> were you an unemployed hermit? confused
No, not umemployed, Roger, at least not at first. I'd signed a proper
contact with the local big-wig, see, usual stuff, seven years on the job and
that, dead pukka. Proper victuals, bread, skittles, and rags provided,
luxurious fully-furnished grotto came with the job, next to the gazzebo it
was, dead posh like. But ...
See, what got up the nostrils of me and the rest of the boys was this
particular clause the buggers kept on insisting on, no lushing it up on a
Friday down at the local boozing ken. "Out of character," it was supposed
to be, as if, I mean, what's *in character for a bleeding English hermit in
the middle of winter sitting shivering downwind from the sheep browsing the
ha ha while the only persons come to see you are the local kids who if they
ain't gawking are poking you with sticks.
Bleeding liberty, and the no rum bouse clause was the last drop in the
tankard, so to speak.
So us all went on what we had to call a stand-up-and-walk-off strike, stick
that in your churchwarden we thought and puff on it. Serve the buggers
right, they'll soon be begging us back since after all what's your bang-up
eighteenth century garden without a deeply atmospheric hermit in residence?
So what did the rotten toerags do the minute they thought on it, the
horseblankets we'd been romantically sitting on to keep our arses off the
stonework barely cold? Called in the local stonemasons, they did,
commissioned a set of reproduction full-sized bloody stone *sculptures,
right, assorted poses as required, and stuck them in the Hermitry instead of
us.
Bastards! Minute they realised that there was no overhead on a stone
hermit, and they were less likely to be caught groping the maidservants,
that was it for the profession.
http://www.hermitary.com/lore/ornamental_hermits.html
Anyways, in the course of time, what with large families and death duties
and that, your squire's descendents were as you might say whittled down in
their circumstances, shoehorned into a semi-detached in Chelmsford, poxy wee
patch of garden in place of the gazzebo. And, naturally, the Stone Hermits
went the same way, scunned down to fit the reduced circumstances of their
owners.
Thus in the course of time, six foot tall Ornamental Hermit Masonary,
introduced into the English garden in the wake of our thoroughly principled
refusal of labour till we got us a better contract, evolved into the tiny
garden gnomies so familiar today, them as we all know and loathe.
Blackleg bloody objects they are, and no surprise, as Patrick pointed out,
that the father of the Grey Man was involved in the manufactuary of them.
Him As Was An Eremine Wunce
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