Читать книгу Snowy - Tim Harris - Страница 12

Anna Carter was born on 21 March 1862 at Marham, a village – about two miles across the fen from Pentney. There, she was christened Ann Elizabeth. In legal documents as an adult she usually called herself Anna, so as this was obviously her preferred name, she will be called Anna in this book.

Her mother Mary Ann was a Marham girl, having been born in the village in 1840, the fifth child and only daughter of Ann and Garwood Steeles. They were a large and respectable family in the area, being wheelwrights, blacksmiths, beer retailers and carriers, travelling to and from Marham to the Maids Head, King’s Lynn, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Later they were coachbuilders. After Mary Ann’s marriage to James Henry Carter, a journeyman shipwright, she lived in Woolwich, Kent. How the couple met is unknown: perhaps she went into service and met him there or he may have come up the River Nar on one of the lighters (barges). These flat-bottomed boats brought bone for the bone factory, where it was ground down for fertiliser. They also hauled coal inland from King’s Lynn; having arrived from northern England, this was loaded onto the lighters for distribution along the Ouse and its tributaries.

Mary Ann must have come home for the birth or been visiting her family when Anna was born. The railway had arrived at Narborough (the station serving Marham and Pentney) in 1845, so the journey from Woolwich – if that’s how Mary Ann travelled – would not have been difficult, although expensive for a working family. She registered her new daughter on 2 April 1862, twelve days after the birth, so one assumes it must have been a normal delivery. Across the fields, three weeks earlier Elizabeth Rolfe had given birth to her sickly baby, Fred.

Marham is an odd village, now overwhelmed by the RAF camp. Without a pub, it seems to have no heart and the church is neglected and unkempt. Even in Fred’s time it would have been unusual in that it stretched for over two miles almost entirely on a single road.

White’s Directory of 1845 records:

Marham or Cherry Marham is a long village with several good houses, 7 miles west of Swaffham and 8 miles north east of Downham. Its parish contains 817 inhabitants, and about 4000 acres of land, a great portion of which is in large open fields, having perhaps the finest grass-turf in the county, and is remarkable for large hares, said to be the best runners in the kingdom.

In the village and surrounding area, hare coursing went on right up until 2005 when it was officially banned, but from the number of rumours heard, and the court appearances reported in the local press, it is still a regular feature today.

Marham was formerly noted for its great abundance of cherries and walnuts; but most of the trees of the latter fruit were cut down during the late war [Napoleonic] and sold to the gun-makers, some of the largest for as much as £100 each tree.

After Anna’s birth, Mary Ann and James went on to have two boys: James Henry in 1864 and Edward in 1866. On the 1871 census young James is recorded as living with Granny Steeles and two cousins in Marham; of the rest of the family, there is no certain trace. In the 1881 census all three children are living with Granny Steeles and their uncle William, who was a wheelwright.

Mary Ann, 35, by then a widow, was also living close by in the village with a daughter, Florence, who was born on 21 April 1876, with no father named on her birth certificate. Anna, then 19, is listed in the 1881 census as a domestic servant.

In his description of their courtship in I Walked by Night, Fred said Anna was an orphan:

It was perhaps a fellow feeling as drew us together in the beginning, as she poor girl was as much persequted as I had been. She was a servant up at a Gentleman Farmers not so far away from were I was liven, and of corse she had her night out like other servants. She was just eighteen years old, the same age as myself wen I got to know her and she started bein friendly with me.

As soon as it was known that she and I was palling up, those that she worked with, and others, tried by every means in there power to stop her, thinken no doubt that I was no proper compney for her, she haven no parents, and no one to go to. But it was all to no purpose, she would have her way.

Clearly, however, Anna was not an orphan, her mother being close by in the village. Nor does it seem she was living in as a servant, but rather still residing with uncle William, Grandma and her brothers, so it was not a question of being allowed her night out from the big house, but more likely escaping from Grandma’s beady eye to spend time with Fred. At the time Fred, who had not yet served his first prison sentence, was living in the middle of a row of five dwellings known as Greys Cottages, Pentney, with his mother and father and Granny Shaftoe, who was by now a widow.

