Esmeralda's Walk

Esmeralda was back in her cottage screwing up her courage. She was going to be seen naked by (in no particular order): a troop of boy scouts on bicycles, the massed bands of the Norfolk Police, the North Norfolk Hunt and the Chipping St Giles Morris Men (although the latter didn't really count).

She sat down and scoured the pages of Lucy Freebody's book. There wasn't any doubt about it. A naked public appearance of this sort was the very epitome of freedom. She would feel a new woman for ever after. She was convinced. Lucy Freebody couldn't be wrong.

Marlene Plugg marched along to the open green space known to all as The Park, she had Timothy with her. The Park was common land. That is not to say that it was owned by the public but that it was land held in Mediaeval times by the Lord of the Manor over which the villagers held certain rights. Nowadays people just thought of it as a public park. But Marlene Plugg knew better, according the statute of King John that she held in her little hand the right to hold a fair was held by the Lord of the Manor. Her! And she had the right to levy a due of one penny in the pound on every pedlar, tinker and jongleur at the fair. She had no idea what a jongleur was, but a penny in the pound would come in very useful indeed. They must get in three thousand quid at least. She could do with that three hundred (maths was not her strong point). The lottery money was running out, and no matter how many more tickets she bought she never won again. How unlucky could you get! Yes! She would make those Harpies at the WI pay, and if they didn't, she had Timothy with her.

The Reverend Dr Dogge perused the running order for the afternoon. The visitors would enter to the sound of the massed bands of the Norfolk Police, while the other entertainments spread out round the greensward.

Dear Esmeralda Bacon would mount the stage wearing her smart two piece bathing suit (how chilly, no 'cool', would that be) and declare the fete open, and the ladies of the WI calisthenics team would start their display. It was all going to be perfect.

Esmeralda however was worried. She just knew that dreadful Plugg woman would be there with her awful dog. If it started to bark at her... Well that would be too embarrassing for words.

The afternoon was hot in the way that only an August afternoon in Norfolk can be. The hunt were splendid in their scarlet pink, the boy scouts did wheelies on their bicycles and the ladies of the WI lined up in their cotton tunics. Lucy Littlemouse sat at the entrance to The Park collecting five pounds (concessions for senior citizens) from the hordes of visitors come to see the entertainment. She must have taken of a thousand pounds already.

Esmeralda marched along the lane to The Park, head high, chin up, as advocated by Lucy Freebody, paying no heed to the stares of the large crowd gathering for the entertainment.

The Reverend Dr Dogge stood with the Reverend Dr Simpkins awaiting the judgment of the latter, who was ready to carp and sneer at everything.

Esmeralda mounted the stage, her speech opening the fete carefully memorised.

Dr Simpkins stared open mouthed.

"Good Heavens man what's that?"

His look was such that Dr Dogge was constrained much against his better judgment, to don his spectacles. He gasped. Not only was Esmeralda Bacon not wearing a two piece bathing suit. She wasn't wearing anything at all.

"Cool!," said Dr Simpkins, "now that's what I call cool!" But the Reverend Dr Septimus Dogge heard him not. He had collapsed on the ground in a swoon.

Esmeralda spoke into the microphone the words she had so carefully memorised, "I declare this fete open!", the band broke into a shaky rendition of "Stayin' Alive" and as one the ladies of the Chipping St Giles WI threw off their tunics and commenced to perform their calisthenics stark naked.

Whether the Reverend Dr Simeon Simpkins found it cool or not we will never know, he had collapsed in a heap next to Dr Dogge.

It was Margaret Corset who, naked as the day she was born, and in the middle of doing star jumps, first noticed the commotion.

"Give me my money!" Marlene Plugg was yelling at a cowering Lucy Littlemouse who was holding a metal cash box to her chest while backed into a corner by a large vicious looking dog.

Calisthenics could wait. Leaving her acolytes to their contortions she advanced upon Marlene.

"What is the meaning of this!" she demanded, hands on hips; she was not the sort of woman to be fazed by the fact that she hadn't a stitch on.

"I've come to collect my duty!"

"What!"

"Under this statute of King John," she waved her bit of parchment, "peddlers... And tinkers... And jugglers and I don't know have to give me a penny in the pound!'

"Jugglers? There aren't any jugglers here."

"You're juggling those about," this pointing at Margaret's impressive bouncers which had just stopped bouncing up and down.

"Stupid woman..." shouted Margaret, and was just about to start a tirade about incomers when she noticed a terrible thing. The horrible big black dog was advancing on her, it's mouth open, slavering.

She turned and ran, her voluminous bottom bouncing as she went, Timothy gave chase.

It might not have been so bad if she hadn't run towards the massed foxhounds of the North Norfolk hunt.

What was that scent? They thought. Not fox. But certainly worth chasing. They followed Timothy, their baying call sounding through the air.

Safety in numbers, thought Margaret, racing towards the now motionless members of the WI, all naked, all now trembling at the site of a pack of baying hounds bearing down on them.

Henry de Vere-Lacey, MFH, looked in amazement as his pack set off in pursuit of the naked women. Blow foxes! This was what he called a hunt. He put his horn to his lips and blew the tally-ho.

And as for the boy scouts, well you can't keep them out of anything.

Fifteen minutes later The Park was deserted, apart from Esmeralda Bacon, forlorn upon the stage, and the Chipping St Giles Morris Men cavorting round the maypole. They just weren't interested in naked women.

In his little bedsit Jack Lambeth pinned another newspaper clipping to the wall.

'Chipping St Giles Trial Ends'

Today Henry de Vere-Lacey, Marlene Plugg and Septimus Dogge were convicted together with 57 others under the 2004 Hunting Act with conspiring to hunt wild mammals with dogs. They had denied the charge claiming that members of the WI were not wild mammals under the meaning of the act. Eight members of the Chipping St Giles Morris Dancing team were acquitted.

When asked if she could be described as 'wild', Margaret Corset (48), said, "Wild! I was bloody furious!"