Thursday, September the 22nd, 2005
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Peter Turf writes in from somewhere called Coldbath Fields. Dear Frank, he says, over-familiarly, Is Hooting Yard becoming obsessed by bees? These little black and yellow fellows seem to be on the increase in your pages. Just asking. Keep up the good work. Peter Turf.
If there are lots of bees to be found here, I don't think it's entirely down to me. Pansy Cradledew's fixation on killer bees is well-attested, and the postbag with Mr Turf's letter also contained this missive from bee enthusiast Max Décharné (for it is he):
Dear Frank : I felt like sending you a beekeeping image, so I went looking for one and found Saint Ambrose, The Honey-tongued Doctor, seen below with a severe case of the hives. In the patron saint department, he seems to have cast his net rather wide. In addition to beekeepers, he looks after bees, candlemakers, chandlers, domestic animals, the French Commissariat, learning, Milan, schoolchildren, students, wax melters and wax refiners. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he was also the patron saint of photocopier toner cartridges, Edwardian municipal bus timetables and superfluous headgear.
Of course, Saint Ambrose is not the only saint with a bulging portfolio. John the Baptist takes care of farriers, tailors, and motorways. Saint Nicholas has Russia, children, pawnbrokers, unmarried women, perfumiers and sailors to protect. Saint Agatha oversees bell-founders, wet nurses, breast cancer, and eruptions of Mount Etna. If you are engaged to be married, travelling, young, epileptic, have the plague or—astonishingly—a beekeeper, you should invoke Saint Valentine. I am not entirely sure how Ambrose and Valentine divvy up the beekeepers, but no doubt they have a system.
Other saints eschew multiple responsibilities and specialise. Consider Saint Timothy (stomach upsets), Saint Antony (basket-makers), Saint Apollonia (dentists), Saint Gall (birds) and Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus (desperate situations).
Hooting Yard really ought to have its own patron saint. Readers are invited to send in their nominations, in the format “I think Saint X should be the patron saint of Hooting Yard because…”, followed by a closely-reasoned argument of between ten and a thousand words.