A radio play on the dark side of Leicestershire village life

Photo of Hallaton © Colin Smith

These is a dramatised ghost story on the BBC iPlayer at the moment called The Parson.

What interested me at once is that it is clearly based on the traditional bottle-kicking and hare-pie scrambling that takes place in the Leicestershire village of Hallaton every Easter Monday.

Sure enough, the dramatist David Varela confirms that the play was:

inspired by the ancient pagan tradition of Bottlekicking in my parents’ home village of Hallaton. The reality is pretty horrific, so turning it into a horror story was easy.

I have not heard the end of it yet, but I do not fancy the chances of the meddling new vicar.