GOODWIFE MUCKLE'S VILLAGE ALMANAC OF SENSIBLE PRECAUTIONS

A Plain Word to Begin

I've nothing clever to say and no time to say it in. The castle up the road is haunted, bankrupt, and sinking, and the people in it are mad as a sack of weasels. None of that is our business, provided we take sensible precautions. This almanac is those precautions. It is not exciting. Sensible never is. That's rather the point of it. The folk who find the castle exciting tend to end up living in it, and you've seen how that goes.

Each entry: The Hazard · The Sensible Thing · As My Mother Said.

Of the Rent

The Hazard. Every quarter a damp note arrives demanding rent the castle has no power to collect. The Sensible Thing. Pay it. Not because you owe it — you don't — but because a small coin posted quietly is cheaper than an afternoon of His Lordship arriving in person to be charming at you. As My Mother Said. "Cheaper to feed the dog than argue with it about whose leg it is."

Of Dinner Invitations

The Hazard. A gilt-edged invitation to dine at the castle. The Sensible Thing. Be ill. Be ill creatively and at once. Nobody who accepted that invitation has been heard to recommend the soup, the company, or, in two notable cases, being alive afterwards. As My Mother Said. "When the fox lays a place setting, it isn't for the chicken's comfort."

Of the Potato

The Hazard. They'll try to pay you in potatoes and call it money. The Sensible Thing. Take them. Here is the village secret the Tithe-Man never grasped: their "coin" is worthless everywhere on earth except that, unlike the Tithe-Man, we can boil it. A Bastable spud is worth exactly one potato to us, which is one potato more than it's worth to anyone sane. As My Mother Said. "A daft man's money spends fine if you're hungry enough to chew it."

Of the Drains

The Hazard. The castle's water has a king in it, and the king has opinions, and you are downstream. The Sensible Thing. Don't whistle near the moat. Don't drink below the bend. And if a crowned frog addresses you with great seriousness, address him back with great seriousness, because he holds the foundations and, frankly, the better claim. As My Mother Said. "Be civil to whatever's bigger than you, and to whatever's wetter."

Of the Tithe-Man Passing Through

The Hazard. Now and again a bloodless gentleman in black comes up the road with a ledger and no expression. The Sensible Thing. Have your papers in order, your fire banked low, and your opinions to yourself. He is not here for you — he is here for the castle — and the surest way to make him become here for you is to be interesting. Be dull. Be impeccably, invisibly dull. As My Mother Said. "You can't be taxed on what he didn't notice."

Of the Castle Itself

The Hazard. The whole leaning, dripping, magnificent disaster of it, sat up the road like a curse with a roof. The Sensible Thing. Leave it be. Don't go in to gawp, don't go in to help, don't go in to seek your fortune. The ones who keep their heads down keep their heads. We grow the food, cut the peat, mind our own, and let the lords ruin the lords. It has worked for the village for six hundred years, which is longer than anything up there has worked at all. As My Mother Said. "It's not your house, it's not your fire, and it's not your job to die putting it out."

Of Meat on Trees (Precaution №47)

The Hazard. A map, a rumour, or a gentleman insisting there is a tree somewhere that grows breakfast. The Sensible Thing. Rule 47: never trust meat growing on trees. Bacon comes from a pig and a great deal of trouble, in that order; anything offering it for free, on a branch, in a dry place, wants something off you — usually your life. (Added to the book following the Bastable Incident of 1888. We don't say his name. We just don't go looking for breakfast in the Griddle.) As My Mother Said. "If it's too good to be true and it's also a shrub, it's a trap with leaves on."

A Last One, Which I'll Deny Saying

The Hazard. A frightened young thing comes down from the castle to the village — a new servant, a "turnip," sent on some daft errand, white as a sheet. The Sensible Thing. (here the writing softens) Give them a hot meal and the back room for the night, and ask no questions, and send them off in the morning fed. Sensible says turn them away; they bring the castle's troubles to the door. But sensible isn't the whole of it, is it. My mother knew that too. She just never wrote it down, in case the village thought her soft. As My Mother Said. "…oh, feed the poor mite. We were all somebody's turnip once."