Monday, April the 10th, 2006

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Stoat in a Bog

I went a-roaming on a bright morning, and I had roamed for about half an hour when the sun was obscured by louring black clouds, and a downpour began. I pulled up the hood of my Westphalian Storm Jacket, and ploughed on, though I knew not where I was going. My head was filled with quiz questions to which I had no answers, for it was a football quiz and I know so little of football. In which year did Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann break his neck in the FA Cup Final? Who were Han Bong Jin and Lim Zoong Sun? Was it wise to pick both Hoddle and Waddle for the England squad? I tussled with these perplexities as I wandered off the muddy path by the canal and into a soggy field. Luckily, the field was empty of cows, for I am terrified of cows, and always have been, they seem so… patient.

I crossed the field and came upon a ramshackle collection of abandoned farm machinery. Perching on what might once have been a tractor piston before rust gnawed any utility from it, I took a pastry from my pocket and nibbled at it cautiously. There were few books on the shelves of the derelict cottage in which I grew up, and the only one I remembered was Caution With Pastries & Other Tips For The Neurasthenic Peasant, a lavishly illustrated compendium of advice that I learned by heart, and have followed diligently all my life long. And it has been a long life, seven or eight decades now, none any better or worse than the other.

Swallowing the last flecks of pastry, after about half an hour's cautious chewing, I stood up and looked around me. The rain was petering out into a drizzle. I headed off towards the west, towards trees, for I had heard that beyond the trees there was a brand new government one stop shop. My understanding was that a one stop shop would cater to all my needs, for that is what it promised in the brochure that had been tossed on to my garden path by the postal delivery person. I wanted insignia, desperately, something I could pin to my hats.

The trees, when I reached them, were dense, many of them of rotting, all of them dripping with recent raindrops. I leaned against a larch, or it may have been a sycamore, and lit my pipe. I decided to skirt the trees rather than to plunge recklessly through them. And that is how I ended up knee-deep in a bog. There was a stoat in the bog, and our eyes met. I wanted to be the stoat, and the stoat wanted to be me. We looked at each other, intently, for the longest time. We were still there, in the bog, staring at each other, when night crashed down and stars glittered in the sky. Such is life.