Walking back from the village this morning, as I crossed the small bridge over the river I could see an old gentleman, one of my regular nodding acquaintances, coming down the slope, approaching the bridge from the other side. I calculated correctly that our paths would cross on the open patch between the slope and the river. Was I not running this morning, he asked me. So I explained that I had already run but had stopped at the coop store for a couple of things. Where did I run, he wanted to know next. As I began to tell him about setting off from my house next to the Old Bell Inn, he interrupted me to tell me he was born in the Old Bell Inn. Well, actually, in the rooms above the archway, when those rooms were still used as accommodation.
There is an archway because the Old Bell was originally a coaching house. Coaches would drive through into the yard to change horses. Old photos reveal there were stables there. Most of the old buildings in the yard have disappeared or been altered beyond recognition, now forming part of an industrial complex. However the archway remains pretty much the same as it ever was, with old cobbles and two rows of broader stones where the wheels of the coaches would have passed. And I think that maybe the rooms above the archway now form part of the Old Bell’s ovenight accommodation once again.
The old gentleman told me that he has just turned 90 (and looks very well on it, I must say!) and that he likes to tell people that he was born in Queen Victoria’s bed, or at least the bed that Queen Victoria slept in when she stayed there. I did a bit of internet searching and it turns out that Phil, the current landlord, and his team had also done research which showed that Victoria did indeed stay there as a princess in 1835, breaking her journey on her way to York Festival. (Who knew that Victoria was a festival-goer?) This article from 2014 writes about Phil and his team applying for a blue plaque, which as far as I know has never materialised. Whatever the outcome of that request, the old gentleman was clearly amused to think that he might have a very tenuous link to the royal family!
I arrived home in time for a chat with one of the neighbours. She had recently been persuaded by one of her relatives to visit a psychic, or rather to go along to a performance by a psychic. After all, if 100+ people are crowded into the upstairs room of a pub it’s definitely a performance rather than an intimate seance. She had not really wanted to go but a £10 ticket had been bought for her and she did not want to seem ungrateful.
The session began, late apparently, and the psychic almost immediately pinpointed my neighbour: - “You, the lady in the grey top, on the second row from the back! …… is here!” This was Marlene’s husband who died of cancer some 8 or 9 years ago. Well, she became convinced that this was her husband as the psychic went on to reveal facts, via messages from him, that only she and her close family could know. Quite why he should get in touch now, after being quiet for 8 years, remains a mystery. And why he felt the need to comment on the fact that she had had decorating done in the house, telling her things she knew, is also a mystery. But messages were being sent. The arrival on the psychic plane of Elsie, an aged and more recently deceased aunt, clinched it for her. Elsie wanted to know what they had done with her cards of condolence and, perhaps more importantly, her jewellery.
She was clearly impressed and more than a little shaken by the experience. Others around her at the performance was also impressed and had been weeping on her behalf. Did someone in her family prime the psychic with key bits of information? I wonder! Whatever the truth of the matter, that psychic must make quite a good living out of the business of talking to spirits if she really had 100+ people at £10 a head in that upstairs room in a pub. It seems she also does private consultations, for which presumably the mass sessions are a kind of promotional exercise, but she is fully booked until July of this year.
Am I just a little cynical about this? Maybe!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment