Well, the visitors have gone - we had a sit-down lunch for 16 on Easter Monday! - and the bits of time I managed to escape have started to bear fruit.
First to finish is a sitting figure. I thought I would use up some of the bits and pieces in Igor's store before they start to smell too badly. This one uses the legs of one of the Italeri truck drivers - the sitting one, although I had messed about with them a year or two back, and then not used them. The upper body is from one of those Chinese Peiser rip-off figures, and the head and hat are from the ICM 'Henry Ford' kit ...
... at some point the arms had been ripped off, so they had to be reattached, slightly repositioned for the pose I wanted. I also had to remove the briefcase from the vice-like grasp ...
... and this is the result, after much bodgement with Green Stuff ...
...
... from the front ...
... and the side. I think I've spotted the reason for the pained expression on his face ...
So, allow me to introduce you to Doctor Atkins, the local medical man. He's a familiar sight around the locality in his hairy gingery tweed suit. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and has spent much of his spare time collecting local myths and legends, rummaging in the old records in the Church vestry and the muniment room of the Hall, and digging in old burial mounds. He tells me that he has some more background on St Arbux, and I have much pleaseure in appending it herewith ...
"The chieftain who martyred St Arbux was called Bixit. Bixit’s wife saved the par-boiled
membrum virile of St Arbux from the cauldron when things had cooled down, and it was said to have magic powers to aid wives who couldn’t get pregnant. Bixit’s wife often used to say this while looking pointedly at her husband.
The member was passed down through generations of ‘wise women’, and when the area was converted to Christianity it was kept in the church as a sacred relic of St Arbux. The women of the village were told that, if they visited the priest late at night and were touched by the relic in a special ceremony, they would fall pregnant – experience seemed to confirm this.
Successive holders of the living were quite keen to preserve the Ceremony, but the relic was destroyed by Parliamentary iconoclasts during the Civil War."
I'm told that an attempt by Rev. Donat’s predecessor to revive the practice with young Mrs Curry came to the ears of the Bishop (probably from young Mr Curry), and resulted in his appearance before the Consistory Court and rapid defrocking. Much like what had been going on up at his vicarage, the old boys at the back of the snug in the ‘Leg-O’- Mutton’ used to chortle of an evening ...
