Crispin's Day

I was so looking forward to today's celebrations. Hnaef promised us a really good liturgical interpretation of the day. So I was looking forward to a good liturgical setting of the battle of Agincourt. I always think liturgy is best when combined with a serious battle re-creation, in the manner of the Batley Townswomen's Guild's recreation of the Battle of Pearl Harbour. And I was looking forward to getting the old longbow out.

So imagine my surprise when instead Hnaef gave us a celebration of St Crispinian. Not even St Crispin himself.  Hnaef, ever one to favour the underdog, wouldn't even celebrate St Crispin, preferring to think of his less famous but equally martyred brother.

So, as our commemoration of one half of the patron saints of shoes and shoemaking, we had a day-trip to Northampton shoe museum, followed by "the Crispinian exhibition" back in Husborne Crawley. Hour after hour of different shoes to look at, from sandals to wellingtons. Not by the longest stretch could even I try and describe this as liturgy.  After we felt we'd wasted our lives looking at shoe after shoe - with Hnaef shouting "Left!" and "Right!" before exhibiting each member of each pair - some of the more fractious Beaker Folk started throwing shoes around - mostly at Hnaef, but a few took it upon themselves to sling them at Drayton and Burton, simply because they were there. The targets decided to retaliate. Well, two of them did. Drayton turned the other cheek, just in time to intercept a Dr Martens boot with it. But Mrs Hnaef, Kylie and Kayleigh rallied to their defence. Soon the air was full of Toetectors and winklepickers, as the massed ranks of English bowmen massacred the flower of French yeomanry. In a dreadful conflation of Shakespearean battles, Young Keith and Marston Mortaine rushed once more unto the breach, to fill it up with their Italian shoes. And cobblers in Rushden now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their lasting sheds cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us here on Saint Crispinian's day.

So the day ended up OK, after all.