Wen ever I went to meet her I used to take my dogs with me if the night was rite – or my gun. Many and many a night she came out with me, for she was no hindrence to the game. She could run and Jump as well as me and there was few could beat me at running wen I was a Young man. She could carry as many Birds to – and carryen Birds is no light Job. Many a hare have she carried under her coat for me, and many a Phesant. As it was all Cuntry round that part we had some good sport.

Well I supose that tale got about, and wen they found that they could not stop her from me, they gave her notice to leave her place. There was sevrell Ladies round about who was intrested in her, and put themselves about to get her a place in London at good wages so she should be out of my way. But no she stayed, and stuck to me through thick and thin, wich she could do as she had no parents, and no one to controwl her, so she went what way she wanted.

Having taken his own cottage on his return from prison, Fred recalled:

As I have rote befor, I had a home of my owen to take her to, as sone as she was ready to come, and after a bit she did come, and shared it with me for about four years or more.

Old maps fail to reveal where the pound to which Fred refers was once situated.

Just at the back of the Cottage was a round wall called the Old Pound, were years befor they used to put strayen cattle. That was done away with a long time ago, but the pound came in useful as it aforded us good cover to get home many a night wen we had been out on the Job.

Unless the baby was very premature, Anna must have already been in the early stages of pregnancy when Fred went to serve his prison sentence in November 1882. The couple were married on Monday, 14 May 1883, only just within the three months required by law following the reading of the banns. Both were just 21. According to parish records, the banns were read on 25 February, 4 March and 11 March 1883.

The requirement for banns to be read came about to regularise weddings and do away with common-law marriages. It was enacted in Hardwickes Marriage Act of 1754. Prior to this, the situation had been in disarray with clandestine marriages and young people being married inappropriately or without their parents’ consent. The new law stated that a marriage could only be solemnised in a parish church or public chapel after three readings of the banns, or by licence from the Bishop of the Diocese.

The 1754 Act forbade people under the age of 21 from marrying before they came of age without parental consent. As the law only covered England and Wales, it began the habit of minors wishing to marry without consent to flee across the Scottish border to marry in Gretna Green.

Banns giving the names of the couple are read to the congregation by the clergyman in the parishes where the bride and groom live, and if that is different, in the parish in which they are to marry. They must be read on three Sundays within the three months running up to the marriage, but are usually read on three consecutive weeks. This provides an opportunity for anyone to put forward any legal reasons why a couple may not marry.

Fred and Anna were well enough educated to sign the register, Anna with a practised hand and Fred with fine flourishes, so why did they wait until only two weeks before the baby’s birth? Was it because of parental objections and they needed to wait until they were both 21? Anna’s own mother was hardly in a position to criticise, having given birth to an illegitimate child five years earlier, but Granny Steeles might have been a different matter. It would seem she took all her grandchildren under her wing from time to time, but the fact that Anna, Henry and Edward were living with her while her daughter was living in another home in the village with little Florence suggests she was disapproving of her daughter’s behaviour, for it seems she was always left with grandchildren to support. Perhaps Mary Ann felt that as she herself had managed to raise an illegitimate child alone, that might be a better option for her daughter than marriage to Fred.

The marriage certificate shows that both the witnesses came from Anna’s side: a cousin and a lodger, who lived with Anna and her brothers at Granny Steele’s. It also stated that Fred resided in Norwich, which is odd and unexplained.

At the time, premarital sex was commonplace and rural Norfolk had the fourth highest illegitimacy rate in the country (10.8 per 1,000), but with as many as 25 per cent of brides being pregnant at the time of marriage, it is more likely the family objected to Fred rather than the horror felt in middle-class Victorian society of a ‘base born’ child. It is thought that some girls hoped to catch their man by becoming pregnant but alternatively, it is argued that men wanted to be sure their partner was fruitful before they married.

Did Anna want to marry Fred, or was she persuaded to do so? Was Fred coerced into marrying her or was he afraid of the Bastardy Laws? Whatever the circumstances, the marriage can hardly have been the stuff of dreams.

The 1876 Magisterial Formulist shows that there was plenty of legislation to catch fathers of illegitimate children, twenty-five pages in all, containing thirty-five different charges under section 6 of the Bastardy Laws Amendment Act 1873. Women could go to the local court and ask for support during pregnancy, and after the child was born. The Workhouse could chase a man for support if the new mother was staying there. There were laws enabling distress warrants to be issued and laws to make the father pay funeral and other incidental costs if the child died. Also, laws to bring him to court if the orders were disobeyed, and finally a Warrant of commitment to prison, if all else failed.

