July 2009 - Posts
The pair waited in the doorway, and eventually heard distant pads of footfall. The steps grew nearer and the large oak door creaked slowly open a fraction.
“Who’s that?” enquired a deep, treacly voice.
“Only me Badger,” replied Mole airilym, as if he had not a care in the world. “And a new friend of mine, Vole.”
“S’pose you’ll be wanting to come in then,” conceded Badger somewhat reluctantly.
The great door continued its inward arc at a snail’s pace. As the door reached its stopper, a great figure loomed in the candlelight. Badger’s black and white face was flecked with grey, and his muzzle and jaws were gnarled like the bark of an ancient ash tree, thick with scars, shabby and careworn. He scowled at Mole and Vole, with an expression of mild displeasure, turned slowly on his heels and led the pair down into his set.
“Close the door behind you,” growled Badger.
*
While the Mole and Vole recounted the tales of the day, in the warm cosy comfort of the Badger’s set and gulped down quantities of warm sweet tea, things were a great deal less cordial for poor Mr Toad.
“Oh poor me, poor, poor me,” wept the Toad.
Toad sat in a white tiled cell, upon a blue plastic-covered foam mattress perched wretchedly on a shelf, a sad apology for a bed. He tucked his large webbed feet up under his rotund belly and sucked on his knees for comfort.
A knock at the door was followed in a moment by the observation flap being snapped open. A pretty pair of blue eyes gazed in from the corridor.
“Hello Mr Toad, I’ve come to see if you would like any food?” The anonymous pair of eyes enquired.
Mr Toad was always one to indulge in collective self-pity and this new audience was delightful relief to the solitude of the previous hours.
“Poop, poop…” he managed in a shaking, choked voice.
The eyes looked to their right. “I’ll try talking with him,” they justified to a hidden third party outside the door. A metallic rattle of keys ensued, followed by the heavy clunk of an iron bolt being drawn back in the door. The door opened inwards and a young lady stood in the door and entered with an air of slightly forced breeziness.
“Hello dear, are you sure you don’t want to eat anything?” said the lady.
“My Dear young thing,” announced Toad, “I sit here in a state of nervous angst… disconsolate… trapped in the mire of officious bureaucratic injustice. My stomach feels like it is attempting to subdue a wild beast within its voluminous folds and you ask me if I require food? My Dear, what I require is legal representation of the highest academic calibre.”
“So, that’s a no then is it?”
“It is,” conceded Toad, chocking back a theatrical tear.
“It’s alright Brian,” called the lady through the open door, “this one’s got the first night nerves, I’ll sit with him for a moment – you carry on.”
The door remained ajar, a shuffle retreated outside in the corridor, and the lady introduced herself.
“I’m Sally,” said Sally, “I help here a few nights a week. You look like you could do with some company.”
Sally sat down on the foam mattress next to Toad. Toad glanced up with bloodshot eyes and recounted the day’s tale…
“…And when they got me in here, this young slip of a Sergeant produced reams of paperwork, which apparently pertained to prior misdemeanours on my part, but for which I have no recollection whatsoever! I am facing a trumped-up charge, based on misinformation, prejudice and envy.”
“Envy? Why would anyone be envious of you?” enquired Sally, which, considering Mr Toad was clad in the prison fatigues of a blue overall, was not such a ridiculous question.
“Because I am cursed with fiscal excesses,” said Toad.
“What does that mean?” enquired Sally.
“I’m ruddy loaded.” explained Toad, putting particular emphasis on the final word in the sentence.
*
“This is the last time I will be able to help out the toe-rag,” said Badger. “I made my promise many winters ago now, and have more than kept my word. But I am too old now and sadly the insolent boy seems to have learnt nothing from me about self control.”
“Don’t be too harsh on him Badger,” urged Mole. “He’s not used to things like you and I, he’s never wanted for anything and just doesn’t understand how the world works.”
“Don’t you believe it Mole,” countered Badger. “That Toad knows more than he lets on, he will do anything for an easy life, anything to avoid confrontation.”
“Come on then you two, no time to waste. Unless we get there soon I fear we will face even more problems created in our absence.”
The trio left the snug candlelight of the set and made off to catch the train into the City. Little did they know that Mr Toad was hatching his own escape plan as they journeyed.
*
“So, you see my money is an awful bind,” said Toad meekly. “It’s a family thing, I got left an absolute pile as a tadpole and have been gradually feeding off it ever since.”
“So it’s a deal then,” said Sally, changing the subject away from Toad’s personal problems for the hundredth time within ten minutes. “When you are out, you’ll send me a cheque for the amount we agreed and I’ll not see you again?”
“My Dear girl, if you spring me from this terrible, dry airless hole you will be handsomely rewarded.”
