FARMER JACK'S SCARECROW

Farmer Jack sawed, hammered and planed some wood and a brand new scarecrow came into existence. He had given it an exceptionally long nose and called it Pinnochio. He wanted it to outperform all the scarecrows on neighbouring farms. It was so lifelike that he harboured a secret dream that when it matured it would copulate with lady scarecrows and produce more little wooden puppets with long noses. But he had another reason for making it which we shall come to later.

The scarecrow did, indeed, work like a charm. It frightened away all the birds except the farm-bred gurkeys, who rapidly got used to it and would occasionally jump up with a flurry of wings and perch on its long nose.

Bunners' Day, as everyone but the most ignorant knows, is the Second of August. The august members of The Bunners' Society arrived, full of prejudices, foibles and crotchety behaviour patterns, at St. Lukes farm. At the swearing-in-ceremony they swore solemnly to eschew all mention of physical ailments, inflation, complaints about the behaviour of their offspring and growing old. Which, of course, restricted the conversation to harmless topics such as religion. politics and scarecrows.

Incidentally, there is a superstitious belief in the neighbouring villages that Farmer Jack enters into a conspiracy with the devil on Bunners' Weekends, because it has been observed how these elderly Grockles from London town regain their youth during their visit.

The sanctification of the Sabbath conducted by Farmer Jack with his usual flair and aplomb put the Bunners into a suitably solemn mood. "Let me be chaste, frugal and self-denying, Oh Lord," they prayed, "but not while we are enjoying Dorset hospitality at St. Luke's farm."

"Strewth, hasn't the year gone quickly," Lord Franco of Shirley and Demesnes South exclaimed, as soon as they had settled into the armchairs. Seems like I was only here yesterday."

The Duchess of Hogarth Roundabout commented: "Did you know, Bert, that 'Strewth is an abbreviation for God's Truth."

"Lorks a mussy, it seems to have gone even faster now you've said that," Lord Franco answered.

Irish Jack asked: "What's the difference between God's truth and everybody else's?"

Dame Pat Franco said: "God's truth is the real as opposed to half or partial truth."

Irish Jack, who had drunk rather a lot of whiskey and wine said tipsily: "Irish Jack says all Bunners are liars. Irish Jack is a Bunner. Therefore Irish Jack was telling a lie. Therefore all Bunners are not liars."

Professor Herr Doctor Rackow gave a little cough to let people know that he was about to say something very profound. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and then looking crestfallen, said: "Sorry, I've quite forgotten what I was about to say."

Lady Miriam of Willesden Greens said reassuringly: "Never mind. It can't have been important, or else you wouldn't have forgotten it."

"Not so," said Lady Polly, "He would have remembered it if it had been trivial. It's the important thoughts we find difficulty in expressing."

"Quite right," Professor Rackow agreed. "Whatever it was I was going to say must have been very important."

Dame Franco intervened shrewdly: "How do you know it was important, if you've forgotten what it was you were going to say?"

"Aha!," said Rackow. "I've remembered it now." He cleared his throat. "What I was about to say is that I won't say anything until it's time to wind up the discussion."

"Can't have that," Irish Jack grumbled. "Why should he have the last word?"

Herr Professor Dr. Rackow, said: "All I'm saying is that I should like to defer giving my opinion on this important topic until the end of the discussion. There is a subtle distinction between that and having the last word."

Irish Jack protested: "But dammit, if you insist on waiting until the end, that means you are having the last word. That's not democratic."

Farmer Jack intervened forcefully. "This is St. Luke's farm and here I'm Lord of all I survey. I rule in favour of the Herr Doctor Professor."

Irish Jack withdrew into a sulk.

The Bunners now digressed from their main topic of conversation, which you will have gathered was all about telling lies – and entered into the most enjoyable of their traditional activities: namely reminiscences about old times. For anthropologists this part of the proceedings has an interesting aspect. The Bunners would never dream of recalling events where the objective facts can be checked or authenticated. This is quite understandable. Nobody in his right mind wants to have his most precious recollections called into question. By polite agreement all anecdotes are legends written in stone and therefore may not be challenged. The spirit in which the accounts are given is more important than the historical facts.

We are now coming to the nub of this tale. A strange phenomenon had recently begun to puzzle Farmer Jack. Whenever he told a lie the nose of the scarecrow, which you will remember he had named Pinnochio, got shorter instead of bigger, which ran counter to the legend of the famous puppet.

