commentary from city and county . by the gossiper . local booksellers are anticipating a heavy demand for copies of the new version of the holy Bible . published today , this mid-20th century edition of the world &apos;s best seller is already certain of living up to its long reputation . a representative of one of Lincoln &apos;s leading firms of booksellers told me yesterday : we have had such a demand for the new Bible that we have today put in an order for additional supplies . many of the advance orders , of course , have come from clergymen , but we have had more from lay people . but he added this warning we , in the trade , feel that many people think that this is a new version of the whole Bible . it is , of course , only the new testament : it will be many years before the old testament , and the Apocrypha are available . his brief appearance . the man who holds the record for length of service as Lincoln &apos;s member of parliament - since the city &apos;s representation was reduced from two to one 80 years ago - made his briefest ever public appearance , on B.B.C television . Sir Walter Liddall , elected M P for Lincoln in 1931 , became a member of the Palace of Westminster home guard when it was formed in 1940 . and we saw him , for a fleeting two or three seconds , on parade , in the latest episode in the film series the valiant years , based on Sir Winston Churchill &apos;s war memoirs . it was a hot summer &apos;s day when the film was shot , in the palace yard , and Sir Walter , nearest the camera , was on parade in shirt sleeves . many Lincoln people recognised him . and many also noticed the awful bloomer the producers of the film made in showing a 1914-18 war poster to aid recruiting in 1940 ! new record coming ? Sir Walter Liddall was elected member of parliament for Lincoln on October 27 , 1931 and served continuously until July 26 , 1945 - although some might argue that he ceased to be M.P three weeks earlier ! the general election of 1945 took place on July 5 but , because of the large number of services votes from distant lands that had to come in , the count was delayed until the 26th of the month . Sir Walter - he had been knighted in the dissolution honours - lost his seat , after a period of service of 13 years and eight months . the present member , Mr Geoffrey de Freitas will pass that record if this parliament runs its normal course . the last general election was in October 1959 and it is likely that the next will be in the early part of 1964 . Mr de Freitas became M.P for Lincoln in February 1950 and his term will have extended to 13 years and eight months by October 1963 . honest - but unreasoning . to return to Sir Walter Liddall : it was in July 1944 that he set up his parliamentary record by beating the term of office of Mr Charles Roberts , who was liberal M.P for Lincoln from 1906 to 1918 . but the all-time record is one of 20 years , held by Colonel Charles Sibthorp , an early Victorian member , and one of a number of gentlemen of that family who at one time or another represented Lincoln in the Commons . Charles was first elected in 1826 but was unseated in 1832 . however , he was re-elected in January 1835 and retained the seat - it was one of two , in those days of course - until his death in December 1855 . that was the Colonel Sibthorp who achieved notoriety for his outspokenness in debate , and of whom the Times said his name has long been a household word , as the very embodiment of honest , but unreasoning tory prejudice . frequently , Colonel Sibthorp had to be called to order by the Speaker for his unparliamentary language , but he did on one occasion save the country &amp;pound;20,000 a year - which was a lot of money in those days ! when it was announced that Queen Victoria was to marry Prince Albert , Lord Melbourne , the Prime Minister , proposed that the nation should settle on his royal highness an allowance of &amp;pound;50,000 a year . Colonel Sibthorp &apos;s violent opposition won the day and the allocation was reduced to &amp;pound;30,000 . W.E.A &apos;S jubilee . the golden jubilee meeting of Lincoln W.E.A branch forged a new and interesting link in its history . the branch has survived two world wars , and battled its way successfully through the great depression . now it has gone full circle for , after the austerities of the first war , the grim despondency of the depression , and the rationed utilities of the second war it has met to consider the affluent society . but , possibly even more interesting than this , was the fact that the speaker was Mrs Mary Stocks , well-known as a member of the B.B.C brains trust and radio programme any questions ? though she had paid only brief passing through visits to the city in the past , Lincoln is not entirely unknown to Mrs Stocks , for she is the sister-in-law of Miss Helen Stocks who was the first resident tutor of the branch . Miss Stocks , who took a history tripos at Lady Margaret College , Oxford , ( she did not obtain a degree , because at that time women could not take degrees ) was also a member of the Oxford tutorial classes committee . her appointment as resident tutor for the Lincoln branch followed a visit to the city in connection with the branch &apos;s formation , by Mr E S Cartwright , secretary of the committee . she remained in Lincoln from 1911 until 1919 when she moved owing to the illness of her father , one time Archdeacon of Leicester , and later Canon of Peterborough , and settled in Kettering . during the meeting Mrs Stocks told me I always used to hear a lot about Lincoln . my sister-in-law grew very fond of the city , and never lost her affection for it . commentary from city and county . by the gossiper . my story of the man who