There are two different charges outlined in the Magisterial Formulist, one to be enacted if the father fails to support the mother and child, and one if he owes upkeep to the Union Workhouse, which has been keeping them. The wording is similar and full of the majesty of the Law:

. . . by two justices of the peace acting for the said division (and having jurisdiction for the said Union) ~~~~~~ was adjudged to be the putative father of a bastard child, born of the body of ~~~~~~~, a single woman, was brought before us to show why the same should not be paid, that no sufficient distress can be laid upon his goods and chattels ....... Convey the said ~~~~~~~ to the common goal there to remain without bail or mainprise for the term of ~~~~~ unless such sum and costs, together with the costs and charges of attending the commitment and conveying of the said ~~~~~~ to the common goal, and of the persons employed to convey him thither, amounting to the further sum of ~~~~~ to be paid and satisfied.

In 1849, George Batchelor was ordered to pay Depwade Union 2/9d a week for seven years to support his daughter, plus arrears of £1 4s 6d.

Lots of women were simply deserted – the men just skipped town and were untraceable.

Fred wrote:

The days went on till the time come for her confinement, wen to my great sorrow she died. Young as I was then it was the hardest blow I have ever had to bear in all my life, the more so because it came so sudden, and there was no reason I knew it should all end like that, and no warning. She did not want to go and I had lost a dear pall as well as a loven wife, and she left me with a new born baby – for the child, a boy, lived.

For those who have read I Walked by Night and so enjoyed the romance Fred describes between himself and Anna, it will come as a revelation that Anna did not die in childbirth or have a boy.

Fred talks with such love and warmth of their courtship and marriage. Here is a little of what he wrote:

After about three years things fell out so that it became Imperitive that we got married . . . I have no need to tell why. She was one of the best pals that a man ever had, and the best wife any man could want. Do not think dear Reader that I am telling a love story, but it is true that I loved her more than anything else on this earth and she loved me the same. It was not only me that loved her neither, for it always seam she had a way with her with all live things, and pets and birds.

Edith Ann was born on 25 May 1883 in Marham. It is unclear whether Anna went home to her family to have the baby or whether she and Fred were living in Marham at the time. Fred was working as an agricultural worker, so it fell to Anna to stop Doctor Steele from Downham Market to proudly register her baby daughter. At the time, the doctor was also the local Registrar and he carried the registers with him in a leather satchel as he rode about visiting the sick, so that people in the remote villages were spared the ten-mile journey to Downham Market to register their child, as had been compulsory since 1837.

Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell introduced the first formal system of registering the population in the reign of Henry VIII. Every clergyman in 1538 was ordered to keep a book in which to record details of all baptisms, marriages and burials at which they officiated. In 1597, in the reign of Elizabeth I, each parish was ordered to purchase a special book in which to record details and from this to make an annual transcript to be lodged with the diocesan registrar. This led to improvements, but records were still incomplete.

The Burial Act (1768) decreed all corpses must be buried in a wool shroud to aid the coffers of the government as there was a tax levied on wool. After each burial an oath had to be taken to confirm the Act had been obeyed.

Eventually, in 1837 two Acts came into being: The Registration Act and the Marriage Act. The General Registrar was appointed to administer, at local level, the civil registration of births (not baptisms), marriages and deaths, and to allow a system for civil marriages. Medical statistician William Farr pressed for the cause of death to be included on certificates so that records could be kept to follow medical patterns.

There is no record to be found that Edith was christened, something that might have helped reconcile Fred with his father. He went on seeing his mother, so she may have seen the baby, but Anna would have been denied the chance to defiantly show off her new husband and baby before the villagers, cutting a dash in a flattering outfit, including a new hat.

Fred was listed again as a labourer on Edith’s death certificate when he registered the child’s death aged 8 months, on 16 January 1883. He is recorded as being with Edith when she died, it would seem they were living in Pentney at the time.

Edith’s death certificate records her cause of death as marasmus. The Collins Dictionary definition is wasting of the body, with most cases due to inadequate calorific intake. Clinically there is a failure to gain weight, followed by weight loss and emaciation. The medical description goes on to describe symptoms similar to those seen on television film footage of harrowing scenes from famine areas of Africa. Poor little thing, she just starved to death.

