The Face of Christ...

Several of our Roman Catholic friends shared a house in Villiers Terrace while they were at Liverpool University. These included Gerard (one of 8 children) and Martin (one of only 5). The house was a typical student house, containing 8 bedsitting rooms and a communal kitchen. All the inhabitants at the time were sweaty socked male youths, resplendant with the pock marked evidence of overactive hormones. The sink in the kitchen was a constant source of new bacterial infections and sex was rarely partaken of on the premises. A religious person may have said, with some justification, that the Lord did not often smile on this house and its inhabitants.

One term, during the final year, a craze had swept Gerard and Martins home town of Ellesmere Port - Burning Your Billies. This involved the removal of ones underwear (rhyming slang Bill Grundies = Undies) and setting light to the skiddie encrusted clothing (it was found that the carbonaceous deposits often helped ignition and burning). The craze spread, via Gerard and Martin, to 15 Villiers Terrace and was a fond end to many a nights piss up.

On one particular occassion, when the Lords wrath against the antics of the occupants of Villiers Terrace was at a high spot, there was a heavy snowfall. After an unusually sober night out at a pub, followed by the demolition of a bottle of Southern Comfort with two recently met girls, Martin and Gerard decided to show the girls just how much fun Burning your Billies could be. Martin volunteered and set light to his rather dishevelled Boxer shorts. Before throwing the flaming underwear from the top window of the house Martin rather playfully twirled the incandescent Billies around one of his fingers. The girls screamed and yelled in delight and urged Martin to let them go.

Off they flew into the snow filled night sky...

The next morning, nursing hangovers and in the warm afterglow of drunken early morning sex Martin and Gerard set off to the Spar for the traditional cold milk and biscuits of the morning after. Their route took them, fatefully, past the place where the burning billies had landed the night before. There in the snow they saw a perfect impression of Christs beatific, bearded face.

Even today, some ten years later, this same spot is revered by locals and the Pope has recently announced that the "Shroud of Burnin" is a genuine relic, every bit as holy as the better known Shroud of Turin.