had been stopped on Burton-road by an elderly woman who asked him for her bus fare to enable her to collect her pension has revealed that this was far from being a solitary experience . telephone calls from a man at Sobraon barracks and from a woman living in Broadway , and a letter from a resident of Yarborough-crescent , indicate that this begging has been going on on what seems to be quite a large scale . the caller from the barracks said the woman asked him the time and when he replied , she said : you do n&apos;t happen to have a few coppers for a bus fare , do you ? he added that he had known her stop at least seven people in one day , and collect a few coppers from each . the woman who telephoned from Broadway told me she was touched as she was leaving the Cathedral . they happened to be passing through the doorway at the same moment and the woman told my correspondent she was very tired , her feet hurt , she had no money and could not go to the post office to collect her pension . I asked her where she lived and she countered by asking me where I lived . it was obvious to me , then , that she was simply begging . there is a slight variation in the tale as told by a reader living on Yarborough-crescent . the woman asked for her bus fare to St John &apos;s Hospital . I gave her sixpence , she told me it was not enough , so I gave her another sixpence . good luck letters . according to a letter I have received , I have been due for a stroke of good luck today , but so far - and the day is far advanced , as I write - Dame Fortune has failed to smile on me to any unusual extent . the letter , I was told , was a prayer which originated in the Netherlands . you are to have good luck four days after receiving this ; it is not a joke , it said , and went on , it must leave your hands before 97 hours after receiving it . just send this letter and 20 others to some people you wish to have some good luck . write it all out 20 times ! it would take me nearly 97 hours to do it , unless I did carbon copies , and they might not work . this letter is about as nonsensical as other chain letters which appear periodically ; the only difference is that there is no money involved here . just the arduous labour of writing out a ridiculous letter 20 times . I am afraid it left my hands before the 97 hours were up - cast into the waste paper basket . bus ticket sevens . equally silly is a story I have just heard about a craze for collecting bus tickets , the serial number of which ends with the figure 7 . a colleague who travels regularly on Lincoln corporation buses tells me he has been asked by someone , acting as spokesman for a third party , to save any tickets he receives from the conductor , the number of which ends in 7 . when , naturally , he asked why , he was told that they were saved and then handed in at the corporation transport department when , in some way which was not specified by his informant , some worthy cause benefited . mention of this to the corporation transport general manager , Mr Herbert Jones , produced the expected comment , never heard of such nonsense . so please do n&apos;t start unloading bundles of old bus tickets at his office ! not Venus , he says ! my reference to the fire which , in February , 1922 , destroyed some business premises in Silver-street , Lincoln , has reminded one reader of something - and provided me with an illustration of what long memories some people have for trivialities ! I had had occasion , some considerable time ago , to mention that fire , in connection with something else , and having turned up the files in the office library , I had quoted a quite picturesque description which had been given to the echo at the time by a lady living in James-street , near the Cathedral . in the course of this , she had said the planet Venus could be seen shining through the glow in the sky from the flames . now an anonymous reader writes to tell me she could n&apos;t have seen Venus that night because it was n&apos;t shining ! he has , it seems , looked through some astronomical records and informs me that the sun set at about 5.34 on the day of the fire and Venus very shortly afterwards , at about 5.50 ! the fire was discovered at about half past seven - by someone rejoicing in the name of Cocky Yates according to my anonymous correspondent - so it could not have been Venus that Miss Bicknell saw from her house in James-street . any other astronomically minded reader who would like to venture what bright star it could have been that , for almost 40 years now , we &apos;ve been thinking was Venus ? we really ought to get this thing straight ! commentary from city and county . by the gossiper . what is the objection to utilising the old burial ground in Beaumont-fee , Lincoln , as a car park ? it is untidy and , apart from what grass there is being trimmed now and then , it is not particularly well looked after . gravestones are broken and almost wholly indecipherable . only a few years ago , the old burial ground in Saltergate was turned into a garden of rest - for the living , not the dead - and the gravestones were taken up , some of them being used for the footpaths . and going further back , the south side of St Benedict-square was widened by taking a slice from the old burial ground . the plot in Beaumont-fee , only a few yards from the city centre , would provide an ideal parking place for quite a number of cars which today are partly blocking the roads by being parked at the kerbside . a woman &apos;s memories . a letter from an 83-years-old lady living near Sleaford indicates that Lincoln corporation had been more reticent than I thought in releasing news about the typhoid epidemic which killed more than 120 people in 1905 . 