Quite stange really

[Vicarious]

You may not know me .

I am the vicar of BllyRicky, a very fine parish, but I won't telll you any more than that because I don't wannt the priest down the road to take it out of me, if he hears this story about what happened to my bike when I left it at a stand in the West end of London.

It was like this. I was told by good authority of one of my parishioners, who worked in london and cycled in town sometimes, that it was quite safe to leave bikes on stands in the West end.
He even told me which bike stand was safest.

So off I went one day determined to enjoy London and everything it has to offer the cyclist.
I decided to leave the bike for three or four hours unattended and then come back for a ride around but when I got back the bike was nowhere to be found.
I looked again and there was a frame which said Dawes on it, and I thought "Can that be my.....
my..... Frame.....? I could not see the bike but I could see a frame which might have been the same. It had a padlock around it... around the frame.

I gingerly put my key into the padlock and it fitted! I was curiously pleased by this; it just went to prove that I could unlock padlocks
and I was beginning to doubt my skill at anything, including relying on parishioners for good information.

What could I do but return home and admit to my dear wife that my day in London had been sadly expensive, and even admit to her that nothing had been stolen because I unlocked the
padlock from the frame and it must have been the same frame because key and lock makers don't make keys all the same.

She was furious but she kept on laughing in a strange sort of way, but I just put it down to experience. On the sunday my young parishioner
said Hello! in a strange kind of way and laughed a deep rumbling laugh that I had never heard from him before. I had always thought of him as a reliable man, but as he left the church and I shook him by the hand in the other hand he was holding a brake sytstem...you know the things I mean, which hold the brakes.

It looked like the front brakes off my bike but I did not like to say so. In fact as he left he said to me "How do you get on London then vicar?" and laughed a kinda strange laugh, whilst holding the bike part in the other hand. He was like that with bike parts. I knew he was a policeman because he used to say he was involved with "criminal activities" which could only be a euphemism for policeman...or so I thought.

I got to thinking, encouraged by my dear wife who has more experience of the world than I do, and I thought that the bike might have been taken apart bit by bit and NOT stolen .
" I mean if somebody leaves something around in the street
they should look after things better; what do they expect if their bike has been unscrewed by the time they get but NOT stolen!" would be his reasoning. I mean I DO know about the CRB. If all he ever did was go round undoing people's bikes for a living he would never be accused of stealing a bike but he might make good money out of it. All he would be doing is a good turn
tidying up the street of unwanted bicycles left there by uncaring owners not using their bikes!

I mentioned it in my sermon the nect week and an experienced member of the CTc came up to me and said "That's the oldest trick in the book
but they usually wait until the bike has been there for longer but if you see just a bike frame on a padlock to the bike stand in London you know that some enterprising CRB clean individual
has been there doing the City corportation a favour cleaning up the street of old and unwanted bikes.

I told my wife and she laughed like a boot and a drain. I still don't know why. Please don't tell the priest at St john of the Holy Sepulchre, or I shall lose Tom as a parishioner. Strange thing I found a brake block in the collection box last week.
You know it could NOT have been one of mine.
It is six weeks ago now.

kind regards to you all from BillyRicky

By the way this is copyright 2005 No stealing
it is under W3 patent licence of St. John's and I am even beginning to have doubts about that!

Vicar

[Happiness]

Oh vicar I do enjoy your sermons, but that is
very silly to suggest that a man involved with criminal activities is a policeman.

I don't like to think about it though, and I don't like London either becuase it is so dangerous. Things like that are bound to happen and I would be upset by them.

That man is a criminal, but he will soon be saved and see the light if he does what you say and puts the bike back together again. Do you think he could do that as well?

How funny

[Vicarious]

I do worry about my congregation. It's all part of the job I s'pose, but if you hear of anybody who
wants to buy a frame will you just check to see if
it is a Dawes they want becoz, that is what I have got left, and since I am not really very good at
putting bikes together OR taking them apart, I shall sell this frame for whatever I can get, probably £20, buy a new bike and hope for better luck next time. I shall jolly well get insured with CTC insurance next time, then if you want to lose the bike you can tell them all about it on
CTC message board, and they will come round and steal it for you; no trouble. They are not members those people, so who would know?niente; nobody.

Any way my parishioner Tom, to whom I did not DARE to mention the matter of the bike loss again, came round to talk to me in the vestry
after service last week and do you know? I smelt gin on his breath at 11 O'clock in the morning. The reason that spirits drinkers migrate to Gin is that it is almost odourless even a few minutes after drinking it, so they have no difficulty in disguising the fact they have been drinking. I would not have noticed the odour at all except that I have noticed he has a very bad temper several times. One minute you'll be speaking to him and the next Boing! He is at you with the worst invective that anybody could invent, without any reason whatsoever. Well for
a man in a responsible job like him I s'pose it's easy to say "Oh my Dad and brother died of
Neuropathy, heart failure and blindness"
If they drink gin at that rate in their family Tom will die of the very same disease and sooner rather than later!

When I say reponsible job...... he is only a loud mouthed market trader really, down Croydon market; perhaps he thinks he needs the spirits to keep him warm in the winter against the cold air.
What excuse he would offer in the summer heaven only knows. He say he's a policeman,
but of course I've got more experience than that.
Talking about Heaven I must go and check with my wife about the summer holiday. One thing is certain we are not going on the tandem again.
She ended up as Captain last year. I did not see anything. I have always liked a big woman....
I still had to pedal harder than her.

Kind regards,

The Vicar of Billyricky

Ps If anybody would like to make a private confession, I shall be available on Saturday afternoon. Oh! We are planning a Pilgrimage for next year all the way from Canterbury to Rome along the Via... Via...... Via...... ah well along
the.... what is it called... my memory! If you would like to come we are going to tell each other stories on the way.

[Happiness]

"I don't suffer fools gladly"
you know, especially when they get angry very suddenly and without apparent cause.

I am all for a balanced and pleasant existence.
Nothing sudden. I like equanimity.
I can be quite a serious man.

I must ask the Vicar