According to popular mythology, on the third Saturday of every August the inhabitants of the sleepy Oxfordshire village of Blithe Upon Sparseness meet at a secret location to perform the Sacred Rites of Depreciation. This arcane ritual involves the sacrifice of an esteemed antiques valuer and is believed to have originated in the eighteenth century after an angry student by the name of Randolf de Johnson took revenge on a valuer who misrepresented to him the worth of a seventeenth century book.