Bert Marshall's Dentures

Bestie organised a ghost walk at Scarborough Castle while we were there; I was gratified, first by the sight of a barn owl pouncing on something in the grasses of the wind whipped headland, and then by tales of sea monsters kept in Egyptian sarcophagi, Roman lovers, Piers Gaveston's head and Bert Marshall's dentures.

Of Piers I've heard before; favoured, some say intimately, by Edward II, his ghost lets its displeasure be known by luring or pushing people to their deaths from the heights of the castle. It seems a bit arbitrary given that he wasn't even executed there, but the ghost seems intractable on these details. It is headless. How then, does it know to push or lure? Because his head rolls behind him, mobilising itself by gnawing along the ground.

Bert Marshall was new to me, his ghost said to haunt the Whitby to Scarborough railway track around Robin Hood's bay. Bert was a farmer, famously close with his money. He took frugality too far when a neighbour died and at the wake Bert spotted that the corpse still wore a fine set of dentures which he pocketed and proudly wore after. One night, Bert decided to splash out at the Windmill Inn, and there drank himself into a near stupor. Fortunately he was still able to get onto his beleaguered old horse and set out for home but come morning, while the horse had returned to the farm, Bert had not.

After much seeking he was discovered, his body laid out on the grass next to the railway track which he seemed to have used as a pillow. His head was never found, and it seems that his ghost is still looking for it up and down the track, carrying the dentures in one of his hands and clacking them like maracas or slipping them into the spot where his mouth should be.

Scarborough ghosts; all heads and teeth.

Brilliant

I have been up since 4 this morning, so perhaps I'm dreaming *checks*. No. No, I am not.

Certain numpties are trying to avoid lockdown restrictions by invoking the Magna Carta, or as some are spelling it, Magna Carter. Specifically they are invoking point 61 which I quote here but leave under the cut for sanity's sake:

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There have been four different versions of Magna Carta, each replacing its predecessor until the 1225 version was reaffirmed by decree of Edward I. Article 61 was in the first (1215) and removed from the second version in 1216. It stopped being part of King John's contract with the barons within 12 months of being penned.

And speaking of barons, there are none, or at least none appointed to make sure these instructions are carried out. Short of the world's most impressive seance, no helm headed aristo is going to come charging in followed by doughty pikemen to stand up for the shopkeepers of Albion.

The country's going through some kind of mass mental breakdown.