a sight to conjure with! And he didn’t sound too bad, either, come to that!).

Becoming landlord of The Old Oak was apparently the fulfilment of a childhood dream for Duke whose parents both died young (and virtually destitute). He and Wincey (who’s from Portmeirion, originally) were like a breath of fresh air when they first arrived here (oh, about ten or eleven years ago, now). They took Burley Cross by the scruff of the neck and really shook it up (not that it particularly needed shaking — but there you go!).

Wincey — true to type — has bravely battled on since Duke’s death, but I’m not sure if her heart’s still in it. And she’s managed to become embroiled in a series of fairly rancorous disputes with a cross-section of local pressure groups (her decision to begin accepting coach parties at the pub — which used to be simply a cosy local — has caused a certain amount of ill feeling among some indigens). Not only that, but just at the point when she was starting to shake off her grief and move on — about eighteen months ago — the pub was burgled (completely turned upside down: obscene graffiti, paint trodden into all the new carpets, smashed up half the stock; they even defecated in the kitchen sinks!). I think this was the point at which her confidence took its most serious knock.

As I already said, though, Wincey runs a tight ship (a ghost ship, but a tight ship!), and I’m sure Mr Booth could do worse than to stay there.

I haven’t spoken to Ruth Hitchens at Lumsden’s (Burley Cross’s other so-called ‘quality’ B&B). Ruth is rather a perplexing character. I think she could fairly be described as ‘a bit of a shrew’. Her husband, Wyn, on the other hand, is perfectly wonderful. Very quiet. Fastidiously clean (which is always a bonus in a man!).

Unfortunately he and Ruth have been involved in a complicated legal dispute over Lumsden’s for about four or five years now. They’ve divided the property in half and still run it in tandem, but they never speak. When they do communicate, it’s only by hand signals and curt notes.

If you did speak to Ruth and she ‘idly’ happened to mention the animal crematorium at the bottom of our garden (trust me, this wouldn’t be the first time!), let me assure you that she was only ‘stirring the pot’. The crematorium is in fact just a small, ancient kiln which Robin — employing his entrepreneurial nous — put to use cremating pets when we first moved into Buckden House about twelve-odd years ago. The business never really took off, though, and we generally only use it now for ‘special requests’ on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

For the record, we’ve never run a cat sanctuary here, either. I kept Cornish Rex cats for many years, as did my sister, and my mother. When my sister moved to a flat in Plymouth and my mother passed away, I took on their animals. We had about seven at one point (and three on loan from the vets), but four of those have recently died, and the ones remaining are extremely sedate, far too old to manage the stairs, and chiefly inhabit the basement area.

Robin is actually an inventor, by trade. I don’t doubt that he and Mr Booth would have plenty to talk about. Is Mr Booth into keep fit at all (Robin’s a keen fell runner)? If he is, he will probably be intrigued by the prototype of a pair of shoes Robin has designed which he developed after hearing about a remote Native American tribe whose men run barefoot through mountains, apparently without sustaining any damage to their soles.

The secret to their apparent indomitability (and Robin can explain this so much better than me) is the tiny, almost mincing steps they take. It’s a new way of running which completely eradicates a whole number of sports injuries!

Anyway, as a consequence of his researches into these fascinating peoples, Robin has invented a ‘training shoe’ which is effectively just a thin layer of transparent, blue-tinged jelly. The jelly is very durable. So powerful and innovative is his design that several of the large trainer companies have expressed an interest in it.

Robin was ‘burned’ once before at the hands of a large corporation, however, and is very suspicious about going into business with people of this ilk. The design has gained an almost ‘mythical’ status amongst the world’s running elite (since it undermines the fundamental logic of all those ‘air support’ shoes), and this has led to a series of threats (by any other name!) being made by these huge corporations against Robin’s reputation and his person.

When I say Robin was ‘burned’ once before, what I mean is that an earlier invention of his — ‘The Key Maker’ — engendered a huge commotion among international car manufacturers. The Key Maker is a small, portable device — a kind of laser, of sorts — which you (i.e. Joe/Josephine Bloggs) can use to gain access to any kind of lock. You simply point The Key Maker into the keyhole and it produces an instant 3D ‘picture’ of the missing key. You then take this ‘picture’ home, plug it into a small box (the size of a breadmaker) and it produces a replacement key, on demand (well, the entire process takes about half an hour, at best).