FINALLY, we are getting some sense out of the National Lunacy. One director has resigned, and so has the OffLot director (unless, of course, he was sacked). Perhaps we will now get our new loo seat at the Village Institute.

It may seem unlikely, but those far off dramas in London sparked a pretty lively meeting at the Institute the other night. Because, like most organisations north of Watford, we had our lottery bid turned down.

All we wanted was a new cooker and a couple of saucepans for the kitchen and a new loo (with a wooden seat, suggested Teacher Tess) in the ladies. After months of negotiations, and filling in a trillion forms only slightly more complex than Einsteins Theory of Relativity, we got our answer: No.

The total bid came to just under £700. It was turned down, said the letter from the Lunacy, because it was considered to be too elaborate for a small community. Should we care to re-submit a less grandiose scheme, it might be given more favourable consideration in 12 months time.

These, of course, are the people who have dished out £78 million to the opera in London, which has closed down for two years anyway and has been judged to be as efficiently managed as the the Soviet economy.

Our refusal came the same week that the official breakdown of Lunacy spending was issued. For everyone in London, they coughed up £217.47p In Yorkshire and Humberside as a whole, it was £60.02d, and most of that will go on a Millennium park near Doncaster which is unlikely to be opened by 3,000 AD. The figure for Beggarsdale is: Nil.

Now the Institute is a pretty efficient organisation.It has been used, almost every night, for some 70 years and the cooker is as old as the hall. Not only does the Institute cover its own costs but it has also been the venue for a thousand events that have raised money for other charities, too.

But we are a bit strapped for cash now and as all those Londoners are drowning on the gravy train, we thought there might be a bit left over for us. So the Vicar called a meeting and asked if we should re-submit our bid. What should we leave out, he asked, to get the price down?

The cooker was, obviously, the key item. That had to stay. The saucepans, said the Innkeepers Lady, were a potential health hazard. So they stayed. So it would have to be the ladies loo. This was too much for Tess: If we cant have a new loo, can we at last get a new wooden seat? she whined.

Mrs Money Grubber, who has just moved into the Old Vicarage and turned up uninvited, stunned them all by saying in her strange accent, half West Riding, half BBC circa 1940: We dont need the Lottery. My husband will happily fund all the improvements required.

To which Cousin Kate, the Post Mistress, retorted:I'd rather burn the whole place down.

In the end, the ladies decided to raise the money themselves, which means another summer of whist drives and Sixties nights. But well get there in the end. After all, those poor Londoners might soon need another concert hall.

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

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.