Word: sussex
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...merry reach of Sussex greensward, hard by the Greyhound Inn, the Toucan Terribles set out last week to defend their title of World Marbles Champions. For twelve straight years, the Terribles had won the colors. This year, however, the very honor of England was at stake. Among the 15 challengers scheduled to appear at Tinsley Green, a hamlet (pop. 150) just 28 miles south of London, was a band of upstart colonials from Chicago...
...16th century swains clashed in an "all known sports" tournament in which marbles, for reasons now obscure, became the dominant contest. By the 1700s the marble tournament had become an annual Good Friday ritual in Tinsley Green. The tourney began in the morning; at high noon (the hour Sussex taverns open), the referee cried "Smug!" and the tournament ended. The rules are wondrously simple: 49 marbles are placed in the "pitch" (ring) and each member of the competing teams takes his turn at trying to knock one out. Shooting is a thumbs-only proposition-a flick of the wrist constitutes...
...dirge reflects not only the declining impact of religion generally but some hard demographic facts. Largely because of farm mechanization, England's rural population has dwindled by 75% in the past half-century; in some isolated pockets of Sussex and East Anglia, it has fallen to 2% of the pre-World War I level. But while the people have gone, their churches remain. Near the village of Tetford, for example, there are seven miniature churches, most of them nearly 200 years old, that were built by the old town gentry in a kind of keeping-up-with-Squire-Jones...
Dear Horse. He was born in 1853, a younger son of a wealthy Sussex squire. In three years, after leaving Cambridge University, he ran through what seems to have been a sizable inheritance. He decided to gamble himself back to affluence, did well for a while, and then grandly staked all his winnings on a two-horse race, having made up his mind to recoup his fortune in the U.S. if he lost. Later he wrote: "The dear, handsome little horse ran most gamely, but in the last hundred yards tired under the weight and just failed to get home...
...have to hit them in the face with it." That pleasant chore falls to Mick Jagger, 23, the Stones' heavy-lipped lead shouter, who in performances bumps, grinds and jiggles his pelvis like a spastic marionette. Jagger also has a summons to appear in a Sussex court next month on a charge of possessing drugs...