In the 1860s mills had come into use that ground corn into refined white flour, removing the valuable wheat germ. It was much the same health issue as today: brown wholemeal bread versus refined white. By the 1870s, this was available in the remotest of shops and most likely Anna, like all the forward thinking girls of her time, thought it modern and labour saving, so the bread she baked would not be very nutritious. This she would have fed crumbled into milk to her child, a form of baby food known as ‘pap’.

Along with the rest of the labourers’ families in the village, almost certainly the only milk Anna would have been able to buy would be the skimmed version from the local farm. Skimmed, because the cream would be removed to chum into butter; it was known as ‘blue milk’ because of its colour. Probably after Anna stopped feeding Edith herself, she weaned her on to pap, which had insufficient nourishment and so her daughter slowly faded away.

In Henry Rider Haggard’s book A Farmers Year, which he wrote after turning to farming and good works, he recounts:

Never shall I forget my early experiences of Heckingham Workhouse. Having been elected a guardian I attended the Board in due course, and, as is so often my fortune, at the very first meeting fell into controversy. At that date all the children in the house, including infants, were fed upon skimmed milk. Owing to some illness, however, the Doctor ordered them a ration of fresh milk, which ration the master had neglected to discontinue when the sickness passed. Consequently there arose trouble, and with the Doctor he was brought up before the board to be reprimanded.

Thereon, with the courage of inexperience, I rose and announced boldly that I considered new milk to be a necessity to infants and that, if I could find a seconder, I would propose that the allowance should be continued to them until they reached the age of nine years. Somewhat to my astonishment a worthy clergyman, now long dead, seconded the motion, and there followed a great debate. Soon we found it would be absolutely hopeless to carry the innovation in its original form, and were obliged to reduce the age limit from nine to five years.

The argument of the opposition was that the children were not fed upon new milk in their own homes, to which I replied that even if they starved at home, it was no reason why they should be starved when in the public charge. Ultimately the Board divided, and to my surprise I carried the motion by a majority of one vote, so that henceforth the infants at Heckingham were rationed with fresh milk instead of ‘blue skim.

Within eight months, Anna had become a wife and mother, and she now stood beside a tiny grave grieving for her child, the weather as bitter and raw as her emotions must have been. Fred described his wife as a woman fond of animals and wildlife, and it would seem the death of her child was from ignorance rather than neglect. In I Walked by Night, Fred recalls that she cared for Fred’s working dogs, and one of her own, Tip, with much care and affection:

My wife thought the world of Tip, and I often used to say to her in fun, you think more of the dog than you do of me. She looked after them all, but he was always the first to have a hot drink and a rub down wen we came in from a night’s work. He would lie at her feet and look at her, and she would talk to him as she would have talked to a child, and I beleve he knew what she said as well as I did. Perhaps her feeling the way she did for that dog had something to do with what hapened after.

The months went by and it came to about three months befor her time. She had to give up going out with me as she always had done, as she could not get about as well as she used because of the child that was comen. So I went out alone one night and took Tip with me and lost him. Of corse I did not pay much regard to that, as dogs often miss there Master at night, but are shure to find him or go home on there owen.

Wen I got home to her in the morning time the first thing she said to me was ‘Where is Tip, you have not brought him back with you?’ I said no, and told her that I had missed him some were, but she need not fret as he would be home on his owen befor long. Then she said ‘No, he will not come home any more, he is dead and lay on Narborough park at the foot of a tree – I saw him hit the tree’.

Well of corse I pooed that and told her she must have been dreaming, but she said no, she had never been asleep all night but lyen and waiting for me to come home.

Well as the dog did not come back I went to look for him, and shure enough after a bit I found him as she had said layen at the foot of a large oak Tree. He had made to kill at a rabbitt and struck his head on the bole of the tree, and broke his neck.

After military service, local man Les Harrison came to Narborough (the next village to Pentney) in about 1953, when he must have been in his early 20s. He lived in a cottage on the Narborough Hall Park. One day, while sheltering from the rain under a large oak tree in the park, he was joined by Albert Coggles, the elderly gamekeeper for the estate then owned by the Ash family. As they stood beneath the dripping leaves, Mr Coggles remarked that they were under the tree where the Norfolk Poacher had hanged his dog.

