I would be less unchurched  if my clergy person was  the the Reverend Mary Edwards, of Collingbourne Ducis, near Marlborough, on the Plains of Salisbury in Merry Olde.

Something of a scholar, she discovered that her commission included the right to muster her parishioners  for practice with lethal weapons in defense of the realm. And so,  this spring, she did just that.

Mrs Edwards said: "It's an unrepealed law from some time in the middle ages and I can call all the men - but I've extended it to all people - in the parish to archery practice."

And I am here to tell you that this woman knows how to command a militia.

"Residents were rewarded for complying with the law with a bar, a barbecue and live music."


The occasion for the bending of the yew was completion of an indoor loo, the church's first.

The extent of diaper dampening in Parliament is thus far unreported.


---


As a descendant of Fearghael of Longford in Leinster, or perhaps Fearghael of the wild Wicklow Mountains,  I find myself suspecting  -- or  perhaps merely hoping -- that  her pedigree begins somewhere in Hibernia.