The Water Race by Barbara Hill

“I’ll raise you £50”
Those words were my undoing.
“Father John”! Matron’s voice sent a chill through the room. Like naughty schoolboys caught in the act we crumbled under her gaze.
“The four of you have 370 years between you” she continued, “you've all been Parish priests for goodness knows how long and what do I see before me?  Dissipated, whisky swilling, gambling old reprobates. If your parishioners could see you now”!

Any half decent matron would have just tossed her head in disgust and walked away. Not this one. She snatched up the pack of cards, the ashtray and the decanter and took them all away with her.
Homes for retired clergy are not known for being riotous places but ours had been fun. Card parties in the main. Oh how I’d looked forward to them, to get a real adrenalin rush at my age is something to be cherished. Even the racing pages were now being removed from the papers, what do we have left??

As usual it was father Eric who came up with answer.
“See those two snails climbing up the window” he said “we could take bets on which one gets to the top first and a side bet on one of them falling off”. All went well until the supply of snails dried up. But without realising it we’d set our own trap. All the chairs were now arranged in a semi-circle around the window and the staff had become convinced we had all become nature lovers. We couldn’t change our habits now, so we had to sit in the same position waiting patiently for the snails to return-a bit like watching paint dry. But we couldn’t let any opportunity pass us by, could we, so it wasn’t long before we were placing bets on water running down the window panes.

I won £40 yesterday, but watching rainwater race down a windowpane is no substitute for poker.

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