As they had planned, the Toad squatted to the left of the heavy cell door and pushed it closed gently, while Sally wrapped herself in the blue plastic covering of the mattress and lay on the floor at the furthest end of the tiny cell.
“Help, help!” She cried and immediately footsteps came running up towards the cell door. The observation flap was dropped with urgency and a pair of dark heavily-browed eyes peered through. They spotted the blue-clad shape at the end of the cell and this seemed to initiate a series of fantastically slow thought processes behind their glassy stare.
“Wussup?” the eyes enquired.
“Help” whimpered Sally, doubt suddenly cutting though the promises of fortune and wealth.
The door sprang open and in a swift movement his stout figure disguised well, Mr Toad leapt thorough the door behind the large Officer and pulled it closed behind him.
“Parp, parp!” mocked Toad through the observation flap, and bounded away down the corridor nattering loudly to himself.
The Toad reached a junction of corridors and realised he had no idea of which direction to run. For a moment he attempted to head in all four directions simultaneously; before pulling himself together, sniffing the air and heading off in the direction of a watery smell.
The Toad burst out into a roofless quad and eyed the starlit sky hungrily. He looked up towards the top of the walls and noted the severe glint of razor wire which skirted the bricks loosely. A small gap in the wire was apparent in one corner and Mr Toad squatted at the base of this wall and paused for a second as if concentrating on something.
“Oi, what are you doing?!” exclaimed a Prison Officer, spotting the crouching figure in the gloom. With that prompt ringing in his ears, the Toad leapt skywards with a piercing snap of his legs!
“Ooh, my hamstring!” exclaimed Toad.
The leap was enough to send him up onto top of the wall and, as the Prison Guards poured out of the doorway into the quad far below, they were powerless to restrain the rapidly diminishing figure of the plump Toad on the roof.
Toad found a convenient drainpipe at the front of the square, red-brick prison building and shinned down the pipe. Webbed feet bleeding from the unfamiliar efforts, and knuckles bruised and battered, the Toad limped across the road, slid downhill into a railway cutting and shambled across the tracks.
The blinding yellow light of an approaching train caught the Toad in its fiery beam, dazzling the poor creature momentarily before Toad regained composure and leapt bodily away from the tracks. The howl of a horn swept past and muffled a surprised shout from one of the train’s windows.
“Toady??!” Cried Mole; who had ridden the entire train journey nervously hanging out of the window like an enthusiastic puppy, in an attempt to make the City materialize more quickly.
The train pulled into Central Station and Badger, Vole and Mole bounded down off the platform and back along the tracks. A young boy waiting for the Exmouth train with his mother watched the trio in fascination from the opposite platform.
“Toad my boy, this is the last time I’m coming to get you out of trouble,” admonished the Badger as he approached. Although it was very well concealed, Toad could make out the tiniest hint of relief in the voice of his dear old friend.
“Hello chaps, have I got a story to tell you?” exclaimed Toad.
“Plenty of time for that on the walk home,” said Mole. “I’ve had my fill of busses, cars, trains and planes for one day; let’s get back to our riverbank.”
And so the four friends turned and shambled, hobbled, shuffled and skipped down the tracks, away from the city lights and into the velvety folds of the night. From his bench on the platform, the little boy watched the scene unfold with his mouth agape.
As the friends shrank into the night, so they shrank in stature too. Their clothes fell from shoulders and hips onto the tracks as their wearers became too slight to support their cloth.
Badger dived off to his left into the think brambles of the railway cutting, snuffling and sniffing out a much needed worm or two. Mole dived into the first patch of open grass and proceeded to burrow out of sight of the moon. Vole scampered away down the tracks toward the river, while Toad shuffled awkwardly along, walking slowly on his warty dry webbed feet, sore and bleeding slightly.
His big yellow eyes blinked slowly as he swallowed down a large juicy slug, and he shuffled on, with many miles to travel before he would eventually find himself in familiar surroundings once again.
Last week, in a rather unconventional departure from the normal format, this column turned into a story. Mole was fed up with spring cleaning; vole was new to the river and finding boating a challenge and toad had got a new car. This week we join the trio once again to finish this particular tale.
…On down the road the trio raced. Clouds of tyre smoke billowed as the little red sports car chased around corners of the narrow country lanes and bluebells shook their heads disapprovingly as the car raced past. Mole and Vole clung on to the dashboard out of sheer fright.
“Weh-hey,” cheered Toad, “Parp-parp!”
“Ahhhh!” chorused Mole and Vole.
The little car sped onto the big main road, and onwards towards the City. Past Isca airport they charged, feeling the downdraft of a large aeroplane as it crept overhead to land. As the speedo needle pushed into three figures, Toad looked nonchalantly over to the blanching pair beside him.
“This is great isn’t it?” Enquired the Toad.
“Ahhhhh…” chimed the pair, unable to make an intelligible sound.
