Free A Little Bit on the Side by John W O' Sullivan

end of the second season, with all crops gathered and the autumn pruning done, they forgot about the cage and turned to other things, which in mid-December included their first visit to the local pantomime in the village hall. This was an irregular not annual event, as it seemed to take the writers a couple of years or more to assemble the catalogue of salacious, scurrilous and near-libellous references that formed their theme.
    Copulation, flatulence, defecation and various close encounters of the physical kind all featured in the script, but two items in particular marked a deviation from the usual rustic programme: the company’s own rural version of George Harrison’s Cos I’m The Taxman, and an obscene sketch of the seduction and subversion from duty of a taxman (unsubtly named Mr Mannering to hammer home the point) by the sexual wiles of the village tart. It was a rude, crude script, but it was played out with verve and gusto. Both items went down to great applause which Jack took as marking his final acceptance into the fold.
    A mild, almost balmy, Christmas was followed, as is so often the case, by a dramatic change in the weather which made life on the hill, even on the sheltered western slope, a testing ordeal. For two days an arctic wind scoured the countryside driving the sheep to such shelter as they could find, and burning the last life from any vegetation that had clung on into the winter. Early on New Year’s Eve the wind fell away to an ominous calm, as a sullen, grey overcast slowly thickened around the hill, shrouding the heights and leaving the valleys in a threatening half-light.
    Two hours or so before midnight, at Jimmy’s request, and having fortified themselves with a hot whisky, Jack and Kate set off to meet him at the Shagger for their first visit to the village New Year celebrations. As they passed the church they noticed with surprise that it was in darkness, and so it would remain. No Watch Night Service in St Matthew’s explained Jimmy when they met in the bar: the village kept to another, older tradition that no vicar had been able to usurp.
    The bar was crowded, noisy and steamy-hot with the physical presence of its many ‘well-oiled’ customers; the atmosphere smoky, and heavy with an odour redolent of ladies’ Christmas perfumes subtly blended with the scent of cheap cigars and the body odours of men who make their living on the land, and may not long have left the milking parlour or pig-pen.
    A call from the vicar took them over to the far corner of the bar where he was standing with a whisky and tempting Ada Sutton to her third Advocaat.
    ‘Thought I had to pop in to wish the mother of the village a Happy New Year, but I won’t stay long. Don’t want to spoil the party.’
    Before he could say any more, he was interrupted by a younger group in what passed for the saloon bar, starting up with one of the latest pop songs, but in the public the older regulars were having none of that.
    ‘Come on Ted, give us one of your Dad’s songs with Charlie and show those youngsters what it’s all about,’ came a call from somewhere in the crush.
    Ada’s two sons were well known in the village for keeping up the tradition of their father, and his father before him, in having at their disposal a repertoire of rustic songs, risqué or sentimental, that never failed to please an audience. Taking one long pull at their pints, which almost emptied the glasses, they moved out to a vantage point beside the fire, called for a bit of hush, put one hand to an ear, and began with The Maid of Barton Hill , one of Old Tom’s own compositions, with its lusty lads, mossy mounds and the raising up and laying down of ‘spirits.’ In those that followed there was much sowing of meadows, ploughing of furrows, thrashing of flails and clapping of hands on cuckoo’s nests, in which all the men and some of the ladies joined heartily, while those of a more reticent disposition sipped their port and