A number of people have asked me about sedan chairs and tradition we have in Port Naain of racing them. Now it is doubtless possible to go into great detail about this. Whilst not myself an aficionado of the sport I know plenty who are, and I could doubtless thrill you with the names of winning pairs, their times over fixed distances and all that sort of thing. But frankly it would bore me to write it.

Still I do see the need to give an overview and so I shall attempt instead to do that. After some discussion with those ladies who know these things I think I can say that it was Lady Balat who made the sedan chair respectable. Now to be fair, Lady Balat never owned one and almost certainly never travelled in one. She went everywhere by palanquin. Not only that but her conveyance was…