The car weaved its way through traffic as the group approached the city edge. The main road dropped to pass beneath the motorway and, while the other cars slowed for the junction, Toad pushed on unperturbed. The car burst through the junction in a bright double flash of lights.
“Oh deary me,” managed the mole. “That’ll be costly.”
“Worry not dear friend Mole,” encouraged Toad, “its only money!”
Toad’s attention was caught momentarily by the sight of his reflection in an office window, he turned to check himself in the glass when the nearside wheel of the sports car caught the curb-stone edge. The car veered away to the right, Toad over compensated and it whipped back to the left and charged over the grass, down a hill towards a huge glass building. The brakes screeched for the first time in their entire journey, Toad had finally found what the third pedal was for amongst his large webbed feet, but there was no grip on the slippery grass and the car slid on, straight into a set of large double doors.
Smash! The car ended up steaming gently, half inside the massive glass atrium of the Met Office. A large burly man in an officious dark blue sweater, trousers and angular hat, loomed above the open-topped car at the hapless three beneath. He sucked his teeth:
“Tsssss, you bays got an appointment?” he enquired.
*
Vole and Mole were allowed to leave Isca police station later that evening after a few difficult hours explaining their role as passengers in the high-speed escapade. Police Sergeant Doyle was a cheerful young officer and explained with a little too much enthusiasm that Toad was facing a severe sentence, as the local constabulary held a list of traffic offences attributed to Toad ‘as long as his arm’ and Sergent Doyle had very long arms. And HUGE feet.
Outside the Police Station Vole and Mole discussed their options.
“I say we devise an escape plan,” encouraged Vole, the adrenalin coursing through his veins making him feel somewhat lightheaded.
“Nonsense,” countered Mole, “We need a nice cup of tea and a sit down, and some sensible advice. You’ve had too much excitement for one day, we need to visit Badger. He’ll know what to do.”
A large cream and red bus pulled up to the stop alongside the pair, its illuminated destination sign glowed ‘X53’ in the twilight. Mole hopped on to the bus and dragged Vole on after him.
“Two singles to Holyford Woods please driver,” asked the Mole.
A look of consternation crossed the bus driver’s face as the voluminous folds of his brow creased with the urgency of a lethargic glacier. “Wha?” expressed the driver.
“I am sorry, Fleet Heights please, on the A3052.”
Frown…
“I’ll just ring the bell, Fleet please. Near the river Axe?” conceded Mole.
Mole gave up with the exchange and thrust some cash at the driver, and both of them dashed up the stairs to sit at the front of the top deck. The bus pulled away and Mole commented how convenient this bus service was for accessing one of the nicest woodland spots in the District. A young, rather dashing chap dressed in the green and khaki uniform of a countryside ranger beamed proudly a few seats behind the pair, obviously pleased with this impromptu and impartial endorsement of the Local Nature Reserve.
*
A little while later, after an absorbing journey through the countryside which passed in a jiffy, Mole rang the bell and the bus pulled up to the side of the road. Mole and Vole charged down the stairs and out of the open doors.
“Oh you mean Seaton Heights!” exclaimed the driver to the back of Mole and Vole’s heads. But the pair were already out of earshot and running down the steep hill towards Badger’s house.
“If you’d said Seaton Heights, I’d have known where you meant,” mumbled the driver to himself, “never heard of Fleet, those two must be new around here.”
*
Mole and Vole found themselves rapping on a large wooden door for the second time that day. Looking rather dishevelled in the dimpsy evening light, they waited impatiently for the door of Badger’s set to be opened. Vole nibbled a wood sorrel leaf as the first hunger pangs of the afternoon set in.
“Now Vole,” said Mole “Badger isn’t one for small talk, so leave the chat to me.”
“Be my guest old fruit,” conceded Vole. “I’ve had more than my fill of excitement for one day.”
*
We leave our familiar friends at this point, if you would like to find out how their adventure concludes, log on to my East Devon Ranger blog on Devon24.co.uk where I will post the ending.
The reason why I have penned this little story is because it is the centenary of the publication of Kenneth Grahame’s classic “The Wind in the Willows”. To celebrate this, we are organising a family festival day at Escot House on Sunday 19th July, when we will be turning the house into Toad Hall. People are invited to come along and meet all the characters in the flesh, take part in fun events along the river, including swamp walks, river dipping, badge making and river crafts. And a local Theatre company will be performing a new take on the classic story.
For more information on the Wind in the Willows day, please contact the Countryside Service at the District Council on 01395 517557.
Once again we venture gallantly off the beaten-track and take a divergence down a story route. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…
Once upon a time, quite recently actually, in a land not very far away at all, there lived a Mole. Mole was doing a spot of spring cleaning. Mole hated spring cleaning. But it was spring, and there was cleaning to be done.
“Oh dear, oh deary deary me” Complained the Mole. “So much dust, where does it all come from?”
