Monday, November the 27th, 2006

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Shrivelled

When I removed the shrivelled human head from the burlap sack, my first thought was that there must have been foul play, as detectives like to call it. But I am not a detective, and foul play seemed incongruous in this sun-dappled meadow splattered with buttercups, tansy and wild hollyhocks, under a gorgeous blue sky. Just before stumbling upon the sack I had been singing at the top of my voice, singing a happy song, one of my own devising, a paean of praise to bees, extolling the virtues of these splendid buzzy insects, and I was dressed like a bee, sort of, in a black and yellow hooped jumper, and black leggings, and a black cap upon my head.

There was no cap or hat of any sort on the shrivelled head I took from the sack, just a few strands of filthy matted hair. I sat on the grass and took a pair of snippy butcher's scissors out of my pocket and gave the shrivelled head a much needed haircut, and I made a little pile of the clippings on a patch of bare soil, and set fire to it with a match, and it blazed oh so briefly, sparking and crackling, and then all that was left was a trace of ash. I plopped the shrivelled head back into the burlap sack, swung it over my shoulder, and headed off towards Old Farmer Frack's pig farm, singing lustily.

No one knew how old Old Farmer Frack was, and no one could remember a time when he was not squelching about in the mud, at all hours of the day and night, raising his pigs. As farms go, it was a tiny farm, but Old Farmer Frack was a giant of a man, by the standards of that land, and his pigs grew to giants too, under his care. It was a mystery how he made his living, for he never took his pigs to market to sell them. When they reached a size that made them too big for the tiny farm, he drove them up into the hills and let them loose. That is why dutiful parents warn their children against going a-wandering alone in the hills, and tell terrifying tales of giant rampaging pigs which capture and carry off misbehaved infants in their big chomping jaws.

I found Old Farmer Frack engulfed in a fug of culinary fumes in his kitchen. He was preparing his lunch, a concoction of jugged hare, devilled kidneys, and blancmange, and he was cursing like a sailor, for he had inadvertently jugged the kidneys and devilled the hare. One of his pigs—not yet titanic in stature—was rooting around the skirting boards, looking perhaps for beetles or other creeping things. I patted the pig on its shanks, if pigs have shanks, and placed my sack on the table.

“This might interest you, Old Farmer Frack,” I said, helping myself to a tumbler's worth of water from the spigot. Except for his maritime curses, learned when he was but a boy, Old Farmer Frack was a man of few words. He eyed the sack, and he eyed me, and he eyed his spigot. Then he put down his jug full of kidneys and opened the sack with unnecessary vigour, causing the shrivelled human head to roll across the table and topple to the floor. To its credit, the pig ignored it. Old Farmer Frack stared at the shrivelled head and immediately made the sign of the cross. I had no idea he was a Papist pig farmer!

“I just snipped the gory locks off this gory find,” I said, “And then I burned them!”

I stooped to lift the head back on to the table, but Old Farmer Frack clouted me with main force and I crumpled to the floor. Unconscious for a few seconds, I came to with the pig's snout in my face. The shrivelled human head was perilously close to one of the pig's cloven feet, and I feared that it would be crushed should the pig become excitable and begin stamping. Thinking fast, I reached my hand up and patted the pig soothingly. Previously, when I had patted its shanks, or what I believed to be its shanks, I had done so in a perfunctory manner, much as one might chuck a dog under the chin. Now I willed the placatory forces of Blotzmann Movement Number Seven (a) into my hand, that I might communicate absolute calm. At this point Old Farmer Frack smashed me on the head with a spade. Typical of a farmer, I thought, to keep a spade in his kitchen.And then I passed out, for hours.

I was woken by the unbearable sound of a transistor radio blaring into my ears. ‘Unbearable’, because on Radio Pipsqueak it was, apparently, U2 Day, and the noise assailing me was the voice of the preposterous Paul “Nobo” Hewson, a Christian Irish millionaire given to taking court action to retrieve a pair of trousers and a hat*. I lunged to deaden the sound in any way I could, and saw Old Farmer Frack looming above me, his jowls smeared with vestiges of devilled hare, jugged kidneys, and blancmange.

“You brought me the wrong head,” he said, lugubriously.

*NOTE :You can read about this matchless example of deluded self-importance here.