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Come in 1584 your time is up!David Villers-Child reminisces... |
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Known as “The Grim Reaper” he had the sort of face that suited his profession so well. He was an undertaker, in a South Coast town stacked to the gunwales with Granny Farms and retired persons of various states of readiness to meet their maker. Very much Gods Waiting Room. Business was good! He was also a supremely talented Dinghy Sailor, and very careful with money! He had a request for a burial at sea. He looked up the Royal Naval Manual on such things and saw that no coffin was wanted but the body had to be weighted and sewn into a canvas shroud. The lifeboat was enlisted the parson booked and they set out from the local harbour. Sadly it was a rough day, and everyone except our hero and the lifeboats crew began to feel a bit “Tom & Dick!”. So long before they should have the Lifeboat hove too and the Parson got through the burial at sea service somehow, quick chorus of “For those in peril……..” and home for tea and buns! Some weeks later a body was washed up just down the coast! Unidentifiable except that it was sewn up in Terylene Canvas Shroud, that had once been a mainsail of a racing dingy! It still had the sail number 1584 on it. It didn’t tale the plod long to discover who owned Merlin Rocket 1584 and that he lived at Second Avenue, Worthing. Thus one very early morning the Grim Reaper his Wife and Children were woken by a loud hailer, saying the house was surrounded and they had better give themselves up! |