Shhhh! Charitable Works Ahead

You, my regular reader, will know that I am almost never likely to wander ever into tales of my charitable good works, no matter how persuasively I might be pressed to give up a copper or two for the starving minions.

No, I won't talk about it so don't even get of asking it at me time after time.

I am resolute to be silent on the issue and not even torture at the hands of the most well-oiled pro will force it out of me, hither and thither.

However, my heart was touched this Christian (and hangers-on) season when I literally came upon a haggard and starving wretch-cum-urchin left unattended in a gutter nearabouts my whereabouts.

With all the charitable goodness in every tip of my left hand's little finger I took said urchin to a local hostelry and did feed him up with a bowl of good broth and a flagon or seventeen of ale, for he was possessed of a mighty yule thirst. Indeed, I have never seen such a whole-hearted bid for the Guinness Book of Records (Dangerous Consumption Chapter).

Then he recounted at enormous length his terribly sad and moving tale for me, one of an unfortunately doomed handicrafts projects using string and wax, a Man with whom he would like to be United, and his eternal battles with the forces of grim bureaucracy.

I would be a brazier liar if I said I did then not bawl up my guts over it.

(I am indebted to Cap'n Jon for his theft of a picture which he passed on to me which was actually by Commissar a la Motte of what is very much a tear-jerk-off moment.)

Then, reeking of Christmas cheer, this eerie creature staggered off alone into the night, weaving between the traffic, cursing up a storm most banefully.

I, naturally, retired to Club Derrig where I spoke sadly to Beattie about this strange experience, and he looked awry.

"Whereso do you dog look awry?" I quippeth.

"'Tis a most haunting tale, Sir Colin," he replied in his usual gloomy manner.

"Out with it Beattie! No! I didn't mean that - put it away. No, advise me you beerhound, that this was no heavenly spirit what I have entertained with my very own cash this cold and darkling evening. Forsooth?"

"Nay, Sir Colin, 'twas an eccentric local goes under the name of Old Alan," he continued in his gloomy monotone. "They who do say, do say he be the richest man in Christendom, after Lord Jenkins."

A sweat broke out in the region of my wallet, and that very night I vowed never to do or speak again of charity.