IT was, we all assumed, an offer he could not refuse. For Ben the Bucket does not enjoy his new status as shedless waif since the beck flooded his allotment, and to be offered the grounds of the Old Vicarage to tend seemed irresistible.

"I'm told that you're a pretty dab hand with the green fingers," said Maggots Money-Grubber, new owner of the vicarage, landing a pork-sausage mit on a surprised Ben's shoulder in the Beggars' last weekend.

Ben, choking on his half pint, looked at Maggots suspiciously: "Wharr'f I am?"

"Believe you had a bit of bad luck when the beck flooded," said Maggots. "If you are lookin' for a spot of work, there's a lot to be done at my place."

This is true. The trendy vicar, Rev Rupe and his wife Rowena, never had the time for much gardening before the vicarage was sold off: they were too busy tending their flock. So for some years, the grounds have been a jungle of overgrown rhododendrons, yews and shrubs and sheep grazed in the old kitchen garden.

"Tha's reet there,' said Ben, wiping some of his spilt beer from his scarf.

"Have another," said Maggots. "Perhaps you could do with a new shed down at your allotment. A few bob from working my place over might come in handy."

And so Ben set to work with scythe and pruning sheers which, as it turned out, were not to be of much assistance. A pair of rubber gloves would have been better.

He had barely trimmed a twig from the first overgrown flowering cherry when Mrs Maggots came out of the house and said: "Oi! Would you mind coming in here and giving me a hand. Can't get this bleeping Aga goin' no way."

So Ben went home to lunch with his sister Beatrice on his first day covered from head to foot in soot, blacking and ash. "It's worse than t'allotment," said Beatrice.

On the second day, with one more twig off the cherry, Mrs Maggots came out with a large dustpan and a broom. She nodded to the mess left in The Lane by Owd Tom's small herd on the way to milking and said: "Would you mind clearing that lot up for me. It's dragging up the drive on the car tyres."

The third day, he unblocked a sink and went home to lunch dripping wet.

"Ah dunna know if ah like tha best stinkin' or soakin'," said Beatrice dryly.

Day four, he moved heavy antique wardrobes from one bedroom to another. Then back to whence they came. And went home with a bad back.

And on the fifth day he quit, when he broke a Crown Derby coffee cup from the set he was washing and polishing in the old scullery - "far too good to put in the dishwasher," she had said.

Ben ducked out of the backdoor before she discovered the damage and was hurrying down the The Lane when Owd Tom stopped his ancient tractor, lifted an accusing finger, and roared with laughter.

"Tha's forgotten tha' pinny," he said and Ben, looking down, saw to his horror he was still wearing a pinafore picked out in bright red roses.

He's not been to the vicarage since. Nor to the Beggars', for that matter, for Ben the Bucket's rosy pinny is now rapidly entering Beggarsdale folklore. It will some time before he can face Owd Tom.

No room in the shed for Ben this Christmas.

l The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.

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