The New Murrey and Blue blog

It was a blisteringly hot summer day — the kind that made even the cathedral’s cool stone feel faintly warm to the touch. The vicar sat slumped in a pew,  his collar limp, fanning himself weakly with a service sheet. Around him, several electric fans whirred in a tired, half‑hearted way.

Richard drifted over, frowning at them.

“You say these are fans, Anne?” he said, baffled. “These… boxes? These spinning contraptions?”

Anne was already mildly irritated because he’d been playing jarringly off-key, medieval tunes on the organ, and had had to admonish: “Richard, it is not a hurdy gurdy! Put it down!!”

Therefore, she was already short‑tempered and replied: “Yes, Richard. Electric fans.”

Richard stared at her as though she had just announced that the moon was made of Wensleydale cheese. Then he exclaimed, with genuine indignation: “Well, your fan was all feathery as I recall. Show me your fan Anne! I haven’t seen it for centuries.”

Anne gave him a withering look.

“Richard my dear,” she said slowly. “I have not carried a feather fan in over five hundred years.”

“But you did!” he insisted. “White ostrich feathers, bound with silver wire, with a carved handle. You used it at court. You used it at feasts. You used it when you were cross with me.”

Anne gave him a look that could have cooled the entire nave.

“That was a ‘ceremonial’ fan,” she said. “Not a device for cooling hot vicars.”

Richard pointed accusingly at the electric fan. “This is not a fan. This is a wind‑making… wheely‑box.”

“It is a fan,” Anne repeated.

“It lacks feathers. It doesn’t look like yours.”

“It is not supposed to have any feathers.”

Richard looked personally betrayed.

The vicar gave a faint groan and slumped further. Richard, alarmed, leaned over him and blew a long icy sharp medieval‑battlefield breath across his face. The vicar jolted upright. “Oh! Oh my. That’s… astonishingly refreshing.”

Richard looked smug. “See? ‘That’ is how one cools a man down.” 

“Huh, take a leaf out of your own book you pesky Plantagenet!” muttered Anne.

Richard returned to the electric fans, determined to ‘correct’ them. He poked one. He tapped another. He lifted a third as though checking its craftsmanship. Then — with a faint shimmer of ghostly energy — all the fans suddenly began blowing ‘cold’ air. Crisp, winter‑morning cold.

Visitors began pouring in, flushed and overheated from the blazing streets outside. The moment they stepped inside, they sighed with relief. The vicar stared at the growing crowd.

“I haven’t seen this many people since the reburial,” he whispered. 

Then he took delivery of a huge container of bottled mineral water which he began handing out to grateful visitors.

At once, Richard went very still.

“Oh no,” Anne said.

“Oh yes,” Richard replied.

“You know Anne, I was never given a proper medieval effigy,” he announced. “That’s what they did in our day, oh yes!”

Before Anne could stop him, he seized several bottles of water. They froze mid‑air. Within minutes, he had created an entire gallery of ice sculptures: Yorkist roses, a huge white boar, and a full‑length effigy of himself, in armour.

Mrs Pemberton and 4B entered just in time to see the enormous ice boar. One boy climbed onto its back and shouted: “CHARGE!” The boar obeyed. Mrs Pemberton fainted.

Richard dashed outside, swiped a 99 from the ice‑cream van, and hurried back. His medieval instincts told him this was a medicinal tincture. 

He rubbed it all over Mrs Pemberton’s face — raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream everywhere, chocolate flake up her nose, cone placed neatly on her head like a hennin.

4B howled with laughter.

The vicar fetched tissues. “He means well, you know my dear,” he said gently.

The ice boar trotted past again with the boy clinging on. Richard guided it with a flick of his hand. The boar stopped abruptly. The boy did not. He flew straight into the font with a splash. Trousers soaked.

Richard, trying to be helpful, lifted Mrs Pemberton and placed her on the boar instead. It carried her — trembling, sticky, and faintly raspberry‑scented — to the ice effigy of Richard above his tomb.

“Are you feeling better now, my lady?” he asked kindly. “That sculpture is me, you know. I’m a great Plantagenet king, oh yes!

“I help all my subjects who visit me here, I was a champion of fairness and justice for all, I helped many a poor maiden, for I am chivalrous, brave and…”

Anne seized his arm. “Richard! We are leaving.”

Visitors admired the sculptures — Richard and Anne on their wedding day, hands touching. Anne remembered and looked away so he wouldn’t see her eyes shining.

There was George of Clarence with a bottle of malmsey and a dubious expression, Edward IV eating a huge pork pie, and Elizabeth Woodville looking quite vexed wearing an ice‑cream‑cone hennin. Anne actually laughed at that one.

They drifted up to the rooftop to enjoy the sun in its splendour, leaving behind a cathedral full of very cool people — in every sense of the word.