WHETHER or not this is good news, I don't know. I suspect it is - but I don't think the Innkeeper and his Lady at the Beggars' Arms would agree. Not with Christmas almost upon us, that is.

But the fact of the matter is that the Crooked Inn over the tops in Crookedale has been re-opened for business and, what's more, it looks set to become a pretty posh proposition.

The Crooks, as we know it, fell victim to foot and mouth disease a year or more ago and, since then, some of its regulars have been more or less forced to frequent the Beggars' or risk the licensed slot-machine arcades which now pass for pubs in Mar'ton.

This has caused a sort of re-adjustment of local resentments which, it is said, go back to the Civil War, when the Beggars were for the King and the Crooks for Cromwell (or was it the other way round - no-one is quite sure).

Any road, we Beggars have been forced to admit that some of the Crooks - the ones who chose the Beggars' rather than Dodge City, anyway - are not necessarily rotten all the way through. In fact, dare I admit it, we have actually become friends with some of them (much to Owd Tom's disgust, I should add). However, with their power base restored, no doubt the Crooks will go back home and ancient hostilities will be restored. But for the Innkeeper - or rather, his Lady - more is at stake.

You see, we came close to losing the Beggars' itself during foot and mouth and the extra custom from Crookedale was a major factor in its survival. That, and Her Ladyship's Olde English Suppers.

These came about almost by accident when the Dale was overrun in the summer of 2001 by a plague of rabbits. Owd Tom, his son Mid Tom and his son, Yun' Tom, went into business culling the little beasts - and many of them ended up in the Beggars' famed rabbit pie.

But there were so many of them that the Innkeepers' Lady had to find new recipes and was soon doing a different dish of lapin a l'Europ virtually every night: rabbit in cider, as in Normandy, with cheese the Maltese way, even with paprika and peppers, in Moorish/Spanish style. But in the end, it became like the old Monty Python cafe sketch, where you could order anything you like so long as it was Spam ... with Spam, of course.

So Her Ladyship branched out. She started doing trout from the beck, pigeon and even crow pie, from birds all the Toms shot with relish. Suddenly, the Beggars' was going up market, with grouse and pheasant and home smoked salmon.

All this summer, the luxury food trade has been building up and not to everyone's pleasure. Owd Tom, despite being a major beneficiary of this success, has been known to whisper many a time, "Ah remember when this place were a pub - not a bleepin' caf."

Now the Crooked Inn is coming back into business and, so rumour has it, the new owners are young Londoners who specialise in the latest foodie trends - "Tha've come to teach us peasants 'ow to eat wi' a knife an' fork," was how one our Crookedale spies put it.

Well, we've been fighting it out over the centuries with the Crooks in one way or another, first with pikes and blunderbusses, more recently with much more deadly cricket and rugby balls. At least a culinary confrontation will add a little flavour to the coming Christmas.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.