St. Petrifieds News Letter

Greetings once more from St Petrifieds.

As you know, I usually avoid the many hare-brained activities which Rev Keen dreams up. And so it was when the curate proposed a ‘Parish Pilgrimage’ to the shrine of our patron, Saint Petrified, in the village of Little Changing

Now my idea of pilgrimages is lots of people walking a long way in uncomfortable conditions and living on stale crusts and water; and there is no chance of me ever being involved in anything like that. Even when Rev Keen proposed a long weekend trip to the shrine in Mr Pullman’s Luxury Road-Cruiser (which is marginally better than walking) I still wasn’t interested. However, when he announced that he had secured accommodation for us at the Hollyhocks Guest House, owned by Rosemary and Violet Honey, I rushed to sign the list because the Misses Honey are first cousins of our beloved Misses Sweet!

Although Little Changing is only 25 miles away, an early start was necessary because of Mr Pullman’s Luxury Road-Cruiser. At 5am sharp the coach struggled into life and we crawled away. Mr Pullman must have given the old bus a jolly good service for we had reached our destination by 4pm, despite having to stop a few times to let the engine cool down. Upon arrival we found Rev Keen (who’d overslept and followed later on his bicycle) waiting to greet us.

We were all starving of course, but the curate insisted that a Gala Dinner to honour the memory of St Petrified would be served only after our pilgrimage to visit the shrine of St Petrified the Unrelenting.

So after checking in to Hollyhocks and meeting the Misses Honey (who were like clones of the Misses Sweet) we set off for the church to visit the Sacred Relics of our Patron Saint. Rev Keen retold the story of how St Petrified, who was a great admirer of the book of Leviticus, was martyred by his flock, sometime during the dark ages, for his insistence in stubbornly practising the Ritual Slaughter of the First Born each year.

The Sacred Relics consisted of a few old bones in a glass case and the sword that he had used for ritual slaughter, and which, apparently, his flock had used to sever his own head. Not even this story was enough to put us off our food, and we rushed back to Hollyhocks in anticipation of the Gala Dinner.

At 7pm the Misses Honey brought in the food. The lids were removed and we found – turnips! Raw, boiled, steamed, or mashed, some served with chunks of stale bread, and others without.

We turned on the curate in fury. He stammered an explanation about St Petrified having eaten nothing but turnips and dried bread all his life and how it was a fitting tribute now to do the same. He then fled through the open window as we hurled the turnips at him, and made his escape on his bicycle. We haven’t seen him for a few days now, but that’s probably because the bus broke down and we are still stranded at Hollyhocks

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