The watery April sun was shining through a gap in the top of the molehill and its radiant beam seemed to goad the Mole as he worked.
“So much to do, so little time”
Mole dusted with dusters, swept with booms and brushes and moped with mops. Dust flew everywhere in great clouds, and settled on shelves and matted in his velvet fur, but the Mole persevered in a state of some agitation.
“Oh bother, oh blow… hang spring cleaning!”
And he dashed off out of his house without even stopping to put on his coat. Out through the fields he ran, pushing through knee-high grass, and on along the hedgerows. Orange tips fluttered about his head as the nodding blossoms of lady’s smock rocked in the rushy, damp grasses. Downhill he sped, pushing past alder, then willow trees and out suddenly onto the river bank.
Mole paused and gazed into the cool water, studying the ripples cascading along the back of a trout as it cruised amongst the crowfoot.
Plop! A loud splash made him jump and look up river. A few hundred metres upstream a large brown animal was struggling with the oar of a shallow punt. Round and round the punt spun, making poor Mole quite giddy to watch it. Mole fussed and hustled along the bankside, through the lush vegetation, until he drew alongside the confused spectacle.
“I say, hello” announced Mole
“Wha!?!?” cried the Vole and fell backwards into the water with the second loud ‘Plop!’ of the morning.
The Vole appeared, spluttering and clung to the far side of his boat, pushing the straw boater to the back of his head in an attempt to look casual.
“I say, that’s a cruel trick to sneak up on a fellow like that, what do you want to do that for?” exclaimed the Vole.
“I’m sorry,” said Mole “I couldn’t help but notice you were in some trouble and I wondered if I could help at all.”
“Touble?” asked Vole. “Trouble? I was in no trouble until you snuck up and verbally assaulted me! I should have you know, we Water Voles are quite at home on the river.”
“Really?” enquired the Mole. “How long have you been boating exactly?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I’ve only just arrived on this stretch of the river and this was my first outing in the old punt. You never forget the basics though, I always say. Was just getting the hang of it again when you turned up and turned me out.”
“I am sorry,” said Mole, apologetically “I didn’t think we had met before, water vole you say?”
“Here you are,” said Vole. “Don’t just stand there looking useless, come down here and help fish me out, I think some of my picnic is still salvageable.”
Mole and Vole sat on the bank and eat a hearty meal of carrot and apple, while Mole politely picked the grubs from the apple and surreptitiously threw the vegetables into the longer grass.
It tuned out that Vole had found himself here a few weeks ago, after living a rather urban lifestyle in a cosy high-rise cageblock, being fed regularly by a number of very friendly humans. After a slightly fizzy apple slice, Vole admitted to not being much of a one for boating and Mole agreed that he only ventured into the water when absolutely necessary.
“If you are new around here Voley, do let me introduce you to some of my friends. I know the chap who lives up there in the Manor House, he’s quite a character. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
*
Knock, knock, knock.
Mole and Vole stood on the threshold and waited for the huge oak doors to open. They waited, and they waited. Mole smiled nervously at Vole and knocked a forth time.
“Parp! Parp!”
Mole and Vole nearly fell on their bottoms with surprise! A blur of red shining metal flashed past behind them at high speed. Voley’s boater span on its rim in the gravel.
Back sped the convertible sports car and in a cloud of dust and a scream of brakes it skidded to a halt. A large warty olive-brown face in slick black sunglasses turned casually down to look at them over the driver’s door. A long lingering smile spread along the width of the face and Mr Toad raised his shades slowly to reveal his big, bogly yellow eyes. “Parp, parp!”
Mole and Vole picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and stepped forward to meet the Toad. Toad leapt out of the little red sports car through the open top, without opening the door, and raced up to meet them.
“Did you see that?” asked the Toad. “Did you? I must have got up to fifty in second-gear then! Only just got her and she’s an absolute beauty. Plenty of juice under the bonnet and step on the loud pedal and she screams like a scalded tadpole!”
“Hello Toad,” said Mole ignoring his friend’s line of enquiry. “This is my new friend Vole; Vole, Toad.”
“Jump in old fruit,” said Toad in response, “we’ll take her for a spin.”
“Um, which one of us?” enquired Vole, lowering his offered hand self-consciously.
“Both of course, you can squeeze into the passenger seat can’t you?”
So the Mole and the Vole crammed themselves into the car. Toad leapt into the driving position, once again without opening the door; pushed the large red starter button, turned to grin at the slightly ashen faces beside him, and lurched forwards along the driveway without looking forwards.
“Ahhhhh!” exclaimed Vole and Mole in unison.
“Parp parp!” cheered the Toad.
*
And so we leave this week’s instalment. The story may be a little familiar to you, and will conclude in next week’s column, when I will also reveal the reason why I am parodying this old classic so dreadfully!