Mr Harrison recalls, ‘I think it was only when it was mentioned this summer, when a friend and I were talking in the cricket pavilion and someone brought up the poacher who used to take game from the park where the pavilion now stands, that I thought of it again. I have never spoken to anyone, not even my wife and children, about the incident. I remember I thought it awful at the time.’ He has never read I Walked by Night, so he has no knowledge of the facts in the book.

When told that Fred had said his dog broke its neck on the tree chasing a rabbit, Harrison said, ‘I know dogs – I can’t believe a dog would do that. I think what the gamekeeper told me, that the dog was hanged, is more likely right. Whether the dog was no good, or Fred lost his temper, I don’t know.’ He also recollects hearing, though he can’t remember the source, that one night the poacher took pheasants home and hid them under his pregnant wife’s bed. When police arrived to search the house, the dog indicated the pheasants’ whereabouts by sniffing round the bed and this led to Fred being charged with poaching. It was suggested this might have been his motivation in killing the dog. ‘That does not tie up,’ said Harrison, ‘he would have been taken straight off to the lock-up, not left to take out his ill humour on the dog.’

Tip – Anna’s dog – was a cross between a Smithfield sheepdog and a greyhound. Not handsome but very efficient, they were crossed to combine the speed of a sight dog with the intelligence of the sheepdog. Their coats took on the characteristics of either breed, but looks were not important, ability was what counted. Smithfields are no longer a distinct breed but the lurcher, another favourite of the poaching fraternity, is still much prized in East Anglia. Their biddable nature and high intelligence mean they are easy to train.

In I Walked by Night, Fred gives a detailed explanation of the training methods used to get the ideal poacher’s dog. Gamekeepers reckoned it took a poacher a year to train up a good dog so to deprive one of his dog gave the keepers some respite. The methods used were brutal and cruel. Fred mentions sweeping the yard around where his dogs were chained up to stop the keepers leaving poisoned meat unnoticed. Gamekeepers also used a vicious device called a dog spear. An iron spear, about 3 in long and usually barbed, was placed over a hare run. If the dog chased a hare, the hare was able to pass under the spear, but the dog was impaled upon it, often with fatal results. To teach a young dog not to maul game, their trainers inserted two spikes diagonally through the carcass into a newly dead bird: this was supposed to instantly cure any desire the dog had to eat the game.

If a poacher lost his dog it was not unknown for him to ‘borrow’ one. It would be found, exhausted, back in its usual place in the morning. In addition, poachers certainly ‘borrowed’ dogs they liked the look of and mated them with their bitches.

In his autobiography, Fourscore Years (1943), G.G. Coulton – who was raised in Pentney during the 1870s and 80s – made two references to Fred:

Mr Paul, the gentleman farmer under whom Rolfe the poacher worked as a boy, to whose kind treatment he pays a tribute, but from whose pigeon cote later on, he took as heavy toll as from my mother’s peahens. . . .

Rolfe, who deserves international fame, for his freak biography is a precious human document, which I am able to verify in every important particular.

I Walked by Night links these two stories:

Then something hapened wich made them verry careful how they handled me. A Farmer lost some Turkeys, and they took me and my pall and locked us up on suspicion. They took me first and then they went after him, and said that I had told them everything. Wen he came to the lock up he asked me what I had told them. Of corse I said nothing as I knew nothing about the Turkeys.

Well they took us befor the Magerstrates and remanded us for eight days to se what they could make out. Just befor we were to apear again they found the Turkeys under a straw stack that had fallen over. They let us out with a lot of Apologies but that did not sute me. I went to a Lawyer to know what redress I could get. I put the case in his hands and he got £5 each for us for rongful arrest.

That tale had a finish to it. A Game Dealer at Lynn wanted to know if I could get some Pea Fowl, or eggs. I had noticed this same Lawyer had a lot of them Birds – they used to sit and lay about the place. I took a dark lantern one night, and hunted round and came acros a bird sitten on some eggs. I put the old bird in a bag and the eggs in my shirt. Then I come acros another bird with young ones, they too went in the bag, and I got them safley to the Dealers and made a good days work out of them.

The lawyer was J.J. Coulton, father of G.G. Coulton, the author.

