THIS skip, seen outside Tewkesbury Abbey, provided readers with plenty of inspiration for their entries to the last caption competition.

“The vicar’s new filing system made up in capacity for what it lacked in finesse” (Russ Bravo); “The Bishop decided to skip the senior staff” (Bridget Swan); “Not what the Dean had meant when he said he would skip the next Chapter meeting” (Tom Page); “Clergy appraisals loomed” (Christopher Wilson); and “With the clergy in the shrubbery, one wonders who the skip is reserved for” (Vicky Lundberg).

The fact that the skip was in a parking slot set another strain of thought going: “Unfortunately, the vintage East European car, which a parishioner had kindly given for the raffle, turned out not to have any wheels, let alone an engine” (Richard Hough); “The new car and mitre provided for the Bishop were a little down-market” (Tom Page); and “The canon’s convertible Skoda was the only car not stolen” (Bridget Swan). There was also this from Christopher Huxtable: “Going one further than the Pope, the Abbey clergy dumped their cars in a fiat accompli.”

Another theme: “Don’t be dismal: we’ll call it a ‘Banksy Baptistery’ and sell it for a tidy sum” (Richard Barnes); “The design for the new total immersion font turned out to be quite traditional” (Richard Hough); and, related to these, this week’s obligatory mention: “For those not selected for the talent pool, alternatives are available” (Alexander Faludy).

Then there were the other puns: “They that go down to the see in skips” (Richard Barnes); “The apiary at Buckfast thought they were getting a new skep” (Frank Kneebone); “Welcome to wor skip”, as they say on Tyneside” (John Appleby); and “The diocesan environmental policy was launched on Trash Wednesday” (David Hill).

A few more at random: “Filming the third part of the Hilary Mantel trilogy, the BBC decides to skip the dissolution of the monasteries” (John Saxbee); “Finally, evidence of what happens to clergy after the new ‘best-before date’ was introduced under Common Tenure” (Chris Coupe); “I thought we’d left all this behind with the Tudors” (Richard Strudwick); “The Bishop’s all-age talk, about collecting up the dead wood chopped off the true vine, had a hidden message” (Andrew Greenhough); and “The Anglican conception of hell was rather different from the Hebrew one: self-contained, no inextinguishable flames, and quite possibly empty” (Patrick Irwin).

We especially liked: “The skip could only have been there for one morning, but now a couple of ospreys had nested in it, and it could not be moved” (Patrick Irwin); “The Abbey staff would be a little surprised when they discovered the tip the Bishop said he had for them” (Tom Page); “The Bishop had a sneaking suspicion that lay ministry in his diocese was beginning to take over” (Rosemary Corfield); and “Pastoral relations were generally good at the Abbey: sometimes there were no clergy in the skip for days on end” (Tom Corfield).

Two winners, though we could have given the Fairtrade chocolate, kindly donated by Divine (www.divinechocolate.com) to several of the entrants.