Ring Road by Ian Sansom Page A

prayers. The original knitting patterns and accompanying pamphlets can, however, be consulted in the Mission to Seamen Special Collection at the library – contact Divisional Librarian Philomena Rocks for details. A typical 1952 pattern and outline reads thus:
    WOOLLY HAT FOR SEAMEN
    Ladies, keep up the good work! Not only do these colourful hats provide much needed protection from the harsh sea winds, but also a cover for many a bible smuggled on board ship bound for pagan lands. Every one of us can share in God’s ministry to the needy simply by picking up our knitting needles! So don’t hesitate, ladies, get knitting today, to advance the kingdom of God!
    Pattern for Hat:
    3 balls 20g d.k. wool.
    Using No. 10 needles cast on 132 sts.
    1st and every K.2 P.2.
    Continue until work measures 2½ inches.
    Change to size 8 needles and continue to double rib until work measures 9½ inches.
    Shape top:
    1st row *K.3 tog. K.9 repeat from * to end (110 sts).
    2nd and every alt. row Purl.
    3rd row *K.3 tog. K.7 repeat from * to end (88 sts).
    5th row *K.3 tog. K.5 repeat from * to end (66 sts).
    7th row *K.3 tog. K.3 repeat from * to end (44 sts).
    9th row *K.3 tog. K.1 repeat from * to end (22 sts).
    11th row *K.2 tog to end (11 sts).
    Thread wool through sts, draw up and fasten. Sew seam.
    * An unorthodox view of the Virgin Birth which Mr Donelly happens to share with Barry McClean, the Gnostics, David Hume, Friedrich Schleiermacher, certain twentieth-century German theologians and the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins.

4
The Dump
    Describing an auspicious occasion – a party in a pub
–
which demonstrates the wholesomeness of life amidst the usual waste and humiliation
    You wouldn’t have thought so, but the range of temperatures here in town can be pretty extreme. It can get all the way up to the seventies on occasion in July and even on a winter’s afternoon, when the sun’s out, you sometimes see young men sitting outside pubs in their shirtsleeves. In February, on a good day, on a bright day, outside the Castle Arms it’s like a playground: little groups, little huddles, jackets off, joking and having fun. In our town such an opportunity is not to be missed: the sun here always tends to go to our heads.
    But, alas, the unseasonably warm weather has not been good for my old friend Billy Nibbs: in the heat, the smell coming out of the skips and those big metal bins can be pretty stiff. In the summer you can actually smell the dump from the car park outside the Plough and the Stars, which is two roundabouts downwind, where all attempts at landscaping have failed to solve the problem. A few scented-leaf pelagoniums on the windowsills and some sweet william outside in huge terracotta-plastic planters are no match for the stench of the accumulated waste of our town. Goodness knows what people are putting in there: Billy spends half his time redirectinggardeners with grass cuttings to the GREEN WASTE ONLY bins, and the other half directing householders with stinking black plastic bags away from the NO FOOD WASTE bins. People do seem to be ashamed about their rubbish, or confused. There’s been talk of recycling – one of the town’s councillors, Mrs Donelly, no less, who has a cousin in Canada, is very keen; she says that’s what they do over there – but whether this will solve the problem of people’s shame or increase it, it’s difficult to say. No one wants to be reminded of their own waste: to have to separate it all out would simply be embarrassing. We’d rather future generations sort it all out for us – and Billy, of course.
    It may just be the sweat and the bins, then, that make Billy smell so, but it may also be the ham. Billy Nibbs is addicted to ham. Absolutely addicted; there’s no other way to describe it. He lives by himself and has never been that interested in cooking, and after a few years he found he’d got into a routine.