J.J. Coulton was an eminent King’s Lynn solicitor, who moved to Little Ketlam, Pentney, in 1871 with his wife and five children. Coulton relished the austere, declining to wear a coat in the coldest weather and becoming a vegetarian. Clerk to the Guardians and Rural Sanitary Authority, King’s Lynn Union, he was also superintendant registrar and gave a great deal of his time to local charities and societies around Pentney.

In his book, Coulton tells of another Pentney poacher who lived in a cabin on some wild land at the edge of the village called Bradmoor. He had no job, but always carried a half crown in his pocket lest any policeman charge him with having no visible means of subsistence. A common crime in those times, a fine was usually imposed which of course could not be paid, so the accused was punished with a week in prison with hard labour in lieu.

Coulton also wrote that at some time in the 1880s, in a hard frost on King’s Lynn High Street on market day, a man fell heavily. A poacher, he had left his gun hidden within his clothes in such a way that the force of his fall activated it, discharging both barrels into his body.

Another instance he remembered from further afield involved a fight between poachers and gamekeepers. In the scuffle a gun went off and shot one of the poachers in the thigh. The police being summoned, they followed a trail of blood until they found the poacher holed up in a barn, where his comrades had carried him and plugged the gaping wound with straw. He survived and as he was carried on a litter into his trial at the Assizes, looking at the double row of policemen, he remarked, ‘I should like to get a day’s shootin’ among ye all.’ His sentence is not recorded.

Coulton also recounts in his book that as children, he and his sister were invited by Benjamin Young, their farmer neighbour, to go into his garden and help themselves to the fruit he grew there. It was a sad indictment of the time that the farmer would indulge the middle-class children next door, but let the labourer’s children in the cottages close by exist half-starved, denying them even a rabbit. This is illustrated by the following press report.

Game Trespass – Frederick Roofe [sic]

Labourer Pentney was charged on remand with trespassing in search of game on Land at Pentney on 31^st August 1884 since which time the defendant had absconded. Hardiman Morton said he saw the defendant on Mr Benjamin Young’s land between 6 and 7 o’clock on the Sunday morning in question. He was beating a turnip field and fired a gun.

Witness was behind a high hedge and could not see what defendant shot. Witness got over the fence and ran after defendant who crossed the plank over the river and pulled it after him thus preventing witness from following. Defendant was further charged with a like offence on land of Mr G. Goddard on the 13th September 1884. Morton stated that about 6.30a.m. that day he saw defendant shoot some birds; he was not more than 10 yards from the defendant.

Grimston Petty Sessions report by the Lynn News, 2 July 1888

Village constable Hardiman Morton was a neighbour of Fred’s when he lived at Greys Cottages. The land on which Fred was caught was within a mile of home. He seemed to have no thought as to whether he would be caught – perhaps the excitement of pitting his wits against officialdom had made him careless, for clearly he would be recognised and easily found:

I had got such a liken for the Game I was past stoppin. Poaching is something like drug taking, – once begun no goen back, it get hold of you. The life of a Poacher is anything but a happy one, still it is exciting at times, and the excitement go a long way to sothe his concience if it trubble him.

Cornered and unable to flee one night, Fred was badly beaten up by four keepers:

. . . they got a cart from the farm near by, and took me to the lock up and left me.

The next morning I was nearly Dead, so bad that the Police had to send for the Doctor, and wen he had looked at me he ordered me to be taken to Lynn Ospitall. I had a verry bad cut head and a Brused Boddy.

I stayed there for a fortnight . . .

Charges for the crimes committed in 1884 were laid against Fred in 1888, although they took place four years earlier. On a later occasion in 1884, Fred – having just won a gun at a pigeon shoot – was coming home with his pals in high spirits when they started to pot at pheasants in a wood, making a lot of noise. The keepers were soon after them. A fight ensued and Fred laid out a keeper, who was one of those who had assaulted him on the earlier occasion:

I did not stop to think or lose the chance of payen some of the score back that I owed.

Fearing the man was badly hurt, Fred fled to the nearest town, probably King’s Lynn, from where he took a train to Manchester. By then Anna was pregnant again When Fred left that night to save his own skin, it seems he thought very little of his wife’s, for there is no record that the two ever met again.

It is not perhaps surprising that Lilias Rider Haggard writes in the preface to I Walked by Night that it was only with the greatest reluctance that Fred talked about his much-loved first wife – he must have been deciding which fib to tell next!