GHOST OF MIDDLETHORPE

I was looking in one of the High Street bookshops a while back and
it struck me that the "Guidebook" section had greatly increased.

Whether or not in an attempt to persuade the great British Holiday
Maker to forsake the Costa Del Package for the more homely climate I'm
not sure.

What seems apparent is that you can take the various phrases like.
"Things to Do At" or "Places to go in" and add the name of just about
any place ascribed in the gazetteer as being bigger than a mini hamlet
and you could almost be assured that someone, somewhere has produced a
guidebook to it similarly named.

Middlethorpe has a guide book....Perhaps you would enjoy a quote from
the said tome taken from the "Places of dubious architectural merit and
insignificant historical importance" section....

THE GHOST OF EGREVOLD....or..
THINGS THAT GO BONK IN THE NIGHT!

N

estling in its own brand of congenial squalor atop the molehillian
plateau of Toddlesworth on the Pee and some thirty five miles magnetic
south south west of the last vestiges of civilisation. .well anyway
Middlethorpe.lies the guano bespotted ruin of Egrevold Castle, country
seat, home, retreat and sanctuary of Sir Robert Soames Egrevold the
19th Earl of Middlethorpe in the Mire, a title hastily bestowed upon
the family some centuries earlier by King Ethelred the inebriated in a
moment of blind drunkard panic.

The present Earl, nineteen thousand two hundred and twenty fourth in
line to the ancient Celtic throne is a direct descendant of an
impressive pedigree of baronial nonentities none the least of which
were his great great great grandfather, whose idea of the War of the
Roses was the mortal damage inflictable by a greenfly spray and his
great great grandfather Egrevold the Unenviable. 'Twas the latter who
was ascribed the suffix and beset the task under penalty of death or
eternal chastity of rebuilding the family edifice from its original
foundation as a scholastic institution for destitute chain mail armour
knitters, using funds acquired by being second best runner up in a pre
Raphaelite "Spot the least hirsute member in the jousting crowd"
contest..A forerunner to the modern "Spot the Baldy."

Little is known of the present incumbent's grandfather, Egrevold the
Unheard of, save that he had two wives. The first bore him five
daughters despite a penchant for garlic sausage. It is well documented
that the daughters names were Omally, Omelly, Omilly, Omully and
Osoddit...The latter being named following the gentleman's instinctive
utterings upon discovering that his spouse had yet again abjectly
failed to provide him with a son and heir.

Rumour and speculation then abounds that wife number one absconded with
a second hand chariot salesman from Toddlesworth. Regrettably the
Toddlesworth Ferret Racers Gazette was not published in those far flung
days so the story was never journalistically ruined by having an
element of truth in it. Suffice it to say that old coffee stained
parchment records still exist which tell the story of a stormy and
acrimonious divorce followed by a long and protracted legal battle over
who was entitled to retain the family crest and have custody of the
Peregrine Falcons. It then appears that a second marriage took place to
a milkmaid from Middlethorpe who finally begat him a son following many
unsuccessful attempts, the implant of a surgical appliance and the
cheers, applause and encouragement of a specially trained band of well
wishing onlookers.

It was during the period 1400 to 1430 (that first half hour after
lunch) that the massive gates of the castle were reinforced using
sections of an obsolete portcullis surreptitiously purloined the
previous evening under cover of darkness. There were two purposes for
this. Not only did it ensure the safe custody and total chastity of
five nymphomaniac daughters but such portals also excluded the
continual advances of a nomadic band of ex commando mercenaries with a
cause to fight for on the one hand but with designs somewhat less
abstainate lower down their anatomies.

The period 1431 to 1436 was a very significant one in the castle's
history. It was during this tea break that the mercenaries laid siege
to the premises and tried to obtain a demolition order under an obscure
piece of fifteenth century legislation which became, later, much later,
the Trades Descriptions Act. When this failed (It was shown to be a
grade one listed building...listing two degrees to the right and with
the battlements two inches and a gnat's out of the perpendicular) they
concocted a sinister plan to batter down the gates using a second hand
codpiece impaled on the tailboard of a 500cc ox cart running backwards
downhill in autopilot.

One dissenting soldier, believing the plan was doomed to failure, tried
unsuccessfully to squeeze his ramparts through the portcullis and was
repelled in short order by the Earl himself, brandishing a sawn off
flint lock pistol and an improvised left hand drive GXL circumcising
tool. In that instant new adjectives to describe intense pain entered
the English vocabulary.

Today the castle shows little of its former prowess. The only remaining
connection with that fateful day is that the ghost of that same
dissenting soldier is still said to haunt the ladies chamber. 'Tis said
that on the Tuesday nights of every second week of the period of the
year between Lent and Borrowed there can be heard much bemoaning, heavy
breathing and the sound of much bonking in the night. 'Tis further said
that on every Wednesday morning during the same period of the year,
Lady Soames Egrevold the 19th Marchioness of Middlethorpe in the Mire,
always goes down to breakfast with a big broad grin on her
face........