He was first alerted to this phenomenon when the gurkeys, making their usual attempts to perch on the scarecrow's nose, kept falling off into an ungainly heap on the ground. Puzzled, he took out his micrometer and measured the scarecrow's nose. Sure enough it was ten millimetres shorter than when he had first made it. Enough to throw any gurkey off its favourite perch. The scarecrow he had named Pinnochio was, apparently being rewarded for any lies told on St. Luke's farm by being given a nose job.

Now apart from scaring birds, one of the reasons Farmer Jack had made the scarecrow in the first place was because he wanted to have an infallible lie detector to test the sometimes far fetched reminiscences of the Bunners.

Farmer Jack kept replacing the scarecrow's nose. But whenever he himself, during his daily conversation, made the slightest deviation from the truth the scarecrow's nose shortened. He was naturally extremely puzzled and conjectured it might be due to a plague of wood peckers. He shot a whole covey of woodpeckers just in case they were the culprits.

On the day before the Bunners' arrival, Farmer Jack had again carefully measured the scarecrow's nose with his micrometer. That evening Lord Franco related a story about an event with some girls in a youth hostel that had allegedly occurred in the earlier half of the last century. The actual story is not important, so we will not repeat it. But Farmer Jack had always doubted, its accuracy. While everyone was drinking cocoa, he surreptitiously took a torch, crept out and checked the length of the scarecrow's nose. It had lost five millimetres!

Later on, Auditor Joe told a story about an event which had occurred fifty-five years previously, when he was wading in a stream where, according to rumour, it was possible for an expert to tickle and catch trout with his bare hands. The point of the story was that Auditor Joe instead of tickling the trout had tickled a girl guide who happened to be bathing in the same stream. Farmer Jack had never believed that hoary old chestnut. After snooker, he went out into the field to check Pinnochio's nose. Sure enough it had lost six millimetres.

The following night he threw the subject open to discussion among the Bunners.

Of course the first allegation, made by a sceptical Irish Jack, was that Farmer Jack himself was secretly shortening the scarecrow's nose. Farmer Jack denied this vehemently. Why should he have brought up the subject in the first place? In any case he had made the scarecrow with his own hands and named it Pinnochio. He would look a damn fool, if it ever came out that a scarecrow he had named Pinnochio had a nose that got shorter instead of longer whenever a lie was told. What would that do to his reputation locally? A farmer who couldn't put a consistent and unwavering nose on a scarecrow was obviously incompetent. Nobody who got to hear it would give him a cent's worth of credit.

Farmer Jack made a heartfelt appeal to the Bunners to try and resolve the mystery. Lord Franco of Shirley tried first. He pointed out that occio- as in Pinnochio- meant "eyes" in Italian, so perhaps it was his eyes that were supposed to grow bigger. The feeble theory was treated with the scorn it deserved.

Lady Betty of Northwood made the monstrous suggestion that Farmer Jack's micrometer was inaccurate.

Auditor Joe, whose mind was wandering in the distant past, mumbled under his breath that it was a much greater feat in the repressed era when he was young to tickle a girl guide than it was to tickle a trout.

But it was Professor Herr Doctor Rackow who had the last word, in spite of Irish Jack's objections.

He said portentously. "You've all heard the saying: The Lord said unto Moses: all Bunners shall have long noses. The noses, as you may have observed, get longer as we grow older. So you see it not only applied to human beings as well as Pinnochio. Does that mean that we tell more lies as we grow older? Not at all. It is just that we sometimes become a little economical with the truth. Legend bears many cases of the nose being granted mystical powers.. Look at, Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a famous poet. And what do poets do? They veil the truth with lies to make it ultimately more comprehensible. They deal in allegories and metaphors, which are, when you think about them, only forms of lies. And that, indeed, is what we Bunners do when boasting of our conquests all those years ago. Life can become unbearable without a little judicious and poetic lying.

Farmer Jack promptly changed the name of the scarecrow with the long nose to Cyrano de Bergerac and everybody has been happy ever since. Since then, as a maer of interest, some of the local scarecrows have given birth to little wooden baby scarecrows. And if you don't believe me you can check the length of the nose on Farmer Jack's scarecrow.